How Would Cupcakes Taste without White Supremacy?

I didn’t see the strong backlash to Critical Race Theory coming. But I have a garbage track record. If you told me that a large group of people’s response to signs that say “Black Lives Matter” was to make signs that say “All Lives Matter” I would have laughed in your face. I think what I’ve gotten wrong about a large portion of mainstream America are as follows:

Mainstream America Thinks They Can Curate a Life Where They And Their Children Never Think About Race or Think About it Less and Less - I think Black Lives Matter offends a lot of people because it is a three word statement that firmly states “IT’S NOT FIXED YET”. It blew my mind when I read a piece that argued that the middle age, upper and middle class black hostility towards rap and hip-hop (I’m most aware of the negativity at black radio stations in the 80s and 90s) was because the mere existence of a genre as capital B Black and very outspoken on the ills of urban life was like a loudspeaker announcing “the Civil Rights and Black Power Era didn’t fix it, we are still in this struggle”. This opened my mind, the mere existence of the genre of hip-hop is an indictment of anyone who tried to fly a Mission Accomplished flag across black America in the mid 70s. An honest teaching of race in America would prevent anyone from pretending that the problem of the 21st century isn’t also the color line. And I believe for pretty obvious reasons, if one is convinced they can shelter themselves or their family from the realities of racism, they would! It’s not possible, but there’s a lot of energy being expended to try to create that culture.

Let’s Stop Your Bullet List and Talk About What You Mean By “Fixed” in the paragraph above - Fine. What does it mean to say racism is “fixed”? First, let’s have everybody who actually thinks race has any biological grounding to leave the room. Awesome, those people are dumb and I’m glad they left. If you believe race is a social construct, that means that a large amount of the disparity in wealth, health, lifespan et cetera are caused by society. For generations the money that I’m now spending and saving as a white man has been protected, supported and bolstered by opportunities handed primarily to white men. I believe that “fixed” means counting back those benefits and distributing the fair share to black families. Most of the opportunities to build wealth I’m speaking of have passed over black families since the end of Reconstruction. I also believe that slavery creates a scornful legacy that we WOULD ALL do well to do something to remedy/address. I support reparations for descendants of slaves. I believe that if you do that, many many less young black people would be killed. Less would be killed by police, less would be killed by fellow civilians.

I took a “Racial Equity through Action and Learning” training this summer. It was mandatory for my job at American Public Media. I found it to be really well put together. But, there was a dismal part where the majority of the participants and the leaders voiced their feeling that racism wouldn’t be “solved” in their lifetime. I bit my tongue but I disagreed. I don’t believe the pernicious impact of racism has simply receded in a straight line for this country’s history. We’ve moved backward at many times in history and we’ve moved backward at times in my lifetime. But, progress has been made. Progress has been made (and has recently been lost) towards more comparable levels of wealth for black families compared to white families. But, correcting for redlining, for GI Bill omissions, for illegal hiring practices and paying out reparations could change that wealth trajectory quicker than anything we’ve tried so far.

Fixed to me means household wealth for blacks that is in the same ballpark as whites. I think it’s doable. I think we could get way close before I die and I’m pretty old already! Ok, let’s get back on the bullet points.

Many White People Fear Competing with Black People on Equal Footing - I can’t know this for a fact, obviously. But here’s where I’m coming from. That book “The Sum of Us” from Heather McGhee messed me up in the best way possible. There are tangible ways in which white leadership at local, regional and national levels chose and chooses to go without rather than share with black people. Part of what I extrapolate from this is a fear of brushing shoulders with black people because maybe you’d find out that any inferiority you’ve ascribed to black people just doesn’t track when you actually spend time at a swimming pool, on a job site or any other spot with black people. If white communities segregate access to the best amenities, job opportunities and rapid mass transit lines and leave them most hospitable to white folks, there will be less opportunity for fair competition.

Many White People Believe That Their Success is Dependent Upon Black Failure - Why do many of my white brothers and sisters seem to stick their heads out only to make sure black people are held down? Why will you go out of your way for that? What does it matter to you? The policies you will show up to vote against, the steps you will take to insure that a two tiered society exists. Why? I haven’t ever read a convincing argument as to how that helps out your family or your pocketbook.

Many people lack the imagination for a better America - I believe that the willful drive to ignore racial disparities from so many people in our country comes from a disinclination to imagine a better America. Combined with some of my points above I worry that many people think that a better America in general would be a worse America for them in particular.

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I think a lot of the people who operate with these views would disavow them, wouldn’t recognize them. But I think at a group level, I see these philosophies in action. I want to talk about the potential invisibility of white supremacy. It’s become part of the language in my world to say something like “white supremacy is the water we swim in, or the air we breath”. It’s often stated as a defense for stating that white supremacy exists in places where you can’t measure it’s impact. My point of departure for a lot of this work was a document written by Tema Okun. It’s a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture. It’s a conversation starter for sure because it lists a lot of characteristics that most readers wouldn’t face value take as part of white supremacy. . .I certainly didn’t.

I didn’t take to this document too well at first: I think of things like perfectionism, quantity over quality as characteristics that are more widespread than just white supremacy culture. I’m all in on ending white supremacy culture. But does that mean I want to end perfectionism? Does that mean we have to end perfectionism? If we believe that white supremacy culture is everywhere can we start saying anything we want is part of white supremacy? There’s no way cupcakes taste this way without white supremacy! I don’t think movies would be so long if it weren’t for white supremacy! We can recognize those statements as humorous, but they are as investigated and supported as the characteristics listed by Tema Okun. But I ask you to read the Okun piece. I got something out of it, I started thinking differently about how we could imagine a world that was calibrated differently. Calibrated without the traumas that racism has given to everyone. You carry trauma from racism. We all do. Maybe that calibration means we don’t celebrate quantity over quality anymore. Shit, maybe the cupcakes will taste different too. I don’t know. But I want to know it. I want to know a world where I don’t pencil in an asterisk next to some of my biggest achievements, a world where I recognize how the road to them would’ve been very different without white privilege. I want to taste a cupcake in a world where a large percentage black people have access to family wealth. I want to watch a movie in a world where we have made an honest effort to right our wrongs.