Because I have a skin.
Because my skin is a particular color.
Because the color is called white.
Because white is privileged by custom.
Because the custom is enforced by law.
Because the law is on my side.
Because I must do very little to be judged right.
Because I must do more than others to be judged wrong.
Because I look scary to no one.
Because white makes many things easy.
Because Black makes many things hard.
When I get into trouble, it’s not because I’m white.
Because I can storm the capitol and come out alright.
Because white racism in not just personal,
it is historical, societal, archetypal, inherent,
it is structural, foundational, fundamental,
residual in the spiritual genome of my race.
Because I have become accustomed
to the status of being Caucasian. ,
I think of myself as the standard.
Other races are a deviation from white.
If I want to recover from white racism,
I must get over myself,
I must see myself, not as more than
but equal with the great rainbow of humanity.
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I have never considered myself a white racist. I am white, but not racist. I was raised by antiracist parents. I have always been friendly and kind to people of African descent. I have participated in civil rights demonstrations, lived in a Black/Hispanic/white neighborhood, spoken against racial injustice and for equal rights. I have Black friends. I voted twice for America’s first Black president and once for our first female Black vice president. I support the values of Black Lives Matter. I couldn’t possibly be a white racist.
But over the last two years I have come to realize that I am. Not willingly, not ideologically, but conveniently. I have benefitted from a system that favors my lack of color over people more colorful. My antipathy with white racism comes from a good heart, but not from a mind that has considered carefully the issue of race in America. When I began reading, listening, thinking, I began to realize white racism, even for me, wasn’t a condition, it was an inheritance. Even with antiracist parents, I was born into this legacy of privilege that comes with being white. This poem is my attempt to examine how that legacy is still alive in me.