1.17.16
“The White liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love, but justice.”
– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sermon
Dr. King has some strong words for the white liberal, doesn’t he?
I am a white liberal.
And I am racist.
I work hard to be anti-racist, because I know that I am racist.
I am racist because I was raised –
as is every single one of us in the U.S. (and, in most other countries) –
in a racist society.
Do you know about Tamir Rice?
Tamir Rice was a 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun in a park.
Within two seconds of arriving on the scene, one of the police officers fired two shots before the car had even come to a halt. After the shooting, neither officer administered any first aid to the boy.
He died the following day. 12-years old.
Do we think a white child playing with a toy gun in a park also would have been killed within two seconds? The statistics tell the truth: in 2015 young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers.
And this isn’t just about police officers. It’s about all of us raised in a system where white people are by default good, and black people bad.
Of course, those of us who are white liberals say we are different: We are not racist.
But consider Dr. King’s warning to the white liberal.
And consider the black writer Brit Bennett’s challenging piece, “I Don’t Know What to Do with Good White People.” She says that sometimes the blatant racism of white supremacists is simpler to deal with because it announces itself. She asks, How do you deal with the white people who congratulate themselves for their non-racism, who say, “I am a good white person.” Or who excuse themselves, after a misstep, by saying, “It is never my intention to harm anyone,” which is what Daniel Pantaleo said after Eric Garner’s death – remember Eric Garner was the black man who was unarmed, selling loose cigarettes, and then choked to death by several policemen.
Brit Bennett says, “What good are your good intentions if they kill us?”
So I say that I am racist
because I know that being anti-racist
is about more than good intentions.
The first time this became really clear to me was in graduate school when I took Harvard’s Implicit Association Test.
It is an online test you can take that measures what they call your implicit associations:
your usually unconscious biases about race, gender, sexuality, ability… They have many tests, and the first one I took was about race, specifically EuroAmericans and African Americans. The way it works is that photos and words flash on your computer screen, and you have to quickly sort the images and words by using two buttons on your keyboard. So, for example, you have to press the e key every time you see a white face pictured or a Good word: like beauty, love, happy, good. And you use the other key for the black faces, or the Bad words, like evil, hurt, failure, etc. And then they reverse it so you have to categorize Good words with black faces and Bad words with White faces. And then they reverse it again.
You have to do it quickly, so that your brain is relying on its automatic associations.
I didn’t even have to see my score at the end to know the results…because it was obvious: it was striking to me, and deeply unsettling, how difficult it was to sort Good words with black faces – and in comparison how easy it was to sort white faces with Good words…And Bad words with black faces was so easy.
The result said I had a “moderate” automatic preference for European American compared to African American. That’s only one step down from the highest score, which is “strong” automatic preference.
…And why wouldn’t I have an automatic bias for white faces…?
Even if I don’t want or intend that bias.
Most of my life I have been in predominately white communities. Most of our leaders, authority figures, and heroes have been white. Perhaps you’ve heard that of the 20 actors nominated for an Oscar, all of them are white. In the rare years when a person of color is nominated for an Oscar, they are usually in roles like villain, servant, criminal, or poor struggling person who perseveres because they are helped by a white person.
This week I took the test again, and despite all the anti-racist training I’ve had, despite the black and latino friends I’ve made, my score remained the same.
While our culture remains unequal we will be fighting an uphill battle to uproot our own prejudices, so in the meantime, the task is to become aware of the bias, and to continually counteract that bias with informed, conscious actions.
It’s called being anti-racist.
I must actively do something to counteract my unconscious biases. Otherwise I am usually… inevitably… unintentionally racist.
Even when I’m trying to be anti-racist, I make mistakes! I get self-righteous, or I start telling people of color how to be respectable in a white person’s world, or ….
So I have to continue to educate myself and recommit.
This week I took another test on the same site, this one measuring my associations of white people and black people with weapons.
My result here was even stronger:
A “strong” association of black people with weapons.
And we wonder why Tamir Rice was killed.
A black boy with a toy gun.
Or Amadou Diallo, who was unarmed and fired upon 41 times by police after he reached for his wallet.
These are not anomalies. We want to try to explain them away.
But they are part of a clear pattern.
Dr. King said:
“The White liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love, but justice.”
The path to justice will include tension.
He said, “It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension. He merely brings out the hidden tension that is already alive.”
We are seeing this tension now. Just look at the tension between our two political parties. We see blatant racism coming from some presidential candidates. And We must not stand for it, of course –
AND we also must remember that just because our own racism is not blatant or intentional that it does not exist.
So let us work for justice by first recognizing our own biases, so that we can be honest with ourselves about the source and the depth of the problem.
Then let us work in solidarity with people of color, so that we can create a Beloved Community where the color of your skin, or your social class, or your sexual orientation, or your gender, or your ability … does not determine your opportunities.
Each of us has varying degrees of privilege, and each of us experiences varying degrees of oppression.
Let us join together, with humility and with courage, to make the world better for the next generation.
May it be so.
-Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
Dr. King's Challenge to The White Liberal
