Seeing more clearly the historical and current institutional, systemic, deliberately orchestrated, and --increasingly since the Civil Rights era-- covertly doctrinal nature of the pervasive "incidental" racism I cannot not see, has helped me to become much more compassionate regarding the unconscious participation manifesting as implicit bias of, defensiveness about, and denial of racism among so many of the white people I have encountered throughout my life. You see, albeit in different ways, we are all victims of it.
We people of color of African and "American" (i.e. original peoples of the North/Central and South "American" continents) heritage are the obvious victims once racism is acknowledged. The explicit atrocities committed against peoples of our heritages are legion. I acknowledge here that atrocities have been committed against nations and ethnicities and localities worldwide over the course of history. What distinguishes the "American" situation is that the foundation of this powerful and most modern nation-state --along with its institutions, culture, and norms-- rests on soil fertilized by the blood, sweat, tears, and bones of our peoples moreso than any other; it has codified white supremacy as the invisible water supporting the ocean of fish who are its inhabitants. But you see, in order to to accomplish this great undertaking, a fundamental aspect of the humanity of unwitting members of the dominant group must be extinguished. And that requires thorough indoctrination.
Throughout this country's history, White Americans have been indoctrinated, conditioned, socialized, and acculturated to this lie so much so that, for most of you, your social position of whiteness is not even recognizable to you. What is obvious to everyone else is invisible to you. You are collectively "the emperor with no clothes." We see clearly the humanity missing in you when you are blind or oblivious to our subtle or profound suffering at the hands of the System supporting your privilege, or perhaps you glimpse bits of it but employ psychological defenses to distance yourselves from it. Rationalizing, intellectualizing what is in front of you; projecting guilt, displacing anger. It is obvious to everyone else, while the collective defense, a specialized form of "folie a deux," the shared delusion called White Solidarity endorses the manufactured reality being defended. All this because your sense of self, of being a good person has been skillfully tied to the lies imbedded in your indoctrination. When your Righteousness is riding on these Wrongs being Right, there is little obvious incentive to see the truth. But the price of living this lie is high: the systematic anesthetizing of empathic association and basic compassion for the people of color. Without this, the indoctrination that allows people not to perceive the system of white supremacy and racism would be sabotaged.
Accomplishing this feat has required the monumental, continuous gaslighting of every generation of Americans, with only those whose humanitarian upbringing or some undeniable enlightening confrontation with the truth and conversion allowed them to resist or undo the charade. Needless to say, they were not thanked for proclaiming the truth to everyone else.
This gaslighting took place in the nursery, at the dinner table, at universities, on the job, in the schoolhouse, in the churchhouse, in the courthouse, in the jailhouse, from the Whitehouse, and from the House of Representatives and the Senate. It is even encoded in the Constitution. The Civil War did not end it; it just made it more devious and ubiquitous. It is happening right now.
Such distortions of the natural soul are confusing and not unpainful for a child. The child must first learn not to trust their own perception, instincts, intuitions, and interpretations; then s/he has them replaced with white supremacist doctrine cloaked in neutral-sounding terms (Law and Order, Reefer Madness, War on Drugs, War on Crime, Reverse Discrimination, Welfare State, Super Predators, The Bell Curve, etc.) and nonverbal communications in specific context involving people of color, until it is the doctrine that has become second nature. It is like acclimating to a pair of ill-fitting shoes until the pain gives way to callouses and numbness, and wearing anything else is extremely uncomfortable.
What can such grand deception about and unwitting collusion against the equality of entire sectors of our shared humanity do to a soul? It must diminish the humanity in one that feels another's pain and informs their conscience. It MUST do this, otherwise the whole thing falls apart. Why do you think white people love jazz, blues, gospel, and rock and roll, latin music and black performers so much? These forms ALL emanate from the souls of those of African and "American" descent: they are overflowing with SOUL, because of having to reach into the soul to survive, find solace, and mine joy with one another in a harsh and hostile world. It is this unconscious craving for this exquisite, painfully mined rare-earth human metal of SOUL that is the echo of longing for the natural soul that was robbed in order to perpetuate the lie that gives us the insane reality of these very same artists being both revered and despised. Examples? Nina Simone, the child prodigy classical pianist at shose recital her parents were told to sit in the back until she refused to play unless they were given seats at the front; countless jazz artists acknowledged as geniuses who were not allowed to enter or exit through the front door, eat or drink at the establishments they performed at; white supremacist rap music... I won't even get into sports; I'll just say "take a knee" for them too.
The consumption of these expressions of soul is a palliative --but not healing-- effect as an elixir for the "white man's (and woman's) burden," the loss of precious pieces of soul through the initial and ongoing indoctrination experience of covert white supremacy.
The motivation for "not going there" is that it is painful, even traumatic to realize the edifice buttressing one's self-identification and whatever reverence they have for aspects of their heritage, and religious upbringing too, is in reality a sandcastle protected from the waves by a huge, artificial sand bar. The enormity of the traumatic guilt and sense of betrayal can be utterly overwhelming. The pain of the awakeness rushing into those previously deadened, anesthetized regions of empathic humanity in one's consciousness can be excruciating. And yet, personal wholeness is impossible without it.
The pain I feel for parts of my own life --past and present--and those of my loved ones who are/were people of color that have been tainted by this system we live under, has been at times intense, and other times background noise. But it has been continual. I have never been in the situation of a shock realization of our racialization and its consequences. And although it is always "better" to be the beneficiary than the victim, nobody escapes unscathed.
While there is no real comparison between the degrees of suffering involved, the power of such a stark realization is almost unfathomable and certainly devastating.
For far too many of you, some of your humanity is being held hostage, and the price of recovering it is the dreadful but eventually liberating experience of finally and fully opening your eyes and starting to see things as they truly are.
You see? We are all victims of the State.
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