The first time I told a racist joke, I was in seventh grade. I had heard the joke from an adult I respected, and I didn’t understand the punch line (which was directed at Latin persons). I knew the form of the joke well enough to know when to laugh, even if I didn’t understand why it was supposed to be funny. The next day, I arrived at school, new joke in hand, ready to make some friends laugh with my very adult humor. The first two people I saw were twin brothers in my grade. They were part of the cool crowd, and also kind to me. They were also Latin. I told them the joke, and they didn’t laugh. At the time, I assumed it was because they didn’t get the joke either.

I’m a white guy who was raised in a very white suburb in the Midwest. Our school was less than 5% non-white when I was in High School. In other words: I was the kind of kid who could tell a racist joke to the race the joke is belittling and have no idea why that was wrong.

It didn’t take me too long to get a clue – at least enough so that I understood what a racist joke was and that they’re not okay to tell. I thought I was a pretty good example of a non-racist White person.

In the last few years, though, it’s become more and more clear we haven’t made as much racial progress as we thought. I’ve been working to educate myself on what racism is, why we still have racial injustice in our country and what my role in healing that can be. So without further ado, I want to offer ten ways I’ve learned I was wrong about Race.

1. I’m not Racist

If there is one thing White people definitely don’t want to be in 2019, it’s racist. We will bend over backwards to avoid the term. Be wary of posting about race on social media: we’ll come out of the woodwork to tell you why whatever you posted doesn’t apply to me!

In his landmark book Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva insists we do away with trying to identify who is racist and who isn’t. He warns, “Hunting for racists tends to get us off what we need to correctly understand the workings of racism in society.” Instead, he suggests we ask how living in a society that organizes itself around the idea of race has affected each of us.

As a White person, I’ve found this perspective helpful to disarm my natural defenses in conversations around race. I can’t deny that my perspective has been shaped by a world that categorizes by race. And rather than asking “Am I or am I not?” the question becomes How has our racialized world shaped me?

2. Racism is a Thing of the Past

Picture racism and you likely think of police spraying protestors with fire hoses, Klan-led lynchings, lunch counter protests, separate water fountains and segregated schools. In other words, racism is something we fixed through the Civil Rights movement.

The problem is that, by pretty much any metric you want to measure – from the ongoing segregation of schools to housing discrimination to access to the ballot box, persons of color continue to trail far behind White Americans – and by rates that show no significant progress since the Civil Rights Movement.

In other words, hard data demonstrates that the lived experience of persons of color in the United States hasn’t measurably improved in relation to Whites in the last 50 years.

3. Racism is About Hate

I grew up thinking about racism as individual behaviors that target a person based on skin color – racist jokes, slurs, shop owners denying service to someone because of their race.

If that were true, then as long as I don’t feel bigotry or hatred toward someone because of their race, I’m not racist.  And if that were true, then racism would be largely fixed because far fewer Whites today think a person of another race is inherently inferior.

But as the data above illustrates, a marked change in individual attitudes of White Americans toward Americans of color hasn’t resulted in significant improvement in the circumstances of Americans of color.

We start digging into why the lives of Americans of color haven’t improved significantly in the 50 years since the Civil Rights movement, it becomes clear that speaking of Racism purely in terms of personal bigotry isn’t sufficient.

Scholars help us speak of race as a system of policies and attitudes that were put in place generations ago. Housing discrimination, mass incarceration, school segregation, voter suppression – all of the systems that continue to disadvantage persons of color can be traced directly back to the end of slavery.

So it’s entirely possible for White Americans to have genuine affection for persons of color and still benefit from the racist systems in the United States. We don’t have to do anything for racism to continue to thrive. And that passivity is a big problem, because we assume racism has to be active and intentional.

4. Racism is a Problem for Persons of Color

One of the biggest reasons I never cared about racism was that I never had to. I’m white. Our whole society was built to cater to me. I was vaguely aware that Americans of color were still disadvantaged, but there was no urgency. That changed one Advent season when I was reading Mary’s Magnificat – the song she sings when she’s pregnant with Jesus.

The song anticipates the Messiah, celebrating what the world will look like under his rule. Mary sings that he’ll fill up the hungry and send the rich away empty handed. He’ll lift up the humble and pull down rulers from their thrones. It’s a powerful, beautiful song. But on this particular Advent, it struck me that, on the whole, I look a lot more like the rich and rulers of Mary’s song than the poor and humble. My life is a lot more like Herod’s than Mary’s.

Which means the Magnificat isn’t good news for people like me – at least at first blush. I spent a lot of time meditating on what that meant for me – as a middle-class citizen of the most powerful nation in the world, a white, straight, cis-gendered man with a master’s degree. By nearly any metric, I have more (power, privilege, access) than most other people.

For someone in my position, the justice of God is going to feel bad. For those with less, justice is experienced as a raising up. For those with more, it’s experienced as loss.

That was a big wake up call for me: from God’s perspective, I’m living an unjust life. It’s going to be evened out later, so why not work toward that justice sooner? It doesn’t matter that I was born into most of my privilege. It doesn’t matter that some have more privilege and position than I do. What matters is what I do with the privilege and positions in which I find myself. Am I working actively for justice? Or am I supporting the currently unjust system – passively or actively? God’s call is to join in making Earth as it is in Heaven. It’s going to be just eventually. So I’d better join in the work now.

5. Reverse Racism is Equally Bad

It doesn’t take long in a conversation about race for white people to express that we feel discriminated against too. We might cite Affirmative Action quotas or share a personal anecdote of a time someone generalized about us because we’re white. The point is that, emotionally, we equate our experiences with those of persons of color.

Scholars of race are careful to distinguish between bigotry and racism. Bigotry is individual discrimination against another person. So yes, persons of color can be bigoted just like white persons can. But – in order to help us have more specific, helpful and nuanced conversations about race, it’s helpful to think of race as bigotry + power. (Ijeoma Oluo’s great book So You Want to Talk About Race deals with this in more detail.) Remember: race is systemic, so to talk about race helpfully, we have to point to systems of power that privilege some and disadvantage others. When it comes to race, whiteness is privileged in our country. So there’s technically no such thing as “reverse racism”.

It’s also important to acknowledge that we (white folks) often feel discriminated against because we’re experiencing the loss that’s moving us closer to equality. If I don’t get hired for a job that goes to a person of color, I will doubtless feel oppressed. But if the company is still 90% white, I can’t claim I’m a victim of discrimination. Even though that’s what it feels like.

6. My Church is Diverse

White people are the most segregated group in American – and it’s not even close. Most of us are nearly never in non-white majority spaces, and that includes church. One result of our segregated lives is that we tend to see the presence of any person of color as proof positive that we’re diverse. One black family in the church? We’re diverse. A Hispanic congregation meets in our building in the afternoon? We’re diverse! Our congregation is a third non-White! We’re diverse!

The problem with this understanding of diversity is that it doesn’t address the systemic nature of race (stop me if you’re picking up on a pattern). It’s entirely possible for a church to be ethnically diverse and culturally homogenous. The churches in which I’ve worked have run the gamut from wholly White (despite being in a predominantly Black part of town) to having a few non-White worshippers to having a significant minority of non-White members. But in all cases, our church culture is White. That’s not real diversity.

True diversity – where persons of multiple cultures are welcomed and valued as they are is a lot harder. It takes having a significant number of non-White leaders. And it takes White people learning not to be centered in every conversation and cultural assumption. (Which again we will experience as loss/persecution.)

7. White Supremacy is Obvious

I spoke at a Youth Pastors’ conference in Guatemala once. The conference started at 7, and we didn’t leave my hotel until 6:45 – for a 30-minute drive across town. I was freaking out – I was going to be 15 minutes late to the thing where I was speaking!, but I was the only one. None of the Guatemalans with me were freaking out. And when we got there, 15 minutes late, hardly anyone was there. We didn’t start until more like 8:15, and by then it was a full house.

That was my first experience with how non-White culture engages with time. And over the years, it’s become an illustration for me of how insidious and subtle White Supremacy can be.

I used to think white supremacy was easy to spot – look for the folks wearing white hoods and carrying tiki torches.

In his massive, essential book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (National Book Award Winner), Ibram X. Kendi outlines two different kinds of racism: segregationism and assimilationism. Segregationism is the sort of supremacy we associate with hoods and torches. Segregationists believe races are inherently different, and that my race is the best. Assimilationism is different: it holds that the races are different, but not inherently so. Assimilationists blame culture, economics, education or a variety of other factors on why one race is currently worse than another. Assimilationists believe it is possible for that inferior race to become as good as the superior race. But it’s still supremacy. It’s still racism.

I’ve learned to think about White Supremacy as anything that centers Whiteness.

I was a kid when Ebonics was first recognized as a dialect of English. Everyone in my world decried this descision as foolish since Black kids who speak Ebonics English weren’t speaking “real” English. But the reality is that my Midwestern (White) English is as far from Shakespeark and the King’s English as is Ebonics. Both are evolutions of language, and the only reason one is “right ” is because it’s White.

Or take the church where I currently pastor – we employ a countdown timer to kick off our Sunday worship gatherings. That’s a very White thing to do (think back to my experience in Guatemala). Is there anything inherently wrong with a countdown timer? Of course not. But it is a sign to our non-White congregants that our church is culturally White, which means we center Whiteness at our church.

Decentering Whiteness is really challenging – not just because it’s so much more subtle than hoods and torches. When we push Whiteness out of the center, White folks experience it as loss and persecution (seriously, am I a broken record here?). Part of what we have to teach is a willingness to embrace loss of power. Or, as Jesus said, “If anyone would be my disciple, pick up your cross and follow me.”

8. I am White

I know I’m Scottish and German. And that’s about all I can tell you about my ancestors. I’m deeply disconnected from my ethnic identity. That’s the goal of Whiteness. It makes it easier for me to disconnect from history, to look at what I have as purely the product of my own efforts, to disavow my own privilege.

Most of us don’t know the history of racism. (Kendi’s book is essentially a biography of racism itself. You can also listen to the fantastic Scene on Radio podcast Seeing White). Race developed as a social construct during European colonialism and imperialism. Specifically, Europeans developed race as a tool for exploiting those they conquered. There were no White people until European imperialists wanted to conquer Africa. Then, suddenly, Europeans weren’t Dutch, British, German, Spanish or Portugese. We were White. And Africans were Black.

In her brilliant interview from the Sparrow conference, Ekemini Uwan warns that Whiteness is inherently problematic:

“Whiteness is wicked. It is wicked. It’s rooted in violence, it’s rooted in theft, it’s rooted in plunder,  it’s rooted in power, in privilege (which we just saw two weeks ago with the college scandal – I have receipts here) so that the goal for our white sisters is to rediscover your ethnic heritage so I am not pulling something away from you without telling you to replace it, so the goal for you all is to recover what your ancestors deliberately discarded – so that means return to whatever that ethnic identity is, are you Italian, are you Irish, are you Polish,  are you Turkish, whatever that was, you have to do that work to find out what that is, pull into that, learn what that cultural heritage is, Celebrate that. It’s going to be work on your part, but that IS the work.“

Uwan warns that divesting ourselves of Whiteness takes work. But that’s part of the work of justice.

9. I’m One of the Good Ones

I’m a performer by nature (Enneagram 3 if you know what that means). That makes social media my kryptonite, particularly when it comes to accomplishing real change. After all, in the well-trod slaktivist tradition, I can throw up a post or like a status and feel as though I’ve accomplished something.

When doing the work of anti-racism, this can be even more insidious. Did a person of color like my status? Did a white person accuse me of self-hatred or race-baiting?

Austin Channing Brown tweeted a few months ago (I couldn’t find it, so please forgive me) something like, “I don’t need more friends. I need more allies.” That struck me hard: is it more important that persons of color like me and think well of me? Or is it more important that I am part of the struggle for justice and equality?

I don’t get a merit badge for being nice to people of color. I don’t get accolades for thinking racism is bad. I don’t deserve a trophy for educating myself on the cardinal American sin. These ought to be basic requirements for anyone who considers themselves a follower of Jesus in our present reality.

Racism and anti-racism are measured not by what we think or feel, but by what we do. Am I taking concrete steps toward a more just world? If not, why not?

10. There’s Nothing I Can Do.

I get it – the task before us seems overwhelming. And if, like me, you don’t have a clue where to start, here’re a couple of simple things you can do:

  • Use Twitter to follow voices of color. Do you realize how many people will tell you what they think about stuff for free? Tons. If you don’t have many voices of color in your life, take advantage of the internet. Follow. Make a commitment to listen for 6 months before you try to engage.
  • Read books written by persons of color. Again, totally free (hi local library!). Read Celeste Ing. Read Yaa Gyasi. Read Gene Luen Yang. Read the folks I linked above. Read as much as you can, fiction and non-fiction. Some friends and I started a book club on Race after the White Power march in Charlottsville a couple of years ago. That group has totally changed how I understand race.
  • Get involved in local organizations. City boards and commissions? Church? PTA? We spend most of our energy on national-level politics where our voices have the least impact. At the local level, we can effect far more change. Take election day off and use it to give rides to the polls or volunteer to be a poll watcher to combat voter suppression! Invest your voice where you’ll have the biggest impact! Be an advocate for justice wherever you are.

How have you been wrong about race? What are you doing to be an active anti-racist?

Racism and anti-racism are measured not by what we think or feel, but by what we do. Am I taking concrete steps toward a more just world? If not, why not? Click To Tweet