Don’t talk; listen. As a white person, I find that almost anything I can think of to say about race sounds patronizing—even to me. So just listen for a while. If there’s no one you can listen to personally, listen to Ta-Nehesi Coates in Between the World and Me. I have a lot of problems with Coates, and I don’t think his line of thought is particularly constructive, and yet—he lost a good college friend in a police shooting. There’s more to that story, but for Coates the takeaway is this: his friend would still be alive if it were not for his color. Throughout history, whites have suffered injustice and violence, but not for their color. With that glaring distinction in mind, we can listen for a while.
Don’t state; question. What do you think we should do? What’s the best way to achieve a just society? This is actually a good rule of thumb for any discussion where there’s likely to be disagreement. Making statements, no matter how logically or forcefully, is equivalent to building walls. Asking questions, on the other hand, is opening windows. Besides, you might learn something.
Wipe that patronizing frown off your face. While listening, you will probably hear some things you don’t agree with. You don’t have to agree with everything, just acknowledge. We get a lot of things wrong on our side of the racial divide; it stands to reason that there will be mistaken assumptions on the other side. Don’t be too quick with the mea culpas, or with the “But–” It took us a long time to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out.
Try on the shoes, but understand you can’t walk in them. The closest a white person could come to that happened in 1959, when John Howard Griffin chemically darkened his skin to record his experiences traveling through the south in Black Like Me. Otherwise, the closest we can come to experiencing the other side of the color divide is understanding that we can’t.
Checkbox your privilege. Personally, I hate the term “white privilege,” because it slaps a big fat generalization on a wagonload of individual factors. And yet (again)—whites, if they behave themselves, don’t’ have to worry about being stopped at checkpoints or suspected of ill intent when they just want a quiet place to read. They are not subjected to suspicious looks, nor do they need to worry about being pulled over by a cop. (I get pulled over once every three years because of my lead foot, but I never automatically rehearse the hands-on-the-steering-wheel-speak-respectfully-and-don’t-make-eye-contact mantra. It makes a difference.)
Try to find the middle. Once we start talking, the talking points emerge. From the left: white privilege, systemic racism, Hands-up-don’t-shoot. From the right: absent fathers, illegitimacy rate, black-on-black crime, Hands up don’t shoot never happened, don’t you realize that? Though I lean right, for the purposes of conversation I lean in, searching for the common ground. It’s there somewhere. We won’t be able to make any progress in the conversation unless we find it.
Think forward, not back. The history sucks, no getting around it. We can acknowledge that—but we don’t have to stay there. The late Walter Dean Meyers, much-awarded writer for children and teens, became a bit fed up: “Black history is usually depicted as folklore about slavery, and then a fast-forward to the civil rights movement. Then I’m told that black children, and boys in particular, don’t read. Small wonder.” To paraphrase a familiar saying, history is a great teacher, but a terrible master. Chaining oneself to a grim past, even to keep your enemy in shame, is slavery by another name. Instead, what can we take from history to help us make the future better?
Be a friend. I live in a part of the country without a large black population, because freed slaves and people of color were historically not welcome here. And yet (once again)—I see black and white kids jumping on a trampoline together. I see two middle-aged guys in overalls, one black, one white, having breakfast at Golden Corral. Mixed-race couples attract hardly a glance anymore. That doesn’t mean we’re the land of sunny harmony, but when change happens, it happens one on one. We fight our own suspicions and priors. We look for common ground and common interests. We smile and say “thank you” and “Excuse me.” One on one, step by step, and God willing we’ll get there.
