There are a lot of reading lists being passed around among us whites. Besides books on racism and antiracism, there are documentaries to watch, conversations to unpack, privilege to be examined and a foreboding sense of work to be done.
We are determined to do that work and determined to let everyone know we are doing it. This work is deemed necessary so we can become better allies for black people in the fight for racial justice. There are so many anguished conversations among white people taking place right now about what to write on our protest signs, about that time we said that thing to a black friend and it changed the energy in the room, about whether rewatching the movie “The Help” counts as progress.
There is a frantic race to catch up, and that’s got to be the correct instinct, right? I mean, look at this moment in history. I swear, if I don’t do it right I’ll ask to speak to my own manager.
However, when I pause for a second I get a sneaking feeling that my ego is involved. I catch myself wanting to be “one of the good ones,” and I have to laugh at myself. Who exactly do I imagine is paying attention to me? Is somebody out there doling out points? Black people are being killed in broad daylight by the police, by actual representatives of the state, and I am fretting over the wording of an Instagram post.
Maybe, just maybe, this work I need to do, this learning and unlearning, is not all about me. As a white woman in America, it’s second nature for me to center myself in the discourse, but also to vanish from it when it’s convenient. So permit me, please, to make this work of undoing my complicity in white supremacy in the name of racial justice all about me, you and literally everybody else.
First up, I disagree that this is in fact work. Work is chores, and chores get done. Mopping the floor, watching “The Help,” getting a root canal; those are chores that thankfully all come to an end. When you’re white, understanding racism and anti-blackness is not a root canal, it’s not a one-time-only, pay-your-money, drill-the-rot-out-and-get-through-it type of experience. This is a lifelong project we get to approach with grace and curiosity and the full understanding that it will be difficult at times and beautiful at times and any chance we have to take part in it is frankly rather stunning.
In a culture fixated on self-improvement, perhaps you could think about rescinding your power as a kind of barre class for your moral compass. In the beginning it will be difficult on those tiny, rarely used muscles, but boy will you be aligned after some years of daily practice.
I hope you don’t, though. I hope you understand that grappling with this country’s brutal past and imagining a future that is fair is not something you are expected to do alone. You’re simply one drop in a new wave, a wave that slips easily into an ocean of people, deep and permanent, who have long been eroding the cliffs of white supremacy.
I hope this comes as a relief to you, as it did to me. There is great solace in putting aside the fallacy that you’re entitled to a starring role in this story. When you jump from the brittle scaffold built by violence and go tumbling into the tide, you’ll see that it’s easy. You’ll find leaders and peers there, all around you. You won’t worry then about messing up or getting lost; you’ll know at once where you’re needed. Much of the time that will be behind these leaders and peers, often beside them, or when faced with danger, you’ll be in front of them, bashing into the cliffs yourself so they can float and sparkle and enjoy the world away from the fight.
One powerful lie that we were born into is that white people deserve different, better lives than anyone else. We see now that this lie is deadly for others, and it is dangerous for us, too. This lie that can only hold fast by isolating us from one another and having us do ugly things to keep that separation up, it divides us from what we are, just a bunch of molecules in a variety of formations that will dissolve and rebuild in the blink of time’s eye. Laugh at that lie as you squint out to the horizon and see the truth, then jump into the ocean that will inevitably get you there, and you will love it, I promise.
Maeve Higgins is the author of “Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl From Somewhere Else” and a contributing opinion writer.
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To White People Who Want to Be ‘One of the Good Ones’ - The New York Times
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