Debby Irving writes, “When it comes to racism, there is no such thing as neutral.” It took me until almost halfway through her new book, “Waking Up White,” to realize just how blinded I’ve been by the brilliant white that has surrounded my life and kept me safe. It’s easy to be confused or frustrated when it comes to race, especially as a white person whose skin color has never been a red flag for qualms. So, after entering graduate school in 2013, I was perturbed and unsettled at all the talk of racial injustice. Hadn’t we figured this out already? Don’t we make it when we try hard and stick to things? All this talk about race. Surely, they mean class?
What felt like a resurgence of racial tensions in this country was not going away, and it wasn’t until I turned the pages of Irving’s narrative that I felt like a chord had been struck. Race in this American life was real and becoming a mounting problem. But what could we do about it? I was floored to read that the GI Bill, something Irving’s father and mine took advantage of as returning veterans, was not so easily offered to returning servicemen of African American descent. In fact, they were turned away, even as the program was there for all veterans. What if my father had been African American as a Korean War vet? Could he have started a new chapter in his life with a leg up from the very governmental programs of educational funding and subsidized housing with the wonderful and hopeful help of the FHA? He would have had a very difficult time accessing those programs because institutions and investors were warned that if a veteran was not white, he was a bad investment. I might not have had a bedroom with flowered wallpaper, a yard to play in, and a network of neighbors and community services, from dance classes to clothing stores to good schools to grow up near. If I hadn’t grown up in a thriving community with a network of supportive parents, teachers and mentors, I may not have had the optimistic view a child with a sense of can-do confidence and worth is able to develop and carry with her as she moves through life.
But how do we approach the conversation of inequity as whites without crossing the line or offending people whose skin color doesn’t match our own? I was shocked to learn that I have been doing this all along by asking people of color, upon first greeting, questions like, “What do you do?” This is not an effective ice-breaker today, even though my parents used it.
So we make small changes and hope the ship can begin to turn itself around. It isn’t easy. Every saying and cliche has me wondering just where its origin may lie. As Irving realizes, as do I, race must be faced. And to do it, we as whites must embrace the complete historical significance of what it means to be white in this country.
If we are to better understand the original Anglo bonds that have been the base of our white constructs in the United States since our forebears pressed their colonial boots into the New World landscape — which was taken with guns, disease and Christianity — then we can begin to accept the truth and build anew in order to flourish. We are all in this together, and in that, we have to accept that we are all coming from different narratives that tell the same story in many different ways.
Try, as Irving suggests, to sort your idea of race. She offers seven categories: Whites, African Americans, American Indians, Jews, Muslims, Latinos and Asian Americans. List five words under each heading without thinking too much — whatever springs to mind first. Don’t judge, just do it. Though uncomfortable, it’s one way to get a litmus as to where your narrative is on race.
Throughout the book, which is one part American history, one part memoir and one part race revelations, she asks readers to consider that the Native Americans were here for thousands of years before the Anglos spread their giant Anglican-tipped wings as far as Africa, Asia and the Americas. I hadn’t thought of it like that. In fact, I was reminded that my husband’s people, the Irish, were twice oppressed — first by the English 700 years ago, and then when they arrived in the States at the turn of the last century. The Anglos had a breadth of power unsurpassed.
Imagine two groups of people, one with all the power, a power that is the infrastructural context of government, banking and schools. In the late 1890s, Native American children were taken from their families and out of their communities to be re-educated out of the goodness of the Church. Little good it did, leaving those children disenfranchised, to say the very least.
My great-grandmother would have been eligible to attend one of 150 or so schools around the country, the last one closing its doors in 1968, believe it or not. Was this why my family narrative was not to talk about my great-grandmother’s Native American roots? She was taught to feel ashamed of her heritage. In fact, she denied them to protect her children, whose father was Scottish, and it’s no wonder being white is the easier way to promise that kind of hope for a better future.
My old thinking was that I had done my level best to raise our four children during the ’80s and ’90s to be good people who didn’t have a bigoted bone in their bodies. I told them of their great-grandmother, but mine was a story of romantic grit: She’d raised five children, and they all grew up to be hard workers and good people. Yet, I knew very little of my great-grandmother’s early people. I felt a sense of sadness whenever I thought of her, unlike the sense I got when my husband would share his story of his family settling in Dedham in 1637, the Fairbanks family from whom Steve can trace his familial beginnings.
It shapes you. Even so, I strove to teach our kids to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, as the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so famously ring after all this time. Truer words have not been spoken on the subject, but actions are even truer. It’s just not enough to be kind and respectful. We must be curious. We must get to know ourselves better.
Today, 63 percent of all Americans identify as non-Hispanic white. White is a race, too. And until we accept that and all its historical ripples, we simply cannot begin to change a darn thing that has gone so off the rails where our kids are concerned. And though there has been a shift toward positive change, it’s been glacially slow in coming.
Irving wants us to be aware of our snap judgments and move into deeper conversations with people who do not look like we do. It’s the only way to gain additional stories to help tell the whole story of race in this country. It’s the only way to see just how, if you’re white, you’ve automatically had a leg up in so many ways. Think of the way in which you are free to move in the communities in which you live and work, the wealth your ancestors have amassed, and how that has benefited you and your family today, your cache of social connections built through a network of family and friends, and the voices steering education, business and politics in this country. Which voices are the loudest?
Irving says we really have to see what’s in our “race” folders before we can begin to understand the devastating socio-economic and psychological impact of racial inequity, systemic racism, that our children of color have had to endure in the land of the American Dream. If you’re white, the dream becomes a reality more often than not.
At first, I defensively bucked this cliche. I was a first-generation college graduate. There were no legacy legs up for me, and we lived a modest life. On my own merits, I earned a college degree, got married and had a family, a house and a career. But what if my father hadn’t been given the GI Bill? Would I have been able to persevere with the same grit and American Dream attitude? I’m not so sure.
Irving poses, “How it is possible that I was both a ‘good’ person and utterly clueless?” She self-describes as WASPy and clubby. My family went camping in the summer, and our club year-round was the Methodist Church in town up on the little hill overlooking the paper mill. We had what we needed. Life was simple.
So when I run into race, I defensively think, “why are they talking about race again? What is the problem? Haven’t we gotten over it?”
Irving says I might try asking how I can get over myself. Taking a defensive attitude only closes doors. Taking Irving’s challenge was eye-opening. Racism is alive and well. You can be nice and still carry racist attitudes and not even know it. You may not even see them until you write them down.
Join me as I prepare to let go of my privilege and embrace a new way of looking at race. Be honest. What did you write under those seven categories? It’s OK. White is a race, too, and we’d better start talking to our kids about the truth. Only the truth can set us free.
Bonnie J. Toomey teaches at Plymouth State University, writes about writing, learning, and life in the 21st century. You can follow Parent Forward on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ bonniejtoomey. Learn more at www.parentforward. blogspot.com or visit bonniejtoomey.com.
