On July 1, The New York Times Op-Docs page published a short documentary called A Conversation with White People on Race (transcript below). The video runs a little over five minutes.
My take away? If this is how white people have a conversation about race, it’s perfectly apparent why nothing is changing.
The video features white people, one person to a frame, giving short testimonials about the confusing and uncomfortable ways their synapses fire when they think about people who don’t look like them. I’m not sure why the piece is called a “conversation,” because no one is actually having a dialogue with anyone else. If anything, the video gives the impression of people stuck so firmly inside their own heads that they can’t have a conversation at all. The best they can do is to engage in a series of monologues about their feelings, as though they were sitting in front of their therapists. Is it any wonder that no problem is being solved?
The video does not begin well. The first speaker’s first words are the following:
It’s very uncomfortable to talk about race.
The very first thing we hear is not an expression of the impact of race hatred on other people. Nor do we hear about the moral necessity of ending the suffering it creates. Hell, we don’t even hear an honest statement of confusion about how one might begin. No. Apparently, the most important thing to say when you’re introducing a conversation about race is how uncomfortable white people feel just thinking about having a conversation about race.
Of course, for those of us who still remember what words mean, a conversation about race, by definition, consists of talking with people of other races about how to solve the problem of racism. But this video is not a conversation about race or about anything else. It’s merely further evidence — as if we needed any — of how impossible it is for most people in this country to do anything other than talk about their feelings.
The second speaker picks up the theme:
I’m feeling… apprehensive because I think there’s a lot of reasons why I feel like I should be able to talk about race?
Note that we are still in the land of feelings: apprehension, a sense of insufficiency, confusion. Note who all of the words refer to: the speaker. Note the grasp of the issues involved: none.
Here’s our next contributor to this important conversation:
I don’t want to say anything… uh, you know… that would offend anyone.
Okay, look. Never, ever, in the whole of my childhood in suburban, lily-white, 1960s America did I think that the problem with racism was that I might give offense. I didn’t know a lot, but I knew that other people had somewhat more pressing, life-threatening concerns. How did I arrive at this nuanced understanding of human life? We didn’t have computers, iPads, smartphones, Facebook, or Twitter, but we did have these marvelous inventions called newspapers, radios, books, and TVs, and those were more than sufficient to give me a baseline understanding of what was going on in the world. These days, no adult with an Internet connection can reasonably plead ignorance.
The video continues along the same lines, with folks talking about race being a “touchy subject,” and about their personal epiphanies, and on and on, until any ability to reason at even the most elementary level has finally evaporated, and one of the participants says:
I want to bring up race, and I want to bring it up in a frame that helps my children think that there’s no difference. But the mere fact that I might be bringing it up could suggest that there is a difference.
Translation: I want to teach my children that all people are human beings of equal worth, and I’m making “all people are human beings of equal worth” equivalent to “all human beings are exactly alike,” which is a conceptual error that renders my point moot, except that I don’t know it. So, because I’m just going to keep circling around my own inability to define the question, nothing I say will make any sense, and I’m unable to address this issue in any way, even though I’m a grown man who surely should have thought about it long ago.
I won’t bother you with the rest of the video. It doesn’t get any better. If the video weren’t on The New York Times Op-Docs page, I’d wonder whether it were a parody.
My fellow white people: Your feelings are important — to you and to those in your immediate circle who care about you. My feelings, like yours, are important to me and to those who care about me. But my feelings are not important in every context, and neither are yours. The world is not our encounter group, and what goes on inside our heads is really not that interesting or useful to most people. Granted, what goes on inside my own head sometimes seems quite interesting and useful to me, but that doesn’t mean that it makes any practical difference to anyone trying to solve a problem.
Contrary to popular opinion, having a conversation about racism does not require us all to have PhDs in Getting Our Heads Straight. This is not a therapeutic issue, nor do you need the equivalent of a dissertation committee to tell you that you finally get it. All you need is a moral compass in decent working order and a willingness to get off your ass. No therapy necessary. No thesis due. No getting lost in your discomfort required. You’ll learn as you go.
If you listen to other people talk about how they live and see the world, you’ll find out what they need. And then, maybe, if you actually have a commitment to doing anything, you’ll have a conversation that bears fruit outside the confines of your own life.
A conversation that bears fruit is not easy. People argue, and give offense, and get pissed off, and embarrass one another, and have their sacred cows knocked over, and watch their heroes thrown off pedestals, and hurt one another’s feelings, and otherwise experience all manner of uncomfortable things. But they also keep coming back for more, and there is only one reason they do so: They care more about helping to make someone else’s life worth living than they care about what is in their own heads. From that kind of conversation might emerge any number of solutions to any number of problems.
If you want to engage in a conversation about race, you will embarrass yourselves, make mistakes, and give offense. I know you will, because you’re doing it already. We all are. What you haven’t done is to learn to handle the inevitability of doing so. So please, learn to handle it — because learning to handle it is what reasonable, ethical, mature people do.
A person who is willing to talk, in good faith, with other human beings about how to solve problems that afflict this world has a place in this conversation. A person who can only talk about how uncomfortable it is to address problems that afflict this world is just causing a distraction. There is no neutral ground. Either you throw your feelings at serious problems and accomplish nothing, or you get down to brass tacks and start working with people who want to accomplish something more than not giving offense.
It’s pretty damned clear the choice we’re making, White America.
[Headline image: A light-skinned person looks at the camera. The person has pink lips, dark hair pinned up, and a hand in front of their face. Through the outspread fingers of the hand, you see a brown eye looking at the camera. The background is tan.]—
TRANSCRIPT
It’s very uncomfortable to talk about race.
It’s not something – it’s not something I do.
I’m feeling… apprehensive because I think there’s a lot of reasons why I feel like I should be able to talk about race?
I don’t want to say anything – uh, you know — that would offend anyone.
It’s a very touchy subject. It’s still difficult, even if you feel like you’re on the right side of it, to have a dialogue about it.
Especially for white people because we don’t want to see if – the racism that we may be holding onto.
I don’t know, maybe I am racist. I certainly don’t like to think that I am. And I think that’s too because the perception – in this society, perception of a racist is a guy in a robe.
Now I understand that it’s a system of advantages and disadvantages based on race. So as much as there’s the disadvantage piece of it, there’s the advantage piece of it, which is what I experience as a white person.
I want to bring up race, and I want to bring it up in a frame that helps my children think that there’s no difference. But the mere fact that I might be bringing it up could suggest that there is a difference.
I remember asking a friend of my father’s who’s black why he was called black, because his skin was brown. And I’ve learned that lots of people who are white ask this question and maybe they also receive the answer that I got from my parents which was like “oh my gosh, we’re so sorry that she asked that, and it’s just a term, move on.”
One of my third grade students seemed pretty rocked after the Eric Garner case – death and came up to me and said “why – when you were little, were you worried about this stuff too?” and I knew what he was talking about before – I didn’t say “what do you mean, what stuff?” I didn’t want to play dumb. And I said “you know no, I didn’t have to be, and that’s not fair.” And that was really hard because he just kind of sat there and it honestly seemed like the first time that he had considered the fact that not everyone had to think about race all the time.
I know that I’m white and I guess I’m part of that collection but I don’t think about being white. I don’t.
I really did not know that I had a racial identity. I knew I was white, I had no idea what that meant, how that had shaped my outlook on life, how that had shaped my sense of optimism, sense of belonging, sense of safety, sense of feeling entitled to go help children that I thought were part of a community that couldn’t figure out how to help themselves.
I think that impulse – that kind of color-blindness impulse comes mostly from white people. I’ve never heard – I don’t know, I’m sure it comes from people of all kinds. But I’ve heard it most from white people who are saying like let’s do this as a way of getting past this racism thing. And I think in part it comes from a sense of shame and guilt about what racism has done and kind of how racism was built by white people.
I don’t want to be ashamed of being – and plus I’m a male, it’s like every group out there can be pissed off at me because I’m white and a male. And that’s a weird kind of burden that some people do feel and I certainly feel it sometimes from people, that I’m privileged, I get stuff that other people don’t get.
I think we’re all implicated in a racist system and I play my part in it as a white person. So I do have individual responsibility and accountability. I mean I’m part of the system and I do things that both perpetuate it and I certainly try to do things that challenge it.
I realize I’ve never said anything. When I’ve heard racist jokes, heard racist comments, I’ve never said anything. I’ve never spoken up and said “hey that’s racist,” not once.
In my mind there’s no – I’m not involved in any conflict that involves race. I’ve only been the beneficiary of it. So to talk about it is – I don’t think I would sound very wise.
Being white means that I have the privilege to think that I’m not affected by racism. Or that I don’t even have a race because I have all these other things like a gender and a sexual orientation and those are pretty neat, so I don’t have a race. But I do, and I’m white.
The Body is Not An Apology thanks Sequoia Prindle for putting together this transcript.