by Tim Wise
Imagine how different the racial dialogue might feel for us if we knew and had been taught from a young age of the history of white allyship and anti-racist resistance? If as children we had been introduced not only to the black and brown heroes and sheroes of the antiracist struggle—like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and of course Dr. King—but also to those white freedom fighters who stood beside them? What if we learned of the alternative tradition in our history, the one in which members of our community said no to racism and white domination, said no to unearned privilege and inequality, said no to racial hegemony and yes to justice?
What if we had learned of those persons of European descent who stood with their African counterparts during Bacon’s Rebellion, recognizing that they had far more in common with most blacks than with the white elite for whom they toiled? What if we had learned of those whites who opposed enslavement and segregation precisely because they realized not only the moral evil of such systems, but also because they saw both as cynical manipulations intended to divide and conquer working people, to keep them at each others’ throats while the rich and powerful continued to hoard the wealth that they, the workers, had created?
The fact is, we know almost nothing of that alternative tradition at present. In addition to the typically pathetic and piecemeal way our history books address the contributions of people of color, even the whites we learn about are from a narrow and cramped range of human experience: founding fathers, military heroes and wealthy industrialists. Rarely is much attention paid to the average, everyday whites who stood in opposition to the actions of so many of the leaders in our own community, and when such persons are discussed it is usually only within the context of the martyrdom that many attained, killed for their efforts to destroy slavery or segregation. But for each one who died, more still survived to tell the story and continue the struggle. What if we knew about them?
In this moment of white anxiety and profound social change—in which our normalcy and a priori claim on Americanness can no longer be taken for granted—how helpful might it be (in terms of lessening our anxiety and allowing us to embrace the multiracial and multicultural future) if we knew about the history of white antiracism, multiracial solidarity and allyship? How much less stressful might the current moment of societal transformation be, if we knew the names and stories of Jeremiah Evarts, William Shreve Bailey, John Fee, Helen Hunt Jackson, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Robert Flournoy, George Henry Evans, Matilda Gage, Catherine Weldon, Lydia Child, Anne Braden, Will Campbell, Virginia Foster Durr, J. Waties Waring, Constance Curry, Bob and Dottie Zellner and Mab Segrest, along with literally thousands of others, who in their own way and in their own communities have demonstrated that there was more than one way to live in this skin? People who have demonstrated that the human values of equity, fairness and justice are not merely modern contrivances but rather timeless guideposts that have historically been betrayed, bringing dishonor to our nation. Their stories call upon us now to do better. It strikes me as almost self-evident that were we to know of their stories, to embrace them as examples for our own lives, to model our commitments after theirs, to rally to the kind of nationhood that they envisioned, much about our current troubles would be different. We would perhaps begin to imagine a different world, in which the divisions of color that have so long roiled us would be the stuff of history, rather than current events.
And no, I won’t tell the stories of the people whose names I’ve rattled off above. Some homework has to be done alone. For starters, all should read Herbert Aptheker’s majestic history of white antiracism from the colonial period to the civil war, Anti-Racism in U.S. History: The First Two Hundred Years.158 From there, we can discover or deepen our understanding of the proud tradition of white allyship during the civil rights struggle, chronicled in dozens of books and documentaries. This tradition I speak of is ours to claim, ours to follow, ours to emulate. If we let it, the tradition can inspire us, motivate us, transform us and transform the society in which we live. It is a tradition that fits with the best of the American ideal, and one that is capable of elevating that ideal to a place more stable and concrete than it has been heretofore.
Or, alternately, we can continue unimpeded on the current path of uncertainty, anxiety, resentment and trepidation. We can continue to hold on to a fictional, nostalgic past, longing for a return to it, and unable to embrace the changes that are as inevitable as the coming of the new day’s sun. We can jealously seek to hold on to our current advantages, be they material or merely psychological—our own sense of betterness, belonging, or perhaps superior character—and squander the opportunity to grow, individually and collectively, into the full members of a democratic polity that we were meant to be.
One thing is certain though, we cannot hold onto the old ways and move into the future at the same time. Something in this equation will have to give. As James Baldwin once explained, many years ago, but even then anticipating this moment:
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free—he has set himself free—for higher dreams, for greater privileges.159
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tim Wise is among the nation’s most prominent writers and educators on issues of racial justice. He is the author of five previous books on racism and has contributed essays or chapters to more than twenty additional volumes. Wise has spoken to more than a million people on more than 750 college and high school campuses across the United States, and has trained teachers, employers, nonprofit agencies, physicians and others on methods of dismantling racism in their institutions. He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs to discuss racial issues, and his writings are taught in colleges and universities worldwide. Wise lives in Nashville with his wife and two daughters.
OTHER BOOKS BY TIM WISE
Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity (Open Media Series /
City Lights Books, 2010)
Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama (Open Media Series /
City Lights Books, 2009)
Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male (Soft Skull Press, 2008)
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005, revised 2008)
Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge, 2005)
NOTES
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headright
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790
3 Shawna Orzechowski and Peter Sepielli, Net Worth and Asset Ownership of Households: 1998 and 2000. Current Population Reports, pp. 70–88. (United States Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC, May 2003), 2, 13–15.
4 Ben Rooney, “Recession Widens Racial Gap,” CNN Money (July 26, 2011), http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/26/news/economy/wealth_gap_white_black_ hispanic/index.htm
5 “Rep. Alan Grayson: $12 Trillion Gone and Nobody Punished,” DailyKos (Feb. 13, 2010), www.dailykos.com/story/2010/02/13/836676/-Rep-Alan-Grayson:-$12-trillion-Gone-and-Nobody-Punished
6 “Cost of Crime” (National Center for Victims of Crime), www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=38710#_ftn4
7 Alfred Blumrosen and Ruth Blumrosen, The Reality of Intentional Job Discrimination in Metropolitan America, 1999 (New Jersey: Rutgers University, 1999), www.eeo1.com_NR/Title.pdf
8 “Study Says Light-Skinned Immigrants in U.S. Make More Money Than Darker-Skinned Ones,” FoxNews.com (January 27, 2007), www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,247302,00.html; and Richard Morin, “Imm
igrants and the Whiter-Shade-of-Pale Bonus,” Washington Post.com (October 18, 2006),
9 U.S. Department of Labor, 2009 Labor Force Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity, www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrace2009.pdf. Table 4. Because this table does not break out non-Hispanic whites from the white totals, it tends to inflate the unemployment rate for white workers, who are not also members of an ethnic “group of color.” In Labor Department data, roughly 92 percent of Hispanics are counted in the “white” racial category and need to be removed in order to provide a “real” white unemployment rate. Once the figures in this table are adjusted, the “real” white unemployment rate falls to 4.1 percent. The black rate, by comparison, at 7.3 percent, is about 80 percent higher. The Asian American rate of 5.6 percent is about 37 percent higher than this white rate, and the Hispanic rate of 5.7 percent is about 39 percent higher than the white rate. As this volume was going to press, newer data from the Labor Department was released, available at www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrace2010.pdf. For 2010, this data indicates a “real white” unemployment rate of 4.15 percent. The black rate of 7.9 percent is about 90 percent higher than the white rate. The Asian American rate of 5.5 percent is approximately a third higher than this white rate, and the Hispanic rate of 6 percent is about 45 percent higher than this white rate.
10 Labor Force Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity; see preceding note, www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrace2009.pdf, Table 16, p. 44.
11 U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements, www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/index.html
12 Devah Pager and Bruce Western, “Race at Work: Realities of Race and Criminal Record in the NYC Job Market,” paper presented at the NYC Commission on Human Rights conference, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (December 9, 2005), and Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), www.princeton.edu/~pager/race_at_work.pdf
13 Douglass S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 200; Deborah L. McKoy and Jeffrey M. Vincent, “Housing and Education: the Inextricable Link,” in Segregation: The Rising Costs for America,
14 Sam Spatter, “Fair Housing Partnership Study: Blacks Still Face Mortgage Bias,” Pittsburgh Tribune Review (November 25, 2009), www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_654803.html
15 Applied Research Center, Race and Recession: How Inequity Rigged the Economy and How to Change the Rules (Oakland: Applied Research Center, May 2009), 37–39; Kathleen C. Engel and Patricia A. McCoy, “The CRA Implications of Predatory Lending,” 29 Fordham Urban Law Journal 4 (2002), 1571–1606.
16 “New Data from the U.S. Department of Education, 2009-2010 Civil Rights Data Collection Show
Continuing Disparities in Educational Opportunities and Resources” (U.S. Department of Education, press release, June 30, 2011), www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/new-data-us-department-education-2009-10-civil-rights-data-collection-show-conti
17 Linda Darling-Hammond, “Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education,” Brookings Review. Spring, 1998: 31.
18 Demetra Kalogrides, Susanna Loeb and Tara Béteille, Power Play? Teacher Characteristics and Class Assignments (Urban Institute, National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal data in Education Research, Working Paper 59, March 2011).
19 Gary Orfield et al., “Deepening Segregation in American Public Schools: A Special Report From the Harvard Project on School Desegregation,” Equity & Excellence in Education, 30, 1997, 5–24; Valerie Martinez-Ebers, “Latino Interests in Education, Health and Criminal Justice Policy,” Political Science and Politics (September 2000).
20 Daniel G. Solorzano and Armida Ornelas, “A Critical Race Analysis of Latina/o and African American Advanced Placement Enrollment in Public High Schools,” The High School Journal (Vol. 87: 3, February-March 2004), www.jstor.org/pss/40364293; Philip Handwerk, Namrata Tognatta, Richard J. Coley, and Drew H. Gitomer, Access to Success: Patterns of Advanced Placement Participation in U.S. High Schools (Princeton, N.J., Educational Testing Service, 2008), www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/PIC-ACCESS.pdf
21 Raegen Miller and Diana Epstein, “There Still be Dragons: Racial Disparity in School Funding Is No Myth,” (Center for American Progress, July 2011), www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/07/still_be_dragons.html; Kevin Carey, The Funding Gap: Low Income and Minority Students Still Receive Fewer Dollars in Many States (Washington DC, The Education Trust, 2003).
22 World Without Work: Causes and Consequences of Black Male Joblessness (Center for the Study of Social Policy and the Philadelphia Children’s Network, 1994); Paige Harrison and Jennifer Karberg, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2002 (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bulletin, April 2003).
23 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Results from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Volume I. Summary of National Findings. (Office of Applied Studies, NSDUH Series H-38A, HHS Publication No. SMA10-4586, Rockville, MD, 2010), as well as all similar years of SAMHSA data dating back to the 1990s. In some years, white drug usage rates are slightly higher that the rates for persons of color, while in others, the rates for persons of color are higher. At other times, the rates of use are similar, within the range of statistically insignificant differences. When the data are longitudinally examined over a decade or so, there is little argument that whites, blacks and Latinos use drugs are comparable rates; also see data from Human Rights Watch, at www.hrw.org/reports/2009/03/02/decades-disparity-0; and www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/05/04/targeting-blacks.
24 Jim Sidanius, Shana Levin and Felicia Pratto, “Hierarchial Group Relations, Institutional Terror and the
Dynamics of the Criminal Justice System,” in Confronting Racism: The Problem and the Response, Jennifer Eberhardt and Susan T. Fiske, eds. (London: Sage Publications, 1998).
25 Eileen Poe-Yamagata and Michael A. Jones, And Justice for Some: Differential Treatment of Minority Youth in the Justice System (Washington, DC: Building Blocks for Youth, 2000).
26 Matthew R. Durose, Erica L. Schmitt and Patrick A. Langan, Contacts Between Police and the Public: Findings from the 2002 National Survey (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 2005), http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp02.pdf
27 The Gallup Organization, Gallup Poll Social Audit, Black-White Relations in the United States, 2001 Update (July 10, 2001), pp. 7–9.
28 Labor Force Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity, 2010 (United States Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Report 1032, August, 2011), www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrace2010.pdf
29 Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 2006).
30 Massey and Denton, 1993, pp. 86, 153.
31 Jeannie Oakes, “Two cities’ tracking and within-school segregation,” Teachers College Record, 96(4), 1995: pp. 681–690.
32 Russell Skiba et al., The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment (Indiana Education Policy Center, Research Report SRS1, June 2000); and the same authors in The Urban Review 34(4) (December 2002), www.springerlink.com/content/m1u4806148441l8x/
33 Joe Feagin and Melvin Sikes, Living With Racism: The Black Middle Class Experience (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1995); Annie Barnes, Say it Loud: Middle Class Blacks Talk About Racism and What to Do About It (Pilgrim Press, 2000).
34 Michael K. Brown, Martin Carnoy, Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M. Shultz and David Wellman, Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 89.
35 United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, “Poverty in the United States, 2000,” Current Population Survey (March 2000).
36 Rose M. Kreider and Renee Ellis, Living Arrangements of Children: 2009. Current Pop
ulation Reports, P70-126 (United States Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC, 2011), Table 8, p. 20.
37 Carmen Denavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor and Jessica C. Smith, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009, Current Population Reports, pp. 60–238 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC, 2010), Table B1, pp. 58, 61, available at: www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p60-238.pdf
38 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Vital Statistics Reports 49:10 (September 25, 2001): pp. 1–4, 11, Table 2; also Joyce A. Martin, Brady E. Hamilton, Paul D. Sutton, Stephanie J. Ventura, T.J. Mathews, Sharon Kirmeyer and Michelle J.K. Osterman, “Births: Final Data for 2007,” National Vital Statistics Reports 58: 24 (August 9, 2010), www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_24.pdf
39 Steven A. Holmes, “Black Birthrate for Single Women Is at 40-Year Low,” New York Times, July 1, 1998: A1.
40 Lucy Williams, Decades of Distortion: The Right’s 30-Year Assault on Welfare (Somerville, MA: Political Research Associates, December 1997), p. 2.
41 Tracy Loveless and Jan Tin, Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Participation in Government Programs, 2001 Through 2003 Who Gets Assistance? Current Population Reports, P70-108 (United States Bureau of the Census, Household Economic Studies, October 2006), Tables A-2, A-4 and A-6, pp. 18, 20, 22.