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Whites Will Never Be Able To Relate To The Black Experience
The struggle most white people have with understanding racism may also result from the fact they will never be able to experience or comprehend what it’s like to live in a Black body. While expounding upon this notion, Lorraine Devon Wilke, a writer for The Huffington Post, wrote the following: “They can want to. They can try. They can watch it, read about it; talk about it, blog about it. They can weep over its injustices, march in solidarity with its victims, use the right phrases and hashtags, even show homage for its music and culture. But just as non-parents can never fully understand the experience of actually being parents (forget the “my brother has kids” thing… it ain’t the same), so, too, can whites never fully grasp the day-to-day, can’t-turn-it-off, always-there experience of being [Black] in America.”
Most White People Don’t Understand The Meaning of Racism
Most people, especially whites, do not have a true understanding of racism. They are able to detect overt racism, but often confuse it with prejudice. Yet the more covert characteristic of structural racism is completely invisible to many white people. In Powernomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America, Dr. Claud Anderson writes, “Racism is wealth- and power-based competitive relationship between Blacks and non-Blacks. The sole purpose of racism is to support and ensure that the White majority and its ethnic subgroups continue to dominate and use Blacks as a means to produce wealth and power…True racism exists only when one group holds a disproportionate share of wealth and power over another group then uses those resources to marginalize, exploit, exclude and subordinate the weaker group. If a problem is not understood, it’s unlikely that it will be solved and may not even be acknowledged.”
