Difficulty talking with one white guy
The conversation with a fellow white guy months ago bounced along through some big topics: money, sex, race, education. We were at a mutual friend’s dinner-ish party. He was dressed in crisp preppy style, Lacoste shirt and all, and it wasn’t hard to gather that he, like me, was from some money. I was probably dressed similarly to him, though I don’t do Lacoste-level preppy these days.
Early on in the conversation, I questioned an assumption in something he had said by bringing up the factor of race, and structural racial discrimination. Often when I bring this up people slow down for a second and think about it, to try to place what the racial dynamics of the situation are. He, on the other hand, did not hesitate to respond:
“Why do you people insist on talking about race? It doesn’t matter, stop it!”
It was his opinion that people simply shouldn’t be talking about race. An idea like his might be grounded in good intention, that we shouldn’t judge people based on their race/ethnicity/colour of skin. This individual in particular took that logic and applied it to the real world by asserting that we now live in a colourblind society, meaning that racism, including its structurally engrained forces, has evaporated and drifted away from planet Earth. He said that since something like slavery had been over for so long (it legally ended in 1833 in Canada by British Decree, 1865 in the USA), racism doesn’t exist any more. He had concluded that because something had happened a while ago, it had no bearing on the present, no legacy. I tried, but he was unwilling to entertain the idea that history matters.
Race wouldn’t matter if what happened in the past had no bearing on what happens in the present. There is no reason to make judgements about people and make preferrential treatments because of how they look and where they are from. But history, ie. the past, shapes the present and the future and race is a huge theme in all of human history, shaping continent-level politics, cultures, migrations, economies, etc. What would the world look like if racism had gone the other way over the past few hundred years?
Saying race doesn’t matter is to live in a dream world. It is to live:
- as though there are no studies showing that interview processes in North America discriminate (perhaps unwittingly) against people with “ethnic” names (like this 1994 study or this one from 2012)
- as though the residential school system, which ended in 1996, didn’t affect any indigenous people who are alive now
- as though the effects of slavery and segregation have completely disappeared
- as though many white kids don’t have privileged educations (eg. tendency for parents to have free time to put towards helping out at schools and extra-curriculars) and don’t then often find themselves in social-familial circles with lots of opportunities for work
- as though children in wealthy white families don’t have their admissions to elite schools, some of which were historically all-white, bought for them, not earned, and that this is by-and-large not evened out through affirmative action programs (studied here and here and bizzarely here)
- as though programs like the unconstitutional, very unconstitutional, Stop-and-Frisk in New York City aren’t real and don’t discriminate racially
- as though none of this weighs more on the day-to-day lives of people of colour than it does on white people
- as though white people can get what it feels like to be racialized chronically, and have perspective to speak as voices of authority on the non-existence of race as an issue in the 21st century (irony noted)
- and ignoring many other manifestations of racism not listed here
I agree race shouldn’t matter. But this is reality, and it unfortunately still does. Keeping that thought present and being open to seeing trends you may not be aware of yourself is a key part of the lifelong accountability one with significant privileges has to uphold.
I was able to write the above list months after that conversation. In our exchange, this white guy and I got hung up on one issue only: affirmative action. I mentioned that the legacy traditions at various schools (letting in children and relatives of alumni, links above) discriminated in favour of a white population. Did he not acknowledge this happened, nor that this should be balanced out somehow? “That shouldn’t happen,” was his not-unreasonable response. “But it does, so what do we do? Is affirmative action a possible counterbalance?” I asked. “Neither of them should happen.” The conversation was stuck, with him unable to acknowledge a real and existing structure, and me hoping in vain he’d see its undeniable enduring existence. We talked for short time longer not making much progress and then he asked an interesting question (roughly quoted): “why do you think you see this apparent racism and I don’t?”
I replied quickly and honestly and without a filter. “I think you are showing a failure to empathize.” It can be hard from a wealthy white perspective to try to imagine what challenges and discriminations other people might be facing. I certainly struggle with this. While I had replied with the intention of maybe opening up conversation further, he didn’t take it that way.
The conversation was quite serious at this stage, and we weren’t paying much attention to the happenings in the rest of the living room / kitchen. His face had an unmistakably angry and proud expression. “Take that back,” he demanded. He then asked repeatedly for an apology from me for how I’d offended him by saying what I believed to be the problem.
There was silence for a while. I had meant what I’d said. I thought he genuinely had either not tried or not succeeded in really listening to and feeling for what others had been going through. Maybe it was from lack of interaction, or from a trained unwillingness. I didn’t have the information to even guess. I had just met him, I didn’t know. But, at a basic level, it seemed he was unwilling to simply believe people who have tried to say they are subject to some form of racism. Maybe I could have explained this. But as the moments passed, staring into his face, having caused a bit of a scene at a mutual friend’s social gathering, I eventually apologized. I took it back, absolving him of any fault, of any lack.
Once he felt that we had made up, we moved on to the topic of sex, relationships, and consent. His grievance was that all this talk of a “rape culture” (the society-level normalizing of non-consentual relations, of sex being something on offer to be gotten from someone by whatever means necessary) was stopping him from being able to approach and talk to women. He recounted how he had had sexual relations with a number of women in his work environment, but noted that he was having difficulty meeting people and finding a partner who he really liked.
At the time, I was in a relationship which, from the beginning, had a focus on consent, about continually and actively trying to make sure we weren’t forcing the other do things they weren’t okay with. It was a good relationship, we learned a bunch about ourselves, and we’re still friends now. I’m not saying consent is easy, but I am saying that meeting people and consciously respecting their desires is quite possible. It is necessary to try to do so. Starting up conversation and asking if it’s okay to keep talking with someone is basic courtesy, and a good start on the path to a consensual relationship.
That context, in my life, contrasted sharply with this guy who was saying that all this talk focus on consent and of “rape culture” was stopping him from having fulfilling relationships, or even from talking to women. He really opened up to me, saying he was having trouble finding someone he really liked. He asked me, almost pleadingly, to introduce him to women. He requested to be my friend on facebook.
I did neither. I wanted nothing to do with this guy. I was polite at the party but just wanted to get away from him.
There are two reasons I’m writing this. One is to show what a not-uncommon wealthy-white-male mindset about race and consent is. Another reason is to say I believe I failed in my interaction with this person. Not because I apologized or didn’t set him up with someone he’d like, but because I missed some teachable opportunities. This individual, who is going to be a highly respected professional in a position of power, is seemingly going to go on believing in everything he expressed that night. I’ve been wondering: who is going to talk with and accompany him through the thinking and feeling necessary to be accountable to the dynamics he is deeply intwined in and ignoring? There’s a common expression that “it’s not my job to educate people about how they are oppressing me”. So whose role is it to accompany people through a learning process? If, for a wealthy white guy like him, I’m not even willing to put in the effort to work with him, can anyone else be expected to step up and put in the physical and emotional energy?
Outspoken thinker and activist bell hooks wrote, in The Will to Change, “…we cannot journey far if men are left behind. They wield too much power to simply be ignored or forgotten.” The guy I was talking to, and others holding similar world-views who may be in positions of power, will continue running the world with that mentality if nothing changes. We need to talk about and to them. It’s crazy to ignore a major demographic perpetuating problems we’re trying to work to remedy.
That is not to say racist white guys who don’t much care about consent should be the center of all conversations, nor most. We need to talk about racialized people and all women whose struggles guys like the one described here are ignoring. We need to talk about everything. The pro-feminist men’s movement, parts of which had good direction, is mostly absent these days, and that is disconcerting to me. As is the difficulty in finding organized anti-racist conversations focused on white people.
The unreadiness and unwillingness I showed, that I see again and again when men with similar thinking enter such conversations indicates that we aren’t well-suited to educate men. This is something to work on.
I am forever indebted to a friend who accompanied me through a learning journey (which isn’t over), and who provided an ad-hoc curriculum and was unendingly patient in informal challenging conversations. Hopefully more of us can find the will and words to speak constructively with white people and men about this stuff.
Hi Dave,
I enjoyed reading your post! I found it to be very thoughtful and in a way, having conversations like this (even with the subject of your post) has to, in some small part, contribute to positive social change.
I want to bring attention to one claim in your post, which I believe can be strengthened:
You write: ” But history, ie. the past, shapes the present and the future and race is a huge theme in all of human history, shaping continent-level politics, cultures, migrations, economies, etc.”
I agree that modern history has been irreversibly shaped by the false science of racial classification. I believe that it is very important, however, not to over-extend our understanding of the past with our present lens e.g. not to draw in the significance of “race” where it does not exist. I will illustrate this point using an example:
Since I graduated McGill, I have been studying abroad in Jerusalem, learning Jewish Studies in a traditional setting. One of my interests in reading the Bible has been to compare current “racial” classification with the manner in which the Bible understands groups, identity, etc… If you study the history of Bible interpretation, you will see a noticeable shift towards racial identification with biblical groups.
For example, Numbers 12:1 reports that Moses takes a “Kushite Wife.” Over time, Kushite is seen in commentaries as expressing a geographical location (south of Egypt), to where Moses took a Black wife (in the strict racial sense) to nowadays where he took a “black” wife in the social-identity sense (even though at the time, being from Kush had a very different social identity than today). The same can be said with the interpretation of Noah’s children– Shem, Ham and Japhet being identified in the modern period with racial groups– a meaning that clearly developed over time.
What I am trying to say, is that the impact of “race” as a theme in human history is very complicated and urges further research. As I have been studying the history of Jewish rabbinic thought, I have found that in the Classical Period, Jewish writings did not emphasize the importance of “race.” In parallel Greek and Roman societies, anyone could be a slave regardless of their place of birth or appearance. In the Medieval period, things get more complicated and you can see slave trades between the Sahara and the Arab world affecting perceptions of the black “other” having an impact on Jewish writings. By the contemporary period, race is already a huge theme in Europe and of course we are all familiar with the race-concept underlying Trans-Atlantic slavery.
I guess to add to your post, I believe that learning our history– really striving for the truth– will ideally help us to learn and combat the roots of oppression in our society.
Keep up the good work (and keep in touch)!!!
Eli
Thanks Eli!
History is a tricky beast, and I do agree my writing is dangerously close to over-simplifying.
I recently made a go at reading the Bible. Trying to read it front-to-back is probably a foolish goal. Anyway, one of the things that turned me off was some of the racism / ethnic / place-based discrimination. That was in both the Old and New Testaments. It seemed like some groups were elevated in importance and others put down, cast aside, and diminished in importance. Reading from my current western liberal-minded view, this came across as close-minded bigotry and I’m still not sure what to make of it. At times the writings seemed to convey the way things were, and sometimes it seemed like the writers consciously sought to describe differences between communities which not infrequently included making unsubstantiated/prejudiced conclusions about everyone in that community. How these writings / teachings align coherently with the golden rule of treating others as you’d like to be treated was a thread I couldn’t discern as consistent throughout the text. I’ve put it on hold, and am waiting for a new inspiration/perspective to come along to keep reading. I imagine being in a traditional setting with people who understand the context better helps a lot to disentangle the many layers. But I’d hope that reading wouldn’t have to be that difficult, that it could be more accessible.
To get back to your main point, you rightly point out that the history of group based and race based discrimination is huge and messy and requires further study. That said, I think there are some very major, fairly clear trends over the last few hundred years that have left lasting legacies on the social order of today. Property, especially the British-American style conception of it, is something I’ve really been thinking about recently. Ownership of land, people, organizations etc. seem to be a tool of control that has operated in ways very much divided along racial lines over the last few centuries. Even just seeing that is a lot to digest, and pretty scary knowledge to hold.
Thanks for the thoughts. It’s always great to hear other perspectives. I hope all is well, and, yes, let’s keep in touch, and hopefully these conversations can continue to grow.
Dave
Great post, Dave!
Laura