I’ve been doing anti-racist organizing in white communities for over a quarter century and what we are witnessing since the election of Donald Trump is of monumental importance and a tremendous opportunity: millions of white people are taking action, many of them for the first time.
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From the historic Women’s March with women of color bringing tremendous leadership — along with white anti-racist women — to make racial justice and women of color leadership central to the demands and program, to the mass demonstrations at airports against the Muslim ban, to white people in the hundreds of thousands campaigning to either fortify or create new Sanctuary cities, Sanctuary schools and Sanctuary houses of worship around the country, we find ourselves in a potentially revolutionary moment. The national network Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), which is organizing white communities to find their mutual interest in ending racism and join people of color-led multiracial efforts for economic, gender and racial justice, has had a massive increase in people joining existing chapters or using SURJ organizer toolkits to start new ones in suburbs, rural areas, small towns and cities.
I do this work in white communities because I want to end the nightmare of racism in communities of color, but to also end it in white communities. I work to develop racial justice leadership in white communities, because fundamentally, I love white people and want to help free my community from the death culture that turns us into soldiers and collaborators in maintaining structural inequality and violence, from the slave society of the past to the agenda of Trump and the GOP today.
During the first Black History Month of the Trump administration, I believe it is imperative that we gather nourishment from the Black Freedom Movement for these times, and that we root our work against Trump in the struggle to end anti-Black racism. For those of us who are white anti-racists, we must fight for the hearts, minds and souls of our people. With vision and love, we must bring leadership in white communities to align our people to multiracial democracy and multiracial movements for collective liberation, and the path to do so requires that we confront, dismantle and end anti-Black racism.
We who are the descendants of indentured European servants and of European working class immigrants who fought back against bosses and their police to form unions and fight for better pay, better working conditions, the weekend, benefits, that few my age and younger have, must confront, dismantle and end anti-Black racism.
We who are the descendants of peoples who became white as a ruling class strategy to divest us of our shared humanity and solidarity with all working and oppressed people, and gave us entitlements, rights, the social and cultural wages of whiteness, as W.E.B DuBois wrote, that ultimately kept many of us economically down, politically weak, and spiritually impoverished, must confront, dismantle and end anti-Black racism.
We who are the descendants of people who became white through our collective consumption of hundreds of years of toxic anti-Black racist culture from the minstrel show to the television program COPS that reinforces anti-Black laws, policies and de facto rules that allow every form of brutality and insult to be unleashed against those who became Black in the process of extracting the wealth and power that built the United States, must confront, dismantle and end anti-Black racism.
We who are raised to be white in a white supremacist capitalist society must remember that white privilege was both a granting of access to resources and rights, while also a strategy to warp our worldview in anti-Black racism so that our anger and resentment about working everyday to make someone else rich, is directed not at the bosses and the ruling elite, but other working people who are Black and of color. A strategy of maintaining structural inequality by granting non-ruling class white people the opportunity to regaining a sense of our own power through our socially encouraged, protected and often rewarded, ability to desecrate the dignity, humanity and life of Black people.
We who are raised white must realize that this society that devours the lives of Black people, everyday, is also a society that systematically raises us to be either butchers of Black life or the defenders and supporters of those doing the butchering. We are raised in a culture where white parents brought their “becoming” white children to watch the lynching and participate in the private rioting of socially acceptable white violence against Black bodies. We who are raised to be white, are raised in a death culture to be soldiers inflicting daily dehumanization against Black people in a capitalist society that profits from the slow and sometimes quick taking of Black life that maintains the monstrosity of the status quo.
Rally Against Hate in Darnell, Arkansas. Photo: Meredith Martin-Moates
While the most devastating and brutal consequences of anti-Black racism take place against Black communities, anti-Black racism is also core to what it means to be white in this society — to be emotionally and spiritually malnourished, fed hate, fear, envy, and resentment that deliberately replaced the sustenance of solidarity, of love, friendship, community and mutually affirming authentic human interactions across what became the color lines of a white supremacist society.
Every murder of a Black person by the police, every justification of how scary and threatening that person was to armed law enforcement, every media account that assumes innocence on the part of the police and guilt on the part of the murdered, every justification for endless anti-Black racist war, is also a continuation of the campaign to turn descendants of European servants, descendants of insurgent European immigrants, into patriotic white people who fight for the agenda of the rulers and denounce all who strike out for a world that affirms the inherent worth and dignity of all people, that embraces our shared humanity, that centers economic, racial, disability, gender, environmental justice for all.
Anti-Black racism is war against Black communities and it is a cancerous, solidarity poisoning, justice denying, process of straight-jacketing the hearts, souls, and liberatory imaginations of those of us who have been raised white, so that we will be butchers, soldiers, and “good white people” who call for calm over ending violence, when Black lives are taken.
Anti-Black racism is a structural nightmare that white people must wake up from. We must wake up and fight back against it. The fight for white people against anti-Black racism is one of solidarity with Black communities and Black people in our lives and in our hearts, but it is also a fight to break free from the death culture suffocating and malnourishing us and everyone raised white, who we love.
When indentured Europeans joined with enslaved Africans to overthrow the tyranny of the slave master, the goal was for all to be liberated and free. When the descendants of indentured servants, of working class exploited immigrants, descendants of those who became white, join with the Black-led multiracial Black Lives Matter movement, when we join with the multiracial movement against Trump, we must remember that in our confrontation with anti-Black racism, in our efforts to dismantle white supremacy, in our work for racial justice, we are also working to all get free and reclaim our shared humanity and the power of our solidarity, to build a world where liberation rather then supremacy guides and governs all of our lives.
Chris Crass is the author of "Towards the 'Other America': Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter." He writes and speaks widely on courage for racial justice, feminism for men, strategies to build visionary movements, and creating healthy culture and leadership for progressive activism. He was a founder of the anti-racist movement building center, the Catalyst Project, and helped launch the national white anti-racist network, SURJ (Showing Up For Racial Justice). Rooted in his Unitarian Universalist faith he works with congregations, seminaries, and religious and spiritual leaders to build up the Spiritual Left. He is also the author of "Towards Collective Liberation: anti-racist organizing, feminist praxis, and movement building strategy." He lives in Louisville, KY, with his partner and their two sons. You can learn more about his work at www.chriscrass.org.