That in the 21st century, groups of people find it acceptable and enable others to trample upon the humanity of others is a disgrace. These situations beg the question: why is it that some white people can easily grasp what Black Americans experience in the United States, and others find it nearly impossible? The reason should not surprise you.
For Argument’s Sake
Let’s swap out Black Americans for short-statured people. I stand forty-eight inches tall. No average-sized person can fully understand the physical challenges that we short-statured people face living in a world not designed to our scale.
Everyday items like staircases, upper kitchen cabinets, top shelves in grocery stores, and driving vehicles provide unique obstacles the average-sized person doesn’t have to contend with, let alone imagine. Then there are the day-to-day emotional challenges of dealing with people who gawk and stare.
But, there is the universality of the human experience — situations and events that are common to every person’s time on earth — which transcends height. For now, let’s call that “humanity.”
As a garden-variety average-sized person, you will never fully understand what it’s like to stand forty-eight inches tall. But you surely can relate to one of the accompanying challenges: being stared at. And you can certainly imagine what it would be like to have every eye in a room find you, regardless of the reason, in just about every room you enter.
The first thing that allows you (or anyone, for that matter) to relate to that experience is a willingness to step into that short-statured person’s shoes and then imagine what specific experiences might be like. Even if being “the new kid at school” or “the new employee” is the closest firsthand experience you have that compares to the objectification that short-statured people often experience, based on that similar experience, you can then better understand my experience. In doing so, you have neither divested yourself of your height nor any advantages therein. Instead, you have allowed yourself to experience the insight that says, “The way I experience the world is not the only way people can experience the world.”
See what I mean?
So why is it so hard for some white people to realize that stepping out of their own experience and attempting to look at the world through the eyes of a Black person does not diminish who they are?
Doing so does not mandate that their experience is wrong and the other person’s is right. It diminishes not one iota of whiteness, experience, or social standing in any way, shape, or form. The only thing it dispelled is the notion that Black people and our experiences are less than human.
It only proves that your life experiences are different in some ways and very similar in others to those of Black people. Christ demonstrated the ability to identify with and respond to other people’s experiences. That’s called compassion.
Compassion in Action
Compassion doesn’t end with the ability to recognize how others feel. That’s called observation. Observation says that I can look at a friend and recognize that they feel a great sense of loss over their mother’s passing even though one’s mother is still very much alive.
Compassion occurs when I fill in the gap (of what it’s like to lose one’s mother) and glean that what another person is experiencing is probably a far deeper pain than losing a sibling, aunt, uncle, or other family member, and then I am moved to act on their behalf in some way. No, the process doesn’t end with observing their feelings. It continues with stepping out of the comfort zone of knowing my mother is still alive to attempt to see the world through their eyes as best I can and then take action. Will I fully understand what they are going through? No. Because their relationship with their mother was different from the one I have with my mother. But that fact should not stop me from attempting to understand their situation.
Compassion also goes by another name: love.
It’s common knowledge that white Americans have a very different life experience than Black Americans, but that doesn’t mean that because they’re white, they cannot relate to some facet of the Black experience. And for anyone to play the “well, I’ll never understand what Black people go through” card as a license to avoid trying is inhumane at worst and deeply flawed at best. White only goes skin deep.
We all live, we all love, we all bleed.
Think about it. If being white limits someone’s compassion, how do you explain mixed marriage?
I know several white people who grew up, by their own admission, in embarrassingly racist environments. But they’ve managed to set the privilege society has bestowed upon people with their skin color aside, take a step back, and recognize that everyone doesn’t have the same life experience that they do. They’ve changed the course of their lives to make the world a more equitable place for Black Americans. And these folks are not all Democrats, liberal, conservative, Christian, or any other truncated label you’d like to stick on a group; they’re people.
The Advent of Racial Tension
Racial tension didn’t just come to a boiling point with the murder of George Floyd. Racial tensions have existed in America since before the first slave ships unloaded Africans in Virginia in 1619. And Black Americans have been murdered with impunity since then. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this article on a mass lynching from only 100 years ago.
With the advent of smartphones, everyone everywhere can now document shootings of Black Americans that would otherwise go unreported or disbelieved. And thanks to the media’s voracious appetite, these events are broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Sea Salt and Cracked Pepper Potato Chips
White people have the luxury of being able to ignore racism. Racism is something that only touches their lives when they choose to allow it. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color don’t have that luxury. Everywhere we go, people will always note the pigmentation of our skin, much like I, as a short-statured person, don’t have the luxury of moving through the world without my height being considered a distinguishing factor. (And don’t start singing the “but, I don’t see color” chorus. I have an essay that addresses that topic on tap.)
In the same way that pulling a bag of sea salt and cracked pepper potato chips from the top shelf in the grocery store on my behalf (after seeing me trying unsuccessfully to snag that same bag for myself) leverages your height on my behalf and for that moment makes you an ally for the vertically challenged; acknowledging and speaking out against racial inequality leverages your social privilege as a white person and makes you an ally for racial equality.
So it comes down to this: if you still don’t understand what Black Americans are going through in these United States, there’s only one reason: you don’t want to.
Love one another.
This article was first published at Medium.com.
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