So you want to talk about racism

by Kai Cheng Thom

Visual by Alice Shen

The McGill Daily – January 9, 2014

To: Liberal White People
Everywhere, the World
Re: Talking about Racism and the Politics of Guilt and Love

“‘Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed,’ she said, ‘and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.’” Toni Morrison, Beloved

Dear Well-Intentioned Liberal White People (WILWP),

So you want to talk about racism. Well, you should know: it’s going to hurt. To talk the truth about race and racism is a kind of surgery which cannot be anesthetized, sterilized, made painless and easy to consume. You need to feel something. Many things, actually: anger, sadness, fear, guilt, resentment, envy, despair – because that is what real relationships with real human beings are like, and I want you to experience me as a real human being. I don’t want to be a tool, a doll, a fetish, a caricature, a charity case, a monster, or a capital-E Expert in Interracial Politics anymore. You cannot really love any of those things. And I want you to love me; it’s what you taught me to want. I dare you to listen. I dare you to love me.

As a writer, performer, student, and community member engaged in critical dialogue on race and racism, there are certain questions that I am often asked by white people in my life: Why am I responsible for something that my ancestors did (i.e. colonization, slavery, forced migration, cultural genocide)? How long is long enough to feel guilty? If white people are always getting it wrong, why can’t you just tell me how to not be racist? If I don’t want to be an oppressor, what is my place in the struggle for racial liberation?

WILWP, here’s the thing: if you can’t figure it out on your own, I got nothin’. Over the years I have certainly learned a lot of academic theory, a lot of critical history, a lot of postmodern terminological jargon, and if pressed, I could formulate answers to these questions. I could talk about the ways in which the history of European colonization of Asia, the Americas, and Africa continue to shape the socioeconomic realities of the present. I could pull out Peggy McIntosh’s list of white privileges. I could refer you to pre-eminent critical race theorists, and I could cite statistics.

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