Editor’s Note: Few TIMES articles have spurred so many—or so thoughtful—responses as those which have followed our neighbor and Diversity Watch columnist Cecelia Nadal’s article about Ferguson last year. We are pleased to publish this recent letter from long-time resident, James Harris, and thank him for contributing to this important conversation.
As a resident of the Skinker/DeBaliviere community, I enjoy reading the Times. It helps me stay aware of activities and developments in my community. While reading the Summer 2015 edition, when I got to the editorial section, I was taken aback by the writer’s opening paragraph. Realizing that editorials afford readers an opportunity to sound off on a variety of issues, I seldom give them that much weight. However, this particular editorial, in which the writer takes issue with Cecelia Nadal’s commentary on Professor Henry Louis Gates’ encounter with Boston police a few years ago, captured my attention.
While I respect the writer’s prerogative to take an alternative stance, I was bothered by the strategy she used to credential herself as one qualified to speak to how Black American men should respond to what they perceive as racism. She defined herself as a bona fide white liberal, married to a black man, raised two bi-racial children, and worked in a Title II educational program. The question is not whether she truly believes herself to be a “bona fide” white liberal, but whether she understands the limitations of so-called white liberalism in relationship to recognizing what is really racism. Does she understand the ways consciousness is shaped by racist social structures and institutions? Without that understanding, even well-meaning white liberals who have participated in the struggle against racism may perpetuate a form of racism unintentionally.
Henry Louis Gates’ response to white police officers seeing him as a criminal extended far beyond the specific incident on which the writer bases her argument. It spoke to a form of post-traumatic racial stress brought on by a history of systemic racism that maligned the humanity of black bodies—racism that cast black men as threats and menaces to society. It spoke to the reality that police departments in this country have been endowed with the authority to destroy black bodies. No white liberal, regardless of how well-meaning, will ever understand the psychological impact of racist structures on black men.
Viewing the situation from the perspective of white privilege, the writer lacks the wherewithal to grasp a full understanding of how it feels to be constructed as something outside the realm of humanity. White people are privileged to move about freely in stores and other places of business without worrying that they will be seen as potential thieves. They will never have to wrestle with the question of how to live in a white body. Those privileges do not disappear through marriage to a black man. The bottom line is no matter how the pie is sliced, white people know they will get the biggest piece. This structural advantage promotes a skewed view of the more visceral forms of racism—the forms often missed by well-meaning, “bona fide” white liberals.
The second point I wish to address is the writer’s notion that her marriage to a black man validates her perspective on racism. That makes about as much sense as my saying being married to a woman validates my views on women’s issues. The damaging effects of racism, or any other form of oppression, are not conditions on which one gains authority by marrying a member of the targeted group.
“Plus, blackness is not monolithic. To paraphrase Henry Louis Gates, if there are twenty million black people in this country, there are twenty million ways to be black.”
It is naive of the writer to assume that having privy to the racial perspectives of her Black American husband and working with poor black children in a Title II educational program give her the insight she needs to define how black men should respond to racism.
Finally, in spite of strides made to erase racism from our laws, it remains as ubiquitous as rain. In light of this reality, I applaud the writer’s social consciousness about race. I also encourage her to be vigilant in the fight to dismantle racist structures that marginalize working-class black people, as well as other people of color.
— James Harris
