We're Late, White Folks. What Took Us So Long?

In this time of learning about race, have you seen or can you imagine this scenario? A Black person says to a now-listening White person: “I’m glad you’re interested in learning about racial injustice, but can I be honest? Why are White people finally showing up now, after all this time?” 

Some Black people ask the question with a tone of voice and look on their face that makes you think they already have an answer, but they are tired of teaching White people about race, and they want you to do your own work. Other Black people ask the question more like an accusation, and then we’re left to wonder if, for them, our new-found interest as White folks is just too damn late.  

Either way, it’s a useful and powerful question. We must answer it, as White people learning to live with race in view. Black people are expecting us to take responsibility for doing our work, individually and with other people who identify as White.

So let’s start working on an answer. 

What has contributed to us as White people not learning much about race until now? I’d like to highlight three factors as places to begin in our discovery process.

The Momentum of Ignorance in White People

It’s understandable that we turn away from the destructive and racist fires set by White people who came before us. It’s easier not to delve into stories of racial pain, when we suspect that we are implicated in some way as a source of that pain. We instinctively avoid the feelings of guilt and shame that well up when the word ‘white’ is applied to us. 

Many of us are skilled at deflecting our racial learning with heartfelt but superficial expressions like:

“I don’t know what words to use: is it ‘black’ or ‘African-American?” 

C’mon now. It’s pretty easy to ask someone “Would you prefer that I use ‘black’ or ‘African-American’ when I talk with you?” 

“But that’s not what I meant!” when we say something that hurts a Black person. 

You can observe when your words or actions impact someone differently than you intended. In those times you can say: “It seems like the way I said that didn’t come across well. Can I try again, and you let me know if it works better for you?” 

“I don’t see you as black. I just treat you like everyone else.”   

Ouch. It’s clear you do see them as black, and want to make sure they know that you don’t see their blackness as a problem. But why would it be a problem?

As White Americans, we have often settled with quiet acceptance into the momentum of our own ignorance. There’s danger in contentment with the silence of advantage. Two vital risks—to our souls, to our relationships, to our influence—lie in what the silence masks: the first is complicity, which in this case is our unwillingness to stand up, witness, and come alongside those suffering from racism; and the second is collusion, by which we participate in racism’s structure by not actively dismantling it and replacing it with fairness and empathy.

Intentional White people are now recalculating the troubling legacy and hidden costs of racial ignorance. Better late than never, perhaps, but ‘never’ isn’t much of a benchmark. The reckoning has arrived—humility in us is required. The invoice has come due: White people must pay with apologies and action that Black people find acceptable. 

The Road to Intentional Malice Among White People

During the 1992 trial of police officers who beat Rodney King, four black friends and colleagues lovingly forced me to face a horrific question: Why don’t White people care about the suffering of Black people? Two of my mentors were pastors with whom I share a deeply-seated faith commitment. So the question, for me, was not to be escaped, because I was in accountable relationships of trust with them. 

I heard basically the same thing from each one of them at different times over several weeks. They did not know one another, and yet each one was concurrently coping with the profound lack of simple human care among people with White skin toward them and other Black people. Here is how I came to understand the pathway of their experience.

The arc of this analysis does not lead only to Klan members or other problematic White people we can dismiss and disavow. My friends were struggling with what felt like intentional ignorance, neglect, and malice coming from White people in their own companies, in their own churches. This echoes Dr. King’s words in Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

White Americans are late to racial learning because there’s racial hatred embedded in our culture. No way around it: we have not cared about the daily experience of Black Americans. 

Let’s be clear: I’m not laying out the hard truth as I see it to add to the ‘burden’ of Whiteness in this moment. But the only way I see for us to become truly useful as White people is to acknowledge and then correct the malicious intent Black people experience from us, and from the systems that secure our racial advantages. 

The Impact of Racial Distancing on White People  

Social distancing calls us to stay six feet apart these days. Racial distancing has separated us for 400 years, even before the modern concept of ‘race’ came into being. The systems us White folks have created largely keep us away from Black people, in our neighborhoods, schools, work, medical settings, places of worship, shareholder meetings …. there might be a pattern here.

Simply put, we as White people are late to racial learning because we have not been influenced by healthy interracial relationships, with Black people and with those of other racial identities. That’s slowly changing in many families and workplaces.    

Why did it take videos of police brutality to motivate many White Americans to finally attend to racial injustice? I think it’s because these images close the distance between us and Black people. We can’t unsee the violence. Our ‘not knowing about racism’ is disrupted. Our empathy accelerates as we affirm that Black Lives Matter.    

We are late to racial learning, so now is the time to make up for years of not listening and not fighting racism. Now we must close the distance between us, by building relationships of trust and accountability across the color line. We must work hard to understand and take down the walls that racism requires. We must generate opportunities for Black people, and influence other White people to do the same.

In Closing

As teachable White people, we each are on the hook for exploring the dynamics of our own racial identity and the White culture that binds us. That means that we look into the structure and momentum of Whiteness. We’re late to racial learning because Whiteness, as it is usually practiced, stifles courage. Whiteness tends to inhibit the way we see others suffer, and step up to stop it. Owning our Whiteness makes it possible to grow a family, a team, an organization, a society that seeks to prevent bias in the first place.

It took us as White people much too long to become truly teachable around race. The solution for us now: renounce racial ignorance, care consistently about the suffering of Black people, and use your learning and your empathy to build relationships of trust with Black folks. And then, together, deconstruct the malicious systems of racism that surround us all. 

Late is better than never. But now that White people are building a new momentum into racial learning, we can’t leave early. Are you committed to staying the course?