White Like Me

Have you ever thought much about white privilege? For most of my life, I haven't. I've never been forced to really think about race in America, which is actually just as good an example that white privilege exists as any other. I'm fairly certain that most ethnic minorities are unable to postpone or avoid confrontations with the realities of racialization that surround them.

 I just finished reading White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise, in which he does a terrific job of narrating the story of white privilege in the U.S., using personal anecdotes as well as expounding on public policy and events to illustrate truths that are difficult for us, as white folk, to accept. His voice is not one of condemnation, however, but one of hope. For justice for all (and even if we don't see or never achieve such justice, "there is redemption in struggle"), which includes white people... racism, he claims, not only harms the oppressed, but damages the oppressor.

Racism, even if it is not your own, changes you, allows you to think things and feel things that make you less than you were meant to be. It steals that part of your humanity that is the most precious because it is that part that allows us to see the image of God, the goodness of creation, in all humankind. And our unwillingness to see that, and more than to see it, to really feel it, deep in the marrow of our bones, is what allows us, and even sometimes compels us, to slaughter one another, often in the name of the same God whose image we wouldn't recognize if our lives depended on it. Which, come to think of it, they probably do. (p. 126)

This echoes Wendell Berry, who says:  "If the white man has inflicted the wound of racism upon black men, the cost has been that he would receive the mirror image of that wound into himself... The wound is in me, as complex and deep in my flesh as blood and nerves." (The Hidden Wound, p. 4)

This is not to in any way, shape or form imply that white people somehow suffer more from racism, or that we should be selfishly motivated in our pursuit of justice. It is simply to say that as we continue to reap the benefits of a racialized society, it would behoove us to get outside of the paternalistic, "we'll help you", mindset that seems to be deeply ingrained in us and move toward a more holistic approach centered on the truth that sin hurts everyone it touches.