Interrogating my anti-Blackness

Right before I sat down to take a state standardized test, I remember worrying aloud that I was nervous about not passing and what the consequences might be. In an effort to reassure me that I would be fine, someone nearby explained to me these tests were not really for us. We will do well because we are all smarter than kids in other public schools.

I don’t really remember the particulars of the conversation, just that I found some comfort in the fact that this test wasn’t “really for us.” I think I may have wondered who these tests were for and most likely pictured the Black kids I had met through Patterson Connection -- an interschool program during the 1990s that invited kids who attended public school in Paterson, NJ, to have pizza and play volleyball with us -- kids who attended a small “top tier” public school located in a small New Jersey suburb populated almost exclusively by families who were white, Christian, and relatively affluent.

I also remember realizing how white my town was when one of my classmates -- let’s call him Ben -- was late to practice because he had been pulled over by the police on the main road in town. Ben was one of the only Black students in our class and although this memory is foggy -- probably because I never really talked to anyone about it -- I do remember someone casually mentioning this was not the first time Ben got pulled over while driving in town. I also remember being momentarily aware of the fact that there were not really any Black people who lived in town. Based on this, I reasoned that it was not that the police officer did not like Black people or that they did not know and like Ben. Rather, it was that seeing a young Black man driving through town was atypical and therefore deemed suspicious. And while it is embarrassing to admit that this logic made sense to me at the time, it is even more disheartening to admit to myself that I thought of Ben -- and the other Black people I met when I went to work with my mom -- as being different from, and on some level better than, other Black people I did not know personally.

The purpose of publicly interrogating my anti-Blackness is not to offer evidence of how far I have come since I was a teenager. I also have not shared these stories to embarrass my hometown or alma mater by illuminating how collectively unconcerned we seemed to be with our intentional self-segregation in the name of educational “choice” and/or when we witnessed institutional racism manifest itself right in front of our eyes (DiAngelo, 2018). I share because I was asked how I was interrogating my anti-Blackness as a white man in the era of Black Lives Matter. #BLM

When Dr. Thomas, an associate professor who agreed to be on my dissertation committee, and I discussed the booklet for the second phase of this study (see Chapter 3), she said something along the lines of, “Before I give you feedback on the booklet, could you share with me how you’re interrogating your anti-Blackness?” I was stunned, but not speechless. I began to explain I had intentionally tried to select excerpts that focused on whiteness in an attempt to “make the invisible, visible” (Marx, 2006) in an effort to avoid unintentionally perpetuating the narrative that the problem is tethered to the Black students who -- “everyone agrees” -- seem to struggle more than other students. Then I began to launch into my thought process for structuring the booklet for the second phase of my dissertation study around seven guiding questions. After listening for a minute or two she interrupted, “I see. There’s no need to get defensive.” It took everything in me not to blurt out, “I’m not defensive!”

Thankfully, Dr. Thomas skillfully guided me back into the conversation by patiently reframing her feedback -- something like, “Dan, this is your friend, Ebony. I want you to know that you may be asked during your dissertation defense to explicitly talk about how you interrogated your anti-Blackness. I just want you to be ready.” After thanking Dr. Thomas, we continued to discuss some of my preliminary themes from the phase one interviews.

I spent the next few days hemming and hawing about the request to “interrogate my anti-Blackness.” I would explain to anyone who would listen, “Here I am thinking I’m just getting a handle on my “whiteness” and now I need to interrogate my anti-Blackness.” Although I had recently read DiAngelo’s (2018) book -- which includes an entire chapter on anti-Blackness -- my reflexive reaction was to assume I did not know and email Dr. Thomas to ask her to explain what she meant by my anti-Blackness. I decided not to -- although this decision was made after days of self-reflection that went something like this:

You should not just default to asking people of color questions about race that you can Google for yourself. / But isn’t it important (and okay) to ask for help if you need it? / But do I really need help with this? I should at least Google it first. / But how will I know if I am reading about the “right” type of anti-Blackness? / Am I serious right now? I can figure this out.

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A few years ago, at the end of a Border Crossers workshop entitled “Talking about race, K-4,” a scenario was acted out in front of the room. While there were scenarios acted out prior to this one I could see were problematic, I was confused. I could not see what made this particular scenario problematic: A white female teacher welcomes students and families as they arrive to a middle school dance. The white teacher says to a Latinx woman who dropped off a student that it was so nice to finally meet her in person -- incorrectly assuming this woman was the mother of one of her Latinx students. Although the white teacher noticed the woman looked both annoyed and upset, the teacher said nothing because she did not know what to do or say.

The facilitators of the workshop explained to us that this was an example of a racial microaggression -- defined in Sue (2015) as “the everyday slights, insults, indignities, and invalidations delivered toward people of color because of their visible racial/ethnic minority characteristics” (p.7). As such, the facilitators explained that the white teacher should apologize to the woman and explained she (the teacher) understood that her incorrect assumption was racist.

Although I agreed the teacher should apologize for her mistake, I do remember thinking: “Racist?! That’s a bit much. Why is it so wrong to assume that the person dropping off a student is their parent? And how is that racist?” I was not alone in my disbelief -- other white participants were confused, too -- and the facilitators did their best to help us understand that this was a racial microaggression because the white teacher’s unintentional gaff was analogous to saying, “You all look the same to me” and “you’re are all interchangeable.”

After the session ended, I approached one of the facilitators to explain that I really wanted to understand, but I had no idea how this teacher’s innocent mistake was being elevated to racism. Her advice was straightforward and concrete: When you want to share a thought, first announce that you are white, e.g., “As a white person, I think…” As I stared at her dumbfounded, she explained this would help me begin to feel a small fraction of what it feels like to have your race take center stage as soon as you walk into a room. I dutifully agreed to give it a try.

I replayed her advice over and over to myself on the subway ride home and began to feel super awkward. As I looked around the subway car, I locked eyes with a Black woman and thought, “She knows I’m white! She’s probably thinking things about me because I’m white! What is she thinking?!” It was paralyzing. Over the next few weeks I began to notice it is frequently a white male pushing his body past everyone else to make sure he had a spot on a crowded train car. I was often this person. #facepalm

Thanks to the facilitator’s advice I am more aware of my own whiteness and male privilege. I am no longer paralyzed by this slight increase in my racial and gender consciousness. Instead, I now consciously think about how my body moves through public spaces, e.g., getting on and off a subway car or in the supermarket. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wouldn’t have been thinking about any of this if I did not come to understand that my white skin meant something. In our current reality, white people, whether or not we acknowledge it, have a vested emotional and financial interest in maintaining a racially inequitable and anti-Black status quo (Lipsitz, 2006).

Although I quickly recognized my white skin offered me access and privilege, what was most disturbing and upsetting to me was that my skin color, particularly when I do not acknowledge it, stands as a barrier to making authentic connections with other people -- both white and of color. To be clear, I do not say this to shift the responsibility to other people by blaming others for the shallowness of our connection. I am white. That means something, especially given that most people who look like me move through the world seemingly unphased and numb to the outrageous violence of generational and state-sanctioned “white rage” unleashed on communities of color (Anderson, 2016; Coates, 2015; López, 2006).

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One aspect of my anti-Blackness that was hardest for me to wrap my head around is that people who were not white -- for example, Black folx -- did not want to be white. It’s been my experience that when white people think about W.E.B. DuBois’s (n.d.) “double consciousness” and the “veil” that separates two distinct realities, we assume the goal is to drop the veil so that all “those people” (read: Black people) from “the other side” can come over to “our world.” We never critically reflect, let alone talk about, what we, white people, lose by segregating ourselves away from other people (DiAngelo, 2018). Nevertheless, I have found a paradoxical comfort in understanding that being part of the problem means that I can, and necessarily need to be, part of the solution (Leonardo, 2009; Menaken, 2017).