Dear White People: We Need To Stop This Insanity

Why People in Power Need to Stop Saying “All Lives Matter”

Saying “All Lives Matter” might feel good to you. It might make you feel a certain sort of holy and righteous. But really all it is is a way to shirk your responsibility as a member of the People in Power. And if you’re white, you’re a member of the People in Power.

Uncomfortable yet?

As the People in Power, only WE white people can stop the systemic murder of young black men, the institutionalized school-to-prison pipeline, the deep, bleeding wound that is race in America. Our black friends can yell and scream and cry and demand justice and protest, but until we are willing to get really fucking uncomfortable with our own participation in our racist society, nothing will change.

I get that many of you abhor the idea of racism. I believe you wouldn’t actively participate in it by choice. But passive participation is participation nonetheless, and the fact is you are a white person born into a racist society. In this post, and hopefully in the posts to come, I’ll try to break that down a little bit to begin to explore what that actually means.

You are probably feeling super uncomfortable right now, and probably a little bit angry. You might be saying to yourself, “Hold up, there. I am hardly a Person in Power. I struggle to pay my mortgage — how the hell am I privileged? I’m not racist — I have black friends! I’m a good person!” And I’m sure all of that is true. You may not be rich and you may truly struggle with daily aspects of your life. You probably are a good person. And yep, you may even have black friends.

You still benefit from a institutionalized racism.

If you are not familiar with how white privilege operates to your benefit in your life each day, Peggy McIntosh’s famous essay is a great place to start. It’s good for you to understand that statistics — while difficult to nail down on this particular topic — show that black men are anywhere from 3 to 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white men.

This is a problem.

Once you really start studying this, once you are willing to really look at the uncomfortable facts, it takes a lot of really special work to continue to insist that white privilege does not exist.

And yet when our black friends cry out in anger at the injustice of this, when they point to this statistic and say, “Hey now, something’s wrong here!” they are accused of being an angry people who “play the race card” (you know, the sister document to “the woman card”) and they are marginalized. So when you righteously say All Lives Matter, you are actively participating in the demoralization of an entire people who are desperately trying to get your attention to say, “Hey! We’re being murdered over here!”

The same article from which those statistics were taken sums it up perfectly:

The point of the “Black Lives Matter” movement is not that the lives of African Americans matter more than those of White Americans, but that they matter equally, and that historically they have been treated as if they do not.

         -Andrew Rosenthal, “The Real Story of Race and Police Killings“, The New York Times; September 4, 2015

It’s not easy to awaken to your own participation in institutionalized racism. I get that. I am a member of a private Facebook group that is committed to discussing these issues. I go there to listen, to learn — or perhaps more appropriately, unlearn the racism that has been instilled in me by my country. And when I speak out about these issues, inevitably I’ll get something wrong. But speaking out, getting it wrong, learning, and then trying again are way better than white silence. Than passive acceptance and participation in a system that is twisted and murderous.

I’ll admit, it’s not always easy to be in that Facebook group. There is anger there. There is heated discussion and a complete lack of regard for white fragility.  I am regularly made aware of the racism that has been somehow installed in my heart and mind like a fucking virus — a disgusting little worm that eats away at my soul. That’s what racism is, and if left unexamined and untended, it procreates.  We must stop this. We — white people — it’s our hearts that must be changed.

Read more –> How The Church Can Respond