White People Need to Patiently Dialogue with Other White People
By: Heather M. Edwards
Tags: Politics, Race, Culture, Racism, Police

White People Need to Patiently Dialogue with Other White People

Do not let your newfound outrage burden people of color

All rights © Patrick Tomasso. Toronto, Canada

Almost three years ago I wrote 7 White Privileges I Didn’t Realize I Was Enjoying. If you spend anytime whatsoever online you already know the range of responses I got — agreement and support from within the echo chamber, a few folks who were willing to reconsider their internal prejudices, profanity, name-calling, defensiveness and enraged denial — the whole gamut.

Two weeks ago Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. And a reader suddenly felt compelled to comment on my three-year-old post:

Maxed out on white guilt and virtue signalling [sic]. No you do not get to speak for me or inveigle me into your spider’s web of Newspeak. Dismal. One black man died unlawfully, four police officers have been charged with it. The story is OVER.

No. My fellow white person, the story is not over. It’s just beginning. It’s a tale as old as time and it is finally being told like a town crier on a global scale.

Three years ago George Floyd was not a hashtag. He was not a name that had come to symbolize the police brutality and racial injustice — I was just starting to grasp the magnitude of both.

George Floyd’s story is many white people’s first glimpse of a reality larger than their own — a reality people of color have been trying to convince us of all along. It must be maddening to not be believed.

I̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶’̶r̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶d̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶l̶i̶e̶v̶e Racism cannot be denied.

One of the things that you will consistently read in pieces about how white people can help is “do the work.” You will also read POC writers speak of their exhaustion at having to constantly explain racism to their white friends/coworkers/neighbors/strangers — too many of whom seem to be coming from a place of doubt that requires proof from the POC in their lives.

Imagine your frustration if everything you’ve known your entire life is just now being discovered by a shellshocked white person who had NO idea how pervasive police brutality is and how disproportionately it affects people of color, particularly Black people. Imagine if you were constantly caught in situations where you were expected to compassionately reassure each white person that you know that they’re not racist and how much you appreciate that they’re not racist while also trying to educate them about the myriad ways racism and racially motivated interactions affect your daily life. Imagine seeing people who look like you get murdered by the people whose salary is paid by your tax money to keep you safe. Imagine seeing how often this happens without consistent or adequate legal consequences.

Explaining all of this to defensive white people in a way that doesn’t threaten them or their self-perception of their own morality is emotional labor. It adds insult to injury. They are living with racism and then they have to convince doubting Toms that racism exists, disrupts their day, their career, their housing, and sometimes can even take their lives.

So. White people. We need to do that emotional labor. In ourselves and with one another. Racism isn’t a niche topic for Black people to discuss amongst themselves or to patiently teach us.

White people need to patiently dialogue with other white people who are still trying to one-off every single instance of racially motivated injustice and violence. Brace yourself. It will very quickly start to feel like coddling. Because it is. But if we can buff out the edges on our fellow “not-racist” white people we can dilute the concentration of denial in our country.

Know that you won’t succeed with everyone. Know that plenty will call you a libtard and a snowflake. One commenter called me a fuck blister. I don’t know what that is but it made me laugh. Know that they will accuse you of self-loathing, virtue-signaling and white guilt.

Here is how I responded to the commenter who describes himself as a Christian.

My fellow Christian, I grew up in the military and have three cops in my family. And a firefighter. I had nothing but respect for the uniform of anyone who risks their lives to protect or help us. I was initially offended by Black Lives Matter posts. I reposted the first Blue Lives Matter post I saw because I thought people were disregarding the risks our LEO take and the sacrifices they and their families make.

I couldn’t imagine that people would look at cops with fear instead of admiration the way I always had. And then I saw that Black people were being killed by cops. One cell phone video after another burst my naive bubble that all cops act honorably – some commit crimes while wearing the badge. I was stunned.

I truly had no idea until the Ferguson protests six years ago when Michael Brown Jr. was murdered by a white police officer.

Not only were they being killed, no one was being charged. I thought Trayvon Marin was the exception, not just one more victim of a horrifying epidemic.

The terms “virtue signaling” and “white guilt” are too “newspeak” for me to address but I will say that this tragic story is just the first portal for many of our fellow white people who had no idea how widespread, how systemic racially motivated injustice is — what a different country our fellow Americans live in.

I wrote this piece two and a half years ago — in response to these countless cases of police brutality and police even killing innocent people. Two years later George Floyd is NOT EVEN CLOSE to an isolated incident, as anyone with an internet connection can see.

Breonna Taylor’s murderers still haven’t been charged. She was an EMT asleep in her bed when she was gunned down.

Tony McDade was murdered in May and no one has been arrested. Wilbon Woodard, Mychael Johnson. God’s children.

The story is not over. It’s just finally being told in public. People are maxed out on injustice. And everyone is finally listening ❤

May God bless you and keep you, my friend.

Since he was “maxed out” on just seven privileges I realized I had been taking for granted, here is a significantly longer fact-checked list, edited and revised of THIRTY-ONE more privileges that has been making its rounds across social media. How long does the list need to be to convince people that these are not isolated incidents?

My white friends. In fact-checking each name I read over and over again “was fatally shot by”. Passive voice. Like stray bullets just happen to fly by and sometimes they happen to land in Black bodies. Shrug. You can’t accept that as some kind of inevitable collateral damage of honest policing.

It enrages your heart while exhausting your spirit. And this is just one mere hour I spent looking up name after name. Imagine if this was the nonstop reality of your community. And remember that this is your community – this is America. These are your fellow Americans.

For many white people, the background noise we may or may not have noticed just became the twenty-car pile-up right in front of us.

Perhaps you and this commenter will consider all of these precious souls that were fatally taken from us. Pause on each of their names. They were just living their lives, in the middle of dozens of freedoms I have always taken for granted yet Black people were murdered while doing these things.

Please think of these departed souls the next time you do any of the following without fear of being murdered by a law enforcement officer.