Progressive Movement So White

we, as a nation, are pretty much okay with it.

But having this team in my home every day for two weeks really got under my skin because it laid bare one of the ways we, as a society, uphold systemic racism and support white supremacy – oftentimes unintentionally and involuntarily.

The “un-remarkableness” of it leads to my next point.

We all know the oft told story of European immigrants who arrive in the U.S. with not much more than the shirts on their backs achieving the American dream through hard work and sheer determination. But, turns out, the rugged individuals who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps got a lot of help, especially from the United States government.

Left untold in most of our history books are the many benefits the United States granted to European immigrants and their descendants but denied others.

It is said that “history is written by the victors.” Since its inception, power in the United States has been concentrated in the hands of white men. Their interpretation of American history has shaped most American’s historical views. School textbooks, public iconography, movies, encyclopedias, historical novels, and a panoply of other mediums convey a perspective of American history that is incomplete and oftentimes inaccurate – witness the “rugged individual” myths.

In his groundbreaking book, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, historian Ira Katznelson painstakingly demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were intentionally created in a manner that would result in whites receiving the full benefit of rising prosperity while people of color, and specifically blacks, would be deliberately left out.

Thanks to the scholarship of contemporary historians, we now know that federal agencies subsidized white suburban development by guaranteeing loans to developers of places like Levittown, New York; Lakewood, California; and many other suburban communities that sprang up across the nation after World War II, while often requiring the builders to refuse sales to African Americans, many of whom were veterans who were entitled to benefit from the GI Bill but were precluded.

According to Ira Katznelson, only 100 of the first 67,000 mortgages insured by the G.I. Bill went to families of color. White families that benefited from these racially exclusionary policies enjoyed decades of equity appreciation that helped finance college for their children and comfortable retirements for themselves.

Policies like land grants for whites, whites-only labor unions, real estate red lining, and immigration policies that excluded people of color were openly sanctioned and enforced by the United States government. We see the legacy of these policies today, not the least of which is the normalization of racial and ethnic discrimination – so normal that racially segregated tiers within the hierarchy of a company barely raises eyebrows at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the organization commissioned by the federal government specifically to enforce discrimination in employment laws.

These policies have helped to maintain what some refer to as “internal colonialism,” a condition of racial and ethnic subordination as prevalent today as at anytime in this country’s history. Interestingly, the people who have been the most negatively impacted by these policies and practices are those whose ancestors didn’t actually immigrate to this country.

As a side note: Every time we refer to ourselves as “a nation of immigrants” we exclude large swaths of the population. The term “immigrant” isn’t applicable to most of the ancestors of today’s African Americans, Native Americans and many Mexican Americans – the three groups subjected to the most enduring subjugation.

Many Mexican-American residents of what is now Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Texas trace their ancestry back to the 1600s, long before those states were part of the United States. Like the Native American population, the term immigrant does not reflect their history or their relationship to the United States, as is true for the vast majority of the ancestors of African Americans who came to this country against their will in shackles.

2018 marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 14th Amendment yet race and ethnicity continues to be a relatively accurate predictor of where African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans rank in this country’s social, political and economic hierarchies.

Typically, the type of racism given the most media attention is the overt racial animus that undergirds many of the police shootings of unarmed black people or the violence directed at Native American protestors at Standing Rock. But arguably, the kind of racism that produces the most harm (perhaps because it is so much more pervasive and ubiquitous) is the type that I attribute to “soft white supremacy.” This doesn’t require a burning cross or a violent act to be hugely impactful.

Author Charles Blow says soft white supremacy is divorced from hatred and violence. He maintains that detesting violence and cruelty doesn’t mean that one truly believes that all people are equal – culturally, intellectually, creatively, or morally. Blow believes, as do I, that soft white supremacy is the very thing that overt racists need in order to pursue their agendas.

I contend that like most social conditions, white supremacy exists on a continuum. I am a black woman who can count the number of times I’ve encountered overt racism – the type that is unquestionably intentional. The softer varieties of white supremacy and racism are often absent intentional discrimination. It can be seen in the silence of whites in the face of mistreatment of people of color. It can be seen when grave racial and ethnic inequality is attributed to “poor choices” made by black and brown people. And it can be seen when white people lack interest in exploring, researching and understanding racial matters.

In her book, Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage, UCLA professor and legal scholar Daria Roithmayr provocatively argues that the openly racist policies implemented and enforced by the U.S. Government in the past provided a “return on investment” that has been locked in. She maintains that racial inequality lives on because white advantage functions as a powerful self-reinforcing monopoly, reproducing itself automatically from generation to generation irrespective of an individual’s intent.

I’ve written in the past and will likely write in the future on the ways that race and ethnic fracture are at the heart of the failure of the progressive movement to have any significant traction in American politics. Famed progressive activist and member of the Progressive Party, Anne Braden (who by the way was white), once said:

The battle is and always has been a battle for the hearts and minds of White people in this country. The fight against racism is our issue. It’s not something that we’re called on to help People of Color with. We need to become involved with it as if our lives depended on it because really, in truth, they do.

African Americans, Native Americans and the Latinx population in this country have always been involved in this fight as if our lives depend on it. So, in closing, my advice to any organization struggling to understand why it cannot successfully engage a more diverse membership – be it a church, an activist group, a school, an issue-based non-profit – look at where your commitment lies, look to your mission and your actions.

Has your organization demonstrated through messaging and actions that it understands the central role that race and ethnicity has played in building systems of advantage and disadvantage? Is your organization committed to dismantling these systems of inequality?

The test of whether or not your organization has done that will be reflected in the demographics of your membership. If your organization has been intentional, bold, and authentic on this front, you’ll see diversity when you look out at the faces of both your membership and its leaders.

So, where to begin? Here is a list of resources: