Photo by Hannah Adair Bonner
Houston Rally for Ferguson
Houston citizens rally in support of Ferguson, Mo., residents.
Voices are crying out in Ferguson and throughout the country with questions that no amount of words can soothe, with questions that only actions can begin to answer. We have politely responded to questions with redirects (or rather misdirects), avoiding the answers that we know—if stated bluntly—would expose the ugly truth of our privilege, and possibly call us to work against the very structures that benefit us so. So we are nice and polite, and say “bless your heart,” and avoid the conversations that could save a life.
We are polite because we feel it is the best we can do. Somehow, polite white people think we are being better than those who are openly racist in their words, and persistently unjust in their actions. But, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said—and I paraphrase—it is often the white liberals who are more dangerous than the openly conservative white racists. If we are racist, we rationalize, at least we are warm, fuzzy, polite racists.
However, when those we call brothers and sisters are crying out in torment, polite feels like a slap in the face. Polite does not say “we are family.” Polite says “we each must look to our own families right now.” Polite is not enough. And it never has been.
Polite is not enough because it is, and always has been, a way of suppressing the questions that make us uncomfortable, silencing the questions that, if answered honestly, could require a fundamental rethinking of the nature of our existence as white people in the United States, and thus result in a loss of (some of) our privilege. Yet those same questions are the ones that have to be answered if we are going to be healthy, safe, whole communities.
Those of us with white privilege—that is, those of us who are white, who have been deemed racially white by a political and legal system created by and for those who are deemed white—may imagine that these questions about racism in our systems or about law enforcement practices are coming up in a reactive way in response to, or what is seen by some as an overreaction to, Michael Brown’s death. Yet, the reality is that these questions are always there, and have always been there. Our “politeness” in ignoring them has been one more act of privilege, determining what is acceptable and unacceptable to speak about depending on whether it makes us feel uncomfortable. It is not that the questions have not been there. It is not that they have not been roaring and echoing like thunder in the ears of those who now ask them aloud. It is simply that we have been ignoring them for our own comfort, silencing them with our “politeness.”
The time for real talk and for real action has come.
The time has come for us to face the reality that every day African American persons in our communities are asking these kinds of questions:
Why do I have to be afraid to run outside at night to get exercise? Not because I am a vulnerable woman, but because I am a black male, and persons of privilege associate the image of me running with crime rather than with fitness.
Why do I have to be afraid that my husband will not come home at night? Not because he does any kind of high risk job, but simply because he is a strong black man in a culture that sees that as a threat.
Why do I have to teach my young son how to act and speak to the police in a polite manner? Not because I am worried he will lose his manners, but because I am worried he will lose his life.
Many of my white friends around the country have been struggling to know how to respond as allies and family to their communities. Their signs of support in social media and blogs and actions have been met with different kinds of questions from many in the white community, from people who are really uncomfortable right now, who are trying to push back the flood of honesty and shore up the crumbling walls of politeness that protect us from facing the truth. I have been seeing questions like this:
Why is the media rushing to judgment when there is so much we don’t know yet?
Why don’t we wait until we have all the facts?
I just want to understand the whole story. What was it that this young man did to put himself on that end of the gun?
Why are people making such a big deal about this? People die every day.
As polite as people think they sound, what we reveal with these types of questions are the assumptions we are making about how much value we place on a life, and who it is that evokes, or does not evoke, empathy from us.
We ask “polite” questions. “Reasonable” questions. “Grounded” questions. “Circumspect” questions. All the while striving to mask our discomfort with the reality that we just do not care enough, our fear that we will be found out in our indifference. We try to make it about the facts. We try to say we don’t have enough information. We turn the focus to a person for whom we can feel empathy by having concern for the policeman who did the shooting.
In the meantime, while we keep the discourse in America “polite,” justice and compassion lie bleeding out in our streets because we are not willing to get our hands dirty by picking them up, along with all the pain and struggle that comes with them.
We want to be seen as nice people. We want to be polite. What we sound like in reality is the woman who came before King Solomon claiming that she had love for her neighbor’s baby and that it was really her own, yet was willing to see that same baby cut in half and die rather than allow her neighbor to have a joy she did not possess. Solomon knew who the real mother of the baby was for one simple reason: Love acts like love.
Love acts like love. Family acts like family. Community acts like community.
No amount of “polite” can make indifference look or feel like love.
If your child was gunned down in the street, with two bullets in his or her head, nothing could comfort you. Nothing could justify emptying a clip into your sweet baby. Nothing could justify leaving their body in the street for hours. Nothing.
Is Michael Brown our child? Is Michael Brown a child of God?
Why, then, are we asking “for all the facts to come out” before we decide whether or not a deep tragedy, sorrow and injustice has taken place, before we take up the cry of Rachel who cannot be comforted for her child is no more. Why would we ask if Michael did something “to put himself on that end of the gun?”
White culture is distracting itself with questions about whether this was procedure, while the blood of an unarmed young man is crying out from the ground. White culture still cannot admit that racism and injustice are the direct results of a nation that has yet to take seriously its racist, sexist history. White culture believes in a system that criminalizes the black body and assumes the worst rather than the best, putting dead black boys on trial and letting their killers walk free. The reason why “politeness” is such a problem is because it masks the very reality that we are complicit in the creation and maintenance of a culture that systematically constricts and restricts black and brown people through the policing and destruction of their bodies.
This culture, that bell hooks named a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, is all too often more worried about not “ruining a good [white] man’s life” than it is worried about actually taking away a good black man’s life. This is why we tell rape victims on college campuses that what happened was their fault, and not to “ruin a promising young [white] man’s future.” This is why we turn on those who hold our “great [white] guys” accountable as traitors, unwilling to accept they could engage in an abuse of power, or sexual harassment, or child/spousal abuse. And this is why we want “all the facts to come out” before we join Michael Brown’s mother in her sorrow. We know how to protect our “great guys,” and when we do so, we reveal who we see as “ours.”
The problem is not the facts, whatever they may be, the problem is that we are not mourning with those who mourn, and acting with and for those who have been on the political, economic, legal, and social margins of this country. Instead, we are covering up our lack of empathy with questions that are merely distractions from the real point, because the status quo is simply just too comfortable.
Don’t ask someone who is mourning to convince you that you should be sad. Don’t blame the victims of the system from which you benefit. Ask yourself instead why you are not sad. Ask God for help if you cannot find the answers, or if the answers scare you. Mike Brown’s blood cries out to God from the ground, and our politeness is our way of sharing Cain’s sentiment: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The time for questions has arrived and stands upon our doorstep knocking.
God give us the courage to answer, not only “in words and speech, but in deeds and truth.”
The author would like to thank Biko Mandela Gray for accountability in the writing of this piece.
The Rev. Hannah Adair Bonner serves as an associate pastor at St. John's Downtown UMC in Houston, TX. She blogs at UMC Lead, from which this article is reprinted with permission.