Most people have a story about being rejected unfairly, being shot down arbitrarily for a reason that wasn’t properly tied to merit or qualifications, some story about being rejected not for what they did or didn’t do, but for who they were. There are as many varieties of these stories as there are eye colors. More. What is much more rare are the folks who will tell you a story about how they got ahead for no good reason, how they were given a leg up for God Knows Why. Those stories are uncommon, because when we get a leg up it’s because we earned it.
Right?
Recently I was invited to sit on a panel in response to the documentary film, The Rape of Recy Taylor. The invitation came from a Black woman who was organizing the event. The other two panelists were a Black woman and a genderqueer Latinx person. The moderator was white, and I am white and genderqueer. It matters what race and ethnicity we are; that this doesn’t go without saying is a testament to a number of things, probably particularly liberal white denial of difference. When we don’t acknowledge racial difference, idealistic white folks will say things like “The rape of Recy Taylor is a universal story.” Someone at the film panel may have said that. But there are no universal stories; anyone who says differently is probably not a person of color.
We were to be given a couple of minutes after being introduced to give a general response to the film. I crafted my response as much as possible to try to hold and promote the integrity of the story of Recy Taylor specifically as a Black woman. Specifically as not a universal story; specifically as a story about someone caught in the crosshairs of being both a woman and also Black. I tried to connect what happened to her then to the experiences today of other women of color – trans women assaulted and killed in public spaces, Black women not protected by Stand Your Ground protections – and of other Black people – those reported to the police in recent months for sitting and eating and hailing a car in public space.
After the film, but before the moderator or I or anyone else on on the panel spoke, the genderqueer Latinx person spoke for a minute and made a statement that the full panel should have been comprised only of Black women. This was generally well-received by people in the room, and throughout the remaining hour of panel discussion folks repeated that statement, both audience members and the Latinx panelist repeated it. They lamented the absence of an all-female, all-Black panel event.
I felt awkward and uncertain about my place and about what to do. Should I leave the stage? Would that come across as dramatic and attention-seeking? Should I read the statement I had crafted and honor the Black woman who invited me and the Black panelist who introduced my remarks? Should I not speak at all and honor the Black audience members who wished for an all Black, female panel? When the white moderator, for one thing, introduced me first and then, for another, disregarded the Black panelist who created an opening for me to speak, I didn’t know to which woman to defer.
It felt bad. It continues to feel bad. I wanted to be good. To this day, weeks later, I still want people to think of me as One of the Good Ones. I keep feeling a need to be assured that I did okay, that I made good choices, or to be assured that all of my choices were fucked before they were made, regardless of how they were made.
Every one of these feelings and needs is attached to my whiteness and to white supremacy, because being assessed or judged for what one does as an individual is an opportunity uniquely accorded to whiteness. And every one of these feelings and needs is attached to my whiteness and to white supremacy, because I am white and because racism and white supremacy are elemental to what I say and do, to every decision and circumstance that led me to that film screening at the Governor’s Art Gallery in Harrisburg on a Thursday night in August. I can’t extricate myself from it, and saying I have is as good as pretending that I don’t see race, as good as pretending that Recy Taylor’s rape is a universal story.
1. It feels true to me that the decisions I made that night were with an understanding of and with the intention of interrupting racism and white supremacy and my role in it. 2. Without question that doesn’t mean those decisions did actually understand anything or interrupt anything.
3. It’s possible that, for some folks in the room, there was nothing I could have done or not done right; I may simply have been wrong for being there and being white. 4. Unquestionably, in nearly every other circumstance of my life, being wherever I am and white benefits me.
It felt terrible to think that, whatever decision I made, I would be contradicting one or another woman, and in most cases one or another Black woman. It felt and it still does feel awful to have been so unwanted by Black folks in the room when I had taken such care to say challenging things to white folks in the room. It feels lousy that some people saw me as That White Person Who Took Up Space Where He Was Asked (Not) To, in a relatively small community of anti-racism colleagues in a relatively small city.
At one time I thought the takeaway from this experience was those four things named above, but I’ve realized that I had more to learn: This may keep happening any time I try to do white anti-racism. I may not ever do it right. There may not be a right way to be white in the middle of white supremacy. Somebody may always (justifiably or unfairly) resent me. Someone may always (justifiably or unfairly) leave with a lower opinion of me than I hoped for. Any expectation or thought that Black folks will or should agree about my role in the work or in the world is fundamentally part of racism. And if I’m doing any of this for thanks or praise or to be considered one of the good ones, I’ll probably always be disappointed and feel awful. And if I’m doing any of this to be thanked or praised or considered one of the good ones, in that very extra way I am, in fact, part of the problem.
I told a lot of people after that night that I didn’t want anyone to reassure me or expend any energy in defending me. When I talked afterward to Black women about what happened, I kept prefacing our conversation by saying I didn’t expect or want them to put any energy into reassuring me. And I meant it.
And yet by saying it, then, by saying it here, even meaning it, I’m still trying to convey that I’m good. That I’m a Good One. I am still vying for that recognition.
That may be a deep thing that needs to come to the surface for me and other white folks. It’s not that I’m being disingenuous. It’s not that I need to be filled with shame and self-loathing for wanting to be known as good. But my goodness doesn’t matter, because, at a basic level, trust in a system of merit or qualifications is an assumption of white supremacy. My desire to be liked and to have good deeds be recognized and appreciated is a human need and makes me human. But, fundamentally, wanting credit for not being racist is thoroughly disordered. And I think racist.
Rev. Miller Hoffman 