About five years ago, my best friends and I sat down at Leatherby’s Ice Cream one evening, and we began to discuss race relations in America. Three of us at the table recognized the fact that (systemic) racism was still a problem, while one of us was vehemently maintaining that it was not. We tried to have a conversation about this friend’s own white denial of racism, but this friend was NOT having any of that conversation. This friend became flustered, red, and angry at the entire discussion. Yes, this friend is a white male; one who in no way, shape, or form wanted to converse about American white racism. I knew, right then, this was not only a social issue, it was psychological. (It’s also spiritual, but that’s another post.)

“If you want to know if racism is a problem in your country, you might not want to ask white people.” – Tim Wise

So, as you know, I’ve been studying ‘White Denial’ (yes, it’s a localized mentality that can be experienced in our American ethos), and with the help of Dr. Cornel West and Mr. Tim Wise, I’ve come across some rather interesting statistics that show how pervasive the psychology of white denial has been throughout America history. In 1963, according to Gallup pollsters, an American research-based, global performance-management consulting company, more than 65% of white Americans thought that black people were equally treated throughout the country—in 1963! Think…this is a year before the passing of the Civil Rights Act; two years before the Voting Rights Act; five years before Fair Housing Act, and, technically, still within the era of Jim Crow (1896-1965). That’s not it…two years prior, in 1961, “six in ten white Americans said they disapproved of the Freedom Riders (Gallup, 1961).” (Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who believed and engaged in direct action, specifically, desegregation throughout the south, targeting bus lines.) Talk about hypocrisy! Not only was this an attempt to, once again, appropriate our protest of unequal treatment, but it also ignored the obvious racial injustice that dominated the society. (92% of black people supported the Freedom Riders in 1961. In fact, many felt that the movement was progressing too slowly.)

“If you are white, racism is too easily ignored and forgiven, regarded as of burning concern only to the ethnic minorities, and therefore of relatively marginal significance.” – Martin Jacques

I want to quickly revisit the 1963 poll: more than 65% of white Americans believed that “blacks were treated equally.” Really…think about how Medgar Evers was shot down dead in his own driveway by a white Klansman; how Bull Connor plowed battle tanks through black neighborhoods; how black children and college students were hosed down in Birmingham; how four young black girls were murdered in the explosion of the 16th Street Baptist Church… We were treated equally??? The white denier has historically created a mental schema that is post-racial; an allusion that allows them to escape their own moral, ethical, human, and spiritual liability to fight on the side of anti-racism. Ideas like the white denier covertly assist white racism. I prefer contending against overt racism—SHOW ME WHO YOU REALLY ARE! Makes me think of George Wallace, the 45th Governor of Alabama, and his famous rant of overt racism: “…segregation today; segregation tomorrow; segregation FAHEVAH!!!”

“White America had not even the most fleeting familiarity with their country.” – Tim Wise

I actually disagree with Mr. Wise on this point. I was telling a friend the other day, Tim Wise kick-starts great conversations, but he doesn’t always delve deep enough into the psychology of behavior very well. The above statement by Mr. Wise is in response to a 1962 Gallup poll that reported 85% of whites saying that, “black children had just as good a chance to get a good education as white children.” This is the same point that my friend at the ice cream parlor attempted to postulate, and if I was a gullible and ignorant man, I would have bought everything he was trying to sell me about “equality”. As I said in part 1 of this series, we have to think about why these false equivalencies are constantly postulated by white deniers…? Here’s some insight as to why: if you can convince society that all things are equal, then society will stop talking about the problems of inequality, and once society stops talking about the problems, the people will assume that there are none, thus pervading systemic white racism, dominance, and control. Let me be very clear: white racism is not unintelligent; there is a very sophisticated psychology flowing throughout this hegemonic juggernaut of racialized oppression. Or as one of my friends likes to say: “It’s all by design.” The white supremacists that founded and shaped this country knew exactly what they were doing and they taught it to their children.

A scientist, Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States of America, nevertheless speculated that blackness might come “from the color of the blood” and concluded that blacks were “inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind (New York Times, Finkleman, 2012).”

Finally, in 1965, the same year civil rights leaders were attacked by Selma, AL Sheriff Jim Clark and his goons on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and police brutality was at an all-time high in Watts, CA, Gallup reported that nearly 70% of whites believed that “equal treatment had already been achieved” and that all the civil rights protests were unnecessary (Wise, 2018). Even then, white deniers claimed that the country was post racial. Well…I’m here to say that in 2018, that’s STILL a lie. White denial is abundantly documented for every one of us to research and consider as we survey our current socio-political climate and make comparisons to the past. The white denial of racism is not just an opinion; it’s a historical and systemic psychosis that must not survive one more generation for the betterment of our world. We must continue to contend with the denial of white racism.

“So, although the American south was an apartheid colony, most white folks opposed the people who were trying to do something about it. That is to say, white people sided, functionally, with white supremacy.” – Tim Wise

T.K.E.G. (Think – Know –Experience – Grow)
~My 2 Cents~

Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 3 here.
Read Part 4 here.