by Luca Fiora Dalton
This piece is a follow-up to a previous article titled “White Emptiness.”
White supremacy is everywhere in our society. Its stronghold is within we white people — it is my deeply held belief that all white people are racist, including myself. By racism, I don’t just mean intentional and violent hatred against people of color. Instead, I use a more expansive definition of racism including all the subtle ways that people of color are dehumanized through the societal, economic and political power of whiteness. This racism is enacted culturally, interpersonally, institutionally and intergenerationally. Importantly, people of color cannot be racist because they do not have the societal, political or economic power to actualize whatever biases they may have.
My own racism looks like complacency, unconscious bias, ignorance and internalized white supremacy: complacency shows up in ongoing police violence against people of color, and the constant enactment of economic exploitation of people of color; unconscious bias reveals itself in how I interact or make decisions about people of color, especially as an educator; ignorance is reflected in not having exposure to, or understanding of, diverse cultures and stories of resistance from communities of color; internalized white supremacy exposes itself through the belief that how I write and speak is better than people who use ‘non-standard’ English. These examples are just a few ways that white supremacy shows up within myself. This internal racist awareness is always evolving and always indebted to the open and critical work of people of color. When you reflect on yourself, dear reader, know that racism as a whole shows up in an expansive array of actions and inactions — it takes more than one 1,000-word article to undo hundreds of years of socialization. Only in vigilance and deep, humble listening can white people move incrementally toward anti-racist ideals and thus, collective liberation.
In addition to being racist and enacting racism, white people benefit from their white identity and are thus privileged. This means that we white people do not experience racism from strangers, police, colleagues, governments and institutions as a whole. Privilege also means that we white people benefit directly from the stolen land of Indigenous people and the labor of Black Americans. As a white, middle-class, able-bodied, genderqueer, settler-colonialist and citizen, I know I benefit from constructed supremacies and violent occupation of stolen wealth. As a whole, these identities are painful invitations to realize my privilege, recognize the need for accountability, and act.
This analysis of individual racism and privilege will be valuably contextualized by an understanding of surrounding communities. Evergreen is one such community. During the powerful Evergreen protests of 2017, two Black, queer, trans, non-able normative protesters were the most harshly punished by the administration. Their protests were partially triggered by an incident where Black students were illegally detained by on-campus police. This is to say that Evergreen isn’t exempt from racial violence. In fact, Evergreen is often the host or perpetrator of racist violence. Evergreen continues to fail to respond adequately to student demands including disarming its police force and promoting adequate multicultural competency training for staff and faculty. These inactions reinforce the racist status quo. This local flavor of liberal oppression pairs logically with its regional and national siblings.
Trigger warning: This paragraph depicts explicit, racist physical violence. In the national context, Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man, was killed by police on July 14, 2014, in Staten Island, New York. He was killed on suspect of selling cigarettes without proper stamps. Before being tackled, he verbally protested this over-policing. Being knocked to the ground, placed in a chokehold and kneeled on, he yells and wheezes eleven times, “I can’t breathe.” He then goes unconscious and is eventually taken to the hospital where he dies. Pause. The queer, white poet Andrea Gibson writes in their 2015 book Pansy, “White is having all of Eric Garner’s air in your lungs. No matter how queer you are. No matter how anything we are. If we are white, we have Eric Garner’s air in our lungs tonight.” This visceral poignancy pinpoints the urgency of working against racist complacency. Because, in truth, before this incident occurred, we white people could have made a collective effort to demilitarize and devalue police violence. We could have made it clear through solidarity, organizing, writing and rage that this continued, unbroken chain of anti-Black violence would no longer be tolerated. But, we didn’t, and we still haven’t. If we white people held the lives of people of color to be just as valuable as our own, this violence would stop. Until then, we will perpetually have all of Eric Garner’s air in our lungs. This feeling of intolerable pain and urgency that you might be feeling right now, imagining someone else’s violent death thrust into your body, could give you an idea of the acute feeling of being harassed and dehumanized every day of one’s life. This enraged grief must be extended to all of the explicit and violently subtle ways racism shows up within us white people, and within this white supremacist country as a whole. We white people must act against white supremacy wherever it shows up.
…in truth, before this incident occurred, we white people could have made a collective effort to demilitarize and devalue police violence. We could have made it clear through solidarity, organizing, writing and rage that this continued, unbroken chain of anti-Black violence would no longer be tolerated. But, we didn’t…
Awareness of racism must be accompanied by an understanding of intersecting forms of oppression. That is to say, I believe that the violent occupation of North American land is just as morally detestable as the unconscious occupation of the white identity. This interweaving of different forms of oppression extends to environmental and disability justice, queer and femme liberation, colonial and capitalist deconstruction, and anti-ableist and -ageist work. So, when I discuss white supremacy I urge an anti-colonial, -cisheteropatriarcal, -ageist, -ableist, -capitalist, -imperialist analysis. It’s not possible to be single-issue and succeed.
Contemporary white U.S. culture is broken and hurting in two ways. First, it instills a distinct sense of emptiness in the white oppressor. This sense of white cultural emptiness is a direct descendent of white immigrants choosing white culture and white supremacy over holding onto their cultural heritage. Second, white culture enacts and invisiblizes the violence of white supremacy, which has been the focus of this article. In other words, white people’s only chance at collective liberation is through showing up to do internal and external work. This especially must be heard at Evergreen, where the predominantly white student body is often complacent to the racist educational environment students of color are subjected to. The notable exception is that there was a significant, if fleeting, solidarity across race in the 2017 protests. In the next edition, I will discuss how anti-white supremacist action relates to white cultural emptiness. The actions that I will propose within my next article are appropriate places to explore the white discomfort that might have been sparked in the paragraph on Eric Garner. Conversely, it is inappropriate to expect that your friends and colleagues of color are excited to educate you further about these issues or dispel your discomfort — grappling with the discomfort of holding a violent identity is just one area of white people’s work.
This is the second piece of a literature submission trilogy titled “White Emptiness.” Look out for the continuation of this series in the next edition of the Cooper Point Journal where Luca will discuss responsible, person of color-led actions. Luca Fiora Dalton is a current Evergreen undergraduate student who has studied political ecology, mass-incarceration, education and writing during her time at Evergreen. Visit Luca’s short story and political theory blog at www.lucafioradalton.com. Feel free to reach Luca at dalluc28@evergreen.edu to submit your questions, comments, and convey how you will utilize this knowledge.
