Beloved, you are ensnared in one of the bitterest paradoxes of our day. You say we black folk are thin-skinned about race. You say a new generation of black activists focus too much on trendy terms like “micro-aggressions.” You say they are too sensitive to “trigger warnings.” You claim they are too insistent on safe spaces and guarding against hateful speech that hurts their feelings. You argue that all of us are too politically correct.
And yet you can barely tolerate any challenge to your thinking on race. I say thinking, my friends, though that is being kind. Many of you hardly think of race. You shield yourselves from what you don’t want to understand. You reveal your brute strength in one contemptible display of power after the next, and yet you claim that we reap benefit by playing the victim.
To be blunt, you are emotionally immature about race. Some of you are rightly appalled at the flash of white racial demagoguery. Yet you have little curiosity about the complicated forces of race. You have no idea that your whiteness and your American identity have become fatally intertwined; they are virtually indistinguishable. Any criticism of the nation is heard as an attack on your identity.
But, my friends, your innocent whiteness is too costly to maintain. We are forced to be gentle with you, which is another way of saying we are forced to lie to you. We must let you down easy, you, the powerful partner in our fraught relationship. Your feelings get hurt when we tell you that you’re white, and that your whiteness makes a difference in how you’re treated. You get upset when we tell you that whiteness has often been damaging and toxic. You get angry when we tell you how badly whiteness has behaved throughout history.
But we must risk your wrath to speak back to a defiantly innocent whiteness. You often deem black dissent as disloyalty to America. But that black dissent may yet redeem a white innocence that threatens the nation’s moral and patriotic health.
*
“For the first time in my life, I feel guilty about being white,” my student admitted in shame. His voice barely rose above a whisper. He hunched over in embarrassment, his cheeks flushing.
A momentary hush came over our sociology seminar. Our intimate setting gave us a stronger emotional connection than we might have had in a bigger class. The subject matter made our bond even more intense. We were studying how black folk died throughout American history. The readings opened my student’s eyes to what he had never before been made to know.
I was torn. I wanted to honor his pain. I wanted the whiteness he had never confronted to fully wash over him, over me, over all of us in the class. I wanted the other white students to share his shame, if that’s how they truly felt—or to find it a bit much, or to feel entirely unsettled by his confession of white guilt. I didn’t want him to be alone in his head or feelings.
But I also wanted the students who were savvier about whiteness to speak up. Those who knew how whiteness often avoids direct hits; those who knew how whiteness often distorts the arguments of its opponents to make itself appear more reasonable, more natural; those who knew how whiteness escapes notice in a blizzard of qualifications meant to avoid responsibility. I wanted them in the stew with him to help sort things out. I wanted the students of color in the class to weigh in too. I wanted them to tell us if they were learning new things about black pain. Or to let off steam from a simmering rage at how white folk could afford not to know what many of them couldn’t help but know.
I’d seen enough in life to know that remorse has its place in our moral ecology. But I didn’t want my student to suffocate beneath an avalanche of guilt. White guilt changes nothing permanently, and bad feelings about black suffering don’t last forever. They certainly can’t remove the source of the shame. I wanted my student to know that whiteness is a problem to be struggled with, that it is a culture in which one comes to maturity, that it is an identity one inherits and perpetuates, that it is an ideology one might flourish under and, in turn, help mold, that it is an institution from which one benefits, an ethos in which one breathes, a way of life. For the rest of the semester we grappled with our guilt, our anger, and, for some of us, even our hopelessness, trying to make sense of it all.
My student’s confession opened a way for us to say things that are often tough for white folk to say: that whiteness is a privilege, a declared, willful innocence, and that lots of white folk in our nation don’t know the kinds of things we were learning in class. One of my bright black students got exasperated at how many white folk protected themselves from such knowledge by seeing themselves as the victims of hurt feelings.
“A lot of white people don’t want to confront these issues, and as a result, we end up reinforcing white fragility,” she said. It was the first time many in the class had heard the term. White fragility is the belief that even the slightest pressure is seen by white folk as battering, as intolerable, and can provoke anger, fear, and, yes, even guilt. White fragility, as conceived by antiracist activist and educational theorist Robin DiAngelo, at times leads white folk to argue, to retreat into silence, or simply to exit a stressful situation.
I have seen this in many lectures I’ve given over the years. When many white folk disagree, or feel uncomfortable, they get up and walk out of the room. Black folk and other people of color rarely exercise that option. We don’t usually believe that doing so would solve anything. We don’t trust that once we leave the room the right thing will be done. Plus we’ve fought so hard to get into most rooms that a little discomfort is hardly a reason to drive us from the premises. Such rooms likely affect our destinies, something that many white folk needn’t worry about, because they have access to so many other rooms just like the ones they are leaving.
I have, over the years, developed a pedagogy of the problematic to address the thorny matter of race, whether it is wrestling with the burdens and sorrows that honest talk of whiteness brings or discouraging my black students from the easy retreat into sanctuaries of black solace. I want students to confront the brutal legacy of race with the kid gloves off, and yet respect each other’s humanity.
Such an effort isn’t easy. I get scores and scores of letters and e-mails from white folk who are angered by how my pedagogy of the problematic plays out in the media. They make sure to let me know what a moron I am, how unfortunate my students are to have me as a professor—okay, let’s be honest, at times that might really be true—how Georgetown should fire me on the spot. They often call me “nigger” to remind me of the inferior status I keep forgetting to embrace. And many are mad because they say I am trying to warp young people’s minds.