Beloved, to be white is to know that you have at your own hand, or by extension, through institutionalized means, the power to take black life with impunity. It’s the power of life and death that gives whiteness its force, its imperative. White life is worth more than black life.
This is why the cry “Black Lives Matter” angers you so greatly, why it is utterly offensive and effortlessly revolutionary. It takes aim at white innocence and insists on uncovering the lie of its neutrality, its naturalness, its normalcy, its normativity.
The most radical action a white person can take is to acknowledge this denied privilege, to say, “Yes, you’re right. In our institutional structures, and in deep psychological structures, our underlying assumption is that our lives are worth more than yours.” But that is a tough thing for most of you to do. My students are a bit of a captive audience. They’re more willing to wrestle their whiteness to a standstill—or at least a tie between the historical pressure to forget and the present demand to remember. Believe it or not, that tiny concession, that small gesture, is progress.
Of course it is hard to undo an entire life of innocence and the privileges it brings. And so you play a game. You pretend that by accountability we mean that you are guilty in a very specific way of some heinous injury. For instance, when we speak of affirmative action, we are not saying that you are individually responsible for the bulwark of white privilege on which it rests. We are saying, however, that you ought to be honest about how you benefit from getting a good education and a great job because you’re white. To twist that into the attempt to prosecute a case against all of white privilege through your individual story is an irresponsible ruse, and you know it, and yet you continue.
There is a big difference between the act of owning up to your part in perpetuating white privilege and the notion that you alone, or mostly, are responsible for the unjust system we fight. You make our request appear ridiculous by exaggerating its moral demand, by making it seem only, or even primarily, individual, when it is symbolic, collective. By overdramatizing the nature of your personal actions you sidestep complicity. By sidestepping complicity, you hold fast to innocence. By holding fast to innocence, you maintain power.
The real question that must be asked of white innocence is whether or not it will give up the power of life and death over black lives. Whether or not it will give up the power to kill in exchange for brotherhood and sisterhood. If it does, it can at long last claim its American siblings and we can become a true family.
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Beloved, fake regrets or insincere apologies for wrongdoing only reinforce white innocence.
I got a whiff of this sort of moral failure in 2015 when I watched the tribulations of Levi Pettit unfold in, of all places, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa has a long history of white oppression. In 1921 white residents of Tulsa massacred hundreds of black citizens and torched Greenwood, one of the wealthiest black communities in America, in a matter of a few hours in one of the worst acts of racial terror in the nation’s history. Pettit, a University of Oklahoma student and former high school golf star, was caught on video chanting a frat song that exulted in saying “nigger.” It also endorsed lynching. The gist of the ugly ditty he led on a bus trip to a party for his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity was that a black person would never be admitted to the group. When the video went public Pettit was expelled from the university.
Pettit held a press conference at a black church in Oklahoma City to apologize for his racist behavior. The black leaders that he sought forgiveness from dutifully surrounded him. Pettit was performing a common three-step ritual of the remorseful: mess up, dress up, ’fess up.
The beginning of Pettit’s mea culpa was promising. He thanked black state senator Anastasia Pittman, to whom he turned for guidance, for schooling him about the meaning behind his hurtful words. Pettit said he was sorry for his actions and admitted that there was no excuse for his behavior. He never saw himself as a bigot, but then, to be blunt, not many of you do. Pettit pledged to combat racism for the rest of his life.
The trouble started when Pettit was asked where, and from whom, he learned the nasty song. He waved the question off, insisting that he was there to address his actions and not the song’s origins. That gesture was surely a sign of willful, durable white innocence. When he was pressed about what he was thinking as he mirthfully chanted the song, Pettit dismissed the question as immaterial to his apology. And yet he and his fellow fraternity boys were all enjoying themselves on the video. After only a few questions Pettit held up his hand, announced “I’m done,” and quickly exited the room.
Pettit refused to address some of the most damning elements of his offense. Thus he took back with one hand what he had given with the other, that is, the willingness to confront racism head-on. Such a gesture is the prerogative of white innocence. My friends, there has been a great deal of talk, and no small consternation, about the idea of white privilege, the unspoken and often unacknowledged advantages that white Americans enjoy. And many of you are resentful of such talk; you think it is foolish. This was a glaring example. When Pettit stood at the lectern he appeared to take responsibility for his actions. In some ways he did, even as other culprits were hidden from view. That hateful chant was undoubtedly passed down through SAE generations as part of the fraternity’s racist legacy, one that it clearly cherished. Pettit functioned that day as a scapegoat.
It is harder to indict forces and institutions than the individuals who put a face to the problem. Institutional racism is a system of ingrained social practices that perpetuate and preserve racial hierarchy. Institutional racism requires neither conscious effort nor individual intent. It is glimpsed in the denial of quality education to black and brown students because they live in poor neighborhoods where public schools depend on the tax base for revenue. Minority students, like the ones I teach at Georgetown, are more often beset by economic and social forces than overt efforts to deny them equal education.