Where I live, in the middle of Montana, the continent transitions fitfully from prairie to mountain, yellow bluffs marking the edge of an ancient sea. We are still linked to a more recent industrial past by the trains trundling through daily bearing coal in perfectly rounded black mounds, but most of us who live here work in service occupations, especially healthcare, spending our days helping others in one way or another. Almost 90% of us are white.
Somehow we still find ways to feel threatened, though, as evidenced by my neighbors’ recent rallies against coronavirus restrictions. Hundreds of people congregated at our state’s capitol last month with guns (Montana is an open carry state) and proceeded to have a relatively calm protest against perceived governmental overreach. Recordings of the rally show people wandering into the street and ignoring social distancing. Only reporters wore masks. Despite the open flouting of rules, though, nobody was hurt. This week’s viral videos make it hard to believe the outcome would have been similar if Montana’s small black population had sponsored the rally.
The recent events filmed and circulated – a white police officer kneeling on a black man until he died, a white woman hysterically calling 911 to report harassment by a black man calmly asking her to follow the rules – have forced white America to think a little, tiny bit harder about institutional racism. Some of us hopefully have taken a step farther and recognized our own implicit biases, how we have internalized our society’s prejudices without meaning to. Our brains take shortcuts based on patterns not only of experience but also of belief, and we place people into categories without knowing anything about them as individuals.
Years ago at a conference, I walked into a room, knowing that four of the five people I was meeting in person for the first time were financial analysts and the other was the administrative assistant for the group. I still remember my surprise when the black woman amongst them started speaking knowledgeably about Asian corporate bonds. She was not the administrative assistant, as I had assumed with my socialized preconceptions. Up until that moment, every black woman I had known professionally had been support staff, and I applied my experience, with prejudice, to an individual I had never met. The system’s lack became my own deficit.
I almost started this piece with, “This has been a tough week to be a white American.” That I even had that thought is an example of the privilege endemic in my skin color. It can be painful to admit that we do not have to be racist to perpetuate the problem, but it is not in the same category of “tough” as dying because the color of your skin awakened irrational fear in other people. This weekend, people all over the United States protested against that fear and the harm it does. Even where I live, where racial diversity is limited, people have organized gatherings outside police stations and government buildings to express dissatisfaction with a culture that ignores embedded inequality. That we are still protesting this is an uncomfortable connection to our history. Hopefully we learn something this time.