The Good Intentions of White People

Even the best intentions can perpetuate racism.

Many years ago, I read an article by philosopher of education, Audrey Thompson, in which she wrote, "Our morality can be one of the primary obstacles to racial change." Cleveland Hayes and Brenda Juarez similarly contend, "The problem of whiteness is not a problem of evil but a problem of good."[i] This jolted me, a white woman who has been studying moral philosophy, moral development and moral education for over 30 years. When I came to Syracuse and started working in the Schoolhouse of Education, I started to research and ask how skillful white intentions can engender defensiveness and denials that volition derail conversations with students, parents and colleagues of color about their experiences with racism and white complicity in that experience. I had to remind myself that what I was reading and studying, mostly from generous and courageous scholars of colour, no ane was maxim white people should not take skilful intentions but rather these scholars were calling for disquisitional reflection around white skilful intentions and their issue on BIPOC feel. On the surface, to want to help others is such a proficient affair and often praiseworthy. Just I was showtime to realize that proficient white intentions can ofttimes, even unwittingly, perpetuate patronizing forms of racism that keep hierarchies of ability and privilege in identify. In a powerful New York Times letter, "Honey White America," George Yancy[ii] invites white people to permit go of their white innocence and honestly engage with the problem of good intentions and the complicity they might hibernate. It is non comfortable for white people to read what Yancy wrote, but it helps to also remind oneself that James Baldwin tells white people, "It is the innocence that constitutes the law-breaking.[3]  Of import disquisitional analysis of systemic oppression can be thwarted by presumptions of innocence.

I call up it is important to remember that racism is not just virtually property hate in your eye or consciously believing you are superior because you are white. Racism is about a arrangement of marginalization that one can exist upholding even through good intentions.

I case that I often accost with my white future urban education teachers is to critically question any beliefs/feelings they have about "saving" their students. We talk well-nigh how "white savior complex," something and so common in movies that focus on white teachers in urban settings, reinforces the idea not only that the white teacher is the hero, but that at that place is something incorrect with their students that requires saving past white people. It is to understand urban students as having a deficiency that only you tin can set up. White teachers don't intentionally endeavor to injure anyone but proficient white intentions oft have that effect, especially if white teachers protect their good intentions instead of existence willing to explore what the touch of their intentions can exist. And a white teacher might be able to admit that people of colour are less privileged and nonetheless not see oneself every bit playing a office in their experience. Help, one Black graduate pupil once told me, was not the same as justice. Unless white teachers are willing to critically reflect on their skilful intentions, their ability to examine how they might be complicit and what to do about information technology will exist blocked. And if yous can't name injustice, you don't accept to practice annihilation about it.  When white people do non critically examine their skilful intentions, and their potential hindrance to justice, they conveniently remove themselves from the responsibility of addressing injustice.

REFRAME. My wonderful instruction assistant ever reminds me how helpful it is to reframe something I am thinking and to come across it in a dissimilar way. Reframing a call to examine systemic racism non as an accusation but instead every bit an appeal to consider what white people might not know or might not want to know tin interruption some of the deadlocks that are linked to preoccupations with good intentions and shift the focus to the touch on of those skillful intentions. Instead of bringing conversations to an finish, such a shift can open upwardly educational moments of growth that brand broader understandings of racism possible for white people. The claiming for white people is to shift the focus from intention to the effects of their doings and listen to what people of color say those effects are.

We tin can meet some other case of white emotional investments in goodness in how some white people responded to the justified anger expressed in protests around the state in response to the murder of Black bodies by the easily of the police. Some white people felt shock, fearfulness so retreat when they heard the powerful statement fabricated by Tamika Mallory'south State of Emergency speech  in which she explains her reasoning for the protestors' response to police brutality, and the discourse around "looters." THE Demand TO REFRAME: How tin can white people movement from stupor, fearfulness and retreat in order to hear the message behind the anger? What would happen if white people understood that rage can unsettle us, jolt us, but also teach us something important almost others every bit well as learn something nearly ourselves? How tin white people stay in the moment of discomfort instead of trying to escape information technology in order to learn something about the experiences of others too as something not piece of cake to hear about ourselves that might change how we run across things? In her profound essay "The Uses of Anger," Audre Lorde addresses how white woman respond when she speaks with clear and meticulously articulated anger near her experiences in feminist circles. White feminists exhort, 'Tell me how you feel but don't say information technology too harshly or I cannot hear yous.'[4] To which Lorde replies, "But is it my way that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a bulletin that her life may change?" White people take to learn to shift their attention abroad from a focus on the tone in order to hear the message. And when I refer to white people in this reflection, I am not excluding myself.

It is not comfortable for white people to take good intentions challenged. It is not easy to hear the bulletin behind anger. But that discomfort is nothing compared to the causes of the anger that marginalized groups experience daily. Also, it helps to remember that anger is non usually the first resort but a tool that might be a consequence of one's voice non being heard. Imagine how much we can accomplish together towards social and institutional alter if white people terminate focusing on white comfort and our good intentions, and instead try to sympathise what has to change and how nosotros accept to change for at that place to be a more simply guild. Elizabeth Denevi offers white people something to seriously inquire ourselves, "What if being called "racist" is the beginning, non the stop, of the conversation?"[v]

[i] You showed your Whiteness: you don't get a 'proficient' White people'due south medal Cleveland Hayes & Brenda M. Juárez 2009 International Periodical of Qualitative Studies in Educational activity, 22:6, 729-744

[ii] https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/dearest-white-america/?mtrref=world wide web.google.com&gwh=14D3E7B6222B672CAB8B710C2BA38CBB&gwt=pay

[iii] James Baldwin, The Fire Adjacent Fourth dimension (New York: Vintage, 1962/1993): 5-6.

[iv] Audre Lorde, Sis Outsider (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984) 125.

[v] Elizabeth Denevi, "What If Existence Called 'Racist' is the Beginning, not the End, of the Conversation?" In The Guide for White Women who Teach Black Boys, eds.,Eddie Moore, Jr, Ali Michael, Marguerite Penick-Parks (Thou Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2017): 74.