A Word To Our White Allies

A Word To Our White Allies

Contrary to the narratives some pundits and elected officials have been spinning, the protests, which are mostly peaceful, are not without warrant. After all, wherever people of color are — NYC, Chicago, Minneapolis, LA, Atlanta, and other so-called hot spots – around the world, we are experiencing a living hell. What you’ve seen on TV is only a tip of a much larger iceberg of anger, impatience, and frustration! The violence, the vitriolic rhetoric, and the unprovoked attacks trained against people of color by President Trump’s dog-whistling and the Pavlovian reaction of his racist base are not isolated incidents. Quite the contrary, they are part of a larger pattern of discrimination and vilification we face daily. While you may choose to coach your children on how to deal with dangerous realities outside your home, you don’t have to teach your children – as a basic matter of survival – how to interact with whites to avoid being misread and mistreated by fellow citizens and, subsequently, law enforcement.

With greater frequency, the media has mischaracterized the recent multi-day demonstrations for justice as “riots.” The mainstream media’s inflammatory, negative labelling reveals its implicit and complicit support of white privilege. While there are some black people venting and looting, the vast majority of blacks are not the ones rioting. They are protesting peacefully, at the risk of their health and safety, to be treated with dignity and equality – nothing more, nothing less. These rights are given to you due to your color and/or class. However, we must protest, strategize, and pray for the privileges you enjoy from birth.

I wish you could understand the skin I’m in. Perhaps you can read the book, Black Like Me, where a white male journalist, John Griffin, doctored his appearance to look black, travelled throughout the South for six weeks, and documented what it was like to be black in America. If you could walk – even for only two or three days – in our ill-fitting, nightmarish shoes, racism would be well on its way to the graveyard of past human atrocities.

I’m aware what I’m sharing with you is outside the scope of your experience. However, just because you don’t experience it does not negate that it’s an everyday, historical reality. Thankfully, it’s refreshing to see some whites, mainly younger ones, out in the protests, standing in solidarity with our struggle for a more humane, fair, and just world.

None of us are responsible for where we enter life. Whatever disadvantages or advantages with which we start life is not up for debate. How high we rise, however, is partially a matter of personal drive and discipline. I say “partially” because you are not aware of, or more importantly, do not seem to care about the structural and systemic barriers which are inherent in the practices, laws, and policies of our beloved republic. You may say, “I hear you, but I’m not responsible for the plight of people of color. This is much bigger than me.” Again, you are partially right. Admittedly, there are harsh, structural, historical realities which you did not create. Still, you are culpable, to some degree, because you benefit from those inequities, which are pre-set to favor those who share your skin color.

Ultimately, I’m not asking you to eliminate racism no more than I would ask you to take wings to fly to the moon. I’m just asking you to do your part to call it out and correct it whenever and wherever you see it. Be more invested and less indifferent and/or silent. Use your position and privilege, as a white person in a largely white country, to extend the same access to opportunity, equality, and justice to everyone. In short, I’m just asking you to do your part to make America the land of the free and home of the brave, for not just your children’s sake, but for mine, too.

Though we have been on the receiving end of an intentional, systematic raw deal, people of color yet believe in the pursuit of happiness, liberty, and justice for all. Let’s not make America great “again.” Let’s work together to make the future of America greater than it’s ever been before. It is my hope that my grandchildren and yours will be grateful we invested the sweat equity to end inequality and injustice in America. —

Rev. Anthony L. Trufant,
Senior Pastor
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Brooklyn, NY