- Mar 11, 2015
- 83,587
- 50,463
Many of the members here grew up in this same situation. Some have come to the reckoning this guy has. Unfortunately those who do get dissed by others, and I expect this guy will get labeled as guilt ridden and self hating. You have to wonder about people who say such things.
Chapter One of A Family History of White Lies: American Roots of Racial Injustice
As chance and ancestry would have it, my life as a White American began on White Street, at the end of the first week of May 1955, in the small town of Clinton, in DeWitt County, smack dab in the middle of the state of Illinois. Clinton was, on the day of my birth, a town of six thousand souls — all but a handful of them White people — hemmed in on all sides by freshly-turned soybean and corn fields.
For the first eighteen years of my life, I lived in Clinton, in the middle of middle America with my middle-class White family in a medium-sized white house on West White Street. Although I have spent my adult life far from the rural Midwest and my racially-isolated hometown, in many ways, “White Street” — think of it as the racially-privileged version of “Easy Street” — is the place I have always called home.
Growing up in an overwhelmingly White community, I was immersed in racialist thinking, actions, and institutions. I have lived my entire life in a world where my Whiteness mattered and has given me rights and freedoms denied to others.
Despite the unquestioning faith in the superiority of Whiteness shared by all my childhood family, friends, and neighbors — or perhaps, because of it — as a child, I was convinced I was not at all racist. I could look back to the time of my parent’s childhood and see clear evidence that racism was a much more serious problem in their generation than it was in mine. As a child in the 1960s, imagining myself as fully enlightened on matters of racial equality and civil rights, I felt my generation would be the ones to solve the problem of White supremacy in America once and for all. I had no idea how far we had to go.
As a child, I was not only ignorant of how deeply White supremacy was embedded in American history and culture, I also possessed a completely groundless certainty about the geographic limits of racism in America. I looked south from my central Illinois hometown and imagined a dividing line, a western extension of the Mason-Dixon line marking the border between the tolerant North and the racist South. In general, I grew up thinking White supremacy was primarily a problem of a different time and a different place, not something related in any way to me or my community.
But, of course, the history and geography of racial inequity in America are far more pervasive and complex than any younger versions of myself ever could have imagined. As a White American male, I have lived a life of entitlement and privilege and yet, until very recently, the myriad ways I was advantaged by ancestral legacies of Whiteness remained invisible to me, too ordinary-seeming to attract notice.
We cannot know ourselves until we know our true history. But the truths of White American history have been intentionally buried. For generations, White Americans have taught their children a history full of white lies, a sanitized and whitewashed version of American origins designed to maximize (White) American pride and minimize any feelings of discomfort (for White folks).
This is an example of part of the solution. Whites understanding of the complete history of this country in order to get a real knowledge of today. Then once that is done take steps to erase whatever racist beliefs you have, which in turn will allow this country to take the proper steps to repent and to reconcile by fixing the damages created by white racism.
Unearthing the Roots of Racial Inequity in America
Chapter One of A Family History of White Lies: American Roots of Racial Injustice
As chance and ancestry would have it, my life as a White American began on White Street, at the end of the first week of May 1955, in the small town of Clinton, in DeWitt County, smack dab in the middle of the state of Illinois. Clinton was, on the day of my birth, a town of six thousand souls — all but a handful of them White people — hemmed in on all sides by freshly-turned soybean and corn fields.
For the first eighteen years of my life, I lived in Clinton, in the middle of middle America with my middle-class White family in a medium-sized white house on West White Street. Although I have spent my adult life far from the rural Midwest and my racially-isolated hometown, in many ways, “White Street” — think of it as the racially-privileged version of “Easy Street” — is the place I have always called home.
Growing up in an overwhelmingly White community, I was immersed in racialist thinking, actions, and institutions. I have lived my entire life in a world where my Whiteness mattered and has given me rights and freedoms denied to others.
Despite the unquestioning faith in the superiority of Whiteness shared by all my childhood family, friends, and neighbors — or perhaps, because of it — as a child, I was convinced I was not at all racist. I could look back to the time of my parent’s childhood and see clear evidence that racism was a much more serious problem in their generation than it was in mine. As a child in the 1960s, imagining myself as fully enlightened on matters of racial equality and civil rights, I felt my generation would be the ones to solve the problem of White supremacy in America once and for all. I had no idea how far we had to go.
As a child, I was not only ignorant of how deeply White supremacy was embedded in American history and culture, I also possessed a completely groundless certainty about the geographic limits of racism in America. I looked south from my central Illinois hometown and imagined a dividing line, a western extension of the Mason-Dixon line marking the border between the tolerant North and the racist South. In general, I grew up thinking White supremacy was primarily a problem of a different time and a different place, not something related in any way to me or my community.
But, of course, the history and geography of racial inequity in America are far more pervasive and complex than any younger versions of myself ever could have imagined. As a White American male, I have lived a life of entitlement and privilege and yet, until very recently, the myriad ways I was advantaged by ancestral legacies of Whiteness remained invisible to me, too ordinary-seeming to attract notice.
We cannot know ourselves until we know our true history. But the truths of White American history have been intentionally buried. For generations, White Americans have taught their children a history full of white lies, a sanitized and whitewashed version of American origins designed to maximize (White) American pride and minimize any feelings of discomfort (for White folks).
Unearthing Roots of Racial Inequity in America
Chapter One of A Family History of White Lies: American Roots of Racial Injustice
medium.com
This is an example of part of the solution. Whites understanding of the complete history of this country in order to get a real knowledge of today. Then once that is done take steps to erase whatever racist beliefs you have, which in turn will allow this country to take the proper steps to repent and to reconcile by fixing the damages created by white racism.