Race Relations: Tackling racism in a milieu of privilege

The 21st-century conversation that seems more relevant than ever, yet the one many white people simply don’t have, or don’t want to. As pervasive and perpetual a subject as race is and has been in the United States — a reality that revealed itself even more starkly over the past year — the conversation about it has been a lopsided one. Most of the talking, protesting and calling for change has come from people of colour. “We have all these other ways to not talk about race and white supremacy and white nationalism,” says the Rev. Jason Chesnut, a minister in Vancouver, Washington, who is white. 

Call it the “fish don’t know they’re in water” perspective: As the largest, dominant group in the United States, assuming the position of the “norm,” white people generally have not identified with having an everyday collective racial identity like Black, Asian American, Native and Latino communities. And yet, those who research it say, whiteness — and a commitment to it, however conscious — is as present as the air. 

“For a long time, it was very easy for white people to sort of ignore race, because they could take their racial group for granted, and especially in an environment where they didn’t perceive a lot of threats to their group and its status,” said Ashley Jardina, an assistant professor of political science at Duke University who researches white identity politics. S. Michael Gaddis, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA, says research shows that for many white people, “their views on race are still in an era where race is something we should not be talking about.” 

The day of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January proved an apt case study for looking at this issue. The racial makeup of the Jan. 6 insurrection was hard to miss — a predominantly white crowd of rioters, including some with connections to white nationalist and extremist groups, violently disrupting the certification of the presidential election and running unhindered through the Capitol, a symbol of American democracy. 

The lax policing, a contrast to the strong law enforcement presence seen last summer during protests over the police killings of Black men and women, was swiftly pointed out as a racial double standard, and the presence of current or former military or law enforcement among the rioters sparked concern over extremism in military ranks. But the entire crowd wasn’t law enforcement, or flag-waving extremist militia. Far from it. They were also regular, everyday white people — small business owners, students, employees — who were ready to overturn an election because they thought their candidate needed to stay in office. That’s something white Americans must wrestle with, as Chesnut sees it. Trouble is, he’s not particularly optimistic, based on his experience doing anti-racist work. Most white people he meets are surprised that a white man would even talk about race as much as he does. “I don’t know if white people have learned how to be in a multiracial democracy,” Chesnut says. “White supremacy is destroying us, too, and I don’t think we talk enough about that.” 

High-profile events driven by racists also impede conversation. When white Americans have emphasised their racial identity in ways viewed as threatening — such as during the Capitol insurrection or the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — it makes white people in general more reluctant to acknowledge white as their racial identifier, Jardina says. But getting white Americans to genuinely wrestle with these issues, Jardina says, will be a struggle. “Are white people willing to confront and have a conversation about the extent to which white racial prejudice and white racism, and the desire to maintain white power in the United States, is part of our political process?” she asks. “I’d say that for the majority of white people, the answer is no, they’re not ready to have that conversation.”