Tag Archives: White Denial

Dr. David J. Leonard: Got Solutions? Beyond Denial and Toward Transformation (Part 2)

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Got Solutions?

Beyond Denial and Toward Transformation (Part 2)

David J. Leonard

As I noted in part 1, white denial about racism and demands for solutions (for the racial injustices often dismissed) go hand in hand. As Mark Anthony Neal brilliantly reminded people in a Facebook status update: “The very essence of ‘privilege’ is when you enter into a space and are fundamentally unaware that not only have you changed the conversation, but have made the conversation about you.” Beyond attempting to turn the conversation into what they want, what these demands fail to recognize is white denial about racism, male denial about sexism, and heterosexual denial about homophobia is problematic and is instrumental in the perpetuation of violence, inequality, and privilege. While I remain wary of the demands for solutions, especially in absence of a willingness to work toward social change and accountability, there are many individual and systemic changes that will not only foster greater equality and justice but will address historically produced inequalities. There is much that can and must be done as part of a movement of racial reconciliation and change.

Universal Health Care: A consequence of America’s history of racism, violence, segregation, wealth disparity, and inequality represents stark differences between life and death. Whether looking at life expectancy, infant mortality, and countless illness, we see that racial inequality has consequences. In other words, racism kills. To combat the health consequences of American Apartheid, we must adopt a single-payer national health system. The grave impact of a Jim Crow system of “health care” is seen each and every day. According to a recent study from Harvard University, “Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care.” Race matters here. Tim Wise notes that each year 100,000 African Americans die “who wouldn’t if black mortality rates were equal to that of whites.” Universal health care would not solve these disparities but it would certainly dramatically intercede against racism’s assault on the basic human right of life. Lesley M Russell makes this clear:

Racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half of America’s uninsured and they suffer higher rates of chronic illness than the general population. They are more likely to experience risk factors that predispose them to chronic illnesses such as obesity, and are much less likely to receive preventive screenings, regular care, and to fill needed prescriptions that could prevent or ameliorate their conditions. Because being uninsured often means postponing needed heath care services, people of color are diagnosed at more advanced disease stages, and once diagnosed, they receive poorer care. Inevitably, they are sicker and die sooner.

A single payer system may not be a complete solution but it is a way to save lives, improve lives, and challenge the ongoing history of racism. Who is on board? It would seem that providing health care and dismantling America’s prison nation is the ultimate fulfillment of family values. You want a solution, how about respecting and valuing every person’s family; now that’s some values I can get on board with.

While we are nationalizing things, how about we abandon the inequitable local funding formulas employed by school districts and ensure that equity and equality is maintained in each and every school district. Since I know everyone is interested in change, how about a higher education that is open and accessible to everyone.

Solutions are a-plenty. Abolish the Electoral College and move toward publicly funded elections.

There are of course many solutions, from the Dream Act to dramatically changing the tax code and increasing minimum wage would take us on a path toward equality, justice, and racial reconciliation. If you want solutions, join me in fighting for them: if people get to deduct mortgage payments from their taxes, how about rental tax deductions; if children are deductible what about no children? Free childcare for all; what about public transformation in every community – interested? An end to the war on drugs and the military industrial complex! Are these the solutions you had in mind?

Continue reading @ Dr. David J. Leonard: Got Solutions? Beyond Denial and Toward Transformation (Part 2).

So You Want to Talk Solutions? White Denial and the Change Question (Part 1)

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So You Want to Talk Solutions?

White Denial and the Change Question (Part 1)

David J. Leonard

One of the common responses to discussions about racism and other forms of injustice is the demand for solutions. The commonplace entry into public and private discussions about racism, the efforts to take over comment sections, to silence those who work to highlight inequality with responses like “what’s the solution” does not engender solutions but rather works to derail the conversation. Usually deployed alongside the descriptor of wining and complaining, this disingenuous demand (as opposed to a desire to figure out the path toward justice) for solutions illustrates the manner that white male privilege operates. In my many years of teaching and writing, the majority of those who felt entitled to have answers NOW and remedies yesterday were white men. The “shut up… stop complaining…give me solutions” reframe is the embodiment of privilege.

Recognizing our forms of denial and challenging our social and racial myopia is the solution. Refusing to accept the lies and distortions, the misinformation and stereotypes is a remedy. However, for those who are desperate for solutions, who feel disappointed with our collective failure to provide a road map toward justice you don’t have to look any further, I got you.

Reparations: Given the history of racist violence, evident in slavery, Native American genocide, Jim Crow, forced sterilization, racist immigration laws, the conquest of Southwest and other crimes against humanity, I think reparations are in order. “Sorry isn’t enough!” According to the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCBRA):

A necessary requirement of all forms of reparations is an acknowledgment by the government or corporation that it committed acts that violated the human rights of those making the claim for reparations. Some groups may want an explicit apology; however, neither the acknowledgement nor apology is sufficient – there must be material forms of reparations that accompany the acknowledgment or apology. Reparations can be in as many forms as necessary to equitably (fairly) address the many forms of injury caused by chattel slavery and its continuing vestiges. The material forms of reparations include cash payments, land, economic development, and repatriation resources particularly to those who are descendants of enslaved Africans.’

Financial restitution, especially given the amount of wealth generated through white supremacy, because of enslavement, genocide, and exploitation, is a necessary step of racial reconciliation. White financial and political success has been predicated on white racism. Malcolm X rightfully destroys the myth of meritocracy, bootstraps, and the white protestant work ethic as reasons for success:

If you are the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and you inherit your father’s estate, you have to pay off the debts that your father incurred before he died. The only reason that the present generation of white Americans are in a position of economic strength…is because their fathers worked our fathers for over 400 years with no pay…We were sold from plantation to plantation like you sell a horse, or a cow, or a chicken, or a bushel of wheat…All that money…is what gives the present generation of American whites the ability to walk around the earth with their chest out…like they have some kind of economic ingenuity. Your father isn’t here to pay. My father isn’t here to collect. But I’m here to collect and you’re here to pay. (From By Any Means Necessary, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970, 123.)

Prison abolition: The history of America’s prison systems and the criminal justice system as a whole is wrought with racism. As Angela Davis remarks,

In order to imagine a world without prisons — or at least a social landscape no longer dominated by the prison — a new popular vocabulary will have to replace the current language, which articulates crime and punishment in such a way that we cannot think about a society without crime except as a society in which all the criminals are imprisoned. Thus, one of the first challenges is to be able to talk about the many ways in which punishment is linked to poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other modes of dominance.

America’s addiction to incarceration requires dramatic intervention. No reform will suffice given the entrenched nature of the criminal (in)justice system within every institution, from the political to the educational, from the cultural to the economic. The systemic incarceration of people of color, of the poor, represents an assault on families, communities, and a betrayal of the principles of equality, fairness, and democracy.

via Dr. David J. Leonard: So You Want to Talk Solutions? White Denial and the Change Question (Part 1).

Dr. David J. Leonard: White Denial and a Culture of Stereotypes

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White Denial and a Culture of Stereotypes

In the last installments I have tried to focus readers’ attention on both white denial and the propensity to deploy the experiences of the black middle-class as evidence of a post-racial America. Despite focusing on persistent wealth gaps, examples of institutional racism, and the ongoing consequences of systemic racism, some readers still responded with the clichéd level of defensiveness. The move to criticize me for blaming white people for inequality, or accusing me of labeling all white people as racists, is not a unique move; rather, it represents a typical effort to turn every conversation about race into a statement about white victimhood. This effort, in fact, defines contemporary racial discourse. How else might we explain the fact that more than fifty percent of whites identify the lack of motivation from blacks as the reason for limited racial progress; sixty-five percent believe that racial inequalities would “disappear if only Blacks would ‘try harder'” (Liptsitz 2011, p. 250). According to a recent study white denial is commonplace even amongst America’s youngest generation: “A solid majority of white Millennials, 56 percent, say that government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities. In fact, “58 percent say that ‘discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.'” Denial is not simply an outward projection about laws, economic institutions, the political structure or the criminal justice; white denial is about “not seeing race,” despite the fact that the racial prejudices and stereotypes are rampant. White denial isn’t simply outward disavowal but a defense of self.

Such denial is neither simply reflective of a lack of knowledge about the ongoing history of racism, nor do these predicable responses simply reflect an absence of the necessary language to actually talk about racism (the difference between prejudice and racism; what constitutes institutional racism; what is a micro aggression). While the limited knowledge about history of racism and the absence of the requisite literary to engage in these important conversations are important, so too is white privilege. White privilege not only allows whites to be blind to racial profiling, stop and frisk, redlining, housing discrimination, and the myriad of examples of institutional racism, but it incentivizes protecting the status quo. This helps us understand the myriad of studies that show that whites think the scale of race relations is tilted in the favor of communities of color.

Yet, even the privileges that sequester whites away from the consequences and realities of white supremacy do not explain the extent of denial, an almost pathological refusal to look at racism within our legal, political, and cultural institutions–but that are visible in everyday life.

Evident in the ubiquity of racial epithets and racist jokes, along with findings that whites are indifferent to those slurs and jokes, demonstrates how racism is alive and well. Irrespective of class or geography, everyday racism is a fact of life present across a myriad of communities. The facts of micro aggressions in the face of white denial illustrate a very different understanding of the world in which we live: one based on facts and experiences and the other based on fantasy, privilege, and segregation. Micro aggressions refer to “brief and everyday slights, insults, indignities and denigrating messages sent to people of color by well-intentioned White people who are unaware of the hidden messages being communicated” (Sue).

Continue reading @ Dr. David J. Leonard: White Denial and a Culture of Stereotypes.