White people's burden
Robert Jensen
School of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert Jensen 2005
<>Editor's Note: This essay is excerpted from The Heart of
Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege, City
Lights, September 2005.
posted on Alternet, August 31, 2005.
by Robert Jensen
<>The United States
is a white country. By that I don't
just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are
(for now
but not forever). What makes the United States white is not
the fact
that most Americans are white but the assumption -- especially by
people with
power -- that American equals white. Those people don't say it
outright. It
comes out in subtle ways. Or, sometimes, in ways not so subtle.
Here's an example: I'm in line at a store,
unavoidably
eavesdropping on two white men in front of me, as one tells the other
about a
construction job he was on. He says: "There was this guy and three
Mexicans standing next to the truck." From other things he said, it was
clear that "this guy" was Anglo, white, American. It also was clear
from the conversation that this man had not spoken to the "three
Mexicans" and had no way of knowing whether they were Mexicans or U.S.
citizens
of Mexican heritage.
<>It didn't matter. The "guy" was the default
setting for American: Anglo, white. The "three Mexicans" were not
Anglo, not white, and therefore not American. It wasn't "four guys
standing by a truck." It was "a guy and three Mexicans." The
race and/or ethnicity of the four men were irrelevant to the story he
was
telling. But the storyteller had to mark it. It was important that "the
guy" not be confused with "the three Mexicans."
<>
Here's another example, from the Rose Garden. At a 2004 news
conference outside the White House, President George W. Bush explained
that he
believed democracy would come to Iraq over time:
<>"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe
that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free
and
self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that
people who
practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose
skins
aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."
<>
It appears the president intended the phrase "people
whose skin color may not be the same as ours" to mean people who are
not
from the United
States.
That skin color he refers to that is "ours," he makes it clear, is
white. Those people not from the United States are "a
different
color than white." So, white is the skin color of the United States.
That means those whose skin is not white but are citizens of the United States
are ...? What are they? Are they members in good standing in the
nation, even
if "their skin color may not be the same as ours"?
<>
This is not simply making fun of a president who sometimes
mangles the English language. This time he didn't misspeak, and there's
nothing
funny about it. He did seem to get confused when he moved from talking
about skin
color to religion (does he think there are no white Muslims?), but it
seems
clear that he intended to say that brown people -- Iraqis, Arabs,
Muslims,
people from the Middle East, whatever the category in his mind -- can
govern
themselves, even though they don't look like us. And "us" is clearly
white. In making this magnanimous proclamation of faith in the
capacities of
people in other parts of the world, in proclaiming his belief in their
ability
to govern themselves, he made one thing clear: The United States is
white. Or,
more specifically, being a real "American" is being white. So, what
do we do with citizens of the United States who aren't
white?
<>
That's the question for which this country has never quite
found an answer: What do white "Americans" do with those who share
the country but aren't white? What do we do with peoples we once tried
to
exterminate? People we once enslaved? People we imported for labor and
used
like animals to build railroads? People we still systematically exploit
as low-wage
labor? All those people -- indigenous, African, Asian, Latino -- can
obtain the
legal rights of citizenship. That's a significant political achievement
in some
respects, and that popular movements that forced the powerful to give
people
those rights give us the most inspiring stories in U.S.
history.
<>
The degree to which many white people in one generation
dramatically shifted their worldview to see people they once considered
to be
subhuman as political equals is not trivial, no matter how deep the
problems of
white supremacy we still live with.In many comparable societies,
problems of
racism are as ugly, if not uglier, than in the United States.
If you doubt that,
ask a Turk what it is like to live in Germany,
an Algerian what it's like to live in France, a black person what it's
like to
live in Japan.
We can acknowledge the gains made in the United States -- always
understanding those gains came because non-white people, with some
white
allies, forced society to change -- while still acknowledging the
severity of
the problem that remains.
<>
But it doesn't answer the question: What do white
"Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white?
<>
We can pretend that we have reached "the end of
racism" and continue to ignore the question. But that's just plain
stupid.
We can acknowledge that racism still exists and celebrate diversity,
but avoid
the political, economic, and social consequences of white supremacy.
But,
frankly, that's just as stupid. The fact is that most of the white
population of
the United States
has never really known what to do with those who aren't white. Let me
suggest a
different approach.
<>
Let's go back to the question that W.E.B. Du Bois said he
knew was on the minds of white people. In the opening of his 1903
classic, The
Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois wrote that the real question whites wanted
to ask
him, but were afraid to, was: "How does it feel to be a problem?" Du
Bois was identifying a burden that blacks carried -- being seen by the
dominant
society not as people but as a problem people, as a people who posed a
problem
for the rest of society. Du Bois was right to identify "the color line"
as the problem of the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it is
time for
whites to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question at
heart of
color. It's time for white people to fully acknowledge that in the
racial
arena, we are the problem. We have to ask ourselves: How does it feel
to be the
problem?
<>
The simple answer: Not very good.
<>
That is the new White People's Burden, to understand that we
are the problem, come to terms with what that really means, and act
based on
that understanding. Our burden is to do something that doesn't seem to
come
natural to people in positions of unearned power and privilege: Look in
the
mirror honestly and concede that we live in an unjust society and have
no right
to some of what we have. We should not affirm ourselves. We should
negate our
whiteness. Strip ourselves of the illusion that we are special because
we are
white. Steel ourselves so that we can walk in the world fully conscious
and try
to see what is usually invisible to us white people. We should learn to
ask
ourselves, "How does it feel to be the problem?"
-----------------------------
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the
University of Texas at Austin, board member of the Third Coast Activist
Resource Center (http://thirdcoastactivist.org),
and the author of The Heart of
Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege
and Citizens of the Empire: The
Struggle to Claim Our
Humanity. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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