After the votes of the 2020 presidential election were finally tallied, we were faced with another question. It wasn’t about the seventy-four million of us who voted for four more years of racism and cruelty and mass death, it was about the eighty-four million of us who didn’t vote for those things. After one of the worst series of crises in American history and the closest brush with fascism we’ve ever had, what were we going to do about it? Were we going to seize the opportunity to effect real and lasting change, or were we going to kick the can down the road again?
If everybody were equal and given the same opportunities at birth, what would I, a white American, be giving up? Not my freedom, not my vote, not my safety. I would be giving up what does not belong to me in the first place, something that is a figment that came to be transformed through the centuries into real power. I would be giving up unearned privilege and power. White superiority is a fiction, but it’s so deeply ingrained that the privileges that accrue are real and have a real impact. But the problem with white privilege is that you can’t give it up even if you wanted to.
* * *
In April 2021, HR 40, a bill introduced over thirty years ago by John Conyers and named in homage to General William T. Sherman’s Field Order 15, which granted forty-acre plots to freedmen and -women, is wending its way through Congress as of this writing. The purpose of HR 40 is to evaluate the legacy and ongoing harm of slavery and debate the idea of reparations. Again, leadership matters, and it’s probably not a coincidence that the bill finally gained traction while Biden’s in the Oval Office.
If we want to create a society in which there really is equal justice for all, we’ve got to level the playing field and dismantle every part of the system that grants white Americans unearned privilege at the cost of oppressing others. Reparations are a way to do that. The concept is straightforward—beginning four hundred years ago, millions of men, women, and children were forcibly removed from their homes. Four hundred thousand of them were brought to the American colonies, where they were sold and forced to work for no wages. This was a permanent condition. Once enslaved, they were enslaved for life, and their children were enslaved after them. Their lives were constantly in danger and their families could be broken up at any time. By the time slavery was abolished in 1865, the number of people living in bondage in the United States had grown to four million. Every generation since has been shut out of the economic and educational benefits that were regularly bestowed on whites. There is no way to compensate for the loss of life or the destroyed potential or the fallout from the resulting traumas, but reparations will, as far as possible, return what has been stolen.
Until the playing field is leveled, America is not a democracy. Until everybody eligible is allowed to vote unimpeded, America is not a democracy. As long as a majority of the majority doesn’t have a problem with the deliberate economic plunder and disenfranchisement of large swaths of the population, and as long as the rest of us ignore it—because to pay attention would be to challenge our privilege—nothing will change.
Epilogue
Guilty on all three counts.
In the aftermath of the Derek Chauvin verdict, Jason Johnson, a political scientist and commentator, said, “What this says to me is that in order to get a nominal degree of justice in this country, that a Black man has to be murdered, on air, viewed by the entire world. There would have to be a year’s worth of protests, and a phalanx of other white police officers to tell one white officer he was wrong, in order to get one scintilla of justice.”
The Notre Dame professor John Duffy described the verdict as “a single drop of water on a tongue parched over 400 years.”
It took the righteous grief and rage compounded across centuries of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans and their willingness to put their lives on the line yet again to get the attention of a system, of a country that has ignored their pain for far too long.
Recently a court in Columbus, Ohio, ruled that police can’t use tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters, something that clearly does not go without saying.
On the other hand, legislators in Florida and other states have passed laws reducing the liability of people who run over peaceful protesters with their cars, which the ACLU refers to as “hit and kill” bills.
The forces, unequal but opposite, keep pushing against each other.
Black Lives Matter. Black lives matter. It’s a simple enough statement. The responses—All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter—underscore the necessity of having to say something so essential.
To raise your voice if you are Black in America is to take an unfathomable risk. To drive your car, or use your phone, or have a picnic, or sleep in your own bed is to trigger a white fear so fundamental and so shared that to be Black in America is an almost impossible proposition.
And right now this is exactly who we are. This is exactly how things will continue to be in an America that values whiteness above everything else if we, those of us who can, refuse to make a different choice. There is no moving on from this. For once we need to dig in our heels and demand what’s right, even if it hurts. Because the first step in healing is facing the truth and feeling the pain.
It’s time for us to put our bodies on the line, it’s time for us to listen.
It’s time for us to kneel.
Notes
Introduction
1. A note on pronouns: When I say “we,” I am generally referring to white Americans. I have no sympathy for or allegiance to the role of the white majority in our history, or to the brutality of white supremacy, but it would be disingenuous to pretend that I haven’t benefited enormously from a system that has kept whites at the top of the racial hierarchy we invented.
Acknowledgments
At St. Martin’s Press thanks to Jennifer Enderlin, George Witte, Kevin Reilly, Alan Bradshaw, Greg Villepique, Adriana Coada, Michelle McMillian, Michael Storrings, Nikolaas Eickelbeck, Paul Hochman, Martin Quinn, Gabrielle Gantz, and Tracey Guest.
At UTA thanks to Jennifer Roehrer, Marc Paskin, Pilar Queen, and the rest of our amazing team.
Thanks also to Athena Lark for her comprehensive and thoughtful sensitivity read; Henry Kaufman, for the legal vetting and the cartoons (!); Darren Ankstrom, fact-checker extraordinaire; Melissa Shore for her help with trauma research; David Morris for his great insights into PTSD (sorry I ghosted you); and Lachlan Cartwright for getting the ball rolling even though I wasn’t remotely ready—I am now officially “Tanned, rested, and ready to go.”
I am grateful to Ben Stiller and Nicky Weinstock for the incredible opportunity, to Sarah Soleimani for taking the journey with me, and to Sylvie Rabineau at William Morris Endeavor for making it happen.
Thank you to a group of extraordinary women who broadened and deepened my understanding of the dangers facing us during this critical time in our history: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Rosa Brooks, Mieke Eoyang, Laurie Garrett, Denise Hien, Susan Opotow, Kavita Patel, and Maya Wiley.
My deep appreciation to Patti Lupone, who has inspired me since I was thirteen, for her fierce dedication to the arts and the people who make them possible; to Jane Fonda for her kindness and the work she does every day to save our planet; to Chely Wright and Lauren Blitzer for reaching out at the very beginning and giving me the chance to contribute to their amazing project; to Rob Rieman, for the invitation and his belief in my work; to David Rothkopf, not only for the great Deep State Radio and awesome Twitter threads, but for his generosity; Molly Jong-Fast for her wonderful writing and the introduction that changed everything.
To new friends who have helped make this indescribable year more bearable: Brad Berkwitt; Allison Gill; Dana Goldberg; Renee Stubbs; and Joyce Vance, E. Jean Carroll, Jennifer Taub, and Katy Phang for inviting me into the inner circle of knitting. Also, to E. Jean for her courage.
If I’ve missed anybody please forgive me but, because of COVID, I haven’t actually met most of you. Now that we can all be in the same room, I will make it up t
o you—as long as you’re vaccinated.
My extreme gratitude to Lynval Richardson, Claudia Baker, Tiago Sarmento and all of the Julucans for creating one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life at a time when I most needed it. It is a privilege to know you.
To Annie Champion for being an amazing friend; Ted Boutrous for his continuing support; Robbie Kaplan for being a total badass; John Quinn and Alexander Rodney for their amazing work; and Sue Craig and Russ Buettner for continuing to do extraordinary investigative journalism. Sue, I will be forever grateful that you knocked on my door.
I am thankful to have reconnected with Denise Dewald, Lana Fiorentino, Wendy Firtel, Suzanne and Brian Gillman, Judy Gold, Helene Hernes, Alan Lebowitz, Reshmi Paul, Pam Perlman, Gaby, Rocky, and Judy Richard, Suzanne Shavelson, Nicole Sherman, Kelly Sullivan, and Kate Szymanski.
Thanks as always to Denise Kemp for doing the heavy lifting; Liz Stein for getting through it, but let’s just say I’m looking forward to moving on to the Unicorn; Pat Roth for being there for me; Eric Adler for his continuing friendship—I’m very glad we got to skip the pawnbroker this time around; John Barrengos for always knowing what to say; and Alice Frankston for once again getting me across the finish line.
And to my daughter, Avary, who never ceases to make me proud of who she is. I love you, Av.
A Note on Sources
As events unfolded in the months leading up to the 2020 election and then the months leading up to the second Senate impeachment trial, it became obvious that I would have to broaden my scope in order to make sense of not only how we were going to deal with our many crises but how we ended up at a point where we were so vulnerable.
To do that I read widely and deeply in order to steep myself in scholarship that provided as many perspectives as possible across many topics, including the history of Reconstruction, the Jim Crow South, the North’s history of oppression and segregation, epigenetics, critical race theory, Calvinism, white supremacy, fascism, the scope of justice, the relevance of all of these to the current political moment, and many others. It turns out that making sense of twenty-first-century America in general and the last four years in particular would not have been possible otherwise.
Not all of the sources I learned so much from are cited directly in the book, but the insights, knowledge, and perspective I gained from them proved invaluable in helping me make sense of the sweep and scope of our history in a way I previously had not, as well as construct my own narrative.
For helping me understand the centrality of race, racism, white supremacy, and fascism to American history, thank you to Michelle Alexander, Theodore Allen, Elijah Anderson, Douglas Blackmon, David Blight, Ron Chernow, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Eric Foner, Henry Louis Gates, Nikole Hannah-Jones and all of the contributors to the 1619 Project, Jerrold Packard, Jason Stanley, Bryan Stevenson at the Equal Justice Initiative, and Isabel Wilkerson.
For keeping me grounded and informed (although not sanguine) about the short- and long-term consequences of the Trump administration and helping keep my eyes wide open about the dangers we still face going forward, I am grateful to Anne Applebaum, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Charles Blow, Jamelle Bouie, Ta-Nehisi Coates, David Corn at Mother Jones, Masha Gessen, Ryan Goodman at Just Security, Sherrilyn Ifill, Ibram X. Kendi, Sarah Kendzior, Ezra Klein, Ed Luce at The Financial Times, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, Malcolm Nance, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman at The Washington Post, Timothy Snyder, Jacob Soboroff, Brent Staples, and David Williams.
And for helping me reach a deeper understanding of trauma and complex post-traumatic stress disorder, my thanks to Joy DeGruy, Judith Herman, and Bessel van der Kolk.
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