What Can White People Do?

We were driving down the road to our first haircut in months, my two youngest kids in the car with me. Our middle son was ranting about the protests over the video of George Floyd dying by a police officer. Presidential rhetoric was blamed for this tragedy, and I pushed back that the president was only a “cog in the wheel” of systemic racism. Back and forth, back and forth we went until something happened.

The youngest son piped up, “What in the world happened? What are you talking about?” I sat back stunned. He didn’t know. Of course, he didn’t. We do not watch the news in our house, and this child doesn’t have access to social media. He only watches global soccer videos, which heaven knows, do not speak about racism and oppression enough. So, I pressed into the conversation.

The middle son explained the murder, protests, and presidential tweet. I shared how this is part of a larger issue where people of color are more likely to experience violence. In such an innocent tone he replied, “I thought they stopped that stuff with the Civil Rights Act.” Oh, out of the mouth of my baby comes such hope. This is the same child who read a book in school this year about the Alabama church bombings in 1963, where four children were killed. He didn’t understand then how anyone could hate black people so much. And here we were in 2020 – still talking about white people in positions of power using suspicion as an excuse to kill a black person. God help us.

I’ve been overwhelmed this week, like so many, by what looks like another story of an unarmed person of color being murdered by white people. A consistent emotion for me has been cynicism, mostly because we have been here before. Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown – and the list continues on for centuries. In this day and age, we white people post support for protestors online and sit heartbroken in our privilege with hopelessness near us. It is just a small glimpse – a moment – of what racism feels like in this country. Unfortunately, most of us will be sad for a few days and move on to some other cause in the next week. We will wonder why this keeps happening and do nothing.

Will things ever change? God, I hope so. I ask that we white people fight racism every day in every way. Here are some tangible ways to act today with resources for you to use in educating yourself.

·       It’s not enough to just vote anymore. We must change the voting process to allow more people to register to vote and stay on the rolls despite voter suppression practices. We also must provide safe and accessible ways for people to vote, especially with the current pandemic. Our right to vote is a key element of our democracy. We must protect it.

Resources: Advocate with Fair Fight, read the Elizabeth Warren plan for voting accessibility, listen to this podcast where Stacey Abrams describe our broken voting process

·       Get educated about police tactics, especially police militarization. Our government has approved the movement of leftover military equipment to local police agencies to “beef up” their capacity for policing. While protecting our police officers is so important, studies show that the training and equipment provided to our police departments directly impact the ways in which officers approach people on the street.

Resources: Learn about police militarization, study the results, read what police have to say, experience the learnings from the police response to the 2014 Ferguson protests

·       Reflect on the different levels of racism and oppression. Not all police officers are good. Not all police officers are bad. However, all police officers are human and operate within human-made structures which are inherently biased. Anti-racism work happens at the individual, group, organization, and community level. There is not one silver bullet to end this. The work is difficult and continuous. A way to step forward is reflecting on the ways that we as white people block access for people of color and changing our practices.

Resources: Dig into yourself by recognizing your own white supremacy behaviors

·       Call out our own silence hypocrisy. Just a few weeks ago, we also watched crowds of people, mostly white, protest in Michigan and New York City about stay at home orders for COVID-19. Think about the overall response to these actions. Did the police show up in riot gear and military vehicles? Did the media use coded racist language to describe these events? Did our government support these people’s rights to protest and be heard? We need to call out the biases when we see them, not just when someone is murdered.

Resources: Remind yourself about white people protests being acceptable

The last thing our world needs is another “woke” white person; however, the world desperately needs white people to voice and act with our privilege and influence toward an anti-racist world.

P.S. This article was originally published May 30, 2020, on my LinkedIn profile.