Yes, White Allies, It Is Your Job To Educate
Throughout out lives we travel a road from ignorance to knowledge in all different areas. Depending on our backgrounds, our speed of travel down this road is different. The road never really ends, we just learn more and more, hopefully.
This is applies to everything from knowledge to Star Wars to issues of race and justice. This article is not about Star Wars.
Most white people do not learn much about issues of race until something brings their attention to it. Some learn earlier from an experience like growing up in a diverse communities. Others learn it abruptly, such as one who grows up in a white community and suddenly encounters people of color in college or at a job.
I experienced a dramatic broadening of my knowledge in college. I distinctly remember a conversation in which I learned that black people aren’t one monolithic entity, and that black people from the South have a different experience and culture than black people from South Africa or Europe or Guiana. In retrospect, it seems pretty obvious, but I was 19 when I had this revelation. Other revelations have come since.
Many of the problems of race in America are rooted in ignorance. Most people think of themselves as non-racist and believing in justice for all, and for many of them, to the best of their knowledge they are living true to those principles. It is only as they learn and advance down the road of knowledge that they realize what they had been missing and can change their beliefs and eventually their actions.
Progress occurs as the population moves from ignorance to knowledge. Prior to the Civil Rights Movements of the 50s and 60s, a vast proportion of white people thought that black people were perfectly content in their place. It was only when they started to learn the truth that change occurred.
The same has happened in many other areas of positive social change. In the 70s, most people thought that homosexuals were some kind of mentally ill deviant freak. Through the 80s and 90s, most Americans advanced down a path from ignorance to knowledge and came to understand that they are simply normal people whose sexual orientation is different. From this progress came the acceptance of, first gay rights laws, and then gay marriage.
Imagine if every white person in America knew that racism in policing was real, knew that economic racism was real, and understood their privilege. Getting acceptance of changes would be much simpler. The fact is that most white Americans are far more ignorant than most people on the front lines of civil rights understand.
It’s not that white people understand their privilege and don’t care. It’s that white people don’t understand their privilege. It’s not that white people don’t care about police brutality. It’s that white people don’t know about police brutality.
If you are aware of these terrible ills in our society, it can be hard to understand how others are not aware of them. Everything you know, you learned at some point. You may have learned it as a small child or you may have learned it last week. But if you never had that learning experience, you would not know it. This is how they can be ignorant: they never learned it.
So, how do people move from ignorance to knowledge? At first, it is easier because they know they don’t know. They have gaps in their knowledge they want to fill. Then it becomes more difficult because the next step is to improve their knowledge. That which we learned in school is often a half truth at best, if not a complete fabrication. Many people do not know what they do not know, and it can be a difficult proposition to reassess everything they thought was true.
These next steps down the road usually take either a shocking revelation, like mine at that table in the Student Union during that diversity workshop, or it takes direct contact and education.
It has been said many times, and I completely agree, that white people should not be expecting black people to be our teachers. It’s not their job. They’ve lived with racism for their entire lives. We should not expect them to suddenly spend their energy to teach us what we should know but have not been taught. It’s not fair to ask that of them.
The same does not go for white people, so the remainder of this article is directed to white folks. If you are white and you have a greater understanding, if you are further down the road of knowledge, you have an obligation to engage when you have the opportunity bring other white people down the road with you.
These opportunities will not come often, but when they do, you must be prepared to take advantage of them.
They Know Not What They Do
Beliefs tend to calcify over time. They also harden when they are challenged and remain. This why the duty to educate with patience and thoroughness is so important.
Let’s say that someone still believes that most police are fair and that only people who break the law would have problems with them. You get into a conversation with them and try to tell them the truth, possibly giving an example or two of innocent people killed by police. They push back in some way, not ready to give up something they have “known” for years.
If, at this moment, you write them off as a racist and block them, or act superior, perhaps sending them a link to some books on Amazon and tell them to educate themselves, effectively ending the conversation, their brain will consider it a win. It will harden that belief because the belief was challenged and it remained. The next time they face evidence to challenge that belief, it is less likely they will change their minds.
However, if you get into it with them and address their objections, answer their questions, and provide information and evidence to convince them, you may shift their worldview. Once one shift occurs, other elements can be called into question, and this is how an ignorant person can become a knowledgeable person.
A Battle For Hearts and Minds
The battle for social justice is fought on many fronts, but one of those fronts is chance encounters on social media, at work, and everywhere else where people come together.
People who suffer from ignorance are not aware they have a problem. They don’t know what they don’t know. Some, however, may have an inkling that they need to learn something but may not know how, or they may simply be intellectually curious and be open to engaging with people who disagree with them to expand their awareness.
This does not happen often, but if you have this opportunity, you must not waste it. You must seize it. Engage in the conversation. Find out where they are starting and work them down the path of knowledge.
Do they understand that there is minimal biological difference between the so-called “races”? If not, educate them.
Do they understand racism is very real today? If not, educate them.
Do they understand that people of color face threats to their lives and livelihoods by various structural factors? If not, educate them.
And on and on down the road. If you are white, there was probably a time when you did not know these things. Somehow you learned them. The fact that you learned them before the person you are speaking to does not make you better than them. Don’t gloat about your superior knowledge. To know more and not to share that knowledge is nothing to be proud of. You are privileged with knowledge, and now you have a duty to share that knowledge.
Just because this knowledge is now obvious to you does not mean it is obvious to them. Explain carefully. Provide examples and evidence. Explain clearly and do not use jargon.
The other day, someone was saying that they believed we should abolish police. What that phrase actually means, I have come to understand is abolish police as we know them as create new structures to fulfill the roles that police serve. I engaged and tried to learn more. I was told that I was a capitalist apologist and was given a link to a web site that was nothing but a list of books I should read.
Since I thought his idea was absurd, knowing nothing about it, I had no interest in doing a research project on it.
Instead of acting superior and pompous, he could have discussed the fact that police duties have expanded over time, explained that the police as structured are not well suited to tasks like dealing with the homeless, enforcing driving laws, and intervening in complex family issues, and told me that other solutions might be safer and more effective.
Fortunately, I am intellectually curious and discovered this on my own in subsequent conversations with more intellectually dynamic friends. However, for many who suffer from ignorance, there may be one chance to move them out of their ignorance to knowledge, and that one chance may be an encounter with you.
Will you gloat in your superior knowledge, or will lean down and offer your hand to pull them up from their ignorance, helping to educate and change their mind, and helping them to support the change that we know is so important in the world?
If you are white and proclaiming your wake-ness but not having difficult conversations with people who do not agree with you, you are just virtue signaling.
What About Trolls
I’m sure some people will object “what about the trolls?” Of course, do not waste your energy with trolls and others who have no desire to learn but just want to goad you. However, don’t be so quick to write someone off as a troll just because they disagree with you.
If someone asks you a question and you answer, but they thoughtfully and respectfully disagree with your answer, it does not make them a troll. It makes them a person who disagrees with you. Continue to engage. They might learn something. You might learn something too.
