I have wanted to write this post for days. I start, and then I stop, and then I start again. But my words always seem to be meaningless, a vexing puzzle of emotions that seem incongruent with words on a page. Nothing seems to meet the magnitude of the moment; my words fall prey to the weight of such overwhelming sadness and anger. Plus, I could not find purpose in sharing another post, by another white person, in another online format that is talk, not action.
But, the burden I bear is light. The anguish I feel is minor. The problem of “purpose” is a source of immense racial privilege in that my skin color allows me to have this internal quandary in the first place. Because, after all, it’s my birthday today. And I get to be alive to experience it. George Floyd will not get to celebrate his birthday ever again. Neither will Breonna Taylor (she would have been 27 just a few days ago), or Ahmaud Arbery, or Sandra Bland, or Trayvon Martin, or Oscar Grant. But, I do. On this day, I have the opportunity to hug my partner, call my mom, and teach my students. George Floyd and countless others will not be able to do those simple acts on their birthdays or any day at all. They were not able to even exist. They were killed by people—the police—sworn to protect them, deceived by laws and by leaders that promised them equal protection and liberties that some people—white people like me—get to enjoy each day, without even thinking about it, like the air we breathe. George Floyd was not granted that simple act of living. He was not allowed to exist in America. He, quite literally, was not even able to breathe in his own country.
So, as an educator and historian, I am adding to the chorus of commentaries, beyond sharing social media posts and curating important history lessons for my students (although, the latter has kept me extremely busy at this moment since our semester is still going on!). It is true white people all have to speak and act. That includes me. I am encouraged by the countless editorials, interviews, how-to guides, reading lists, resources, and scholarship (which are not new) geared toward white people to help them become educated about whiteness, white privilege, and racial injustice. Understanding a person’s racial identity and how our race influences how we see and experience the world is a continual process, and one that I am constantly renegotiating all the time. This is not a “snap-your-fingers” moment, but, again, a process. And, it is up to white folks, in their own white spaces, to go through that process of critical self-reflection and independent learning; it is up to them, to us, to interrogate our biases and engage in “uncomfortable” conversations. (I should add that I believe much of this learning should be grounded in historical perspectives.) These processes do not need to be advertised or applauded; nor do our private actions that advance the cause of racial justice. White people like myself should not seek to re-center ourselves in the narrative of justice (which is one reason why I avoid the word white “ally” because it too often does just that it). It is not about our “feelings” as there is really no level of empathy that can help us understand what it feels like to be Black in America. (After all it’s an immense privilege to have the choice to learn about racism than to forcibly experience it every day.) Thus, it is about doing the work on our own—and then taking action in whatever form that takes, because only through action can we actually further the cause of justice.
As so many others have eloquently explained, it not enough to just be “not racist,” either. To be “not racist” is to be complicit in maintaining the status quo—a status quo which has perpetuated violence against Black Americans for over 400 years and that Black Americans have been pleading for white Americans to understand for these same centuries. Thus, we must be anti-racist (again, to paraphrase others, most notably historian Ibram X. Kendi in his important book How to be an Antiracist)—we must actively work to combat racism. The literature and discussion on this is powerful, and I encourage you to think about what being anti-racist truly means. But, we must also understand that what we are seeing is not just racism, but anti-Blackness—it is our original sin and our current one. To understand American history is to understand that being Black in America connotes a certain type of oppression that has deep roots in the fabric of this country. It would be impossible in this essay to recount all the number of ways this is true—in education, in housing, in employment, in wealth, in the private sector, in health disparities and of course, in the criminal justice system, to just name a few—and any denial of this past and present is beyond reproach.
Still, there have been moments in history where real progress against this anti-Blackness has been made—Reconstruction and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, for example—after intense struggle and against the backdrop of white resistance (and violence). I believe we are at a milestone moment where the gears of progress are renewed, the long struggle for justice revived. And, so, when I think about this moment and what a more collective re-envisioning of American democracy looks like, those on the side of justice must do a number of things. One, at the bare minimum, is to take immediate steps to stop police brutality through common-sense, data-driven reforms such as 8Can’tWait and Campaign Zero that would lower the number of police killings and reform the unfair protections police have. However, these reforms assume that police can be “reformed” in the first place when, in reality, we know that these problems are far more systemic, widespread, and rooted in racism (not just “bad” laws). Thus, two, we have to engage in serious conversations about divesting in police and significantly restructuring police departments across the country. This includes re-thinking the role of police in the first place and perhaps abolishing police all together in favor of community safety. Consider, on average, that less than 5% of all arrests are violent crimes and less than 1% are murders. So, it probably makes sense to allow police to, at best, have a narrowly-defined set of responsibilities—and then, allow other specialists to perform roles more tailored to them, such as having trained counselors help with issues of substance abuse and not police officers. There are countless examples of this across sectors. (As I’ve written before, what keep us safe is not the police, but a belief in a social contract—a mutual respect for each other to allow us to live our lives. Perhaps we need to think differently about public safety in our communities altogether.) Police department budgets often make up one-third of all city budgets—that’s hundreds of millions of dollars that could be going to schools, toward healthcare, toward actually creating safe communities. In reality, wealthier communities are safer not because they have a greater police presence, but because they have more resources such as education, healthcare, access to jobs, and more. There is also the education component, making sure people who become police officers, but also firefighters, nurses, entrepreneurs, and so on, understand the breadth of discrimination throughout American history. For example, specifically, over 80% of all police, firefighters, and EMTs graduate from California community colleges. I take seriously my responsibility to make sure these students—my students—understand the full weight of American history and strategies for how to be anti-racist in their vocations. To be sure, I don’t have all the answers nor do I pretend to. I hope out of this movement comes a compete rethinking of the role (or lack thereof) of police in a more just society by urban planning experts, policymakers, and community-members who are much more well-versed in this area than me. This unceasing epidemic has to stop.
However, there is also one more incidental “thing” that I hope comes out of this moment that is less concrete but also important and speaks to my historical lens: a re-claiming of the word freedom and the meaning of what it means to be American. As we pursue policies that inch us toward “liberty and justice for all,” we should do so under the guise of freedom. As I will explain, perhaps we can create what the brilliant Rev. William Barber terms a “third Reconstruction”—a diverse, widespread movement of people from all walks of life to reconstruct the nation into a fully equitable multi-racial society. The optimist in me—perhaps aided by my whiteness—believes that this goal could finally come true, the memory of George Floyd becoming the spark that could create a lasting bend in the “arc of moral justice” in the months and years ahead. (Or, more accurately, in the words of Nikole Hannah-Jones, another Black American has had to die “in order to force white Americans to recognize our humanity.”)
As my director at the Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME), Dr. Erica Walker at Columbia University recently wrote, this is a “revolution in real time.” Let’s not waste it.
*****
On the first day of all my history classes, I always introduce a few key themes—racial oppression, activism and struggle for equality, access to democracy and meanings of citizenship, to name a few—followed by an informal list of questions that will flow throughout each unit. One of those questions asks: what does it mean to be an American and who gets to be “considered” an American? These might seem like simple questions, but the answers have always been highly contested. In fact, they have changed over time. At this country’s founding, whether a person was truly seen as American—with the rights and privileges therein—was based on a person’s race, gender, religion, and class. Rich (and property-owning), white, protestant males were recognized as Americans: they participated in “democracy” and could be citizens, both in terms of rights but also in terms of their human existence. Over time, however, through various reforms and an expansion of democratic ideals, slowly—and not without intense, often violent, struggle—many groups gained wider acceptance into American society. For some groups, this happened fairly quickly; for others, it took generations, but for Black Americans, it never happened at all.
So, in my opinion, what has remained almost unchanged in this original construction of our nation’s American identity is the characteristic of race, and specifically, anti-Blackness. To be American—literally, written in one of the first federal laws in 1790—was to be white. This, I believe, is still the case today. This is why Black Americans are seen as outsiders in the country they built and have lived on for tens of generations. (And, it’s why, even though I am only a third-generation American, nobody asks me where I am “from”—I am just “American” but a “Chinese-American” or “Mexican-American” or, yes, “African-American” have dashes in front of their American-ness. All three groups have been in American far longer than many, if not most, white Americans like me!) The correlation of American-ness to whiteness is also why LeBron James can be told to “shut up and dribble” and have racial slurs graffitied on his house, but white athletes’ opinions are sacred and their homes untainted. And, of course, it is why George Floyd can die at the hands of a police officer, in a country where being Black does not equate to full citizenship. It never has, in fact. George Floyd, in his 46 years of life, was never seen as an American in society. He (and all the other Black men and women killed while those that committed the crime are still free) did not have the same legal protections or “seen” as American by the majority of the nation. He life—his Black life—did not have the same value as a white life. The callousness in which we, as a society, disregard Black Americans—including the passing around of George Floyd’s death as if he was less than human—speaks to centuries of internalized, often unconscious, dehumanization of people who do not have white skin. It is only possible for such a video to be shared so widely because we have become normalized to seeing violence enacted on Black Americans. The truth is, is that George Floyd was never able to be American in the way that I get to be every day. That was true in his life, and that was true in his death.
Still, we have tried to remove this original vestige of oppression previous times throughout history—and, at various times, we made notable progress! In the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address (and through the outcome of the war), sought a re-envisioning of America away from whiteness. As he laid out, to be American should no longer be about a person’s whiteness—a shared white skin color—but instead, about believing in a common set of ideals: democracy, equality, justice. To be American was about upholding these sacred ideals—that is what being American was all about, about sharing these beliefs, not sharing a common skin color. This is why historians call the Civil War the “Second American Revolution” because the first American republic—one built on slavery—was destroyed. And, what followed was, in my opinion, the most important time period in American history called Reconstruction, from 1865 from 1877. For a moment, those ideals around a new American-ness looked like they might come true! Laws were passed that expanded citizenship and equality to Black Americans (and other non-Black men, too); thousands of Black Americans were elected to public office. Leaders like President Ulysses S. Grant, Senator Charles Sumner, and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens fought voraciously to protect the full rights of Black Americans—to fight for their inclusion into the American experiment. While great progress was made during those years, unfortunately, it did not last, and a century of Jim Crow, lynchings, violent massacres, and widespread exclusion from American society followed.
But, then, after decades of Black Americans (and their allies) fighting against these injustices all throughout the 20th century, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there was another moment to try and uproot racism and fight against anti-Blackness. Even operating under the constant threat of white violence, the 1960s “Civil Rights Movement” saw a brilliant web of mass organizing, legal battles, and civil rights legislation. (I should also note that key to this movement’s success was voting—in many ways the cornerstone of the whole enterprise—as well as gaining a deep understanding of process and the various levers of democratic power.) Despite the virulent racism and resistance—and murders of Black and white activists—it seemed possible that, finally, Black Americans would have the full rights of American citizenship at least under the law. Then there was hope that perhaps with these legal protections, they would also be seen as American. A person who could not sit on the bus freely or sit anywhere of their choosing in a restaurant or who attended a dilapidated segregated school was not a person who had his or her humanity fully recognized. Sadly—but perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, not surprisingly—Black Americans continued to be excluded from American society in the years after this movement in countless ways. Although significant gains and very important progress was made, white flight, “de facto segregation,” years of mass incarceration and the “war on drugs,” housing and employment discrimination, unequal schooling, and, yes, habitual police brutality proved that Black Americans were still not seen as fully American.
Another movement has been needed. And, I think it might just be here.
*****
It often said that no two movements are alike. After all, it’s not 1868. It’s not 1968. It’s not even 1992 or 2014. It’s 2020, and our country is different than it was when these past movements happened. Our country is far more diverse than it ever has been, and young people more transient and more urbanized than ever before. Whether in reality or in perception, social media has caused young people all across the world to be connected and to be exposed to injustice together—and over and over again. Moreover, the current protests have featured far more white people than any movement in the past; perhaps such participation can be a turning point in sharing the immense burden of moving justice forward that Black Americans have always carried for so long. Even the polls show a greater acknowledgement and understanding of what is at stake. Although both aforementioned movements were notably interracial, what were are seeing in terms of these sustained protests all across the country is nothing short of unprecedented—a multicultural movement unlike anything we’ve seen before. As legal scholar Michelle Alexander just wrote in searing prose—her essay is a masterclass in the history of inequality and a reading list of how to tackle it—this is America’s chance to finally get democracy right.
Yet, just because this movement is different, does not mean we should overlook past lessons. One of those lessons is that we must march, organize, donate, strategize, teach, reflect, and participate in this movement under the banner of freedom. Although the Civil War began as a war about keeping the country together, it soon became a war for freedom—the seminal event in American history that ended slavery and freed 4 million slaves. Similarly, the 1960s, and the prior decades of activism throughout the 1900s, is referred to as the “Black Freedom Struggle.” Protesters in the street waved American flags, and Black leaders rightfully claimed this word as their own (as they had for generations). During the Civil Rights Movement, the language of freedom resonated through Black communities and their allies: freedom to vote and have fair representation, freedom to get a job and be treated fairly; freedom to go a well-resourced neighborhood school; freedom to be on a jury; freedom to treated with respect; freedom to just live in peace.
Today, the world freedom is rarely associated anymore with racial justice, civil rights, or those seeking equality. That should change. This movement, today, like in the Civil War and in the 1960s, is a movement for freedom: freedom for Black Americans from discrimination and without being killed because of the color of their skin. For those on the side of justice, this is our word, and we must reclaim it. No longer should racists, white supremacists, and those who seek to maintain the status quo get to co-opt it with hatred and bigotry. Nor should those who hide between self-interest and ignorance claim it either. As I think about the third “thing” that I believe should come out of this moment, it is this powerful reframing of what freedom actually should mean, not just for now, but forever.
When I think about who is American, I think of people in the streets marching for justice, marching for this long-elusive freedom. The images of mass protests, of young people marching in every city and state with such voracity and spirit inspires me beyond words. However, so do the millions of people supporting this movement in other ways, financially, organizationally, educationally, and beyond—educators putting in overtime to change their institutions, business leaders re-dedicating their entire company to supporting racial justice, local councilmembers, community organizers, and researchers doing the hands-on policy work to actually make tangible change. This courageous multicultural, multifaceted spectrum of people are true American patriots, sacrificing their time, money, energy, and even their health (in this pandemic) to stand up for what is right. And, so, when I think of patriotism, yes, I certainly think of the brave women and men in our military, who bravely fight abroad for the idea of American freedom to exist. But, I also think of the people working here at home to make sure American freedom happens in practice. As Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in her groundbreaking 1619 Project, by virtue of tirelessly pushing to make this country live up to the eloquent ideas of liberty, justice, and freedom, it is Black Americans who have been the “most American of all.” It is these goals that, in my mind, should be what it means to be American.
Thus, to me, it is time to choose a side—there are people who seek to join together to fight against racial oppression that has plagued this country since its birth, or there are people who seek to go against our constitution and against freedom. Also deeply ingrained in our history is a rich current of activism and relentless struggle for equality. It is deeply “American” to try to make the country a better, more inclusive, and more tolerant society that grants true freedom to all of citizens, white, Asian, Latinx, indigenous, and Black. It is these efforts over time, incomplete and imperfect as they were, that have made America closer to its constitutional claims and idealistic ideas. People who actively fought against these efforts—almost uniformly white people throughout history—have always been on the wrong “side” of history. It is trite to say, but it is no less true. A strong majority of Americans disliked Martin Luther King, Jr. at the time of his assassination; he was hated, reviled, deemed far too radical. Only decades later did his popularity rise and his name universally praised. But, that is revisionism (at best): those who opposed MLK and opposed the Civil Rights Movement (and they are alive today) were on the wrong side. Those who fought in the Confederacy against slavery were on the wrong side, too. All of these people—whites—fought against freedom, against justice, against allowing for the full humanity of Black Americans. This is not about politics; it’s about what is right and what is wrong.
Today is no different. Because in reality, for white people, there are those who stand for allowing racism and/or a status quo that sanctions the killing of their fellow Americans either out of bigotry, ignorance, or negligence. Conversely, there are those who decide at this pivotal moment in history to take a stance against injustice even if they will not benefit, even if it inconveniences them, and even if it’s hard, because they know that deep in their heart, the way that Black Americans are treated is antithetical to what America is supposed to be.
I am proudly choosing a side. I am choosing the side of justice. I am choosing the side of freedom. I am choosing the side of hope, love, dreams, and kindness. It is time to take up this unfinished mantle of previous movements for racial justice with earnestness and zeal (and to support each other in doing so). Long is it overdue for all communities to demand the full democratic inclusion of Black Americans—our fellow brothers, sisters, colleagues, friends, and citizens—into the nation they built, toiled, and served. I hope you will join me. That would be the best birthday gift of all.
