One day in front of a class of art history students at Cornish College of the Arts, I say, “Raise your hand if you’re a racist.” I hadn’t planned on this.
That class period I was focusing on James Baldwin and Glenn Ligon, both gay men, both African American, and it hit me that because there wasn’t a black person in the room, things were getting abstract. This art is valuable and has to be taught—there really is no arguing against Baldwin, and Ligon’s painting Black Like Me #2 was one of the first President Obama brought to the White House—but how do you teach someone to have a relationship to it?
So I throw it out there: Raise your hand if you’re a racist.
As my students do that thing where they sort of just look at you, perplexed, I raise my own hand. I am deeply embarrassed, but I feel I have to be honest if I am asking them to be.
“You’ve never had a negative thought based on racial bias?” I ask.
Very slowly, arms begin to rise. I understand their confusion. Theirs is a generation in which we have elected a mixed-race president, but affirmative action has been struck down for being racist.
It was white Seattle parents (and a few from Kentucky, too) who fought all the way to the United States Supreme Court in 2007 so that race would be eliminated from consideration as a tiebreaker in competitions for placements in public schools. Despite the fact that racial inequities remain steady year after “post–civil rights” year—across indexes of health, wealth, and education—racial balancing, according to the 2007 ruling, is no longer a “compelling state interest.”
The racial tiebreaker in Seattle was originally instituted to end de facto educational racial segregation. But now segregation across Seattle schools is worse than it was in the 1980s. A few years ago, the Seattle Times published mind-blowing maps of the data; this same backslide has happened around the country.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” declared US Supreme Court chief justice John G. Roberts Jr., in 2007, siding with the Seattle parents whose kids didn’t get into Ballard High because they were white. This is legal color blindness. It has dubious precedent: In 1883, 18 years after the abolition of slavery, US Supreme Court justice Joseph P. Bradley wrote a majority opinion that ended reconciliation laws because former slaves must “cease to be the special favorite of the law.”
Today the same argument is made under the precious neologism that laws intended to redress racial inequity are themselves racist. “Racist is the new nigger,” says Riz Rollins, the writer, DJ, and KEXP personality. “For white people, the only word that begins to approximate the emotional violence a person of color experiences being called a nigger from a white person is ‘racist.’ It’s a trigger for white people that immediately conjures pain, anger, defensiveness—even for white people who are clearly racist. ‘Racist’ is now a conversation stopper almost like that device where you can skew a conversation by comparing someone to Hitler. It’s an automatic slur. And only the sickest racists will own up to the description.”
White people in Seattle are more likely to own rather than rent. White people are more likely to have health insurance and a job. White people are more likely to live longer. White people are less likely to be homeless. White people are less likely to hit the poverty level. White people are less likely to be in jail. White kids are nine times less likely than African Americans to be suspended from elementary school (in high school, it’s four times higher; in middle school, it’s five times, according to the district’s data). Nonwhite high-school graduation rates in Seattle are significantly below white graduation rates—even if you’re Asian, regardless of income level.
And then there’s the white Seattle police officer beating “the Mexican piss” out of a guy. The white Seattle police officer punching a 17-year-old African American girl in the face. The Seattle Police Guild newspaper editorial that called race-and-social-justice training classes “the enemy,” “socialist,” and anti-American.
Not that racial experience is monolithic. It’s not black and white. But it’s real. And across all measurable strata, white people in Seattle have it better.
Yet nobody is racist.
The 2010 US Census data led to reports of Seattle being the fifth whitest city in the country—reinforcing the perception of this place as a white place. But if you look at the actual numbers, 66 percent of people in Seattle identify as white, which means that one in three people are not white. That’s not a white city. It only seems like a white city when you’re in, say, Ballard or Wallingford or Fremont. If you walk the street expecting every third person you see not to be white, well, then you’ll see how weird it is to be in Ballard or Wallingford or Fremont, where almost everyone is white. If you walk the street in Rainier Valley, the opposite is true.
“In Seattle, there’s really a small amount that you have to do to be labeled a hero of diversity,” says Eddie Moore Jr., the Bush School’s outgoing director of diversity, who describes Seattle as “a segregated pattern of existence.”
He adds, “It’s just that there’s really no real challenge to how the structure in Seattle continues to assist whiteness and white male dominance in particular. When you say ‘white supremacy’ or ‘white privilege’ in Seattle, people still think you’re talking about the Klan. There’s really no skills being developed to shift the conversation. How can we be acknowledged to be so progressive, yet be identified to be so white? I wish that’s the question more Seattleites were asking themselves.”
Back at Cornish, a week after that awkward classroom moment, the vice provost has called me into her office. My classroom was in the basement; this office is on the top floor, beyond a waiting room that doubles as a gallery of finely framed alumni art and behind a wing of administrative assistants typing quietly in cubicles. I’ve never been here before, I’ve been teaching only two years, and I am scared. I’m invited into a closed office where the blinds are partially drawn to block out bright sun, to sit at a table across from the vice provost’s desk. A third white person in the room, the director of student affairs, pushes a piece of paper across the desk to me.
A student from my class—white, male—has asked for my head. His charge is that by admitting to racism, even though I described it as a problem that had to be named in order to be solved, like any other problem, I could only have been trying to recruit white supremacists. In his letter, he compares me to Hitler. I spend the next hour rehashing, in detail, the tone and content of my lecture. I am trying to be honest and I am trying to wrap my head around the accusation. I am trying to admit to being a racist while at the same time defend my ability to teach about black art history. It is, to say the least, a tortured conversation.
The charges are dismissed; the other students didn’t share his theory.
But it suddenly hits me how alien it has become just to try to define racism, and admit to it.
Every conversation about race is tortured—palpably awkward, loaded with triggers, marked by the blind spots of perception and presumption—but that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong or should stop doing it, says Scott Winn. That means you have to keep on.
“Once I realized I was racist, it was, well, what am I going to do about it?” says Winn, a mild-mannered white guy in his 30s. “That shifts the defensiveness.”
Ten years ago, Winn cofounded CARW (you say “Car W”), or the Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites. For him, getting involved in antiracism “ultimately was not a moral shift but a strategic one.” He already knew the world was racially fucked. He just had to figure out what to do next, and he began by examining whiteness as the invisible structure that defines everything—that needs to be explored and then exploded.
“Whiteness is the center that goes unnamed and unstudied, which is one way that keeps us as white folks centered, normal, that which everything else is compared to—like the way we name race only when we’re talking about a person of color,” Winn says. “We can name how some acts hurt people of color, but it’s harder to talk about how they privilege white folks.”
CARW holds an open meeting every month at the downtown Y, one of those early-20th-century brick buildings whose architecture is especially, absurdly on this occasion, Anglo. More than 20 people show up usually, sometimes up to 50. They’re young and old, male and female, straight and gay. The only thing that would tip you off from the outside that this isn’t, like, a giant poker tournament is that participants ask each other to share which gender pronoun they prefer during introductions. There’s plenty of overlap between antiracist and LGBT activists in Seattle—Others know from Othering—and the message of these intros is simply that people are not necessarily what you think they are, whatever that is.
The radical thing about CARW is that its purpose is to force awkwardness into the open. It could just as well be called Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Privilege. The first half of every meeting is devoted to group discussion of a theme. The second half is spent in committees, each attached to a separate racial-justice organization run by people of color. CARW is fueled by the philosophy that white people need to follow the lead of people of color on matters of race. (It sounds simple; what’s surprising is how seldom it occurs.) One concrete result of that idea is that CARW members volunteer as support staff—waiters, babysitters, whatever—for the activities and events of groups in the Duwamish, African American, Latino, and Filipino communities.
How have I lived in Seattle for more than five years and never heard of CARW until a year ago?
After the first meeting I go to, I describe to CARW member Esther Handy my sense that this is a conversion experience, that everything around me has begun in recent years to look different, with a totality that feels spiritual—waking up to white privilege. (For me, embarrassingly, the real awakening began late, with a 2008 story about transracial adoptees that I wrote in The Stranger, and it continues, propelled selfishly by the fact that I am marrying into a family of color. I come late, and I mean to come humbly.) Gently bringing me down to earth and shifting the focus away from me, Handy says, “Our coming around to figuring out that we should be thinking about and talking about and doing work around racial justice is great and it can be spiritual, as you mentioned. But it is in service and in honor to the awesome organizations and leaders of people of color who have been doing this work for decades… The truth is that communities of color are thinking about racial justice all the time. They’re living it and breathing it, and there’s a group of white folks supporting that work, but it’s only a small fraction of the white community at this point.”
I ask her how to talk about racism with people who don’t want to see it. I’m not talking about Tea Partyers; I’m talking about people like some of my friends and family, lefties who care, people who are on my team. Attempts to bring up race in editorial meetings at The Stranger have been as klutzy as anywhere. Even for perfectly decent, well-meaning, progressive people, it can be hard to see the connection between unintended acts of racism and actual racial injustice.
“I start with the facts,” Handy says. “It’s clear these injustices exist. I say I’m trying to understand the systems that create these inequities, and what’s my role in working to change things. Reaching out and sharing these concepts with families and friends is absolutely part of the work, it’s just not all of the work. Getting our racist uncle to stop saying bigoted things is not going to change the system. But we’re not going to change the system without talking to our friends and family about it. While it benefits us not to talk about race, let’s look at these disparities that just don’t seem right.”
I ask how often she encounters resistance to conversations about race among white people in Seattle who consider themselves progressive.
“I’d say every day,” she says. “We’re confused about it and we’ve been taught to be defensive about it. I don’t think we should be too surprised about that.”
Winn says, “Exposure is often the key thing that trips people into awareness.” The old “black friend” routine. Yes, it helps to seek out friends who are racial minorities if you want to understand racial injustice. Yes, this is weird. But so is the history of judging people based on something as arbitrary as skin color; we have to work with what we’ve got.
“After that, I think many white people are integrationists in that ‘beloved community’ way, but integration usually means assimilation,” Winn says. “As in, you’ve gotta act like us for this to work. So exposure on the terms of people of color is important. At CARW, we create a space that’s not a PC space. If you say something that’s not cool, we say here’s why language matters. That talking about it is a skill.”
At the two CARW meetings I attend, nobody tells anybody that anything’s not cool. But people vary in how much experience they have in talking and thinking about race. A very experienced turquoise-eyed lady who lives on Beacon Hill tells a story from her neighborhood: She’d been looking forward to meeting her nonwhite neighbors at a block party, but only the white neighbors showed up, talking about how they wished a Trader Joe’s would move in. “Not a Trader Joe’s!” she gasped as she told the story, laughing. “That is the definition of gentrification in Stuff White People Like.”
There’s a quiet, older woman at the meeting who comes across as a little more awkward, endearingly so. She mentions a cousin who went on a medical tourism trip to Costa Rica and returned with some choice racist remarks written in a family e-mail. She’s struggling to find a way to talk to him about it, and this isn’t the first time. “I tend to start out a little soft,” she says, gently, “and it never goes anywhere. I just need some opening lines.” Other CARW members help her figure out how to begin.
“The test of how racist you are is not how many people of color you can count as friends,” I recall someone telling me—I can’t remember who now. “It’s how many white people you’re willing to talk to about racism.”
Through CARW, I find out about WEACT, or Work of European Americans as Cultural Teachers, a group of educators who give presentations on white antiracism in Seattle schools. The reception to these presentations varies widely depending on the school. Like, at Ballard High School, the reception tends to be disbelief and defensiveness (i.e., “What are you talking about?”), whereas at Franklin High School, students go, “Yeah, duh.”
The antiracist white movement in Seattle is growing.
If you’re white and you tell a white friend you’re going to a community meeting about zoning or bike lanes or homelessness, that seems normal—like you might even make a difference in your little way. But try saying you’re going to a meeting of white antiracists.
“Jen, people won’t get it,” said a white friend, an art scholar and lifelong radical whose first serious boyfriend in the 1970s was an organizer for the African Liberation Support Committee and the Black Action Society. Her father didn’t know that; he already wouldn’t let the guy in the house just because he was black. (My father would have done the same; my dad’s attitude to the black men I’ve dated over the years has changed from “I forbid you” in college to “Why?” to, finally, “He’s going to make a great son-in-law.”) Years later, when my friend and her white partner were living in Seward Park, a white man came to their door canvassing for the NAACP.
“On some level, I felt funny that a white person was doing it,” she said. “Not funny, but surprised. Or suspicious. I don’t know, but I was suspicious. I guess I wondered, do you really care, or are you just paid to canvas?”
She wishes she’d asked him directly.
White people saving trees: check. Ending poverty: check. Improving racial equity: What’s the catch? If you’re white and talking about race, or working for the NAACP, people will ask you to explain yourself.
Doing it isn’t pretty. I’ve made a fool of myself. I’ve been accused of being a race traitor. A comment on a recent Slog post I wrote reads, “You’ve got some issues of your own, there, sweety, and it’s not the first time you’ve used ‘white’ as a pejorative. Let go of just a tiny bit of your guilt complex, and you just might find that white people can be wonderful, too.”
But how would the conversation be different if Seattle were as progressive on race as it is on the environment? This city isn’t as green as it should be, but at least we’d like it to be—nobody proposes color blindness when the color in question is green. And opportunities find us on a daily basis should we want to help make Seattle greener.
At my first CARW meeting, I shared a story from when I lived in the Central District. Driving the narrow streets, I’d notice that young black men would sometimes walk in the middle of the street and refuse to move for cars. They’d downright lope, slow like the South, where African American families coming to work at Boeing in the 1950s hailed from when they moved to this neighborhood—the only area of the city where they were allowed to live until the middle 1960s. To me, this loping was a form of historical communication, intentional or not: This is our street.
But the reason this communication was happening was the opposite: Clearly, this was no longer their street, as the neighborhood steadily homogenized, growing whiter as well as wealthier by the year. I would drive slowly behind them, as in a funeral dirge. We were getting nowhere. But I noticed that often, white drivers would honk at the men to move aside. It seemed to me the reason they honked was that they were irritated at having an experience that people of color know well: that you’re not just entitled to live anywhere you please, that there might be consequences. Honking was an attempt to reassert privilege.
The United States was started by white people, for white people. That’s the premise of the White Privilege Conference, founded in 1999 by Eddie Moore Jr., the former Bush School diversity director quoted earlier. Today, the conference is held in a different city each year, and where it used to bring maybe a couple hundred people, now more than 1,500 attend.
“It is not a conference designed to attack, degrade, or beat up on white folks,” its website reads.
“There’s some pancakes I’m not gonna be able to flip over,” Moore says. “But what I say up front is that what whiteness does, as a structure, is to limit your ability to listen to people of color, to hear people of color, to believe people of color. I would encourage people to embrace that as true, and then start to work through it—and to use me as a resource. I’m not trying to villainize anybody.”
So one answer to the question What can I do? is simple: Listen. Believe.
“I had to stop talking to white people about race, because I kept getting retraumatized,” an African American friend told me about her days as a diversity trainer. “They just wanted to talk about why they weren’t racist.”
As Moore argues, segregation—whether enforced or voluntary—teaches us to disbelieve racism. I grew up in a middle-class white suburban neighborhood. Although we never had a black family over for dinner, every house on our street hosted black men doing perp walks through our living rooms on the news. I didn’t realize the contradiction until much later—that our seemingly all-white existence was predicated on keeping other people other.
“It’s really important to recognize that race affects everything you do—and that to act otherwise is just naive,” says Julie Nelson, the director of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights (she’s white; her predecessor was an African American woman).
Every city has one of these Offices for Civil Rights, to deal with legal antidiscrimination claims, but Seattle has an additional arm of government (only two and a half full-time positions, but supported by a small army of volunteers) devoted to racial justice, called the Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI). It began in 2006—it was the first of its kind in the nation—in response to an anti–affirmative action initiative sponsored by Tim Eyman. (Thank you, Tim Eyman.)
At least in Seattle, racial balancing is a compelling goddamn state interest. The RSJI is officially anti-color-blind. Not finding a racially equal world, it does not pretend at one. The city worked around the fact that Eyman’s initiative specifically disallowed “quotas” or “set asides”—rather, the city strengthened the conditions of eligibility for getting city contracts by using the terms that are allowed in order to do the same thing: “good faith efforts” and “aspirational goals.” The result has been a rise in contracts to minority-owned firms. Based on statistics that show that racial minorities in Seattle are still less likely than whites to hold diplomas and college degrees, the RSJI worked to remove unnecessary degree requirements from city jobs, which earned the RSJI a mocking on the local Fox News (a sign you’re doing a good job). The RSJI reaches into every department. It influenced Seattle City Light to change its streetlights policy, which used to be replaced on a call-and-complain basis—a system that works fine in affluent, native-English-speaking communities where people know to look on a light pole, call the provided number, and trust that the city will come out to fix the problem. Now streetlights are changed on a fixed rotation that begins in the South End.
None of this is perfect—and more people of color still work in lower-paying jobs in the city’s own 10,000-strong workforce, Nelson says—but at least the City of Seattle acts like it recognizes the existence of racism.
Nelson’s office high up in the municipal building is full—really, full—of paintings by the African American street artist Darryl, who for years has been sitting on corners throughout the city, selling his scrawled paintings on cardboard. They say things like “What in the hell WRONG with my ass.” (My fiancé bought one that sits in our living room and reads, “100 YEARS OF BLUE MOONS.”) I didn’t imagine I’d see the phrase “What in the hell WRONG with my ass” scrawled across anyone’s office in this tower high above the city, but the sound of Darryl’s voice way up here emphasizes the distance down to the street.
What Nelson says is this: If you’re white, you have to own it. None of this I’m-not-
white, I’m-beyond-it-and-I’m-Norwegian stuff.
White people have to see race according to the terms they actually benefit from. Not that whiteness is a monolith, any more than nonwhiteness is. As Mab Segrest writes: “Women are less white than men, gay people are less white than straight people, poor people less white than rich people, Jews than Christians, and so forth.” But what might matter, what should matter, is that whiteness is a real force that you’ve personally benefited from in one way or another if you’re white.
The work of art that illustrates this story you’re reading, by Seattle sculptor Sean Johnson, is two halves of two couches, one painted white and one painted black (the couch started out brown), sawed from their wholes and set next to each other. They don’t balance right, so you can’t sit on them, and there’s a gaping hole between them. The title is False Identity. Johnson is half black, half white, and originally from Columbus, Ohio. He says Seattle’s racism is unlike the racism anywhere else, because Seattleites act like they’re above it.
“I’ve had a conversation [about privilege with someone] like once a week for a while now,” Johnson says. “It’s a denial that’s almost more offensive than somebody just coming out and saying a racist word to us. I’ve been arguing about this in a bar and been thrown against the coals like I don’t know what I’m talking about—that there’s no way Seattle’s racist, there’s no way Seattle’s segregated—yet I’m the only black person in the room. Yeah, it is.”
He goes on, “I have this friend from Mississippi, and we were both saying that we’ve never encountered anything like it before. There’s a collective thought that it’s a progressive place, so that everything has been done to make things equal, and any form of ‘No, it’s not enough’ is either greeted with passive-aggressiveness or ‘No, you don’t know what you’re talking about.'”
“Remember: Seattle doesn’t have a race issue,” Tali Hairston says, laughing, during a pause in a heated public conversation about race at Taproot Theatre in June. Hairston, a Rainier Valley native who directs Seattle Pacific University’s John Perkins Center for Reconciliation, Leadership Training, and Community Development, is descended from white plantation owners and black slaves. His family was the subject of the 2000 book The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White.
The production at Taproot, Brownie Points, concerned an African American woman, a Jewish woman, and a white woman who go on a camping trip and end up debating race, religion, and motherhood. The director of the play had organized this public talk about race because the same audience that had flocked to an anti-Nazi play before this one now was telling her race issues seemed passé (and not buying tickets).
Backstage during rehearsals for Brownie Points, Hairston had asked each cast member how important race had been for them growing up. Their rankings, on a scale of 1 to 10, ranged from 2 (a white actress) to 10 (an African American actress).
“Your life story produces a racial filter,” he explains in a conversation after the panel. “It might be a lens so thick that everything gets drawn into looking like it’s about race, or so thin that when someone says something is racial, you go, oh hell no, it’s not. As a white person, you have to own the development of your own racial lens. Because whether you’re aware of it or not, you have one.”
It reminds me of something said by the white man sitting on the other end of the panel, Ron Ruthruff, a close friend and neighbor of Hairston’s.
“The number 7 bus tells me things about myself,” Ruthruff had said.
“Seattle people, we are really nice on the outside,” he said. “The problem, I would argue, is that many of the things we struggle with regarding race in Seattle are covert. What do I see? I’ll be really honest. I see two school districts in Seattle, one in the north end, one in the south end. You know what kids in the community call Garfield? They call it the slave ship, because the white kids are on the top two floors and the black kids are on the bottom two floors. I see my son walk into a classroom with his [African American] best friend [Hairston’s son], one receiving the benefit of the doubt, the other being questioned—same thing in a movie theater.”
Ruthruff pointed over to Hairston, wearing a suit; Ruthruff wore jeans. “He can’t wear jeans and get taken seriously,” Ruthruff said. “Tali can’t carry no plastic bag on an airplane. In our neighborhood, I’m affirmed for living in the Rainier Valley. Meanwhile, people look at Tali and say, ‘You’re still in the Rainier Valley? We thought you were moving on up.'”
(Ruthruff’s mention of Hairston’s formal dress reminded me of the time recently when NPR’s Michele Norris, an African American woman, tried to explain to Steve Scher, KUOW’s white morning-talk-show host, that her parents felt they always had to make sure their kids were dressed better than the white kids in the mostly white neighborhood where they grew up. Scher—perhaps the archetype of the unaccountable Seattle white liberal—asked Norris if she saw that as an opportunity.)
On the number 7 bus, which runs from Rainier Beach to downtown, a woman once scolded Ruthruff for calling a young African American kid a boy. He was a boy, and Ruthruff almost ignored the woman because she was drunk. But he was feeling open, and instead he asked her to tell him more. She explained that masters used the term “boy” to belittle slaves; it’s still a charged word for black males of all ages. That was 25 years ago, and Ruthruff is still riding that bus in the same spirit. “I think for many of us, we have to just keep listening,” he said. “Could we as white people be willing to be wrong? Could that just be okay?”
After talking to Hairston, I approach a young African American man I’m overhearing. “I’d love to interview you; you’re so eloquent,” I tell him, immediately hearing myself sound like one of those people who said candidate Obama was so well-behaved (well-groomed, polite, pick your nice adjective) for a black man.
“I can’t believe I just called you eloquent,” I say. He gives me a knowing look, we both laugh, and start talking.
“Three hundred years of affirmative action for white people,” is how author and activist Sharon Martinas sums up American history.
The original “whites”—well-bred, high-class people, not those dirty Irish or Italians—were based on someone’s dim memory of the beauty of women from Georgia, on the Black Sea, historian Nell Irvin Painter writes in her new book, The History of White People. (The word “Caucasian” might have been “Georgian,” except that the German man who coined it knew there was an area called “Georgia” in the nascent United States, and didn’t want to confuse people!) Layers of ridiculousness piled up, like a lie compounding. Science was pushed and pulled. Tomes full of charts and graphs demonstrate that the race scientist’s most sophisticated tool for centuries was—wait for it—measuring human heads with a ruler. True.
African American scholar Cornel West suggested in 2008 that the somewhat more wounded, struggling Americans of the 2000s rather than the Americans of, say, the 1950s, are well-positioned to feel race. After 9/11, “for the first time in the whole nation, my fellow citizens had the blues across the board: they felt unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, hated for who they are. It’s a new experience for a lot of Americans.”
He continued, “It’s a very American thing, in many ways, to be sentimental, to create your little world of make-believe, live in your bubble. And then sooner or later—like Wall Street—boom! Here comes reality. Boom, here comes history. Boom, here comes mortality.”
Right around September 11 was when a handful of white people began the current movement of white antiracism in Seattle—and not too soon. I can’t help but think that in many ways, the natural white allies for the needed next generation of racial justice work—progressives who still may not have heard of CARW or antiracism—are instead unwittingly playing into the hands of race-baiting right-wingers simply by remaining silent.
“Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us,” Rich Benjamin writes in his 2009 book Searching for Whitopia, in which he spent a year in the growing, increasingly white neighborhoods that are creepily cropping up all over the country. A 2008 study from the Pew Research Center showed that racial segregation in this country is worse than income-level segregation.
Is Seattle in danger of becoming a whitopia? The largest swaths of racial minorities are now living far north and far south, keeping racial separations alive, for various reasons, economic and otherwise. In some ways, we don’t seem to want to live in racially mixed neighborhoods. Instead, we consume polarizing simplifications. In May, a study by Harvard and Tufts researchers made headlines around the world. The study was called “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing,” and came to the stunning conclusion that white people believe they are the real victims of contemporary racism (reverse racism). But look closer at the study—it surveyed 417 people total. You can fit more people than that on some buses. The sample was not even close to statistically significant. Yet like the idea of Seattle as a “white city,” word about it spread fast.
“Our racial thinking needs a truly twenty-first-century upgrade,” Benjamin writes. “Identity politics is letting America down, on the one hand. Race and structural racism still matter, on the other.”
“Rather than thoughtfully discussing race,” he writes, “Americans love to reduce racial politics to feelings and etiquette. It’s the personal and dramatic aspects of race that obsess us, not the deeply rooted and currently active political inequalities. That’s our predicament: Racial debate, in public and private, is trapped in the sinkhole of therapeutics.”
There’s a riddle at the heart of our racial lives, he writes: “It’s common to have racism without racists.” He means the redneck, Deliverance-style kind—easy to identify, easy to marginalize.
How else to explain a generation of people who voted for Obama, and who cried tears of happiness at what his election meant, but are doing nothing to eliminate racial inequality where we live?
“Awash in its racial conundrum, America has delightful people who are perfectly comfortable with widening segregation and yawning socioeconomic inequality that often breaks along racial lines,” Benjamin writes. “Let’s call that a problem.” 
There are almost twice as many Asians as African Americans in Seattle. There are almost as many Asians as African Americans and Latinos combined. So why are Asians all-but absent from this article? The reader is left to wonder.
@18:
So because you may be judged honestly for your privilege, you’d rather not consider the fact that you COULD be acting out of privilege and just stick your head in the sand?
I’m not denying that I’m privileged. I’m not denying that, if people judge me based on that, they’re correct. But inserting myself into a situation where I’ll be judged for it is basically sticking my nose in where it’s not wanted. The polite thing to do seems to be to just avoid situations where, as a white person, my presence will be unwanted and make people uncomfortable.
I’ve known African-Americans who said they felt alone and uncomfortable because they didn’t act “black enough” to suit other people in their community. As basically the whitest person in the universe and a child of white privilege I have no hope of ever being accepted socially by people like that.
@133: It’s an interesting question. People tend to think of Asians as never having suffered from racial discrimination, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries there was substantial prejudice against them. Seattle and Tacoma at one point both tried to evict their Asian populations en masse; Tacoma was slightly more successful at it.
I suspect, on some level, people are just subconsciously more comfortable with Asian people because they look “more white.” For similar reasons we’ve largely forgotten the white-on-white racism that used to exist against the Irish and Italians.
As long as white people can look at a gathering of white people and think it’s diverse, we have a problem in this country that we need to address. It may not be racism; I think it’s simply lack of experience and understanding.
After being married to an African-American man for nine years, and being around his family, I have had many life-changing and attitude-changing experiences.
Any white person who wants a different perspective on race issues can try something like this:
I was the only white guest at my in-laws’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration. It was in southern Virginia, where they live and where my husband is from. I was the only white person among a gathering of African-Americans. I was dressed wrong. I was among African Americans who remember getting off the sidewalk for white people, who remember hearing white people call their parents “aunt” and “uncle” when they had to say “Mr.” and “Mrs,” who remember “whites only” waiting rooms, lunch counters, hotels, restaurants, drinking fountains, you name it.
For one overwhelmingly relieved moment, I thought there was another white person there. Then I realized she wasn’t! She was African American, but so light-complected I didn’t notice.
Then I did realize that there were other white people in the room.
They were servers.
I was a guest.
But I’m white.
The other guests were African American.
I had the most astonishingly, profoundly, visceral and gut-level experience of being a minority with divided loyalties.
If any of the white people here ever have an experience like that, I’ll bet you anything you like you’ll change your mind about what you’re posting here.
Meanwhile, there are some good ways to introduce yourself to the issues.
Read books — you can’t offend them like people could be offended. “Member of the Club,” by Lawrence Otis Graham. “The Sweeter the Juice,” by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip. “Slaves in the Family,” by Edward Ball.
See movies. “Jungle Fever,” by Spike Lee.
I’m sure there are equivalent books and movies for other communities, like Latinos, Asians, Native Americans. Anyone have any suggestions?
@103 – Right on.
Jen, you realize that the term “racism” is pretty loaded. Is it so hard to tell white people that they are the *beneficiaries* of institutional racism and white privilege and that by not doing anything to challenge it, they are, in their own small way, contributing to it? I just said it in one sentence and it seems to ring a little truer to me than saying “you are all racists”. Also, it doesn’t make people so defensive. You want people to hear you, yeah?
Talking race with white people is an uphill battle either way, but it seems like it is needlessly antagonistic to negatively label well meaning (and to differing degrees, oblivious) white folks. It seems more like a form of hazing to me — “I was told I was a racist and I didn’t get it, but now I do, and now I’m going to tell you you’re a racist too, until you admit it”. It could be more about compassion and caring for the people around us than simply rubbing shit in people’s faces.
Lastly, it seems like equating honking at people in the street with asserting privilege is a huge reach — seems to me like when white people get their eyes opened to racism they sometimes start seeing things that aren’t really there, such as this. ANYONE of ANY RACE loping through the street when there’s a car behind them waiting to get by should be (and hopefully will be) honked at. It’s stupid. That’s what a car horn is for, to get people’s attention when they are doing something stupid! Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.
Despite these small objections, I’m glad you wrote this article, clearly it’s got a lot of people talking and thinking about race and that’s a good thing.
@137
Talking race with white people is an uphill battle either way
You got that right.
As a successful black man, I find this to be incredibly condescending.
As if I can only succeed if white people would be nice enough to fine-tune their feelings. Or that you have the power to “keep me down” with nothing more than a bad attitude.
Many of us in the black community are doing really well, and we’ll take the credit for that, thank you. And we’d also like to take responsibility for our shortcomings.
Sometimes I think folks like Jen need to keep thinking of us as victims for some self-serving purpose. Like we represent some spiritual self-improvement opportunity for them or something.
Anyway, whatever you do with your guilt, stop projecting it on to us.
In fact, please just leave us alone.
The worst hate speech I’ve ever heard in Seattle against gays was from African Americans.
The worst hate speech I’ve ever heard in Seattle against women was from African Americans.
The worst hate speech I’ve ever heard in Seattle against Jews was from African Americans.
The worst hate speech I’ve ever heard in Seattle against Asians was from African Americans.
In Seattle I’ve heard black folks openly (and in public) say things about white folks 10000x worse than anything I’ve ever heard whites say in public OR private about blacks.
Yeah, I can’t take your side Jen.
@140: I think the strong social conservatism of the African American community is something that liberals prefer not to think about. One of the reasons Prop 8 was so shocking to a lot of people is that it forced them to confront that head on.
Being in a minority doesn’t necessarily make people sympathetic to the plights of other minorities; in fact it often makes them want to pull up the ladder once they’ve climbed it. The negative attitude that many homosexuals have toward transgendered people is another example.
It’s really easy to break down criticize specific points of this article, or to interpret it in a way that allows a person to easily find faults, but what I haven’t much seen in the responses of “naysayers” is an earnest desire to actually explore the possibility that this author might be on to something. In the first third of the article, Jen mentions listening to and believing people of color when they share their experiences as a great start to working against racism. Absorbing this article and being willing to engage with a paradigm shift in the way one views race and racism would be a minimal effort towards making sure that reading such an article contributed to a person’s growth and development as a human being. White people working against racism (that they project, internalize, and witness) should be doing it because they understand that they lose out on their humanity by not making such efforts.
Where I grew up a black man (who had a year earlier saved a white child in a fire) lost control of his car and accidentally hit 2 white kids who were playing. Whites saw the driver was black and immediately pulled him out of his car and badly beating him. The police saw they could not control the crowd who was trying to lynch him and they instructed the first ambulance that came to take the man away for his own safety while they waited for the 2nd for the white children (which came less than half a minute later). A rumor started that the white children were left to die because the black man was getting preferrential treatment. White racists worked the crowd into a hoopla. Over 250 whites came from all over to attack blacks and destroy their property. 2 hours after this accident a white lynch mob (about 15 people) stabbed a black guy to death while screaming racial slurs. They attaked a black man walking home with his child knocking the man unconcious and they continued to attack the child while police stood only 10 feet away. The police were instructed not to interfer when blacks were attacked to avoid further angering white people.
Later a white jury acquitted the lynch mob despite the fact they admitted doing it and took the perpetrators out for drinks, hailing them as “heros”. Several jurors refused to follow the judges instructions and did their own independent “reserach”- but they were not charged. The white man who stabbed the black man had a long history of unprovoked violent crime and said he had murdered just because he was “drunk and caught up in the excitment” but white folks framed it as him acting nobley out of protection for white children.
2 years after this happened a white reporter went into this neighborhood and asked white residents their feelings about this event. Most were remorseless and without compassion. When the reporter mentioned the black man who was murdered by the mob one young white woman sneered “they’re STILL bitching about THAT?”
A reporter who covered the event recently stated that the editors (who were not present) demanded it be referred to it as a “clash” and “tensions” between blacks and whites despite him witnessing it as a one way street, and they changed the story to cite examples of blacks attacking whites and cops even though it didn’t happen. They also omitted all the racial slurs and calls to kill all black people that the white crowd was chanting.
One paper complained that it was racist that no blacks had been arrested by the police- despite the fact that all of the murder, assaults, robberies, and looting were being committed by whites towards blacks.
To this day whites will excuse this lynching by stating that a white child was killed in a car accident by a black driver who was protected from the community (in reality a predominately white grand jury found him innocent of any wrong doing). They will claim he was drunk (proven untrue), that he fled to Jamaica to avoid punishment (he was aquitted by a grand jury but has avoid the US because of the large amount of death threats against him). When blacks mention the black man who was lynched whites will call them racist for valuing the life of the black man and the black folks who were assaulted more then the white child killed in a car accident. They will say the car accident and the lynching are no different.
Later a white woman wrote a highly acclaimed book in which she describes this event in a way that is symapthetic to the white lynch mob and focuses on their “feelings” with little regard for facts. This is the book used in schools to educate people about this incident. She doesn’t mention 2 innocent black men were murdered in hate crimes. That over 50 people (inlcuding children) were assaulted, or that the mob (who she claimed were acting out of mourning over the child killed in a car accident) committed over 250 robberies. She also doesn’t mention that in this neighborhood white on black violent crime was a daily occurance, and that the group who did this (young white men) were respoinsible for almost all unprovoked violent crime in this neighborhood and surrounding areas.
Recently a white reporter for the NYT referred to this incident as simply “white people rioted because a white child was killed in a car accident” and didn’t even mention that whites had killed, assault, and robbed hundreds of innocent black people. The NYT recently did an article about an art exhibit about this event. 25 artists participated, only one was black. There was no outreach to black artists. It mainly focuses on the white child killed in the car accident and focused on what frustrations whites had that made them lash out with violence. It explained what society needed to do to placate whites so they wouldn’t have to react this way. The article labeled the exhibit “healing”.
What do you think about this Jen, honestly?
Do you feel the same way if I told that everything in my story is true except the “whites” were black? And the “blacks” were “Jews”? Still outraged?
The Crown Heights pogrom was the worst hate crime against Jews in US history but it (like the hate crimes against Asians by blacks on both coasts) is referred to as a “dispute between communities” for only ONE reason- the perpetratos were black.
WHO is really entitled here? Ask Yankel Rosenbaum’s family about “white priveledge”.
@143
Holy sh*t. Where did this happen? I’d like to learn more.
Crown Heights NY 1992. Look up Yankel Rosenbaum, Lemrick Nelson, Al Sharpton
The Amsterdam News complained that everyone who was arrested was black, despite blacks being the ones murdering, assaulting, and robbing.
Anna Deavere Smith, a black woman, wrote “Fires in the Mirror” about this incident. She brings up slavery and every little slight blacks in the neighborhood felt they’d ever had but convienantly omits that 2 people were murdered in hate crimes by black people, 50 (including children) were assaulted in hate crimes by black people, and that this crowd (which she claims acted out of anguish over a child dying in a car accident committed over 250 robberies (facinating way to mourn, eh?). She also omitts that black on jewish violent crime was already epidemic (still is in this neighborhood) and that this group (young black males) she claims were soooo anguished over the death of a child were responsible for close to 100% of all homicide in that area.
New York Magazine was the one that went there 2 years later and found the black residents were mostly apologists for the lynch mob (this article is avialable on their online archieve).
It was the NYT which purposely skewed coverage of this. Read Ari Goldman’s Telling it Like it Wasn’t (can be found online).
And NYT’s only article about the 20th anniversary of this hate crime was about a art exhibit in which black artists depicted this Black on Jewish hate crime in a way that was mostly sympathetic to themselves. The NYT lavished praise on the exhibit, calling it “healing” (when were people ever so concerned about the healing of white folks when whites committ hate crimes?). Only one Jewish artist (out of 25). There was no outreach to those who had actually been victimized by this hate crime.
Look for “Crown Heights Gold” in the NYT art section. Ask yourselves what the reaction would be if white artists put on exhibit about Jasper TX in a way that made the whites who did it look like the victim. I don’t think the NYT would be all the sympathetic. And the general public would be disgusted.
Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race??
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_yo…
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/0…
You mentioned a cop punched a black girl in the face but neglected he was defending himself after the black girl and her friend continued to assault him. His only other options were use pepper spray or a stun gun. Having seen both used, the girl got the most gentle of the 3 options. And it was 100% legitimate use of force. If racism was really that bad in Seattle why are you forced to use such invalid examples? How about using the example of the 7 white kids who stomped an elderly black man to death and only got a slap on the wrist? Isn’t that an example of racist? Oh, that’s right, it was 7 black kids, an elderly white man, so talking about this injustice and how it pertains to race is of no interest to you
@Andrew S.
Thanks. Yes, I remember that. I’ll look it up.
It is absolutely sickening the way the Stranger’s writers will push this garbage on the Jon Stuart Leibowitz-educated readers. Go walk down MLK at midnight, Jen. See what happens.
First, i commend the good intentions of the writer. Like many self described liberals and progressives, she seems to be honestly and eanrestly stuggling with our American obsession:race. I am one of the people she champions, and it’s interesting to me that the inherent assumption is that i need championing.Again, i applaud her innate sense of justice and fairplay, however i think it’s somewhat misguided. While i agree that America was founded for the benefit of Western Europeans, and for the vast majority of it’s existence, continues to be a place designed for such benefit, i believe so strongly in equal opportunity and meritocracy, that it is enough for me that we cling to what James Brown said:(I paraphrase) “You don’t have to open any door for me, you don’t have to even lead me to the door, just let me know what direction..” in other words, i agree with her historical and cultural critique, but i disagree with what seems to be her solution: Non-white people suffer from a lack of equal opportunity, but many of my friends also suffer from self-discipline and proper organization, long range planning, and understanding the immediate sacrifices needed to eventually lead a middle-class existence. I am much more interested, as Barry Gordy said, in learning how to fish than well intentioned libs and progs giving out free fish. What i hope is that we continue our slow, but perceptible, movement toward an equal opportunity society. For me, that is enough. Let our discussion and efforts focus on providing quality public education, color blind assistance to the socially/economically disadvantaged(which will be heavily minority focused, anyway)..and make sure all these programs focus on self-reliance, learning self discipline, and personal accountability…thus, all the well meaning anti-racist sentiments of this article will bear fruit.
I’m a culturist, not a racist. In the Seattle metro area “race” is self designated and there is no basic cultural difference between white trash culture and black trash culture.
White people don’t make excuses for white trash. People who self-designate as African-Americans will not join the main stream until they stop making excuses for black trash.
Do I think White Privilege exists?
Most definitely.
Have I benefited from it?
Surely.
Have I done anything to further this?
Not to my knowledge.
So why should I sit around feeling guilty and/or apologize for something I had no control over?
Do NBA players have group therapy sessions where they sit around, navel gaze and discuss the privilege of being born tall and naturally athletic?
I’m not going to lose any sleep over things I have no control over. Instead I’ll focus on what I DO have control over, my own thoughts and actions and doing what I can to reduce/remove the institutional racism in our system.
I reeeeeeally like this article. As a white girl growing up in Snohomish, I remember thinking racism was totally over and that affirmative action was the stupidest thing ever. Why did minorities deserve more of a chance at a job or school than I did? Of course, my high school had roughly “two and a half black people” (as I remember my half-black classmate joking), and was in a small, fairly conservative town. That changed a tiny bit when I went to UW, just because I at least met a few more people of color. But still, race was NOT an issue that I ever heard discussed, especially by white people. After graduation, I moved to Harlem to teach in the South Bronx, and I suddenly became very aware of my whiteness, and I started thinking about race in a much deeper way than I had ever really considered. Even New York is almost comically segregated- I don’t remember seeing an Asian person during my first few months of living here until I went to Chinatown to satisfy a craving for pho, and after 3 years in various classrooms, I have never taught a white student. So I think discussions like this are a good way to open a few eyes. Seattleites tend to be passive agressive on almost everything; it shouldn’t be surprising to think some racial tension is boiling under the surface of this “progressive” city.
jen, please keep the race thing going on slog. the context of art is perfect of course, no matter how loose. we dont talk race enough on here, only subtext or socioeconmic (which i think is better placed).
its art and culture because of its tentativeness. they dont have quite the same conversation in europe or south africa or any fucking country. shades eh?
this is old so maybe noone is reading but damnit.. more on race here. the internet is the perfect place to let it out and this is a great spot for the letting out.
more more more!
The Bush School? THE BUSH SCHOOL?!?! Can someone please enlighten me to why the Bush school was quoted in this article? It costs $25,000 A YEAR to send an elementary kid to that school. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty white school. I’ve been to the school. It’s lily white. I saw a few Asians there. That’s it. I met Eddie, the dude is really nice. But he was the one and only black person that I saw during my visit.
I just don’t get why anyone would quote the Bush school in this article (and a quote that is talking about diversity). Blows my mind.
@TheCHZA
‘African-American’ is a term that African-Americans use as a way to reclaim our history and our past, and how we got to this continent in the first place. I think some people are uncomfortable with the term, because it reminds them that slavery DID exist, and that millions of Africans were uprooted from their homes in order to be brought here and treated as property.
Yes, there is a difference between 1st/2nd/3rd generations Africans who have recently moved to America and 40th generation Africans who came as slaves. But a 1st/2nd/3rd gen African would obviously know their origin, and wouldn’t even use that term, they would instead say that they’re Ghanaian, Ethiopian, etc. We use African-American as a blanket term, and as a painful reminder that our history was erased. We’re reclaiming it.
I always think it’s interesting when people say, “You shouldn’t call yourself African-American, because you didn’t come from Africa.” And to that I say, “Oh, really, so where did I come from? Italy? France? Japan?” And they say, “No, you’re just black.” What does that mean? Just “black?” That’s like you’re insinuating I’m a person with no origin, that just appeared out of thin air. NO, I’m reclaiming my past, and if it makes you uncomfortable, that’s not my problem.
@TheCHZA
‘African-American’ is a term that African-Americans use as a way to reclaim our history and our past, and how we got to this continent in the first place. I think some people are uncomfortable with the term, because it reminds them that slavery DID exist, and that millions of Africans were uprooted from their homes in order to be brought here and treated as property.
Yes, there is a difference between 1st/2nd/3rd generations Africans who have recently moved to America and 40th generation Africans who came as slaves. But a 1st/2nd/3rd gen African would obviously know their origin, and wouldn’t even use that term, they would instead say that they’re Ghanaian, Ethiopian, etc. We use African-American as a blanket term, and as a painful reminder that our history was erased. We’re reclaiming it.
I always think it’s interesting when people say, “You shouldn’t call yourself African-American, because you didn’t come from Africa.” And to that I say, “Oh, really, so where did I come from? Italy? France? Japan?” And they say, “No, you’re just black.” What does that mean? Just “black?” That’s like you’re insinuating I’m a person with no origin, that just appeared out of thin air. NO, I’m reclaiming my past, and if it makes you uncomfortable, that’s not my problem.
@TheCHZA
‘African-American’ is a term that African-Americans use as a way to reclaim our history and our past, and how we got to this continent in the first place. I think some people are uncomfortable with the term, because it reminds them that slavery DID exist, and that millions of Africans were uprooted from their homes in order to be brought here and treated as property.
Yes, there is a difference between 1st/2nd/3rd generations Africans who have recently moved to America and 40th generation Africans who came as slaves. But a 1st/2nd/3rd gen African would obviously know their origin, and wouldn’t even use that term, they would instead say that they’re Ghanaian, Ethiopian, etc. We use African-American as a blanket term, and as a painful reminder that our history was erased. We’re reclaiming it.
I always think it’s interesting when people say, “You shouldn’t call yourself African-American, because you didn’t come from Africa.” And to that I say, “Oh, really, so where did I come from? Italy? France? Japan?” And they say, “No, you’re just black.” What does that mean? Just “black?” That’s like you’re insinuating I’m a person with no origin, that just appeared out of thin air, with no history, no culture, no accomplishments. I feel like that’s a blatant attempt at whitewashing history.
@brunomars
Go walk down MLK at midnight, Jen. See what happens.
What will happen?
Would it be the same thing that would happen if a black person walked through Broadmoor at midnight? Or Medina?
“White people in Seattle are more likely to own rather than rent. White people are more likely to have health insurance and a job. White people are more likely to live longer. White people are less likely to be homeless. White people are less likely to hit the poverty level. White people are less likely to be in jail. White kids are nine times less likely than African Americans to be suspended from elementary school (in high school, it’s four times higher; in middle school, it’s five times, according to the district’s data). Nonwhite high-school graduation rates in Seattle are significantly below white graduation rates—even if you’re Asian, regardless of income level.”
You’re repeating yourself Jen. If someone is more likely to be to have a job then they’re less likely to be homeless and less likely to be to be below the poverty line. They’re also more likely to have health insurance. It’s the last point that is interesting. Instead of repeating how badly someone has it if they don’t have a job, why not explore why Nonwhite high-school graduation rates are significantly lower than white graduation rates? This is probably one of the root causes why white people are more likely to have a job and the benefits that go with it. If you do write another piece, please more substance.
Also in your summary of how white Seattle is, you’re over looking an important fact. Seattle imports a lot of people from different countries for its high paying jobs. Most of these people come from countries that don’t have a big black population, so they’re most likely to be non-black. It’s normal that these people who aren’t American’s would want to try to live in the safest neighborhoods (your crazy Americans are scary with your guns!) which tend to be populated with similar people in similar income brackets.
Finally, an interesting flip side of the “white people are the cause of all evil” article you wrote, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch…
One more thing, if you want to start a conversation with white people about race, it’s best not to use “white” as a pejorative. It’s never a good way to start a conversation by insulting the other side. As an (Canadian) educated white person I understand that there has been 300+ years of systematic racism in the USA, and that it was only 50 years since the civil rights movement and the affects of segregation are still lingering. And it doesn’t even take an education to see that white starlets get slap on the wrists for drinking and driving/drug possessions, while black rappers are doing serious jail time for the same crimes. Also anyone who’s read anything about the drug war knows the racism that was behind both it and the mandatory sentences (i.e. powder cocaine having a lower mandatory sentence then crack cocaine). But hearing “white” being used a pejorative just makes me cringe. I can’t do anything about the skin colour I was born with any more than a black/asian/brown person can, so please stop using my skin colour as a negative. It’s insulting. Instead of talking about how easy the white-man’s had it, why not talk about why the other side’s had it hard and what the causes are (Yes I know many of the causes are from policies created by white-men, but talking about the policies/history is something much more tangible and is a better way to start the conversation then attacking everyone born with a certain skin colour).
This entire article is a demonstration of its title, and won’t do a thing toward ending racism in Seattle. How about stories about the bull&$@# people of color put up with every day, in their every day lives, at their jobs, in their neighborhoods, in their kids’ schools, every time they go out to a concert or restaurant. Those stories would do more than make a white person cringe, they make my stomach hurt.
If white people knew the truth about what people of color put up with everyday, here and now, maybe then we’d all be outraged enough to do something about it, to look at and for all the ways we’re perpetuating the inequity, poverty, disrespect and abuse, and allowing it to happen right under our well-intentioned noses.
@163 Sorry, no sympathy from me. FYI, “white” is a color to, the old “people of color” was a derogatory label created by racists, so using it only demonstrates a racist mentality. Key here, racism doesn’t mean what many people think it does. Back to the no sympathy angle though, my life has been hell, for being different, and guess who treats me like shit the most for being different …. yep, darker skinned folks. So really, if you want equality, you have to give it first. I don’t treat anyone different based on how they look, dress, act … or how dark their skin is …. so to treat me different they are proving themselves to be worse people than me. My life has not been easy either, I live in low income housing now, was homeless for almost a decade, had to steal to survive, been in jail for it even, but even after all that, I am now a law abiding citizen, I found an alternate route, the same route afforded to all regardless of “race”. So if you want sympathy, talk to the rich darker skinned folks, ask them how they succeeded instead of whining about your failures.
Racism does exist, but the bigotry is on all sides, and in order to stop one, the others have to stop to, it all has to stop at once or it will never end.
@162 — Yeah, agreed. This article offers a bunch of statistics but fails to analyze them, then concludes, “all white people are racist”.
I am not sure how I feel about this article at all. I realize change begins with recognition and discussion. My experience of Seattle, however, as an East coaster who moved there at the age of 30, was that things get talked to death and even when specific actions have been called for, demanded, even voted on – NOTHING WOULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN. (Hello, Monorail anyone?). It seems to me that Seattle should be way beyond “let’s start a conversation about our racism problem” in the year 2011.
Moving to Seattle from Brooklyn, NY I was astonished at how white and segregated Seattle was (is) and more astonished that a place that considers itself a city, and a progressive city at that, is so incredibly provincial and in many ways in serious denial about just how provincial it is. And I say all this as someone who loves Seattle. I don’t find the two things contradictory. There are things I love about Seattle and things I find downright distasteful. I believe Seattle could be better if it changed in certain ways. …”Niceness” and “politeness” and “passive-aggressiveness” prevent change. You can’t change something you refuse to publicly acknowledge and discuss OUT LOUD. The fact that white students who didn’t get into Ballard High cried reverse racism and WON in the city of Seattle speaks volumes to how far from understanding racism and the reality of the racial divide in privilege is.
A good article, but long.
I want to make a couple points. First, young Black, White, Hispanic, etc. people who saunter across streets in neighborhoods like the CD aren’t doing it for any other reason than to say, “F’ you, my life sucks. You have a car and I don’t!” They don’t discriminate, trust me.
This speaks to my second point, over analyzing “gentrification”. All kinds of people enjoy things like new parks, coffee shops, and even Trader Joes. The problem occurs when the affordable housing disappears, not when white people move into a neighborhood.
Again, good article but long. The length and some of the content suggest you have too much time on your hands to think about this kind of stuff. But then, you are an academic and that’s what they do – think about this kind of stuff.
I had an earlier point about homophobia and racism, I’m not suggesting any behavior for anybody, but rather pointing out that it is not possible for a black man to appear as anything else in our society, not even for a moment. That, in my mind, is a key difference between homophopia and racism.
I’m now curious about the difference between racism and bigotry, as I read comments many of the things labeled as racist or racism appear to me to be bigotry. The two ideas seem pretty similar and very different all at the same time.
Ok, so I shouldn’t call an eloquent African-American person “eloquent” and I shouldn’t call an African American boy a “boy”. (I was once instructed by an African American woman that I shouldn’t say “May I help you?” to African American customers because that term was used to scare black people out of white stores). I should tolerate black men walking in the street and refusing to let me pass because they are “claiming ownership”. I should scorn certain grocery store chains because they’re “stuff white people like”. I should avoid buying or renting in a black neighborhood lest I “gentrify”. I should experience my own accomplishments in life through a lens darkened by the shadow of white privilege. I should accept the label of “racist” applied to me by somebody else without objection. I should build a different vocabulary, and use a different set of behaviors and hold to different expectations the African Americans in my life than other groups. Most importantly, since I lack the intellectual integrity to understand and define my own intentions, behaviors and feelings about race, I should accept somebody else’s definition of what I am, what I intend, what I stand for and how I interact in the world. And this is the level of accommodation and self-reproach that white people must voluntarily provide in order to for America to move forward on race??? Really??
@166 Uuuuuh … no …. “reverse racism” is a catch phrase to demonize people who really are against racism, in all form. It does this by lumping us all with the idiots who want actual forced segregation. Naturally occurring segregation cannot just be forced out of people, it happens on both “sides” a lot. Try visiting a shelter, where there are a hundred people, evenly populated by various “types” or “races”, you will see a majority will congregate with others who look like them, but how they treat each other depends on the subclass, not the appearance. Homophobic people will treat those who they know as gay very badly, regardless of their physical appearance, junkies will generally try to befriend everyone by treating them nice while not regarding them as equals. The once wealthy ones will typically treat everyone else with too much respect (strange but true, there is such a thing) but you can see the guilt and regret in their eyes. Now many will say “but these are homeless people” …. hate to break it to you, but homeless people are just like you, there is no difference, and a shelter is a great place to see a very large number of different types of people forced to co-exist in a small space. The psychological dynamics of this situation should be studied much more than it is, it’s mind boggling to see, and these are not all Seattleites, many are from other areas of the country as well, transplanted for various reasons. They don’t have the luxury of avoiding a neighborhood they fear.
I grew up in a mostly “white” neighborhood for the last portion of my childhood, Covington. Spent a lot of my childhood in Tukwila as well, the rest I can’t remember. I honestly had no feelings about this whole race issue, and still don’t. All humans suck, it’s human nature to suck. But we all suck equally, just in different ways. The part that’s hard for people to admit is that granting special privileges to any one group is prejudice, no matter how you spin it. No law should be prejudiced, ever, in any way, at all, period. The “white privilege” idea is a myth, it’s an old concept that went out, it’s the same as saying “straight privilege”, which I could claim exists but I know that would be a lie. For one, it would have to be a conspiracy to accomplish this, since there are a lot of the “other” side in positions of power they would have to somehow be in on it as well, which just destroys the “white privilege” and “straight privilege” and any other “… privilege” claim.
As for your claims that Seattle doesn’t know, very wrong, most of us grew up going to forced desegregated schools, and the schools suffered a lot for it having to bus kids in from all over, our buses were almost never on time and the budgets were spread so thin, the teachers had too many students as well. It was a mess then because of it, every student suffered, and it wasn’t the “white” folk who pushed to end it there.
Awesome article. I’d also give a shout out to the Minority Executive Director’s Coalition, who also have (had?) an amazing anti-racism training. It was mind blowing.
“And it doesn’t even take an education to see that white starlets get slap on the wrists for drinking and driving/drug possessions, while black rappers are doing serious jail time for the same crimes”
And in Seattle a white man was sentenced to more time in jail (9 months) for calling a black person a racial slur (he was charged with a hate crime) then black men were sentenced to for stomping an elderly man to death (the TubaMan). I have been threatened unprovoked by black folks on several occasions in Seattle, and have seen similar things happen to other people, and on some occasions anti-gay slurs were used. Never were they arrested even though threatening someone is actually a crime.
White men in Jasper TX are on death row for killing a black man in a hate crime, the dozen black men who killed a Jewish man in a hate crime in Crown Heights got off scott free, with the blessing of the “civil rights” “anti racist” activists. Black folks DO get away with a lot, it’s just considered racist to notice it.
If white people were attacking black people unprovoked left and right it would be considered a hate crime and blacks would be openly talking about it.
Blacks attack white people unprovoked left and right and it is practially considered a hate crime to notice it.
The latest example in someone who was stomped in Belltown the beginning of August. His throat was stomped on. How is 5-6 black folks stomping on a white person’s throat not a hate crime, but the other way around is?
I usually ignore the comment sections of articles. That people can express openly is fantastic, but that it may be anonymous is another piece of evidence that we have soooo much farther to grow in learning about and accepting eachother. If this kind of conversation would happen in the open to the people you are speaking about, dear commenters, then maybe we could dissolve a little of this wall between us!! I want to thank you, Jen, for writing this. though I am in NY now (a place where diversity thrives, and where people tell you straight up what their problem with you is [hmmm]), my family is still in seattle, i grew up there, am half white and half black, i went to cornish 15 years ago and Seattle didn’t have a satisfying audience for my work then. The repression Seattle has always had is what pushed me to find my audience and my home elsewhere. Confusion is a hhhuge step in the right direction! I admire that you were able to leave your students with that. It is so so so refreshing to see glimmers of exposure and hope and self-consciousness emerge in seatown!
I usually ignore the comment sections of articles. That people can express openly is fantastic, but that it may be anonymous is another piece of evidence that we have soooo much farther to grow in learning about and accepting eachother. If this kind of conversation would happen in the open to the people you are speaking about, dear commenters, then maybe we could dissolve a little of this wall between us!! I want to thank you, Jen, for writing this. though I am in NY now (a place where diversity thrives, and where people tell you straight up what their problem with you is [hmmm]), my family is still in seattle, i grew up there, am half white and half black, i went to cornish 15 years ago and Seattle didn’t have a satisfying audience for my work then. The repression Seattle has always had is what pushed me to find my audience and my home elsewhere. Confusion is a hhhuge step in the right direction! I admire that you were able to leave your students with that. It is so so so refreshing to see glimmers of exposure and hope and self-consciousness emerge in seatown!
@6 & 8
I’ve got to say that any professor, much less an art professor, asking students to raise their hand if their racist is so stupid to me that it is such a turn off that I would have a very difficult time getting into any conversation about race no matter how interesting and/or societly necessary it was. I almost didn’t read the article because it struck me, too, as a lame professor trying to be edgy and “thought provoking”.
As it was, the article was basically fine if not way too long. The points that it brought up were largely valid. I read the author’s comment @7 and can buy that this question was a painfully ackward stumbling attempt at leading into a potentially worthwhile discussion of race, but I think a lead-in that lame is highly at risk of dooming the conversation to failure.
What I don’t get are the number of comments telling @6 & 8 how she’s too dumb to understand anything in the following coversation.
“Racist” is indeed generally defined as holding one race as being superior/inferior to another. If you want to have a conversation about the legitimate issues of white priviledge or forcing a shift in perspective to minority view, then fine, but the whole “everyone’s a little racist” lead in is just so vacuous sounding pseudo intellectual day time talk show host wisdom spewing I would have been deeply pained to have felt academically obligated to stay in that room- especially for an ART class.
I think that, in many ways, the fact that people are so unused to discussing these subjects that they suffer *and* inflict pain in just trying to discuss things in relatively uncharacted waters is as much a part of the story as any other aspect that was discussed.
@166: What you have to remember is that Seattle was pretty much a backwater until the 1990s. So it feels provincial because in a way it *was* until quite recently. Seattleites are a bit schitzophrenic about this — they often talk longingly of a desire to return to a “lesser Seattle” without the traffic and housing problems brought by all the newcomers, but at the same time they’re painfully self-conscious about wanting to be a “world class city.”
Thanks for writing this, Jen! This is a conversation that needs to be on-going.
Glad you wrote this article. Happy to see all of the discussion here. People need to think about this more. I’m mixed race so I experience different aspects of race perception.
Don’t assume you know everything about someone based on appearance. It’s pretty simple. When you generalize, you limit your understanding and experience.
We came across this blog and decided to chime in. It’s good that You have organizations of European Americans that are against racism but from our experiences across the United States, European Americans don’t really ever have to experience racism so they never have to nor truly understand how to fight it.
Unfortunately because so man European Americans are still enjoying the benefits and opportunities that European Americans get from it i.e access, jobs, privilege, power, opportunity, preferred treatment and reasonable doubt.
Ya see what so African American see are what European Americans see & are just truly don’t want to admit are the aforementioned facts that racism brings to European Americans which makes African Americans want to now reinforce their own, just like European Americans do. It’s not just the horrific history that’s between the two cultures, but its’ the denial by European Americans that they have the benefits that the world over knows comes directly off the backs of African Americans.
If European Americans really want to end racism and not just be against it, then they need to make racists and bigots uncomfortable to be the way that they are. 1)This would mean busting them out when you see European Americans discriminating and or giving preferential treatment to other European Americans over African Americans 2)stop acting like you don’t SEE IT when it’s been right before you for a while now, then expecting DOUBLE A’s to be cool with you after you just ignored what just went down…cause that ain’t gon happpen!
When European Americans are serious about fighting racism, they will be Proactive in removing advantages that whites give each other ALL THE TIME based off of race.
Then we’ll deal with the stereotypes and false perceptions later. If not then you should expect and accept that African Americans will actively follow suit in using the same measures that you do, but more in the form of protection because this is something that European Americans would have forced into the American atmosphere for centuries now.
Great article, Jen! One thing I love most about visiting other cities like Austin is the diversity that’s everywhere. When I mention it to people here, they don’t seem to know what I’m talking about…it’s pretty sad. I would LOVE if capitol hill would turn into more of a Mission-style place to live.
Jesus Christ, the “walk slow in the middle of the street” is the biggest racist “fuck you” I see every time I drive in Rainier Valley.
This article needs a follow-up, called “Blacks Are Racists, Too.” I have directly experienced plenty of overt racism from blacks. I’ve lived and worked downtown (in a different, Southern city), ridden the bus for years, and worked with plenty of black folks. Fine people, lots of them. But some of them are just as racist as the KKK, and no one ever has the balls to call bullshit on them.
Want racism to end? Confront it, everywhere. No excuses. I’m fine with spending public money on education and jobs for minorities, the poor, etc. But I will NOT be guilted about being white, and I will not be put in the “you’re the only racist” box.
I agree with the sentiment that we are all racists. However, a previous poster nailed it — I’m a culturist. As long as black Americans stick to their culture of worshiping the Thug, celebrating thug life and gang life, then fuck’em. Fuck that culture. If they abandon it, and want to grow out of it, then I welcome them with open arms. Marry my daughter. Run my schools. But I’m not going to hold my breath — I see the seething hostility of young black men where-ever I go, and I will not pretend it does not exist, I will not excuse it, I will not be held hostage by white man’s guilt.
As I mixed race person, I will admit that honestly I am kind of racist. I prefer to live in gentrified neighborhoods, I have one of two black/mixed race people I know, but really I’ve just sort of fallen, settled into white society, and I’m most comfortable with it.
When I take the metro home, and I hear someone speak in African American vernucalur, I discount them. When I walk home, and I see an “urban” person, I do think, is he going to mug me.
I don’t look black (if anything I look Greek or Turkish). There are all sorts of privelages I have, that I know if I was tradinally black, I wouldn’t. I don’t have a job, but I live in a nice enough apartment, and I’m finding myself, I’m not unemployed, but I’m one of those young people finding what they want to do, I’m in a period of transition, I’m trying to self actualize. I’m taking a break from school, and just finished an internship, and plan on spending the next year abroad.
If I were “black” I’d be an conisdered a college drop out, unemployed. Why don’t I get myself a job? Because my parents have means, I don’t have to work, and can take time off, but somehow I’m consdiered better than someone on welfare trying to get started on their rap carrer, cause I’m trying to write short fiction, cause I may want to work in government.
It’s not expected I’ll ever perminatlly be in the service industry, if I was I would have failed, but if I were “black” look at him, he’s making a living. The rub of it is, I’d be lying if I said, I don’t consider myself better than that guy, because I do. I don’t feel any kinship really. I expect certain things out of my life, others do, because socially I’m white, my physcal affections, my speech patterns, how I think, how I act, and really how I look. I don’t look black. My nose is a little wide, and my lips a little thick, but nothing that really says what I am. I have a light tan, but some english people are darken than me, and I can part my hair. I could easily be Italin, or from Potragal, or Greece.
I have friends who are promiscous, and it’s bohemian cause they are white, and for the most part well to do. If they were black, some other choice words would come to mind. I drink hard, but it’s craft beers, and the bars are full of young proffesinals, so it’s a sort of endering drunkenss.
In college I’d horse around, it wasn’t look at those hoodlums, no, it was college boys being college boys (I knew a guy who stole a sign, you know things like that), if it were a black guy the same age, well you wouldn’t think of it the same. It would either be criminal, or look what society does, look they act out because of oppression, not because it’s an animal house-esque prank.
That’s racism. Holding one group to a lower standard, for what is successfull, and a different standard for whats just having a good time, versus being a problem.