What’s the Harm in Not Talking About Race?

Not talking about race in general is harmful for several reasons. First, it perpetuates, if not outright endorses, the status quo (which is rooted in systemic racism). Second, it minimizes or disregards the lived, racialized experiences of people of color. Third, not talking about race makes it seem like there is something wrong with people of color. In the same way that shushing a child who asks about a person in a wheelchair sends the message that being in a wheelchair is somehow shameful (and drawing attention to it would be rude), shushing a child who asks about skin color sends a similar message ⁠— that it’s rude to point out the ‘defects’ of others, and that having brown skin, like being in a wheelchair, makes that person defective. Finally, not talking about race prevents us from moving forward, together, as a society, which we cannot do until we address the racial divide between us.

Not talking about whiteness specifically, however, is also very harmful. Because whiteness and the white lived experience are seen as normal and universal, not calling out that the white experience is, in fact, a white racial experience means that the false belief that the white experience is the universal experience goes unchallenged. The unwritten assumption is that black folks, for example, have a unique experience and culture, while ‘the rest of us’ all share the same basic lived experience, values, and traditions.

When we see, for example, college students chugging beer to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ and call that “college kids having a good time,” we’re glossing over the fact that what we’re seeing is white college kids having a good time, within white cultural traditions. And by setting up the white experience as normal, good and developmentally appropriate (even though it includes breaking the law by drinking alcohol under the age of 21), we set up any other experience to be seen as diverging from that norm. So when we see black college students have a similar good time, smoking marijuana and listening to Nas’ I Can, they get labeled as deviant or even delinquent.

When we call out our own whiteness, we call out that our experiences, culture, and traditions are racialized just as much as those of any other person. We disrupt the narrative that whiteness is akin to not having a racial identity. And we open space for the criticizing of our own racial culture and traditions, and for the acceptance of others.

We as white folks cannot be effective anti-racists until we come to terms with our privilege, and our complicity in white supremacy. And we cannot do those things without first coming to terms with our own whiteness. If we don’t see ourselves as white then we certainly will not see ourselves as being privileged on the basis of that whiteness, nor as benefitting from a system set up to systematically advantage white folks in every conceivable way.

In addition, we cannot be fearlessly anti-racist while holding onto the belief that we are “all just members of the human race.” While that may be biologically true, as we discussed last week, the concept of race still carries with it immense social consequences. Until we accept our role in perpetuating racism merely by virtue of our skin color, then we will continue to be afraid of the criticisms of others, because we will take them personally. We won’t see a critique of our words or actions as an accurate and helpful commentary on the culture and beliefs we have inherited and internalized as members of the white race (e.g., our implicit bias), but rather as a personal attack on our character.

Developing your white racial identity is challenging, but it’s also exciting. The truth is, as white people, a large part of our power to change the system comes from being white ⁠— from being part of the system we are trying to change. We have the unique ability to use the privileges that come with our white racial identity to disrupt white supremacy in ways that black and brown people cannot. If systemic racism could have been dismantled solely by people of color, it already would have been. White supremacy needs to be dismantled from within, by white people, in collusion with people of color. As so many of our friends and colleagues have told us, people of color don’t need allies, they need accomplices. They need white accomplices, ‘on the inside,’ who understand their own racial identity and their unique role in dismantling white supremacy from within the system.