I Am White. I Refuse To Feel Guilt About That.

The whole #blackouttuesday campaign yesterday was unnerving to me for lots of reasons. Mostly, because I find hashtag campaigns like that so completely disingenuous, even when I know and deeply care about and respect the people earnestly participating. I know my friends posting the black box wanted to show solidarity with black people who feel that they’ve been victimized by systemic oppression.  They wanted to show support for black people who’ve been unfairly treated due to the color of their skin.  I get it.

But what’s happening right now goes beyond a trite hashtag campaign.  What I’m starting to see on social media feels cultish.  Look at this madness.

White neighbours kneel down and beg their black neighbours for forgiveness on behalf of whites for years of racism. Such a beautiful moment.#GeorgeFloyd #ICantBreathe pic.twitter.com/2CJRZheSeN

— Preeti Nahar (@PreetRang) June 1, 2020

That’s one of the most cringe-worthy things I’ve ever seen. It’s not “beautiful” to pander in this way, to prostrate yourself in this way. It’s degrading. It’s grotesque. It’s likely that none of the sheep kneeling before their black neighbors ever did anything WRONG to their black neighbors. But they’ve been conditioned, particularly by recent media coverage of what’s happening in our country right now, to feel guilt about their own skin color. This is lunacy.

A good friend of mine, someone I went to junior high with, wrote on her FB in part: “I am sincerely sorry and disgusted to be associated with a race that treats African Americans like they are less than worthy of what we ALL have the fundamental right to. FREEDOM.”

No. NO NO NO.

I refuse to feel shame over things I’ve had no part in. I refuse to feel guilt about the amount of melanin I was genetically born with.

I will gladly STAND WITH my black friends in support of things that matter to them. We all should. But I will never bow down or prostrate myself to them. We are equally humans.

Yesterday, I started to read more into what the Black Lives Matter movement WANTS.  And one of the things they want is to eliminate police entirely. 

How would that work, exactly, you might wonder?  No worries – the NYT has you covered. Check this out. According to the NYT, “the entire criminal justice system gives police officers the power and opportunity to systematically harass and kill with impunity.”  So their solution? To reinvest the $100 billion spent on national policing and instead put that money towards “alternative emergency response programs.” Those response programs could include “healthcare teams” and “rapid response social workers” and “conflict interrupters” and “restorative justice teams.” And best of all? “Community organizers.” Their conclusion? “Now more than ever is the time to divest not only from police resources, but also the idea that the police keep us safe.”

Never mind the fact that police DO keep us safe on the whole, because the vast majority of them are fantastic people who really care about their communities.  It SUCKS that there are police officers like the one that killed George Floyd, particularly since he had so many prior complaints (although none of them, I should point out, had anything to do with racism.)  I haven’t seen any evidence to definitively prove that the killing of George Floyd was even racially motivated.  It appears to me that Floyd’s killer was a cold-hearted, power-hungry evil monster who killed a man because he could.  But was it BECAUSE George Floyd was black?  I don’t know.  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.

But if Black Lives TRULY Matter, then that slogan shouldn’t only be thrown around when it involves rogue white cops against black people.  If Black Lives Matter, then everyone should be mourning and protesting David Dorn’s senseless death. And the other black Americans’ senseless deaths at the hands of rioters.  If you don’t know David’s name, you need to Google him.  And then ask yourself why his name hasn’t bombarded your newsfeeds the way that George Floyd’s has (or did, since he’s all but been forgotten now that violence and looting are stealing the headlines).

I am heartened by the videos I’ve seen of protesters TALKING with police, and of police walking side by side with protesters to show that they understand their pain, that they know that what George Floyd’s killers did was abhorrent, that they AREN’T like those killers.  It’s been a beautiful sight to behold.  I’m less OK with seeing the videos of protesters demanding that cops kneel.  When they all kneel together?  Tolerable, I suppose.  When cops kneel before the protesters?  NO.

This mass cult-like behavior?  A THOUSAND TIMES NO.

Re-education camps next? pic.twitter.com/k4KbVAepel

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 3, 2020

If you’re white, and you’re feeling guilty? You need to do some serious soul-searching, because you’re being played. You are being used as a pawn in an artificial race war that is being perpetuated by radical activists who want to tear down what this country is about. YES OF COURSE racism is wrong, and we need to do everything we can to call it out when we see it, and dole out the appropriate consequences for those who are guilty of it, and listen to our friends and colleagues who want to talk about their experiences of it. But unless you’ve owned a slave, or personally mistreated a person of color, or denied a black person an opportunity because of their skin color, YOU DO NOT NEED TO FEEL GUILT about anything.  Least of all something you cannot control – like the shade of your skin.

I don’t feel guilty.  I won’t kneel. I won’t post a stupid pointless black square on my social media. I will never respect sham organizations like the BLM who want to dismantle capitalism or demand reparations. But to my black fellow American citizens, please know I am happy to walk side by side with you, hand in hand, to speak out against racism in all its forms.