Table of Contents Title PageIntroductionPreface BORN TO BELONGINGAWAKENINGSMIDDLE PASSAGEHIGHER LEARNINGLOUISIANA GODDAM* - *(WITHAPOLOGIES TO NINA SIMONE)PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTHOME AND AWAYCHOCOLATE PAIN, VANILLAINDIGNATIONPARENTHOODREDEMPTION

Copyright Page

INTRODUCTION

TO THE THIRD EDITION IT IS DIFFICULT for me to believe that nearlyseven years have passed since I began writingthis book’s first edition. But as I examine thecalendar on my desk and look across the roomat my daughters—now nearly eight and ten—Ifind it impossible to deny how long it’s been, andhow much has happened between then and now.

When I first thought of writing White Like Me,I never anticipated that it would strike the chordit seems to have struck with so many, that itwould be taught in hundreds of colleges, evenhigh schools, or that it would be read by so manywho would then let me know how the work hadaffected and even changed them.

In one case, I was informed that my words

had helped save a marriage. I felt pretty goodabout that until a few months later, at which pointI was told by someone else that my book hadhelped hasten her divorce. I apologized for anyrole I may have played in the dissolution of herrelationship, but was told not to worry, that it hadbeen for the best, and that it had taken my bookfor her and her now ex-husband to realize thattheir differences, rooted in racial identity and theirexperiences around racism, were too vast tobridge. Okay then, I guess you’re welcome,was all I could think to say. Not very creative,but it was the best I could come up with at thetime.

Yet, even as White Like Me has made suchan impact, like any book on a topic as fluid asrace, it runs the risk of becoming dated. Thecontours of the racial dialogue in the UnitedStates are constantly changing, so in order to stay

relevant, this volume needed yet anotherupdating, especially given the election of BarackObama as president in November 2008.Considering how quickly folks rushed topronounce the United States “post-racial” in thewake of Obama’s victory—after all, how can wehave a race problem, and how can there be whiteprivilege if a man of color can be electedpresident?—I knew almost as soon as he hadwon that I would need to revisit the main thesesof this book yet again. In the meantime I havewritten two other books challenging the post-racial thesis (Between Barack and a HardPlace and Colorblind), but given the shelf-life ofWhite Like Me, addressing some of the sameissues within these pages seems equallyimportant.

Though on the surface the election of a man ofcolor to the highest office in the land might

suggest the demise of racism as a persistentsocial force—and the subsequent death of whiteprivilege—in truth, it says nothing of the kind.Just as the election of women as heads of state inPakistan, India, Israel, or Great Britain (amongothers) hardly signaled the eradication of sexismin those places, so too the election of a blackman in the United States hardly speaks to theissue of racism facing 85 million people of colorhere. Individual success and accomplishmentsays little about larger institutional truth.

Additionally, and as I explained in BetweenBarack and a Hard Place, many who voted forBarack Obama in 2008 were persons who, bytheir own admission to pollsters, continue toadhere to racist stereotypes about blackAmericans. The fact that they were able to carveout an exception to their prejudices by viewingObama as differing from an otherwise negative

black norm may indicate that they are free fromthe all-consuming bigotry that was normative ingenerations past, but it hardly suggests a racialecumenism that extends to people of colorgenerally. If support for Obama was, in part, dueto his seeming “different” from other black men,we could even say that racism, albeit of a 2.0variety, was instrumental in helping him attractsupport from white voters.

Finally, let us recall that Barack Obamadownplayed issues of race within his campaign,rarely if ever spoke to concerns about racialinequity, and went out of his way to distancehimself from his former pastor, Rev. JeremiahWright, so as to curry favor with white voterswho found Wright’s condemnations of U.S.foreign policy and our history of racism troubling.Such truths suggest that in some ways, Obama’svictory was evidence of white privilege, rather

than a refutation of it. To the extent he has had toremain relatively silent about race matters lest hispolitical star be dimmed by a volcanic eruption ofwhite backlash, his success, given what wasrequired to attain it, stands as the ultimateconfirmation of ongoing white political power.

Since the election of Barack Obama, evidenceof white privilege has been even more ubiquitousthan before. With the emergence of the Tea Partymovement, the nation has been treated to imagesof thousands of mostly white, ultra-conservativeactivists surrounding lawmakers and screaming atthem to vote against health care reformlegislation, carrying guns to rallies just to showthey can, or spouting off about the potential needfor secession or even revolution. Needless tosay, if black or Latino activists (or ArabAmerican or Muslim activists angered by racialand religious profiling, post-9/11) were to

surround lawmakers and scream at them likepetulant children, one can only imagine how itwould be perceived by the public. They wouldbe seen as insurrectionaries, as terrorists, asthugs; but when older whites do it, they areviewed as patriots exercising their FirstAmendment rights. If people of color showed upto rallies armed, or were calling for revolution, itdoesn’t take much imagination to know howdifferently they would be viewed, compared towhites engaged in the same activities.

In the first two editions I chose to foregosimple chronology in telling this story. Mythinking at the time was that it was best to breakthe book down by themes, rather than toproceed linearly. In part this was because Igenerally prefer thematic discussions to thosedriven by a slavish devotion to a particulartimeline; further, it was because I wanted the

points herein to be crystal clear. I wanted toleave no doubt as to what I was saying, and itseemed as though telling stories under thematicheadings would better accomplish that goal thanto simply tell the stories and hope they wouldspeak for themselves. As much as this methodseemed to work at the time, I have recently cometo question the approach. Reading back over thebook this many years later, I found myselfwincing at the seemingly forced nature of it all.Yes, the themedriven narrative made things easy,both for me as a writer and for those reading thework. But something about it fails to satisfy; itsmixture of the narrative, memoir voice on the onehand, and the analytical, polemic voice on theother, meant that in the end neither voice was asstrong or clear as it could have been.

Mostly, what I realized as I read back overthe volume was that in some ways I hadn’t

stayed true to the purpose of the book, or theinitial impetus for it. I had written White Like Methanks to an admonition from people of color Iknew in New Orleans to “take inventory” of mylife, to get clear on why I cared so much aboutracism, to understand my own motivation forchallenging it. Until I did this, they insisted, mywork would be unfocused, my contributionsminimal, my willingness to stay in the struggletransitory at best. Get clear on your motivation,they told me, beyond the politics and theideological stuff that’s in your head. Figure outwhat it is about your heart and even soul thatcompels you.

So I began to explore that question and hadspent nearly twelve years on it before sittingdown to write this book the first time. By then,the answer was as clear as the sound of ouryoungest girl, a year old at the time, crying in the

night over the baby monitor in her room. When Ihad sat down and begun to take inventory, it hadbecome impossible to miss how race had beenimplicated year in and year out, all throughout thecourse of my existence. Hardly any aspect of mylife, from where I had lived to my education tomy employment history to my friendships, hadbeen free from the taint of racial inequity, fromracism, from whiteness. My racial identity hadshaped me from the womb forward. I had notbeen in control of my own narrative. It wasn’tjust race that was a social construct. So was I.

And as much as we all like to believe we’respecial (and God knows, white men areencouraged in this conceit well enough), I simplyfailed to accept that this story was mine alone.Although others will have experienced whitenessdifferently to various extents, I felt certain therewere aspects of my past that dovetailed with

those of others, and that if we could begin toexcavate some of that, perhaps we could breakthe seemingly intractable impasse between whitefolks and folks of color; perhaps we could movethe dialogue forward by coming to see ourselvesin the center of the problem, rather than seeingracism as some abstract sociological conceptabout which the black and brown must worry,but about which whites shouldn’t lose muchsleep. Only by coming to realize how thoroughlyracialized our white lives are can we begin to seethe problem as ours, and begin to take action tohelp solve it. By remaining oblivious to ourracialization we remain oblivious to the injusticethat stems from it, and we remain paralyzed whenit comes to responding to it in a constructivemanner.

This time, I’ve opted to tell these stories—many from the previous volumes and several that

had been left out—more or less chronologically,in an attempt to highlight the way that race flowsthroughout a life from the beginning. All thethemes discussed in the first two editions will stillfind exploration here, but they will do so within anarrative that is much more of a story than a merecollection of relatively disjointed reflections. Idon’t know if this will be a better or worseapproach than the last two. But I know that, fornow, it is the way I must tell the story. It is thevoice in which I need to speak. Life is livedchronologically, after all. So perhaps itsrecounting should be chronological too.

Thank you, all who have made the book asuccess thus far, and all those who are reading itnow for the first time. If you are among the latter,you are reading a much better book than yourpredecessors did. I hope you’ll find that it wasworth the wait.

Nashville, March 2011

PREFACE

“WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?” IT’S A QUESTION no one likes to hear,seeing as how it typically signifies an assumptionon the part of the questioner that something isterribly wrong, something that defies logic andbegs for an explanation.

It’s the kind of query one might get fromformer classmates on the occasion of one’stwenty-year high school reunion: “Dear God,what the hell happened to you?” As a generalrule, people don’t ask this question of thosewhom they consider to have dramaticallyimproved themselves physically, emotionally, orprofessionally. Instead, it is more often asked ofthose considered to be seriously damaged, as if

the only possible answer to the question wouldbe, “Well, I was dropped on my head as ababy,” to which the questioner would then reply,“Aha, I see.”

So whenever I’m asked this, I naturally recoilfor a moment, assuming that those inquiring aboutthe matter likely want to know what happenedto me, only so that they may, having obtained theanswer, carefully avoid at whatever cost having it(whatever it may be) happen to them. In mycase, however, the cynicism with which I greetthe question usually turns out to be unwarranted.Most of the persons who ask me “whathappened” seem to be asking less for reasons ofpassing judgment than for reasons of genuineconfusion.

As a white man, born and reared in a societythat has always bestowed upon me advantagesthat it has generally withheld from people of

color, I am not expected to think the way I do. Iam not supposed to speak against and agitate inopposition to racism and institutionalized whitesupremacy. Indeed, for people of color, it isoften shocking to see white people even thinkingabout race, let alone challenging racism. After all,we don’t have to spend much time contemplatingthe subject if we’d rather not, and white folkshave made something of a pastime out of ignoringracism, or at least refusing to call it out as a majorsocial problem to be remedied.

But for me, ignoring race and racism has neverbeen an option. Even when it would have beeneasier to turn away, there were too many forcesand circumstances pulling me back, compellingme to look at the matter square in the face—inmy face. Although white Americans often thinkwe’ve had few first-hand experiences with race,because most of us are so isolated from people

of color in our day-to-day lives, the reality is thatthis isolation is our experience with race. We areall experiencing race, because from the beginningof our lives we have been living in a racializedsociety, in which the color of our skin meanssomething socially, even while it remains largely amatter of biological and genetic irrelevance. Racemay be a scientific fiction—and given the almostcomplete genetic overlap between persons of thevarious so-called races, it appears to be just that—but it is a social fact that none of us can escapeno matter how much or how little we may speakof it. Just as there were no actual witches inSalem in 1692, and yet anti-witch persecutionwas frighteningly real, so too race can be afalsehood, even as racism continues to destroylives and, on the flipside, to advantage those whoare rarely its targets.

A few words about terminology: When I

speak of “whites” or “white folks,” I am referringto those persons, typically of European descent,who by virtue of skin color or perhaps nationalorigin and culture are able to be perceived as“white,” as members of the dominant racial groupin the Western world. I do not consider the whiterace to be a real thing, biologically, as modernscience pretty well establishes that there are notruly distinct races, genetically speaking, withinthe human species. But the white race certainlyhas meaning in social terms, and it is in that sensethat I use the concept here.

As it turns out, this last point is more importantthan you might think. Almost immediately uponpublication, this book’s first edition came underfire from various white supremacists and neo-Nazis, who launched a fairly concerted effort todiscredit it, and me as the author. They sought todo this by jamming the review boards at

Amazon.com with harsh critiques, none of whichdiscussed the content—in all likelihood none ofthem had read the book—but which amounted toad hominem attacks against me as a Jew. Asseveral explained, being Jewish disqualifies mefrom being white, or writing about myexperiences as a white person, since Jews are, totheir way of thinking, a distinct race of evildoersthat seeks to eradicate Aryan stock from the faceof the earth.

Of course, on the one hand (and ignoring for asecond the Hitlerian undertones), it is absurd tothink that uniquely “Jewish genes” render Jewsseparate from “real” whites, despite our commonand recent European ancestry. And it’s evenmore ridiculous to think that such genes fromone-fourth of one’s family, as with mine, cancancel out the three-quarters Anglo-Celticcontribution made by the rest of my ancestors.

But in truth, the argument is irrelevant, given howI am using the concept of whiteness here. Even ifthere were something biologically distinct aboutJews, this would hardly alter the fact that mostJews, especially in the United States, aresufficiently light-skinned and assimilated so as tobe fully functional as whites in the eyes ofauthority. This wasn’t always the case, but it isnow. American Jews are, by and large, able toreap the benefits of whiteness and white racialprivilege, vis-à-vis people of color, in spite of ourJewishness, whether viewed in racial or culturalterms. My “claiming to be white,” as onedetractor put it, was not an attempt on my part tojoin the cool kids. I wasn’t trying to fool anyone.

Whiteness is more about how you’re likely tobe viewed and treated in a white supremacistsociety than it is about what you are, in anymeaningful sense. This is why even some very

light-skinned folks of color have been able toaccess white privilege over the years by passingas white or being misperceived as white.Whiteness is, however much clichéd the sayingmay be, largely a social construct. This is a bookabout that construct and how it plays out in thelarger culture. It is not a scientific treatise, andthus it is quite impervious to whatever sciencemay or may not have to say about race, now orin the future.

As for the concept of privilege, here too,clarification is in order. I am not claiming, nor doI believe, that all whites are wealthy andpowerful. We live not only in a racialized society,but also in a class system, a patriarchal system,and one of straight supremacy, able-bodiedsupremacy, and Christian hegemony. These otherforms of privilege, and the oppressionexperienced by those who can’t access them,

mediate but never fully eradicate something likewhite privilege. So I realize that wealthy whitesare more powerful than poor ones, white menmore powerful than white women, able-bodiedwhites more powerful than those with disabilities,and straight and cisgendered whites (the latterbeing a term for those who are nottransgendered) more powerful than gay, lesbian,bisexual, or transgendered whites.

But despite the fact that white privilege playsout differently for different people, depending onthese other identities, the fact remains thatwhiteness matters and carries great advantage.So, for example, although whites are often poor,their poverty does not alter the fact that relativeto poor and working-class persons of color, theytypically have a leg up. In fact, studies suggestthat working-class whites are typically better offin terms of assets and net worth than even

middle-class blacks with far higher incomes, dueto past familial advantages. No one privilegesystem trumps all others every time, but nomatter the ways in which individual whites mayface obstacles on the basis of non-racial factors,our race continues to elevate us over similarlysituated persons of color.

The notion of privilege is a relative concept aswell as an absolute one, a point that is oftenmisunderstood. This is why I can refer to myselfas a “privileged son,” despite coming from adysfunctional family that was not even close towealthy. Relative to persons of color, whitesreceive certain head starts and advantages, noneof which are canceled out because of factors likeclass, gender, or sexual orientation. Likewise,heterosexuals receive privileges relative to LGBTfolks, none of which are canceled out by thepoverty that many straight people experience. So

too, rich folks have certain privileges on the basisof wealth, none of which vanish like mist justbecause some of those wealthy persons aredisabled. While few of us are located only inprivileged groups, and even fewer are locatedonly in marginalized or oppressed groups—weare all occasionally privileged and occasionallytargets—the fact remains that our status asoccasional targets does not relieve the obligationto address the ways in which we receive unjustadvantages at the expense of others. As myfriend and colleague Jacqui Wade puts it, “We allhave a couple of nickels in the quarter.” Thisbook is about my nickels. They are not the onlyones, but they are the only ones over which I cantake ownership.

There would be nothing wrong with someonewriting a book like this and dealing only withmale privilege, straight privilege, class privilege,

Christian privilege, or able-bodied privilege.Likewise, those in other countries could writeabout privilege and oppression systems there:Japanese privilege vis-à-vis ethnic Koreans andthe Buraku caste in Japan, upper-caste privilegein India and the oppression of the Dalits there, orJewish privilege in Israel and the institutionalizedmistreatment of the Palestinians. Those would allbe illuminating. But this book is about whiteprivilege in the United States, because it is realand must be confronted. It is not more importantthan the other types of privilege, but it isimportant enough to merit its own examination.

Once again, I would like to thank my loving,supportive, and patient wife, Kristy, for all shehas brought to my life. Also, I have to thank ourtwo wonderful daughters, Ashton and Rachel. Ihope that in my desire for a better world for all, Ihaven’t neglected the world that is closest to

home and to my heart. In that regard, I will try todo better.

I also need to thank a number of other people,including my parents, LuCinda and MichaelWise, and my friends, most notably Albert Jones,my best friend for roughly thirty-five years, for allof your support and wisdom, and for serving as asounding board for my politics all these years.And finally, thanks to everyone who has inspired,supported, and influenced my work as a writer,activist, and aspiring antiracist ally. These include,in no particular order: Bob Zellner, DorothyZellner, Anne Braden, Lance Hill, Larry Powell,Ron King, Ron Chisom, Barbara Major, DavidBillings, Diana Dunn, Marjorie Freeman, SharonMartinas, Chris Crass, James Bernard, FrancieKendall, Michael Eric Dyson, Derrick Bell,Kevin Powell, “Coach” Jimmy Coit Jackson,Angela Davis, Ray Winbush, Molly Secours,

Betita Martinez, Felicia Gustin, Jean Caiani,Lauren Parker-Kucera, Catherine Wong, EddieMoore Jr., Victor Lewis, Michael Benitez, HughVasquez, Joe Feagin, Ted Quandt, KimberleCrenshaw, Peggy McIntosh, Jesse Villalobos,Judy Watts, Donna Johnigan, Olayeela Daste,Haunani Kay-Trask, Justin Podur, BrianAwehali, Richard Davis, Mab Segrest, HoraceSeldon, Paul Marcus, Robert Jensen, RandallRobinson, Paul Kivel, Rose Jackson, CarolineBlackwell, Rev. Johnny Youngblood, and theentire St. Paul Community Baptist Church familyin Brooklyn.

BORN TO BELONGING

“People who imagine that historyflatters them (as it does, indeed, sincethey wrote it) are impaled on theirhistory like a butterfly on a pin andbecome incapable of seeing or changingthemselves, or the world. This is theplace in which it seems to me, most whiteAmericans find themselves. Impaled.They are dimly, or vividly, aware thatthe history they have fed themselves ismainly a lie, but they do not know howto release themselves from it, and theysuffer enormously from the resultingpersonal incoherence.”

—JAMES BALDWIN, “THE WHITE MAN’S GUILT” Ebony,

August 1965 IT IS NOTHING if not difficult to know whereto begin when you first sit down to trace the storyof your life. Does your life begin on the day youcame into this world, or does it begin before that,with the lives of your family members, withoutwhom you would never have existed?

For me, there is only one way to answer thequestion. My story has to begin before the day Ientered the world, October 4, 1968, for I did notemerge onto a blank slate of neutralcircumstance. My life was already a canvas uponwhich older paint had begun to dry, long before Iarrived. My parents were already who theywere, with their particular life experiences, and Iwas to inherit those, whether I liked it or not.

When we first draw breath outside the womb,we inhale tiny particles of all that came before,both literally and figuratively. We are nevermerely individuals; we are never alone; we arealways in the company of others, of the past, ofhistory. We become part of that history just assurely as it becomes part of us. There is noescaping it; there are merely different levels ofcoping. It is how we bear the past that matters,and in many ways it is all that differentiates us.

I was born amidst great turmoil, none of whichhad been of my own making, but which I couldhardly have escaped in any event. My motherhad carried me throughout all of the greatupheavals of that tumultuous year, 1968—perhaps one of the most explosive andmonumental years in twentieth century America.She had carried me through the assassinations ofMartin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy,

through the decision by President Johnson not toseek re-election in the midst of the unfoldingmurderous quagmire in Southeast Asia, andthrough the upheaval in the streets of Chicagoduring that year’s Democratic Party convention. Ithink that any child born in 1968 must, almost bydefinition, be especially affected by the historythat surrounded him or her upon arrival—therewas too much energy floating around not to haveleft a mark.

Once born, I inherited my family and all thatcame with it. I also inherited my nation and allthat came with that; and I inherited my “race” andall that came with that too. In all three cases, theinheritance was far from inconsequential. Indeed,all three inheritances were connected, intertwinedin ways that are all too clear today. To be thechild of Michael Julius Wise and LuCinda Anne(McLean) Wise meant something; to be born in

the richest and most powerful nation on earthmeant something; and to be white, especially inthe United States, most assuredly meantsomething—a lot of things, truth be told. Whatthose inheritances meant, and still mean, is thesubject of this inquiry, especially the last of these:What does it mean to be white in a nationcreated for the benefit of people like you?

We don’t often ask this question, mostlybecause we don’t have to. Being a member ofthe majority, the dominant group, allows one toignore how race shapes one’s life. For those ofus called white, whiteness simply is. Whitenessbecomes, for us, the unspoken, uninterrogatednorm, taken for granted, much as water can betaken for granted by a fish.

In high school, whites are sometimes asked tothink about race, but rarely about whiteness. Inmy case, we read John Howard Griffin’s classic

book, Black Like Me, in which the authorrecounts his experiences in the Jim Crow Southin 1959 after taking a drug that turned his skinbrown and allowed him to experience apartheidfor a few months from the other side of the colorline. It was a good book, especially for its time.Yet upon re-reading it ten years ago, onestatement made by the author, right at thebeginning, stuck in my craw. As Griffin put it:

How else except by becoming a Negrocould a white man hope to learn the truth . .. The best way to find out if we hadsecond-class citizens, and what their plightwas, would be to become one of them.

Though I hadn’t seen the trouble with the

statement at sixteen when I had read Black LikeMe during the summer before my junior year,

now as an adult, and as someone who had beenthinking about racism and white privilege forseveral years, it left me cold. There were twoobvious problems with Griffin’s formulation: first,whites could have learned the truth by listening toreal black people—not just white guyspretending to be black until the drugs wore off;and second, we could learn the truth by lookingclearly at our own experiences as whites.

Although whiteness may mean different thingsin different places and at different times, one thingI feel confident saying is that to be white in theUnited States, regardless of regional origin,economic status, sex, gender identity, religiousaffiliation, or sexual orientation, is to have certaincommon experiences based upon race. Theseexperiences have to do with advantage, privilege(relative to people of color), and belonging. Weare, unlike people of color, born to belonging,

and have rarely had to prove ourselves deservingof our presence here. At the very least, our rightto be here hasn’t really been questioned for along time.

While some might insist that whites have awide range of experiences, and so it isn’t fair tomake generalizations about whites as a group,this is a dodge, and not a particularly artful one.Of course we’re all different, sort of likesnowflakes. None of us have led exactly thesame life. But irrespective of one’s particularhistory, all whites born before, say, 1964 wereplaced above all persons of color when it cameto the economic, social, and political hierarchiesthat were to form in the United States, withoutexception. This formal system of racialpreference was codified from the 1600s until atleast the mid-to-late ’60s, when the nationpassed civil rights legislation, at least theoretically

establishing equality in employment, voting, andhousing opportunity.

Prior to that time we didn’t even pretend to bea nation based on equality. Or rather we didpretend, but not very well; at least not to thepoint where the rest of the world believed it, orto the point where people of color in this countryever did. Most white folks believed it, but that’ssimply more proof of our privileged status. Ourancestors had the luxury of believing those thingsthat black and brown folks could never take asgivens: all that stuff about life, liberty, and thepursuit of happiness. Several decades later,whites still believe it, while people of color havelittle reason to so uncritically join the celebration,knowing as they do that there is still a vast gulfbetween who we say we are as a nation andpeople, and who we really are.

Even white folks born after the passage of civil

rights laws inherit the legacy of that long historyinto which their forbears were born; after all, theaccumulated advantages that developed in asystem of racism are not buried in a hole with thepassage of each generation. They continue intothe present. Inertia is not just a property of thephysical universe.

In other words, there is enough commonalityabout the white experience to allow us to makesome general statements about whiteness andnever be too far from the mark. Returning to thesnowflake analogy, although as with snowflakes,no two white people are exactly alike, fewsnowflakes have radically different experiencesfrom those of the average snowflake. Likewise,we know a snowflake when we see one, and inthat recognition we intuit, almost alwayscorrectly, something about its life experience. Sotoo with white folks.

AT FIRST GLANCE, mine would not appearto have been a life of privilege. Far from affluent,my father was an on-again, off-again, stand-upcomedian and actor, and my mother has workedfor most of my life in marketing research.

My parents were young when they had me.My father was a few months shy of twenty-twoand my mother had just turned twenty-one whenI was conceived, as legend has it in a BossierCity, Louisiana, hotel. Interestingly, my parentshad opted to crash there during one of myfather’s stand-up tours, because having first triedto get a room in nextdoor Shreveport, theywitnessed the night manager at a hotel there denya room to a black traveler. Incensed, they optedto take their business elsewhere. Little could theyhave known that said business would involvesetting in motion the process by which I would

come into the world. In other words, I wasconceived, appropriately, during an act ofantiracist protest.

My parents had dated off and on since eighthgrade, ever since my father knocked over a stackof books that my mom had neatly piled up in themiddle school library. My mom, having little timefor foolishness, had glared at him, her flaming redhair and single upraised eyebrow suggesting thathe had best pick them up, and then perhaps planon marrying and starting a family. The relationshiphad been rocky though. My mom’s folks nevertook well to my dad, in part because of the largecultural gap between the two families. The Wiseswere Jews, a bit too cosmopolitan and, well,Jewish, for the liking of the McLeans. This is notto say that my mom’s parents were anti-Semiticin any real sense. They weren’t. But as with theirviews on race, the McLeans were just provincial

enough to make the thought of an interfaithrelationship difficult to swallow.

So too, they also worried (and in this theycouldn’t have been more on the mark), that myfather simply wasn’t a very suitable suitor fortheir little girl. Besides being Jewish, the problemwas him. Had he been an aspiring doctor orlawyer, the McLeans might well have adoredhim. But a man whose dreams were ofperforming in comedy clubs? Or acting? Oh no,that would never do. And his father, though abusinessman, owned liquor stores, andaccording to rumor, he might know and even befriends with mobsters. After all, weren’t allbooze-peddlers mafiaconnected, or in some waydisreputable, like Joe Kennedy?

In 1964, right before my parents were to begintheir senior year of high school in Nashville, mymom’s folks moved the family to West Virginia,

at least in part because West Virginia was farfrom Mike Wise. After graduation, my momwent to a two-year women’s college in Virginia,while my dad went West and obtained entranceto the prestigious acting program at PasadenaPlayhouse. But within two years they were backtogether, my dad having given up on Californiawhen he realized that being discovered took timeand more effort than he was prepared to put in.They married in May 1967, and spent the betterpart of the next year traveling around the countrywhile my dad did comedy, finally ending up inthat Bossier City Howard Johnson’s, where theirbodies and the origins of my story would collide.My mom pregnant, it was time to move homeand begin a family, and so they did.

All throughout my childhood, my parents’income would have fallen somewhere in the rangeof what is politely considered working class, even

though their jobs were not traditional working-class jobs. Had it not been for the financial helpof my grandparents, it is likely that we wouldhave been forced to rely on food stamps atvarious points along the way; most certainly wewould have qualified for them in several of myyears as a child. For a while my father had prettyconsistent work, doing comedy or dinner theatre,but the pay was rotten. By the time I was insecond grade, his employment was becomingmore spotty, forcing my mom into the paidworkforce to help support the family.

I spent the first eighteen years of my life in aperfectly acceptable but inadequately maintained850-square-foot apartment with dubiousplumbing, a leaky air conditioner, certainly nodishwasher or washing machine, and floor-boards near the sliding glass door in my bedroomthat were perpetually rotting, allowing roly-polies

or slugs to occasionally find their way inside. Thewalls stand out in my mind as well: thin enough tohear every fight my parents ever had and to cavein easily under the weight of my father’s fists,whenever the mood struck him to ventilate theplaster, as happened with some regularity. Buteven before the busted-up walls or leaky faucetsat the Royal Arms Apartments, there had alreadybeen quite a bit of family water under theproverbial bridge. Examining the source of thatstream provides substantial insight into theworkings of privilege, and the ways in which evenwhites who lived in modest surroundings, as Idid, had been born to belonging nonetheless.

Even if you don’t directly inherit materialadvantages from your family, there is somethingempowering about the ability to trace yourlineage back hundreds of years, as so manywhites but so few persons of color can. In 1977,

my third grade teacher encouraged us to traceour family trees, inspired by the miniseries“Roots,” and apparently unaware of howinjurious it might be for black students to makethe effort, only to run head first into the crime ofslavery and its role in their family background.The exercise provided, for the whites at least, asense of pride, even rootedness; not so much forthe African American students.

Genealogy itself is something of a privilege,coming far more easily to those of us for whomenslavement, conquest, and dispossession of ourland has not been our lot. Genealogy offers asense of belonging and connectedness to otherswith firm, identifiable pasts—pasts that directlytrace the rise and fall of empires, and whichcorrespond to the events we learned about inhistory classes, so focused were they on thenarratives of European peoples. Even when we

personally have no desire to affiliate with those inour past about whom we learn, simply knowingwhence you came has the effect of linking you insome great chain of mutuality. It is enabling, if farfrom ennobling. It offers a sense of psychologicalcomfort, a sense that you belong in this storyknown as the history of the world. It is to makereal the famous words, “This land is my land.”

When I sat down a few years ago to examinemy various family histories, I have to admit to asense of excitement as I peeled back layer uponlayer, generation after generation. It was like agame, the object of which was to see how farback you could go before hitting a dead end.Thanks to the hard work of the fine folks atAncestry.com, on several branches of my familytree, I had no trouble going back hundreds, eventhousands of years. In large measure this wasbecause those branches extended through to

royal lineage, where records were keptmeticulously, so as to make sure everyone knewto whom the spoils of advantage were owed ineach new generation.

Understand, my claim to royal lineage heremeans nothing. After all, since the number ofone’s grandparents doubles in each generation,by the time you trace your lineage back even fivehundred years (assuming generations of roughlytwenty-five years each), you will have had asmany as one million grandparents at someremove. Even with pedigree collapse—the termfor the inevitable overlap that comes whencousins marry cousins, as happened with allfamilies if you go back far enough—the numberof persons to whom you’d be connected by thetime you got back a thousand years would still beseveral million. That said, I can hardly deny thatas I discovered those linkages, even though they

were often quite remote—and despite the factthat the persons to whom I discovered aconnection were often despicable characters whostole land, subjugated the masses, andslaughtered others in the name of nationalism orGod—there was still something about theprocess that made me feel more real, more alive,and even more purposeful. To explore thepassing of time as it relates to world history andthe history of your own people, howeverremoved from you they may be, is like puttingtogether a puzzle, several pieces of which hadpreviously been missing; it’s a gift that really can’tbe overstated. And for those prepared to look atthe less romantic side of it all, genealogy alsomakes it possible to uncover and then examineone’s inherited advantages.

Going back a few generations on my mother’sside, for instance, we have the Carter family,

traceable to John Carter, born in 1450 inKempston, Bedfordshire, England. It would behis great-great-greatgrandson, William, whowould bring his family to the Virginia Colony inthe early 1630s, just a few of twenty-thousand orso Puritans who came to America between 1629and 1642, prior to the shutting down ofemigration by King Charles I at the outset of theEnglish Civil War.

The Carters would move inland after theirarrival, able to take advantage in years to comeof one of the New World’s first affirmative actionprograms, known as the “headright” system,under which male heads of household willing tocross the Atlantic and come to Virginia weregiven fifty acres of land that had previouslybelonged to one of at least fourteen indigenousnations whose members had lived there.

Although the racial fault lines between those of

European and African descent hadn’t been thatdeep in the earliest years of the Virginia Colony—race-based slavery wasn’t in place yet, andamong indentured servants there were typicallymore Europeans than Africans—all that wouldbegin to change in the middle of the seventeenthcentury. Beginning in the 1640s, the colonybegan assigning blacks to permanentenslavement; then in the 1660s, they declaredthat all children born of enslaved mothers wouldbe slaves, in perpetuity, themselves. That samedecade, Virginia announced that no longer wouldAfricans converted to Christianity be immune toenslavement or servitude. Then, in the wake ofBacon’s Rebellion in 1676, during whichEuropean and African laborers joined forces tooverthrow the government of GovernorBerkeley, elites began to pass a flurry of lawsintended to limit black freedom, elevate whites,

and divide and conquer any emerging cross-racial alliances between the two groups.

In 1682, the colony codified in law that allwhites, no matter their condition of temporaryservitude, were to be seen as separate and apartfrom African slaves, and that they would enjoycertain rights and privileges off-limits to the latter,including due process in disputes with theirmasters, and the right to redress if those mastersabused them. Furthermore, once released fromindenture, white servants would be able to claimup to fifty acres of land with which to begin theirnew lives. Ultimately, indentured servitude wouldbe abolished in the early eighteenth century,replaced by a dramatic upsurge in chattel slavery.Blacks, along with “mulattoes, Indians, andcriminals,” would be banned from holding publicor ecclesiastical office after 1705, and the killingof a rebellious slave would no longer be deemed

murder; rather, according to Virginia law, theevent would be treated “as if such accident hadnever happened.”

The Carters, as with many of the Deanes(another branch of my mother’s family), lived inVirginia through all of this period when whitenesswas being legally enshrined as a privileged spacefor the first time. And they were there in 1800,too—like my fourth great grandfather, WilliamM. Carter—when a planned rebellion by ThomasProsser’s slave, Gabriel, in Henrico County, wasfoiled thanks to other slaves exposing the plot.As a result, Gabriel was hanged, all free blacks inthe state were forced to leave, or else face re-enslavement, and all education or training ofslaves was made illegal. Paranoia over theGabriel conspiracy, combined with the near-hysterical reaction to the Haitian revolution underway at that point, which would expel the French

from the island just a few years later, led to newracist crackdowns and the extension of still moreadvantages and privileges to whites like those inmy family.

Then there were the Neelys, the family of mymaternal great-grandmother, who can be tracedto Edward Neely, born in Scotland in 1745, whocame to America shortly before the birth of hisson, also named Edward, in 1770. The Neelyswould move from New York’s Hudson Valley toKentucky, where Jason Neely, my third great-grandfather, was born in 1805. The land onwhich they would settle, though it had been thesite of no permanent indigenous community bythat time, had been hunting land used in commonby the Shawnee and Cherokee. Although theIroquois had signed away all rights to the landthat would become Kentucky in the Treaty ofFort Stanwix in 1768, the Shawnee had been no

party to the treaty, and rejected its terms; not thattheir rejection would matter much, as ultimatelythe area came under the control of whites, andbegan to produce substantial profits for farmerslike Jason Neely. By 1860, three years after theSupreme Court in its Dred Scott decisionannounced that blacks could never be citizens,even if free, and “had no rights which the whiteman was bound to respect,” Jason hadaccumulated eleven slaves, ranging in age fromforty down to two—a number that was quitesignificant by local and even regional standardsfor the “Upper South.”

And then we have the two primary, parentalbranches of my family: the McLeans and theWises.

The McLeans trace their lineage to around1250, and at one point were among the mostprosperous Highland clans in Scotland, but

having allied themselves with Charles EdwardStuart (claimant to the thrones of England,Ireland, and Scotland), they lost everything whenStuart (known as Bonnie Prince Charlie) wasdefeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. TheMcLeans, as with many of the Highlanders,supported the attempt to restore the Stuart familyto the thrones from which it had been deposed in1688. Once the royalists were defeated and theBonnie Prince was forced to sneak out ofScotland dressed as an Irish maid, the writingbegan to appear on the wall for the McLeans andmany of the Highland Scots who had supportedhim.

With that, family patriarch Ephraim McLean(my fifth great-grandfather) set out for America,settling in Philadelphia before moving South in1759. Once there, Ephraim would be grantedover twelve thousand acres of land in North

Carolina and Tennessee that had previouslybelonged to Catawba and Cherokee Indians, andwhich had been worked by persons of Africandescent for over a century, without the right ofthe latter to own so much as their names.Although the family version of the story is thatEphraim received these grants deservedly, aspayment for his service in the Revolutionary War,there is something more than a bit unsatisfyingabout this narrative. While Ephraim served withdistinction—he was wounded during the Battle ofKing’s Mountain, recognized as among the war’smost pivotal campaigns—it is also true that atleast 5,000 blacks served the AmericanRevolution, and virtually none of them, no matterthe distinction with which they served, receivedland grants. Indeed, four out of five blacks whoserved failed to receive even their freedom fromenslavement as a reward.

Ephraim’s ability to fight for the revolution wasitself, in large part, because of white privilege.Although the Continental Congress authorized theuse of blacks in the army beginning in 1777, nosouthern militia with the exception of that inMaryland allowed them to serve. Congress,cowed by the political strength of slave owners,as well as threats by leaders in South Carolina toleave the war if slaves were armed and allowedto fight, refused to press the issue. As such, mostblacks would be kept from service, and deniedthe post-war land grants for which they wouldotherwise have been eligible.

In the early 1780s, Ephraim became one ofthe founding residents of Nashville, and served asa trustee and treasurer for the first college west ofthe Cumberland Mountains, Davidson Academy.On the board with him were several prominentresidents of the area including a young Andrew

Jackson, in whose ranks Ephraim’s grandsonwould later serve during the 1814 Battle of NewOrleans, and alongside whom his greatnephew,John, would serve during the massacre of CreekIndians at Horseshoe Bend.

Ephraim’s son, Samuel (my fourth great-grandfather), was a substantial landowner, havinginherited property from his dad. Although therecords are unclear as to whether or not Ephraimhad owned slaves, Samuel most certainly did,owning at least a half-dozen by the time of hisdeath in 1850.

It has always fascinated me how families likemine have sought to address the owning of otherhuman beings. Because it is impossible to ignorethe subject altogether, those descended fromslave owners opt instead to rationalize or smoothover the unpleasantness, so as to maintain theconvenient fictions about our families to which we

have so often become tethered. And so, in theMcLean family history, compiled by a cousin ofmine several years ago, slave-ownership isdiscussed in terms that strive mightily to normalizethe activity and thereby prevent the reader fromfeeling even a momentary discomfort with thisdetour in an otherwise straightforward narrativeof upright moral behavior. So we learn, forexample, that Samuel McLean, my fourth great-grandfather, “owned much land and slaves, andwas a man of considerable means.” This is statedwith neither an inordinate amount of pride norregret, but merely in the matter-of-fact stylebefitting those who are trying to be honestwithout confronting the implications of theirhonesty. Say it quickly, say it simply, and moveon to something more appetizing: sort of likeacknowledging the passing of gas in a crowdedroom, but failing to admit that you were the

author.A few pages later, the reader is then treated to

a reproduction of Samuel McLean’s will, whichreads, among other things:

I give and bequeath unto my loving wife,Elizabeth, my Negro woman, named Dicey,to dispose of at her death as she may thinkproper, all my household and kitchenfurniture, wagons, horses, cattle, hogs,sheep, and stock of every kind, except asmay be necessary to defray the expense ofthe first item above.

In other words, Elizabeth should sell whatevermust be sold in order to hold on to the slavewoman, for how would she possibly survivewithout her? But there is more:

I also give the use and possession of, duringher natural life, my two Negroes, Jerry andSilvey. To my daughter Sarah Amanda herchoice of horses and two cows and calves,and if she marry in the lifetime of my wifeshe is to enjoy and receive an equal share ofthe property from the tillage, rent and use ofthe aforesaid 106 acres of land andNegroes Jerry and Silvey, that she may bethe more certain of a more comfortableexistence.

Furthermore, if Sarah were to marry before

the death of her mother, she and her husbandwere to remain on the property with Elizabeth soas to continue to benefit “from the land andNegroes.” However, if mom were to die beforethe wedding of Sarah, then the daughter wasinstructed to sell either the land or the slaves and

split the proceeds among her siblings. Either way,Dicey, Jerry, and Silvey would remaincommodities to be sure. Choosing freedom forthem was never an option, for in that case, theMcLeans might have to learn to do things forthemselves: they might have to wash their ownclothes, grow their own food, nurse their ownwounds, make their own beds, suckle their ownbabies, and chop their own wood, all of whichwould make them less “certain of a morecomfortable existence,” so it was out of thequestion.

To his son, Samuel D. McLean, Sam Seniorbequeathed “a Negro boy named Sim,” whowould then be handed down, not unlike anarmoire, to his son John, my third great-grandfather. Then, according to family legend(and in what can only be considered theMargaret Mitchell version of the McLean’s

history), Sim went happily off to the Civil Warwith his master. What’s more, we even havedialogue for this convenient plot twist, as Simexclaims (and I’m sure this is a direct quote,transcribed faithfully at the time), “I’ve taken careof Mr. John all his life and I’m not going to lethim go off to war without me.” Cue theharmonica. For his loyalty, we learn that “Sim gota little farm to retire on because the McLeansknew he would not get a pension of any kind.”No indeed, as property rarely receives thebenefit of its very own 401(k) plan.

To his daughters, Sam McLean gave the slavewoman Jenny and her child, and the slave womanManerva and her child, and in both cases “anyfurther increase,” which is an interesting andchillingly dehumanizing way to refer to futurechildren. But we are to think nothing of thissubterfuge in the case of the children of Manerva

or Jenny. We are to keep telling ourselves thatthey are not people, and we are to keeprepeating this mantra, no matter how much theylook like people. Pay no attention to such smalland trivial details.

Though many would excuse the barbarity ofenslavement by suggesting that such an institutionmust be judged by the standards of its own time,rather than today, I make no such allowance, andfind it obscene when others do so. It is simply nottrue that “everyone back then felt that way,” orsupported slavery as an institution. Those whowere enslaved were under no illusion that theircondition was just. As such, and assuming thatthe slave owner had the capacity for rational andmoral thought on par with his property, there isno excuse for whites, any whites, not to haveunderstood this basic truth as well. Furthermore,even if we were only to consider the views of

whites to be important—a fundamentally racistposition but one we may indulge for the sake ofargument—the fact would remain that even manywhites opposed slavery, and not only on practicalbut also on moral grounds.

Among those who gave the lie to the notion ofwhite unanimity—which notion has served tominimize the culpability of slave owners—we findAngelina and Sarah Grimké, John Fee, EllsberryAmbrose, John Brown (and his entire family),and literally thousands more whose names arelost to history. Indeed, if we look hard enoughwe find at least one such person in my ownfamily, Elizabeth Angel, whose opposition to theinstitution of slavery led her to convince her ownfamily to free their chattel and to opposeenslavement at every turn. Though Elizabeth’sconnection to the McLeans—her daughter wasthe wife of my great-great grandfather, John

Lilburn McLean—and her opposition to aninstitution in which they were implicated mightseem worthy of some exploration, in the officialfamily history it is missing altogether. Rather thanhold Elizabeth up as a role model for her bravery(which would have had the effect of condemningthe rest of the family by comparison), the cousinwho compiled the McLean biography passedover such details in favor of some random andmeaningless commentary about the loveliness ofher haberdashery, or some such thing.

But no excuses, no time-boundrationalizations, and no paeans to our ancestors’kind and generous natures or how they “lovedtheir slaves as though they were family” can makeit right. Our unwillingness to hold our people andourselves to a higher moral standard—a standardin place at least since the time of Moses, for itwas he to whom God supposedly gave those

commandments including the two about stealingand killing—brings shame to us today. Itcompounds the crime by constituting a new one:the crime of innocence claimed, against all visibleevidence to the contrary.

In truth, even those family members whodidn’t own other human beings had beenimplicated in the nation’s historic crimes. Thiswas true, indeed, for most any southern family inthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Stateauthorities made sure of that, by passing laws thatenlisted the lower-income and middling whites inthe service of white supremacy. In 1753,Tennessee passed its Patrol Act, which requiredwhites to search slave quarters four times eachyear for guns or other contraband. By the turn ofthe century, and at which time large parts of myown family had made the trek to the state, thesesearches had been made into monthly affairs. By

1806, most all white men were serving on regularslave patrols for which they were paid a dollarper shift, and five dollars as a bonus for eachrunaway slave they managed to catch.

Throughout the period of my family’s settling inmiddle Tennessee, laws required that all whitescheck the passes of blacks they encountered tomake sure they weren’t runaway slaves. Anywhite refusing to go along faced severepunishment. With no record of such racialapostasy having made it into our family lore—andsurely such an example of brazen defiance wouldhave been hard to keep quiet had it occurred—itseems safe to say that the McLeans, the Deanes,the Neelys, and the Carters all went along,regardless of their direct financial stake in themaintenance of the chattel system.

Likewise, although whites were members ofnearly thirty antislavery societies in Tennessee by

1827, there is nothing to suggest that any of myfamily belonged to one. Nor is there anything toindicate that my kin objected to the uprooting ofthe Cherokee in the 1830s, even though manywhites in the eastern part of the state did. Andwhen Tennessee’s free blacks were stripped ofthe right to vote in 1834, or when the first JimCrow laws were passed, also in Tennessee, in1881, there is nothing in our family history thatwould portend an objection of any kind. Inreading over family documents, handed-downstories and tales of all sorts, it is nothing if notjarring to note that race is almost completelyabsent from their discussions, which is to say thatfor so many, white supremacy was so taken forgranted as to be hardly worth a fleeting momentof consideration, let alone the raising of one’svoice in objection. You can read their accountsof the time, and never know that you were

reading about families in the United States, asociety of institutionalized racial terror, wherethere were lynchings of black men taking placeweekly, where the bodies of these men would benot merely hanged from trees but also mutilated,burned with blowtorches, the ears and fingerslopped off to be sold as souvenirs.

That was the way this country was when myfamily (and many of yours) were coming up. Andmost white folks did nothing to stop it. Theyknew exactly what was going on—lynchingswere advertised openly in newspapers much likethe county fair—and yet the white voices raisedin opposition to such orgiastic violence were soweak as to be barely audible. We knew, but weremained silent, collaborating until the end.

In marked contrast to this tale, in whichEuropean immigrants came to the new countryand were immediately welcomed into the

emerging club of whiteness, we have the story ofthe Wises (not our original name), whosepatriarchal figure, Jacob, came to the UnitedStates from Russia to escape the Czar’soppression of Jews. Theirs was similar to theimmigrant stories of so many other AmericanJews from Eastern Europe. You’ve heard thedrill: they came here with nothing but eighteencents and a ball of lint in their pockets, theysaved and saved, worked and worked, andeventually climbed the ladder of success,achieving the American dream within a generationor two.

Whether or not it had been as bleak as all that,it certainly hadn’t been easy. Jacob’s arrival in1907 was not actually his first time to make it tothe United States. He had entered New Yorkonce before, in 1901, but had had the misfortuneof cruising into the harbor only ten days or so

after an American of Eastern European descent,Leon Czolgosz, had made the fatal decision toassassinate President William McKinley.McKinley had lingered for a week after theshooting, and died just a few days before thearrival of my great-grandfather’s boat. As thesaying goes, timing is everything—a lesson Jacobwould learn, sitting in steerage and coming torealize that he had been literally just a few daystoo late. So back he went, along with the rest ofhis shipmates, turned away in the shadow ofLady Liberty by a wave of jingoistic panic, anti-immigrant nativism, hysteria born of bigotry, anda well nurtured, carefully cultivated skill atscapegoating those who differed from the Anglo-Saxon norm. That Czolgosz claimed to be ananarchist, and thus his shooting of McKinleycame to be seen as a political act, and not merelythe lashing out of a madman, sealed Jacob’s fate

for sure. To the authorities, all Eastern Europeanswere to be viewed for a time as anarchists, ascriminals, and later as communists. Czolgosz wasto be executed, and tens of thousands of EasternEuropeans and other “undesirable” ethnics wouldbe viciously oppressed in the following years.

The mind of a twenty-first-century American isscarcely equipped to contemplate just how longthe trip back to Russia must have been, notmerely in terms of hours and days, but asmeasured by the beating of one’s heart, the slowand subtle escape of all optimism from one’stightened lungs. How painful it must have been,h o w omnicidal for Jacob, meaning theevisceration of everything he was, of everythingthat mattered to him—the extermination of hope.Though not of the same depth, nor coupled withthe same fear as that which characterized thejourney of Africans in the hulls of slave ships

(after all, he was still a free man, and his journey,however aborted, had been voluntary), theremust have been points where the magnitude of hisdespair was intense enough to make thedistinction feel as though it were one withoutmuch meaning.

So he returned to Minsk, in modern-dayBelarus, for another six years, it taking that longfor him to save up enough money to make thejourney again. When he finally came back, familyin tow, it would be for keeps. His desire forAmerica was that strong, borne of the belief thatin the new world things would be different, thathe would be able to make something of himselfand give his family a better life. The Wise familycontinued to grow after his arrival, including, in1919, the birth of Leon Wise, whose name waslater shortened to Leo—my grandfather.

Jacob was the very definition of a hard

worker. The stereotype of immigrants putting ineighteen hours a day is one that, although it didnot begin with him in mind, surely was to be keptalive by him and others like him. There is littledoubt that he toiled and sacrificed, and in the endthere was a great payoff indeed: his children didwell, with my grandfather graduating from aprestigious university, Vanderbilt, in 1942.What’s more, the family business would growinto something of a fixture in the Nashvillecommunity that the Wise family would come tocall home.

But lest we get carried away, perhaps it wouldbe worth remembering a few things about JacobWise and his family. None of these things takeaway from the work ethic that was a definingfeature of his character, but they do suggest thata work ethic is rarely enough on its own to makethe difference. After all, by the time he arrived in

America there had been millions of black folkswith work ethics at least as good as his, and bythe time he passed at the age of ninety-three,there would have been millions of peoples ofcolor who had lived and toiled in this land, everybit as long as he had. Yet with few exceptions,they could not say that within a mere decade theyhad become successful shop owners, or that oneof their sons had gone on to graduate from one ofthe nation’s finest colleges. Even as a religiousminority in the buckle of the Bible belt, Jacobwas able to find opportunity off-limits to anyoneof color. He may have been a Jew, but his skinwas the right shade, and he was from Europe, soall suspicions and religious and cultural biasesaside, he had only to wait and keep his noseclean a while, and then eventually he and hisfamily would become white. Assimilation was notmerely a national project; for Jacob Wise, and

for millions of other Jews, Italians, and Irish, itwas an implicitly racial one as well.

Even before assimilation, Jacob had been ableto gain access to opportunities that were off limitsto African Americans. His very arrival in theUnited States—as tortuous and circuitous as wasthe route that he had been forced to take in orderto achieve it—was made possible by immigrationpolicies that at that moment (and for most of ournation’s history) have favored those from Europeover those from anywhere else. TheNaturalization Act of 1790, which was the veryfirst law passed by the U.S. Congress after theratification of the Constitution, made clear that allfree white persons (and only free white persons)were to be considered citizens, and that thisnaturalization would be obtained, for most allwhites, virtually as soon as we arrived. Yet,during the period of both of Jacob’s journeys—

the one that had been cut short and the one thathad finally delivered him to his new home—therehad been draconian limits, for example, on Asianimmigration. These restrictions would remain inplace until 1965, the year his grandson, myfather, would graduate from high school. If that’snot white privilege—if that’s not affirmativeaction of a most profound and lasting kind—thenneither concept has much meaning any longer;and if that isn’t relevant to my own racialization,since it is the history into which I was born, thenthe notion of inheritance has lost all meaning aswell.

And there is more of interest here too, asregards the Wise’s role in the nation’s racialdrama. Though whites who came to Americaafter the abolition of slavery can rightly claim theyhad played no part in the evil that was thatparticular institution, it is simply wrong to suggest

that they are not implicated in the broader systemof racial oppression that has long marked thenation. In addition to the receipt of privileges,which stem from the racial classification intowhich they were able, over time, to matriculate,there are occasionally even more active ways inwhich whites, such as the Wises, participated inthe marginalization of black and brown peoples.

It was only a few years ago, during aworkshop that I was attending (not as a facilitatorbut rather as a participant), that I really came toappreciate this fact. During the session, we hadall been discussing our family histories, and at onepoint I mentioned, almost as an afterthought, thatmy comfort in and around communities of colorlikely stemmed from the fact that my paternalgrandfather had owned and operated a businessin the heart of Nashville’s black community formany years—an establishment I had visited

dozens of times, from when I had been only asmall child until I was a teenager.

Prepared to move on to another subject andwrap up my time to share, I was interrupted by ablack man, older than myself, whose ears andeyes had quite visibly perked up when I hadmentioned my grandfather and his business inNorth Nashville.

“I’m originally from North Nashville,” henoted. “What kind of business

did he have?”“A liquor store,” I responded. “My family

owned liquor stores all over town and mygrandfather’s was on Jefferson Street.”

“Your grandfather was Leo Wise?” he replied,appearing to have known him well.

“Yes, yes he was,” I answered, still not certainwhere all this was headed.

“He was a good man,” the stranger shot back,

“a very good man. But let me ask you something:Have you ever thought about what it means thatsuch a good man was, more or less, a drugdealer in the ghetto?”

Time stood still for a second as I sought torecover from what felt like a serious punch to thegut. I could feel myself getting defensive, and thelook in my eyes no doubt betrayed my hurt andeven anger at the question. After all, this was nothow I had viewed my grandfather—as a drugdealer. He had been a businessman, I thought tomyself. But even as I fumbled around for a reply,for a way to defend my grandfather’s honor andgood name, I began to realize that the man’sstatement had not been a condemnation of LeoWise’s humanity. It was not a curse upon thememory of the man to whom I had lovinglyreferred as Paw Paw all of my life. Anyway, hewas right.

The fact is, my grandfather, who had spentseveral of his formative years living with his familyon Jefferson Street, indeed made his livingowning and operating a liquor store in the blackcommunity. Though the drug he sold was a legalone, it was a drug nonetheless, and to deny thatfact or ignore its implications—that mygrandfather put food on his family’s table (andmine quite often) thanks to the addictions, or atleast bad habits, of some of the city’s mostmarginalized black folks—is to shirk theresponsibility that we all have to actually own ourcollaboration. His collaboration hadn’t made hima bad person, mind you, just as the black drugdealer in the same community is not necessarily abad person. It simply meant that he had beencomplex, like all of us.

The discussion led to the discovery andarticulation of some difficult truths, which

demonstrated how messy the business of racismcan be, and how easy it is to both fight themonster, and yet still, on occasion, collaboratewith it. On the one hand, my grandfathertrafficked in a substance that could indeed bringdeath—a slow, often agonizing death that coulddestroy families long before it claimed thephysical health or life of its abuser. On the otherhand, he, unlike most white business owners whooperate in the inner-city, left a lot of moneybehind in the community, refusing to simplyabscond with it all to the white suburban home hehad purchased in 1957, and in which he wouldlive until his death.

Even the man who had raised the issue of mygrandfather’s career as a legal drug dealer wasquick to point out the other side: how he hadseen and heard of Leo paying people’s light billsand phone bills, hundreds of times, paying folks’

rent hundreds more; how he paid to get people’scars fixed, or brought families food when theydidn’t have any; how he paid people under thetable for hauling boxes away, moving liquoraround, or delivering it somewhere, even whenhe could have done it himself or gotten anotherstore employee to do it. The man in theworkshop remembered how my grandfatherwould slip twenty dollar bills to people for noreason at all, just because he could. By allaccounts, he noted, Leo had continued to feel anobligation and a love for the people of theJefferson Street corridor, even after he hadmoved away. But what he had likely nevernoticed, and what I had never seen until that day,was that he and his commercial activity wereamong the forces that kept people trapped, too.Not the same way as institutional racism perhaps,but trapped nonetheless.

He had not been a bad person, but he hadbeen more complicated than I had ever imagined.He had been a man who could count among hisclosest friends several black folks, a man whohad supported in every respect the civil rightsmovement, a man whose proximity to the blackcommunity had probably done much for me, interms of making me comfortable in nonwhitesettings. But at the same time, he had been a manwhose wealth—what there was of it—had beenaccumulated on the backs, or at least the livers ofblack people. Neither his personal friendshipsnor his political commitments had changed any ofthat.

That structural dynamic had provided himprivilege, and it had been my own privilege thathad rendered me, for so long, unable to see it.

LOOKING BACKWARDS IN time then, it

becomes possible to see whiteness playing out allalong the history of my family, dating backhundreds of years. The ability to come toAmerica in the first place, the ability to procureland once here, and the ability to own otherhuman beings while knowing that you wouldnever be owned yourself, all depended onEuropean ancestry.

Nonetheless, one might deny that this legacyhas anything to do with those of us in the modernday. Unless we have been the direct inheritors ofthat land and property, then of what use has thatprivilege been to us? For persons like myself,growing up not on farmland passed down by myfamily, but rather, in a modest apartment, whatdid this past have to do with me? And what doesyour family’s past have to do with you?

In my case, race and privilege were every bitas implicated in the time and place of my birth as

they had been for my forbears. I was born in anation that had only recently thrown off theformal trappings of legal apartheid. I was born ina city that had, just eight years earlier, been thescene of some of the most pitched desegregationbattles in the South, replete with sit-ins, boycotts,marches, and the predictable white backlash toall three. Nashville, long known as a city toopolite and erudite for the kinds of overt violencethat marked the deep South of Alabama orMississippi, nonetheless had seen its share ofugliness when it came to race.

When future Congressman John Lewis,Bernard Lafayette, Diane Nash, James Bevel,and others led the downtown sit-ins againstsegregated lunch counters in February 1960 (twoweeks after the Greensboro, North Carolina,Woolworth’s was similarly targeted by studentsfrom North Carolina A&T), the modern youth-

led component of the civil rights struggle wasofficially born, much to the chagrin of local thugswho attacked the protesters daily. Someone hadapparently forgotten to tell them, as they put outcigarettes on the necks of these brave students,that Nashville was different.

Of course, why would they think it was?Violence had marked resistance to the civil rightsstruggle in Nashville, as it had elsewhere. In1957, racists placed a bomb in the basement ofone of the city’s soonto-be integrated schools,and a year later did the same at the JewishCommunity Center because of the role Dan May—a local Jewish leader and head of the schoolboard—had played in supporting a gradual (andactually quite weak) desegregation plan.Although the bombers in those instancesgalvanized opposition to outright terrorist tactics,ongoing resistance to integration delayed any

truly meaningful movement in that direction until1971, when busing was finally ordered at thehighschool level. It would be 1974, the year Ibegan first grade, before busing would filterdown to the elementary level. This means that theclass of 1986, my graduating class, was the firstthat had been truly desegregated throughout itsentire educational experience; this, more thanthirty years after the Supreme Court had ruledthat segregation was illegal, and that southernschools must desegregate “with all deliberatespeed.” There had been nothing deliberate orspeedy about it.

But when it comes to understanding thecentrality of race and racism in the society of mybirth, perhaps this is the most important point ofall: I was born just a few hours and half a stateaway from Memphis, where six months earlier, tothe day, Dr. King had been murdered. My mom,

thirteen weeks pregnant at the time, had beenworking that evening (not early morning, asmistakenly claimed by Bono in the famous U2song), when King stepped onto the balconyoutside room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, only tobe felled a few seconds later by an assassin’sbullet. Upon hearing the news, the managers ofthe department store where she was employeddecided to close up shop. Fear that black folksmight come over to Green Hills, the mostly whiteand relatively affluent area where the Cain-Sloanstore was located, so as to take out vicariousrevenge on whitey (or at least whitey’s shoedepartment), had sent them into a panic. Nodoubt this fear was intensified by the fact that thedowntown branch of the store had been the firsttarget for sit-ins in the city, back in December1959, when students had attempted todesegregate the store’s lunch counters.

A minor riot had occurred in Nashville theyear before the King assassination, sparked bythe overreaction of the Nashville police to a visitby activist Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture),from the Student NonViolent CoordinatingCommittee, who would soon become “HonoraryPrime Minister” of the Black Panther Party.Although the violence had been limited to a smallpart of the mostly black North Nashvillecommunity around Fisk University—and eventhen had been unrelated to Carmichael’sspeeches in town, contrary to the claims of then-Mayor Beverly Briley and the local media—bythe time King was killed, white folks were onhigh alert for the first signs of trouble.

That I experienced my mother’s bodilyreaction to King’s murder, as well as the killing ofBobby Kennedy two months later, may or maynot mean anything. Whether or not cell memory

and the experiences of one’s parent can bepassed to the child as a result of trauma, therebyinfluencing the person that child is to become, issomething that will likely never be proven oneway or the other. Even the possibility of such athing is purely speculative and more than a bitromantic, but it makes for a good story; and I’venever much believed in coincidences.

But even discounting cell memory, and even ifwe disregard the possibility that a mother maysomehow transmit knowledge to a child duringgestation, my experience with race predated mybirth, if simply because being born to a whitefamily meant certain things about the experiencesI was likely to have once born: where I wouldlive, what jobs and education my family waslikely to have had, and where I would go toschool.

On my third day of life I most certainly

experienced race, however oblivious I was to itat the time, when my parents and I moved into anapartment complex in the above-mentionedGreen Hills community. It was a complex that,four years after completion, had still never had atenant of color, very much not by accident. Butin we went, because it was affordable and a stepup from the smaller apartment my folks had beenliving in prior to that time. More than that, in wewent because we could, just as we could havegone into any apartment complex anywhere inNashville, subject only to our ability to put downa security deposit, which as it turns out was paidby my father’s father anyway. So at least as earlyas Monday, October 7, 1968—before the lastremnants of my umbilical cord had fallen off—Iwas officially experiencing what it meant to bewhite.

I say this not to suggest any guilt on my part

for having inherited this legacy. It is surely not myfault that I was born, as with so many others, intoa social status over which I had little control. Butthis is hardly the point, and regardless of our owndirect culpability for the system, or lack thereof,the simple and incontestable fact is that we allhave to deal with the residue of past actions. Weclean up the effects of past pollution. We removeasbestos from old buildings for the sake of publichealth, even when we didn’t put the materialthere ourselves. We pay off government debts,even though much of the spending that createdthem happened long ago. And of course, wehave no problem reaping the benefits of pastactions for which we weren’t responsible. Fewpeople refuse to accept money or property fromothers who bequeath such things to them upondeath, out of a concern that they wouldn’t wantto accept something they hadn’t earned. We love

to accept things we didn’t earn, such asinheritance, but we have a problem takingresponsibility for the things that have benefited uswhile harming others. Just as a house or farm leftto you upon the death of a parent is an asset thatyou get to use, so too is racial privilege; and ifyou get to use an asset, you have to pay the debtaccumulated, which allowed the asset to exist inthe first place.

If you think this to be unreasonable, try a littlethought experiment: Imagine you were to becomethe Chief Executive Officer of a multibillion dollarcompany. And imagine that on your first day youwere to sit down in your corner-office chair andbegin to plan how you would lead the firm toeven greater heights. In order to do your jobeffectively, you would obviously need to knowthe financial picture of the company: what areyour assets, your liabilities, and your revenue

stream? So you call a meeting with your ChiefFinancial Officer so that you can be clear aboutthe firm’s financial health and future. The CFOcomes to the meeting, armed with spreadsheetsand a Power Point presentation, all of whichshow everything you’d ever want to know aboutthe company’s fiscal health. The company hasbillions in assets, hundreds of millions in revenues,and a healthy profit margin. You’re excited. Nowimagine that as your CFO gathers up her thingsto leave, you look at her and say, “Oh, by theway, thanks for all the information, but next time,don’t bother with the figures on our outstandingdebts. See, I wasn’t here when you borrowed allthat money and took on all that debt, so I don’tsee why I should have to deal with that. I intendto put the assets to work immediately, yes. Butthe debts? Nope, that’s not my problem.”

Once the CFO finished laughing, security

would likely come and usher you to your car, andfor obvious reasons. The notion of utilizing assetsbut not paying debts is irresponsible, to saynothing of unethical. Those who reap the benefitsof past actions—and the privileges that havecome from whiteness are certainly among those—have an obligation to take responsibility for ouruse of those benefits.

But in the end, the past isn’t really the biggestissue. Putting aside the historic crime of slavery,the only slightly lesser crime of segregation, thegenocide of indigenous persons, and thegenerations-long head start for whites, we wouldstill need to deal with the issue of racism andwhite privilege because discrimination andprivilege today, irrespective of the past, are bigenough problems to require our immediateconcern. My own life has been more thanadequate proof of this truism. It is to this life that

I now turn.

AWAKENINGS FOR WHITES, THE process of racial identitydevelopment is typically far slower than forpeople of color. As the dominant group in theUnited States, whites too often have the luxury ofremaining behind a veil of ignorance for years,while people of color begin noticing the differentways in which they are viewed and treated earlyon. Recent studies suggest that even by the ageof eight, and certainly by ten, black children arecognizant of the negative stereotypes commonlyheld about their group. Folks of color know theyare the other, and pretty soon they learn whatthat means. What’s more, people of color notonly recognize their otherness , but are alsoinundated by whiteness, by the norm. Sort of likethat kid in the movie The Sixth Sense who seesdead people, to be black or brown is to see

white people often. It’s hard to work around us.But for whites, we often don’t see people of

color. To be white in this country has long beento be in a position where, if you wanted to, youcould construct a life that would be more or lessall-white. Although the demographic changesunderway in the nation—which by 2040 willrender the United States about half white and halfof color—are making it more difficult to maintainracially homogenous spaces, in many parts of thecountry white youth grow up with very littleconnection to anyone who isn’t white.

Even in 2011, I meet white folks all around thecountry who never really knew any person ofcolor until they came to college; in some cases,they had hardly even seen people of color (otherthan on television) until then. Though perhaps itshouldn’t surprise me, in part it does becausesuch insularity is so foreign to my own

experience.Fact is, I remember the first time I ever saw a

black person too—I mean really saw them, andintuited that there was something different aboutour respective skin colors. But that memory isnot a college memory or a teenage memory;rather, it is my very first memory from mychildhood.

I must have been about two, so it would havebeen perhaps the fall of 1970, or maybe thespring of 1971. I was in the living room of ourapartment, gazing as I often did out of the slidingglass door to the porch, when about two hundredfeet away, cutting across the rectangular lawnused as common recreation space by residents ofthe complex (which I would in years to come allbut commandeer as my personal baseballdiamond), came striding a tall, middle-aged blackman in some kind of a uniform.

The man, I would come to learn, was namedTommy, and he was one of the maintenancecrew at the Royal Arms. It is testimony to howentrenched racism was at that time and place thatthis man, who was at least in his fifties by then,would never be known to me or my parents byanything other than his first name. Even as a mereinfant I would be allowed the privilege ofaddressing this grown black man with a familyand full life history only as Tommy, as if we wereequals, or perhaps “Mister Tommy,” as mymother would instruct, since at least that soundedmore respectful. But about him, I would needknow nothing else.

As I gazed out the window my attention wasriveted to him and the darkness of his skin. Hewas quite dark, though not really black of course,which led me to ask my mother who the brownman was.

Without hesitation she said it was Mr. Tommy,and that he wasn’t brown, but black. Havingdeveloped a penchant for argument, even at two,I naturally insisted that he most certainly was notblack. He was brown. I knew the names of allthe crayons in my Crayola box, and knew thatthis man certainly didn’t look like the crayoncalled “black.” Burnt umber maybe, brown mostdefinitely, but black? No way.

My mother acknowledged the accuracy of myoverly literalistic position, but stuck to her gunson the matter, explaining something ratherprofound in the process, the profundity of whichit took many years for me to appreciate. “Tim,”she explained, “Mister Tommy may look brown,but people who look the way Mister Tommydoes prefer to be called black.”

And that was the end of the argument. Even attwo, it seemed only proper that if someone

wanted to call themselves black they had everyright to do so, whether or not the label fit theactual color of their skin. Mine, after all, wasn’treally “white” either, and so it was really none ofmy business.

This may not seem important, but think howmeaningful it can be to learn early on that peoplehave a right to self-determination, to define theirown reality, to claim their own identity—and thatyou have no right to impose your judgment ofthem, on them. When it comes to race, that’s nota lesson that most whites learn at the age of twoo r ever. Historically, white Americans havealways felt the right to define black and brownfolks’ realities for them: insisting that enslavedpersons were happy on the plantation and feltjust like family, or that indigenous persons werethe uncivilized ones, while those who would seekto conquer and destroy them were the

practitioners of enlightenment.At the level of labels, racism has long operated

to impose white reality onto others. Whites foundthe assertion of blackness (and especially as apositive, even “beautiful” thing in the 1960s and1970s) threatening because it was an internallyderived title unlike “colored,” or “Negro,” termswhich had been foisted upon black bodies by thewhite and European tradition. Likewise, manywhites today react hostilely to the use of the term“African American” because it came from withinthe black community, and as such, stands as achallenge to white linguistic authority.

When whites tell black folks, as we often do,that they should “just be Americans,” and “dropthe whole hyphen thing,” we’re forgetting that it’shard to just be an American when you’ve rarelybeen treated like a full and equal member of thefamily. More to the point, it isn’t our hyphen to

drop. But it’s always hard to explain such mattersto those who have taken for granted, because wecould, that we had the right to set the parametersof national identity, or to tell other people’sstories as if they were our own. It’s been thatway for a while and explains much about the waywe misteach history.

So at roughly the same time as I was beinginstructed by my mother on the finer points oflinguistic self-determination, I was also beginningto read. I read my first book without help onMay 5, 1971, at the age of two years, sevenmonths, and one day. That’s the good andreasonably impressive (if still somewhat freakish)news. The bad news is that the book was MeetAndrew Jackson, an eighty seven-page tributeto the nation’s seventh president, intended tomake children proud of the nation in which theylive, and of this, one of that nation’s early leaders.

Given that my mother had been quick to prohibitbooks like Little Black Sambo from coming intoour home because of the racial stereotypes inwhich the story trafficked, it was somewhatsurprising that she would indulge such a volumeas this one, but she did, and I consumed itvoraciously.

Therein, I learned that Jackson’s mom hadadmonished him never to lie or “take what is notyour own” (an instruction he felt free to ignore ashe got older, at least as it applied to indigenouspeoples or the Africans whom he took asproperty), and that when Jackson headed Westas a young man, he encountered Indians who“did not want white people in their huntinggrounds,” and “often killed white travelers.” Thispart was true of course, if a bit incomplete:people whose land has been invaded and is in theprocess of being stolen often become agitated

and sometimes even kill those who are trying todestroy them. Imagine.

On page 46, I read that although “somepeople in the North were saying it was not rightto own slaves . . . Jackson felt the way mostother Southerners did. He felt it was right to ownslaves. He called his slaves his ‘family.”’ Wellthen, who are we to question his definition of thatterm? Ten pages later, I learned that Jacksonfought the Creek Indians to preserve Americaand save innocent lives, though oddly there wasno mention that in order to get an accurate countof the dead they slaughtered at Horseshoe Bend,soldiers in Jackson’s command cut off the tips ofCreek noses and sliced strips of flesh from theirbodies for use as bridal reins for their horses—surely an accidental editorial oversight.

At the end of the book, after recountingJackson’s rise to the presidency, Meet Andrew

Jackson concludes by noting that when Jacksondied, his slaves cried and “sang a sad old song.”To insert such a flourish as this, though itprobably struck me as touching at the time, isutterly vulgar, and suggests as well as anythingwhat is wrong with the way children in the UnitedStates learn our nation’s history. There is noscholarly record of sad songs being sung byslaves as Jackson lay dying. This kind of detail,even were it true—and it almost certainly is not—has no probative value when it comes to lettingus know who Andrew Jackson was. It exists forthe same reason the old fairy tale about GeorgeWashington cutting down the cherry tree andtelling his dad because he “couldn’t tell a lie,”exists—because no fabrication is too extreme inthe service of national self-love. Anything thatmakes us feel proud can be said, factsnotwithstanding. Anything that reminds us of the

not-sonoble pursuits of our forefathers or nationalheroes, on the other hand, gets dumped downthe memory hole. And if you bring those kinds ofthings up, you’ll be accused of hating America.

The way in which we place rogues likeAndrew Jackson on a pedestal, while tellingpeople of color to “get over it” (meaning thepast) whenever slavery or Indian genocide isbrought up, has always struck me as the mostprecious of ironies. We want folks of color tomove past the past, even as we very much seekto dwell in that place a while. We dwell thereevery July 4, every Columbus Day, every time achild is given a book like Meet Andrew Jacksonto read. We love the past so long as it veneratesus. We want to be stuck there, and many wouldeven like to return. Some say as much, as withthe Tea Party folks who not only announce thatthey “want their country back,” but even dress up

in tricorn hats, Revolutionary War costumes, andpowdered wigs for their rallies. It is only whenthose who were the targets for destructionchallenge the dominant narrative that the pastbecomes conveniently irrelevant, a trifle notworth dwelling upon.

GOOD OR BAD, the past is a fact, and it oftenholds the keys to who we are in the present, andwho we’re likely to become in the future. Thiswas certainly the case for me.

By 1971, it was time for me to beginpreschool. Although I’m certain there were anynumber of programs in Green Hills orthereabouts in which I could have been enrolled,my mother made the decision (very much againstthe objections of certain friends and family) that Ishould attend the early childhood program atTennessee State University (TSU), which is

Nashville’s historically black land-grant college.Her reasons for the decision were mixed. On theone hand, she knew that upon beginning school Iwould be in an integrated environment—something she had never had the benefit ofexperiencing—and she wanted me to know whatit was like to occasionally find myself in a spacewhere I might not be the taken-for-granted norm.On the other hand, I’ve long suspected that itwas also something she did to tweak her familyand mark her own independence from the muchmore provincial life she had led growing up.

TSU, the name of which had recently beenchanged from Tennessee A&I, is located inNorth Nashville, just off the foot of JeffersonStreet—the epicenter of Nashville’s blackcommunity. Although the Jefferson Streetcorridor had been recently devastated by theconstruction of Interstate 40 right through the

middle of it—a part of “urban renewal” thatoccurred nationwide and contributed to thedestruction of up to one-fifth of all black housingin the country by 1969—the city’s blackresidents were rightly proud of the area andconstantly fought to return it to its former glory.My grandfather had grown up on Jefferson Streetas a teen, since the black community was one ofthe few places Jews could live unless they wereof substantial means. Of course, he hadn’t goneto school there. During the days of segregation,he would be sent to the white school downtown,Hume-Fogg, even though his neighborhoodschool was Pearl, one of the academic jewelsamong southern black high schools at the time.

Not to romanticize the days of segregation ofcourse, but under conditions of formaloppression, black business districts like JeffersonStreet had often managed to carve out a thriving

subculture of black success. Forced to turninward, African Americans across the nationspent their money with black businesses, and thechildren in the schools knew that the teachers andadministrators loved them—they were, after all,their neighbors. While integration was clearlynecessary to open up the opportunity structurethat had previously been closed off, it also led tothe firing of thousands of black teachers acrossthe South, who were no longer wanted in thenewly consolidated schools into which blackswould be placed (but as clear minorities in mostcases). Integration would be of limited successbecause whites had been ill-prepared to open upthe gates of access and opportunity wide enoughfor any but a few to squeeze through. Those fewmanaged to leave the old neighborhoods andtake their money with them, but the rest were leftbehind, access to suburban life limited, their own

spaces transformed by interstates, officebuildings, and parking lots, in the name ofprogress.

Just a mile or so from Fisk—the city’shistorically black private college—TSU was seenas the university for working class AfricanAmericans, and more to the point for local blackfolks, while Fisk (long associated with alumW.E.B. DuBois’s “talented tenth” concept)attracted more of a national and internationalstudent clientele. At the time of my enrollment atTSU, the college was embroiled in a struggle withstate officials who had been seeking to establish abranch campus of the University of Tennessee indowntown Nashville. Concerned that such aschool would allow whites to avoid the mostlyblack campus by attending a predominantly whitestate institution in town, and thereby siphonresources from TSU to the newly-created UT-

Nashville, TSU officials were battling valiantly toremain the flagship of public education in the city.

As a student in TSU’s early childhoodprogram, my classmates would be principally thechildren of faculty or families living in closeproximity to the college, which is to say, theywould be mostly black. Indeed, I would be oneof only three students in the classroom whoweren’t black, out of a class of roughly twentykids. Although several of the teachers who ranthe program were white, the ones I remembermost vividly were African American women.They seemed quite clearly to own the space. Itwas their domain and we all respected it.

I can’t remember much about my time at TSU,although I can vividly recall the layout of theclass, the playground, and the drive to and fromour Green Hills home each morning andafternoon to get back and forth. But despite the

vagueness of my TSU memories, I can’t help butthink that the experience had a profound impacton my life, especially as I would come tounderstand and relate to the subject of race. Onthe one hand, being subordinated to blackauthority at an early age was a blessing. In asociety that has long encouraged whites todisregard black wisdom, for a white child to learnat the age of three to listen to black women anddo what they ask of you, and to believe thatthey know of what they speak, can be more thana minor life lesson. It would mean that a littlemore than twenty years later, listening to AfricanAmerican women in public housing in NewOrleans tell me about their lives and struggles, Iwould not be the white guy who looked themsquare in the face and inquired as to whether itmight be possible that they had lost their minds. Iwould not be the white guy who would assume

they were exaggerating, making things up, orfabricating the difficulties of their daily routine. Iwould go back to that early imprinting, andremember that people know their lives betterthan I do, including those whom the society hasignored for so long.

Attending preschool at TSU also meant that Iwould be socialized in a non-dominant setting,my peers mostly African American children.Because I had bonded with black kids early on,once I entered elementary school it would behard not to notice the way that we were so oftenseparated in the classroom, by tracking thatplaced the white children in more advancedtracks, by unequal discipline, and by a differentway in which the teachers would relate to us. AtBurton Elementary, with the exception of theAfrican American teachers, most of theeducators would have had very little experience

teaching black children, and in some cases, verylittle interest in doing so. At one point in my firstgrade year the teacher would actually pawn offthe task to my mother, who had no teachingbackground, but who knew that unless sheintervened to work with the African Americanstudents they would receive very little instructionin the classroom.

While few white children at such an age wouldhave noticed the racial separation going on, Icouldn’t help but see it. These were my friends, afew of whom I had been at TSU with. Even theblack kids I hadn’t known before were the oneswith whom I would identify, thanks to my TSUexperience. Although I hardly had a word todescribe what was going on, I knew thatwhatever it was came at a cost to me; it wasseparating me from the people in whom I’d hadsome investment. Although the injury was far

more profound to them—after all, the institutionalracism at the heart of that unequal treatmentwasn’t aimed in my direction, but theirs—I wasnonetheless the collateral damage. My motherhad never tried to push me into whiteness or putme into a socially-determined space. But whatshe would not do, the schools would strive for,from the very beginning.

WHATEVER RACIAL SEPARATION theschool system sought to reimpose, even in apost-segregation era, it was something againstwhich I struggled for years. I had a few whitefriends, but very few. Albert Jones, who is stillmy best friend to this day, was among the onlywhite classmates with whom I bonded at thattime. Frankly, even that might have been a caseof mistaken identity. Though white, his dadworked at TSU in the School of Education, so

even he had a connection to the black communitythat made him different. But other than Albert,pretty much all of my friends at Burton wereblack.

Yet, as I would discover, interpersonalconnections to racial others say little aboutwhether or not one is having experiences similarto those others. Even when a white person isclosely tied to African Americans, that whiteperson is often living in an entirely different worldfrom that of their friends, though we rarely realizeit.

It would be early 1977, in third grade, that Ireceived one of my earliest lessons about race,even if the meaning of that lesson wouldn’t sink infor several years. The persons who served as myinstructors that day were not teachers, but twofriends, Bobby Orr and Vincent Perry, whoseunderstanding of the dynamics of race—their

blackness and my whiteness—was so deep thatthey were able to afford me the lesson duringsomething as meaningless as afternoon recess.

It was a brisk winter day, and Bobby, Vince,and I were tossing a football back and forth. Oneof us would get between the other two, whostood at a distance of maybe ten yards from eachother, and try to intercept the ball as it flewthrough the air from one passer to the next.Football had really never been my game. ThoughI was athletic and obsessed with sports, I wasalso pretty small as a kid; as such, I saw littlepoint in a game that involved running into peopleand being tackled. I preferred baseball, but sincebaseball season was several months away, theonly options that day during P.E. class werekickball or football. Normally, I would havechosen kickball, but when Bobby and Vinceasked me to play with them I had said yes.

Because we were so often separated in theclassroom, I treasured whatever time I couldcarve out with my black friends.

Our game began innocently enough, withBobby in the middle, usually picking off passesbetween Vince and me. Next it was Vince’s turn,and he too picked off several of the passesbetween Bobby and me, though the zip withwhich Bobby delivered them often made the ballbounce off of Vince’s hands, too hot to handle.

When it came time for me to be in the middle,I frankly had little expectation about how manypasses I could intercept. My size alone virtuallyensured that if Vince and Bobby wanted to, theycould simply lob the ball over my head, and solong as they did it high enough and fast enough,there would be very little opportunity for me topull the ball down. But strangely, I caught everyone. Each time they would pass just a bit beyond

my reach and I would jump to one side or theother, hauling their efforts into my breast, neverdropping a single one or allowing even one passin thirty to make it past me.

At first, I reveled in what I assumed must bemy newfound speed and agility. What’s more, Ibeamed with childish pride at the smiles on theirfaces, assuming that Bobby and Vince wereimpressed with my effort; and I continued tointerpret this series of events as evidence of myown abilities, even as they both began to repeatthe same refrain after every pass, beginning withabout the tenth throw of the series. As the ballleft Bobby’s throwing hand and whizzed towardits destination in Vince’s outstretched arms, onlyto be thwarted in its journey time and again bymy leaping effort, they would repeat, one andthen the other, the same exclamation.

“My nigger Tim!”

Pop! The ball would once again reverberatedas it hit my hands and was pulled in for anotherinterception.

“My nigger Tim!”I would toss it back, and we would repeat the

dance, Bobby moving left, Vince right, mefollowing their steps and taking cues from theirbody language as to where the ball would begoing next.

Pop! Another catch.“My nigger Tim!”After the first dozen times they said this, each

time with more emphasis and a bit of a chuckle, Ibegan to sense that something was going on, themeaning of which I didn’t quite understand. Astrange feeling began to creep over me,punctuated by a voice in the back of my headsaying something about being suckered. Not tomention, I instinctively felt odd about being called

a “nigger” (and note, it was indeed that derivationof the term, and not the more relaxed, evenamiable “nigga” which was being deployed),because it was a word I would never use, andwhich I knew to be a slur of the most vile nature,and also, let’s face it, because I was white, andhad never been called that before.

Though I remained uncomfortable with theexchange for several minutes after it ended, Iquickly put it behind me as the bell rang, recessended, and we headed back to class, laughingand talking about something unrelated to thepsychodrama that had been played out on theball field. If I ever thought of the event in the daysafterward, I likely contented myself with thethought that although their word choice seemedodd, they were only signifying that I was one ofthe club so to speak and had proven myself tothem. Well, I was right about one thing: they

were definitely “signifying”—a term for thecultural practice of well-crafted verbal put-downsthat have long been a form of street poetry in theblack communities of this nation.

As it turns out, it would be almost twentyyears before I finally understood the meaning ofthis day’s events, and that understanding wouldcome while watching television. It was there thatI saw a black comedian doing a bit about makingsome white guy “his nigger,” and getting him todo whatever he, the black comic, wanted: tojump when he said jump, to come running whenhe was told to come running, to step ’n fetch’ it,so to speak. So there it was. On that afternoonso many years before, Bobby and Vince hadbeen able to flip the script on the racial dynamicthat would, every other day, serve as thebackground noise for their lives. On that day theywere able to make me not only a nigger, but

their nigger. The irony couldn’t have been moreperfect, nor the satisfaction, I suppose, in havingexacted a small measure of payback, not of me,per se, since at that age I had surely done little todeserve it, but of my people, writ large. It washarmless, and for them it had been fun: a cat andmouse routine with the white boy who doesn’trealize he’s being used, and not just used, butused in the way some folks had long been used,and were still being used every day. Today Tim,you the nigger. Today, you will be the one whogets to jump and run, and huff and puff. Todaywe laugh, and not with you, but at you. We likeyou and all that, but today, you belong to us.

As I thought about it, however, I wasovercome with a profound sadness, and notbecause I had been tricked or played for a fool;that’s happened lots of times, usually at the handsof other white folks. I was saddened by what I

realized in that moment, which was very simplythis: even at the age of nine, Bobby and Vincehad known what it meant to be someone’snigger. They knew more than how to say theword, they knew how to use it, when to use it,how to contextualize it, and fashion it into aweapon. And the only way they could haveknown any of this is because they had either beentold of its history and meaning, had been called itbefore, or had seen or heard a loved one called itbefore, none of which options were a lot betterthan the others.

Even as the school system we shared wasevery day treating Bobby and Vince as that thingthey now called me—disciplining them moreharshly or placing them in remedial level groupsno matter their abilities—on the playground theycould turn it around and claim for themselves thepower to define reality, my reality, and thereby

gain a brief respite from what was happening inclass. Yet the joke was on them in the end.Because once recess was over, and the ball wasback in the hands of the teachers, there werenone prepared to make me the nigger.

It had been white privilege and blackoppression that had made the joke funny in thefirst place, or even decipherable; and it wouldlikewise be white privilege and black oppressionthat would make it irrelevant and even a bitpathetic. But folks take their victories where theycan find them. And some of us find them moreoften than others.

I WAS NEVER a very good student. No mattermy reading level or general ability, I had a hardtime applying myself to subject matter that Ididn’t find interesting. In effect, I treated schoollike a set of noisecanceling headphones, letting in

the sounds I was interested in hearing whileshutting out the rest. By middle school I wasstruggling academically, finding myself bored andlooking desperately for something else to occupymy time. Given the home in which I lived, it washardly surprising that I would settle on theatre.Growing up in a home where my father wasalways on stage, even when he wasn’t, hadprovided me with a keen sense of timing, ofdelivery, of what was funny and what wasn’t, ofhow to move onstage, of how to “do nothingwell,” as Lorelle Reeves, my theatre teacher inhigh school, would put it.

I grew up memorizing lines to plays I wouldnever perform, simply because my dad hadsaved all the scripts from shows he had done inthe past. They were crammed into a small,brown-lacquered paperback book cabinet thathung in the living room of our apartment—one

after another, with tattered and dog-eared pages,compliments of Samuel French, the company thatowned distribution rights for most of the stageplay scripts in the United States. I would pickthem up and read them out loud in my room,creating different voices for different characters.The plays dealt with adult themes, many of whichI didn’t understand, but which I pretended to,just in case anyone ever needed a ten-year-old toplay the part of Paul Bratter in Barefoot in thePark.

At Stokes School, in fifth grade, I would finallyhave the chance to take a theatre class as anelective. The teacher, Susan Moore, was amongthe most eccentric persons I’ve ever met. Had Ibeen older, I may well have appreciated hereccentricity; but at the age of ten, eccentric is justanother word for weird, and weird is how westudents viewed her. All we knew was that she

was an odd, fat lady (we weren’t too sensitive onissues of body type, as I’m sure won’t surpriseyou) with a dozen cats, whose clothes alwayssmelled like cat litter and whose car smelledworse. One of my friends, Bobby Bell, who wasnot in the drama club but once got a ride fromMs. Moore, dubbed her wheels the “douche ’n’push,” which we all thought was hilarious, eventhough I doubt any of us really knew what adouche was. In fact, once I learned the meaningof the word, calling her car a douche ’n’ pushseemed less funny than gross.

We didn’t study much in terms of theatretechnique. For good or bad, Susan thought itbest to just throw us into the process of doingtheatre, learning as we went. So she would picka play and we would work on it for the betterpart of a year: reading it, learning it, and thenfinally producing and performing it. The good

thing about this process was that it led to fairlysophisticated outcomes, at least for fifth and sixthgraders. When you have ten- and eleven-year-olds pulling off Shakespeare’s Taming of theShrew and never dropping a line, you knowyou’re doing something special. As the male leadin that production, I can attest to feelingsignificantly older and wiser than my years forhaving done it, for having successfully taken on aShakespearian farce at such an age.

On the downside, unless you got one of thecoveted roles in the play chosen for that year byMs. Moore, your participation in the theatregroup would be circumscribed. Occasionally, shewould create a few characters and script a fewlines for them, so that as many kids as possiblecould get a chance to be onstage, but this hardlyflattened the hierarchy of the club. There werethe actors and there was everyone else: the

students who would work the lights, pull thecurtains, or just hang out and perhaps help theactors run lines, or maybe just quit theatrealtogether and find something else to do.

Having an actor for a father pretty wellassured me of a prominent role in whateverproduction was chosen as our annual play. Ms.Moore could presume my talent, and althoughthat talent may have been genuine, there werecertainly no cold readings or auditions. A few ofus would pretty much rotate: I would be the malelead in one play, and in the next production thathonor would go to Albert. The female leadswould also pretty much rotate between two ofthe girls in our class, Stacey Wright and ShannonHolladay. It was a fairly closed circle.

In sixth grade we would switch fromShakespeare to You’re a Good Man, CharlieBrown, which, given that it’s a musical and

neither Albert nor I could sing, should haveguaranteed that it would be our turn to pullcurtains or some such thing. But despite our lackof ability, we were cast as Charlie and Linus,respectively. In my case, Ms. Moore actuallyagreed to take the song “My Blanket and Me”out of the play altogether, because I made clearthat I was terrified to sing a solo in public.

My ability to force script changes was notabout race of course, but my ability to be in theposition I was, and therefore to make that kind ofdemand and gain the director’s acquiescence,most assuredly was about race, at least in part.Had I been anything but white, it would havebeen highly unlikely that I would have gotten theparts I landed in any of the productions done atthat or any other school. These were roleswritten for white actors. Shakespeare’s work isnot, to be sure, replete with black characters,

and there are only so many times a school can doOthello. Likewise, You’re a Good Man CharlieBrown was written before the introduction of thecomic strip’s one black character, Franklin.Although Ms. Moore added a few lines to thescript and had a black kid deliver them in theperson of Franklin (and created an entirely newcharacter for Carol Stuart, one of the few blackstudents in the theatre class), this hardly alteredthe racial dynamic at work.

To be white at that school, as in many others,was to have a whole world of extracurricularopportunity opened to oneself—a world where ifyou were a mediocre student (as I was), youcould still find a niche, an outlet for your talents,passions, and interests. To be of color at thatsame school was to ensure that no matter howgood an actor or actress you were, or werecapable of becoming, you were unlikely to be in

a position to avail yourself of this same outlet foryour creativity. Unless a theatre teacher isprepared to violate the aesthetic sensibilities ofthe audience, which is rare, and cast a person ofcolor in a role traditionally played by a whiteperson (like Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, or Snoopyeven), black, Latino, and Asian kids are just outof luck.

This, it should be noted, is no mere academicpoint. Theatre was a life raft for me in middleschool, without which I might well have goneunder altogether. My ability to access it, and thewhiteness that granted me that ability, was nominor consideration. By the time middle schoolbegan, my home life was increasingly chaotic. Myfather’s drinking had gone well past heavy, on theway to serious alcoholism. Though he was stilltechnically functional—and would remain so,more or less, right up until he got sober eighteen

years later—his addiction propelled hisinternalized rage and sense of failure forward,which would explode time and again in our smallapartment, always aimed directly at my mother.Though she absorbed the nightly verbal blowsand tried her best to shield me from the damage,each fight, each hateful word, each gutturalexpression of unhinged contempt cut deeply intomy sense of personal security.

I took to closing myself off in my room afterschool most days. When he was around, I wouldonly come out to eat dinner, always making sureto be back in my own personal space shortlythereafter, as the drinking continued and the fightswere sure to begin. Then, on those occasionswhen he would go out to a bar to drink more, Iwould force myself to stay up late until I couldhear the hall door open at the far end of ourapartment building, followed by the sound of his

heavy drunken footsteps moving closer to ourunit, and I could know that at least for that nighthe wasn’t going to kill himself while driving. Icould go to sleep.

Things got so bad at one point that I began tokeep track with hash marks on a page thenumber of days in a row that he had been drunk:twenty-one on the day I stopped counting.Though I longed for a closer relationship with mydad, I also breathed more easily whenever hewas in a play out of town. By then I had learnedthat quiet loneliness is always preferable toamplified togetherness when the cacophony towhich you’re being exposed reverberates withthe blaring notes of marital discord.

Only by escaping into the world of acting (astrangely ironic choice, I realize) was I able tomake it through those grades at all. It was myrefuge. I could lock myself in my room with a

play script, avoid my father, escape the smell ofCanadian whiskey or bad vodka on his breath,and avoid the verbal battles that were thehallmark of his relationship with my mother. Theonly times I would come out of my room were inthose moments when I honestly felt that if I didn’the might kill her. Although my home was not onecharacterized by physical abuse—thankfully, mydad only struck my mom once (which of coursewas one time too many) by pushing her into awall outside my room—when you’re ten andeleven your mind has a hard time processing thedistinction between verbal and physical violence,and knowing where that line is, and just howmuch it might take for the abuser to cross themetaphorical Rubicon. During this period,although I never had friends over—mostlybecause I didn’t want them to see my fatherdrunk—I also refused to go to their homes, at

least not past dinner, feeling that I needed to bein the house as a way to deter my father from theinevitable leap to assault or even murder.

No matter the infrequency of physical abuse,in my mind the threat always seemed to hang likea thunder cloud over our home. At one point, Iwas so sure he would kill her that I beganplanning an escape route. If I could intervene andsave her I would, but if it became apparent that Iwouldn’t be able to do much good, I knew howto get my bedroom window open fast, andexactly where I would run to get help, or toborrow the weapon with which I would end myfather’s life.

That my dad was not going to kill my motherwas hardly the point. When you hear him say thathe’s going to—like the one time he said it with asteak knife held three inches from her face, whileI watched from perhaps seven feet away—and

you’re a child, you are in no position todeconstruct the context of his words. All you cando is spend precious moments of your youthtrying to figure out ways to save your mom’s life,or at least your own, on that day when yourfather has one drink too many and burns dinnerbecause he wasn’t paying close enough attention,or can’t find his keys and flies into a rage, andreaches into the utensil drawer—and not for aspoon or salad fork.

So when I say that theatre was a life raft, I amnot engaging in idle hyperbole. I mean it literally.Without it, I would have had no escape. Whilemy physical existence may have continued—afterall, my father never killed anyone in the end, andhad he meant to, it’s doubtful I could havedissuaded him with a sonnet—my already fragileemotional well-being would have likely taken anosedive, with dire consequence in years to

come. Theatre was how I released myfrustrations; it was how I avoided falling intoclinical depression; it was how I got my mind offother things, like killing my father before he couldharm my mom, which I did contemplate in mymore panicked moments.

Without theatre, which I could only access theway I did because I was white, it is a very openquestion how my life would have gone. If all theother variables had been the same, but I hadbeen anything other than white, and therebybereft of the diversion offered by acting, I feelconfident that things would have gone differentlythan they did. As for my father, he should begrateful that we were white, and that I had anoutlet.

NEXT TO THEATRE, my other obsession asa kid was sports. When I wasn’t working on

lines for whatever play we were soon to beperforming at school, I was likely to be practicingeither basketball or baseball.

As for basketball, I had begun playingcompetitively at the age of nine. By my fifth gradeyear, 1979, I was playing for what wasundoubtedly the most feared team of eleven-year-olds in the city. Comprised of twelve guys,nine of them black, we had the advantage ofracist stereotypes working in our favor. Most ofthe teams we would play were made up ofprivate school white boys who had barely evenseen a black person, let alone played ball againstone. Psychologically we had won before we evenstepped on the court in most cases. The onlytimes we lost were because the white boys’coaches were smart enough to encourage theirplayers to foul and force us to the line. Sadly,most of our guys could hit twenty-five-foot

jumpers with no problem, but free throws fromfifteen feet? Not so much.

Still, the racial lessons imparted by mybasketball experience were profound. We wouldwalk in the gym, part of the YMCA youthbasketball program, in our black uniforms andour mostly black skin, and watch a bunch ofpasty white boys damn near piss themselves.We’d win by scores of 40–8, 34–6, 52–9, andother absurd point spreads; and it wasn’tbecause we were that much better. Fact is, ourfield goal percentage wasn’t very high, but we’dalways get multiple shots during each offensivepossession because the other team was tooafraid to fight for rebounds. It was as if theythought our guys might knife them if they eventried.

Because our opponents were so psyched outby the black players, they assumed they had little

to fear from the few of us who were white. Sowhenever the other team got to the foul line, wewould line up four black guys around the paint torebound if they missed, and I would stand at theextreme other end of the court, literally on theopponent’s foul line, completely unguarded,because they weren’t afraid of the short whiteguy. Their players would miss their free throws,our guys would rebound, and throw the balldown court to me for an easy layup each time.

On the one hand, the stereotypes of blackathleticism worked in our favor on the court,triggering in our opponents what psychologistslike Claude Steele call “stereotype threat” on thepart of the white players. According to thistheory, which has been amply demonstrated inlab experiments and real world settings, when aperson is part of a stigmatized group (thought tobe less intelligent or less athletic, for instance), the

fear of confirming the negative stereotype whenforced to perform in a domain where thatstereotype might be seen as relevant toperformance, can drive down performancerelative to ability. In other words, the anxietyspawned by fear of proving the negative stigmatrue can actually cause a person’s skills to suffer,whether on a basketball court or a standardizedtest.

In most situations, stereotype threat affectssocially marginalized groups, since they typicallyface more stigmatizing stereotypes than dominantgroups. So black students do worse in academicsettings than their abilities might otherwiseindicate because of the anxiety generated as theytry not to confirm racist stereotypes about blackintelligence; women and girls do worse on mathexams because they fear validating commonstereotypes about female math ability or the lack

thereof; and the elderly do less well when toldthey’re taking a test of memory because of a fearthat they may confirm negative beliefs about theirabilities in that arena. But because of thewidespread and anti-scientific belief that blacksare “natural athletes,” superior to whitesespecially at basketball, in this particular case thestereotype vulnerability fell on our whiteopponents. For a brief thirty-two minutes on thecourt, the script was flipped.

But thirty-two minutes does not a day make,let alone a lifetime—a point worth remembering,lest we assume a parity of disadvantage betweenwhites and blacks, simply because in one arenalike sports (and even then, just a few particularsports), blacks occasionally get the benefit of thedoubt and are thought to be superior.

A few years ago, I received an e-mail from avery thoughtful private school mom in Minnesota,

who had been asked to read the first edition ofthis book, along with other parents at the schoolher child attended. Much of it she liked, but shefelt compelled to tell me of at least one instanceof “black privilege” in the school, and how it was,to her mind, negatively impacting her white son.Her son, she explained, was an excellent footballplayer—a running back as I recall—and fasterthan several of the black guys on the team.Nonetheless, the coach (who was white) gavehim less playing time than her son’s blackteammates. She attributed this to the coach’sinability to believe that a white guy could be asgood a running back as a black guy. In otherwords, because of the black athlete stereotype,inferior black players were getting moreopportunity than her son.

Now on the one hand, I’m a parent, so Iknow something about the way parents tend to

view our children. To put it mildly, we are notalways the most objective judges of our ownkids’ talents: we tend to think their preschoolscribbling is a sure sign of artistic genius, their firstsentence evidence of pending literary fame, theirability to play a tune on the piano proof of theirstatus as prodigies, and their successfulcompletion of a pirouette sufficient confirmationthat they’ll be dancing in the Joffrey in no time.So I take parental bragging about children with agrain of salt. I would hope others would do thesame when I get to talking about mine; they’regreat, mind you, but they’re just kids.

On the other hand, I was willing to indulge thismom’s accolades for her son. After all, she couldbe right—he really could be faster than the blackguys—and if she was (in other words, if thecoach really was making a racist decision in favorof the black players and against her white son),

there was an interesting lesson to be learned; butit wasn’t the one she imagined.

Let’s assume the coaches on her son’s teamreally did misperceive the relative abilities of theirplayers because of some pro-black stereotypewhen it came to speed or agility. Where wouldthat thought have come from? How did itoriginate, and for what purpose? Well, of course,the racist stereotypes of black physicality andathletic prowess have long been constructed asthe opposite of certain other abilities they arepresumed to lack, namely, intellectual abilities.Interestingly then, whites, having been consideredintellectually superior to blacks, which works toour benefit in the job market and schools, end upbeing seen as less athletic, because we have longviewed the two skill sets (sports and academics)as incompatible. Ironically, what this means isthat the racist construction of an anti-black

stereotype when it comes to intellect—whichincludes as a corollary the idea that blacks arebetter athletes, since brain power is believed tobe inversely related to athleticism—can have anegative consequence for those whites who playsports. They end up the collateral damage ofracism—not racism aimed at them, but a largermindset of racism long aimed at the black andbrown.

Which is to say that if we’d like to see whitefootball players or basketball players given a fairshot to prove themselves, free from theinferiorizing assumptions that can attach to thembecause of a larger system of racist thought, wehave to attack that larger structure. We can’tmerely deal with one of its symptoms. In otherwords, young men like the son in this story willbe viewed as equally capable running backs atprecisely that moment his black teammates are

likely to be seen as equally capable doctors orengineers, and not one second earlier.

BY MIDDLE SCHOOL, my closeness to myblack friends had translated into a remarkableability to code-switch, meaning an ability to shiftbetween so-called “standard” English, and whatsome call “Black English,” and to do it naturally,fluidly, and without pretense. Although myparents never minded this, even when I wouldforget to switch back, thereby remaining in blackcadence and dialect around the house, therewere others who found it mightily disturbing.Teachers were none too happy with the way theywould hear me speaking in the halls to myfriends. It was one thing for an actual blackperson to speak that way, but for a white child todo so was one step over the racial line, and oneabout which they were hardly pleased.

Adding to the general unease that some whitefolks seemed to feel because of my growingproximity to blackness, there was my musicaltaste, which included a growing affinity for funkand hip-hop, the latter of which was just thenbeginning to emerge on the national scene. I hadlong had strangely eclectic musical tastes, soalthough I was a huge KISS fanatic, I went tobed every night listening to WVOL, Nashville’sso-called urban station, always making a pointnot to go to sleep until I had heard Parliament’s“Theme From the Black Hole,” or something,anything, by Kurtis Blow.

I had actually been the first person in myschool, white or black, to memorize every wordto the fourteen-minute version of “Rapper’sDelight” (the first major rap hit, though puristsdispute the legitimacy of its pedigree andperformers, the Sugar Hill Gang). My friends and

I would have rap battles to see who could getthrough the latest song without forgetting any ofthe words. I usually won these rather handily.

But all this cross-cultural competence didn’tendear me to the white teachers, many of whomhad been teaching long enough to remember (andprefer) the days when white faces were the onlyones in front of them; and by God those whitefolks had known what it meant to be white—andwhat it surely didn’t mean was beatboxing.

One teacher in particular quite clearly despisedme. Mrs. Crownover, who was my teacher forLanguage Arts (literature and English class),spoke to me in a voice that barely concealed hercontempt, and looked at me with an expressionsimilar to that which one makes around rottingfood. When she gave me a D in the class for thesecond grading period of fifth grade, my motherwas stunned. Given that it was a reading class

and I had been reading since before I was three,it made little sense that I would have done sopoorly. Frankly, I hadn’t been doing my bestwork. I found the class boring and her lessonstedious, so I knew I wouldn’t be getting a goodgrade; but a D seemed extreme, even with mylackadaisical effort.

When my mother went to meet with Mrs.Crownover to discuss my grade and find out ifthere was anything she needed to be worriedabout in terms of my own effort, focus, orreading skills, it became clear that the grade hadbeen largely unrelated to my effort or ability;rather, it was principally connected to how shefelt about my social circle. As Mrs. Crownovertold my mom, “Any white parent who sends theirchild to public schools nowadays should havetheir heads examined.”

As it turns out, this would prove to be a not-

so-incredibly bright career move on Mrs.Crownover’s part. Standing up for myfriendships and her own principles, my mothertook action, getting together with a few otherparents and demanding a sit-down with theprincipal. Within a matter of weeks, Mrs.Crownover had mysteriously and quiteunceremoniously disappeared, at first to bereplaced by a series of substitute teachers, andfinally, the next year, by someone else altogether.An extended sabbatical, and I believe an earlyretirement (though not early enough), was to beher much deserved fate.

On the one hand, an act of antiracist resistancesuch as this is worthy of praise. My mom didwhat she should have done, and what any whiteparent in that situation should do. But there is aninteresting aspect to this story that is equallyworthy of attention, and which demonstrates that

even in our acts of allyship we sometimes missthe larger issues. Yes, my mother had resolved toget the individual racist teacher in this instanceremoved. So far so good. No longer would shebe free to work out her own personal damage onchildren. There would be one less teacher atStokes carrying around the deep-seatedconviction that black children were inferior to thewhite children she apparently felt should have allfled to private schools at the first sign ofintegration.

But with that excision accomplished, thereremained a far more dangerous institutionalcancer operating in the heart of the school that Ishared with those black friends of mine. When Ireturned to class after Mrs. Crownover’sremoval, I was still attending a school system thatwas giving the message every day that blackswere inferior. The school had never needed this

one teacher to impart that lesson; it was implicitin the way the school system had been trackingstudents for five years by then, placing blacksalmost exclusively in remedial or standard leveltracks while placing most all white students inadvanced tracks, or so-called “enrichment”programs, as if those with privilege needed to bemade richer in terms of our opportunities. Andneither my mother nor I, with all those closefriends, had said anything about that racism.

Even in sixth grade, when the racialized natureof tracking became blatant, I wouldn’t catch it.My primary teacher that year, Mrs. Belote,would literally wave her hand, about mid-waythrough fifth period, signaling to the white kidsthat it was time for our V.E. class (which stoodfor, I kid you not, “Very Exceptional”) down thehall. We would quietly rise and depart theintegrated classroom like a receding tide of pink,

leaving a room filled with black kids whocouldn’t have missed what was happening, eventhough we did. We never thought about it once atthe time, friendships or no.

In other words, even as my mother had stoodup against the obvious bigot, she had droppedthe ball, just like everyone else, when it came toconfronting institutional racism. My closenesswith black people hadn’t protected them fromthat system, and hadn’t allowed me to see whatwas happening, let alone resolve to fix it, at leastnot yet.

OF COURSE, THERE were a few exceptionsto the racialized tracking scheme at Stokes andthroughout the Nashville public schools. Typicallythere would be one or two black females in theenrichment classes but rarely ever a black male.One of the black females in particular is worth

reflecting upon, as her experience demonstratesquite clearly the absurdity of racism as a nationaland even global phenomenon. During that fifthgrade year, she was the one black student whowas consistently placed in the advanced track.Her name was Rudo Nderere, and she and herfamily had recently come to the United Statesfrom Zimbabwe, arriving, if memory serves,before it actually became Zimbabwe—when ithad still been Rhodesia, a racist, whitesupremacist and apartheid state, much like SouthAfrica.

White teachers loved Rudo, and on severaloccasions I would hear them commenting uponhow intelligent she was (which was true), andhow articulate she was (also true), and howlovely her accent was (absolutely inarguable, asthe Southern African accent is among the mostpleasant in the world). But of course there were

also native-born blacks in that school, and inthose same teachers’ classrooms, who wereevery bit as brilliant and articulate. But theteachers rarely saw that, which is why theirastonishment at Rudo’s articulateness was soimplicitly racist: it suggested that such acharacteristic was somehow foreign to blackpeople, that the ability to speak well was a whitetrait that no black person had ever managed topossess before.

In any event, what was fascinating about theway Rudo was viewed in that Nashville middleschool is how utterly different the perception ofher—the very same her, with the sameintelligence, accent, and ability to string wordstogether in coherent sentences—would havebeen, and indeed had been in her native country.In Rhodesia, from which place she had justrecently departed, she would have been seen as

inferior, no matter her genius. She would havebeen a second-class citizen, her opportunitiesconstrained, all because of color. But in America,she could be viewed as exotic, as different, ascapable. She could be contrasted with localblack folks who were perceived as less capable,as aggressive, as uninterested in education, asinferior.

Many years later I would realize the process atwork here—the way that foreign-born blacks areoften played off against native-born AfricanAmericans in a way that has everything to dowith racism and white supremacy. Reading astory in my local paper about a white church intown that had been working with Sudaneserefugees to help them find jobs, child care, andvarious social services, I was struck by one ofthe statements made by the church’s pastor.When asked why the church had gone to such

lengths to help African migrants, but had neverdone similar outreach with local black families inneed of the same opportunities, the pastor notedthat in some ways it was probably because theAfricans were so grateful to be here. They hadchosen to come, after all. They had wanted to belike us, like Americans. Native-born black folkson the other hand had made no such choice, andthey regularly contested the dominant narrativeabout what America means and has long meant.African Americans, in other words, were pushyand demanding, and felt entitled (imagine that) tothe fruits of their prodigious labors throughout thegenerations. But African immigrants were joiners,wanting nothing more than the opportunity topartake in the American dream. They serve asvalidation for the greatness of the country; theygive the lie to the notion that the U.S. is a placewhere racism still exists. After all, were it so, why

would any of them move here? That Irish andItalian and Jewish migrants had long before cometo America, despite the prejudices they knewthey might well face in their adopted countries—in other words, they had come for economicopportunity, racial and ethnic biasnotwithstanding, much as Africans sometimes donow—seems to escape us.

That one place may be preferable to another interms of opportunity says little about whether thatfirst place is as equitable as it should be. But formany white Americans, like those teachers atStokes, the presence of someone like Rudoconfirmed everything they needed to believeabout their nation. She was like a soothing balm,allowing them not only to push away concernsabout institutional racism, but also to avoidconfronting their own biases, which played outagainst the other black students in their classes

every day.

MIDDLE PASSAGE 1980 WAS A horrible year for a lot of reasons,only one of which had to do with the election ofRonald Reagan that November—itself a causefor sincere political mourning in the Wise home.

Only twelve days into the year, my mom’sfather died at the relatively young age of sixtyfive, ending a life that had been of miserablequality for the past half-decade thanks to severalstrokes that had rendered him unable to care forhimself. A few months later, one of my dad’s oldtheatre colleagues died on stage, the victim of amassive heart attack. The next month, anotherfamily friend was killed in a car accident, and oneof my classmates, Roger Zimmerman, was killedwhen a drunk driver plowed into him while Rogerhad been riding his bike.

And then there was life with my father. In

May, dad and I started working on a few scenesfrom the play “A Thousand Clowns,” which wewould perform during my school’s spring theatreshowcase. Ultimately the show went well, but hehad shown up to dress rehearsal so blindrunningdrunk that I had a complete emotionalbreakdown on stage. Even as I glared at himthrough a literal cascade of tears, he failed tocomprehend the meaning behind the melancholy,incoherently mumbling something about howbrilliant I was for being able to make myself cry,just like the character in the scene was supposedto. I guess he also thought my silent seething onthe ride home was just a matter of staying incharacter, rather than what it really had been: theexpression of profound embarrassment that hehad exposed his illness for so many of my friendsto see. Needless to say, as sixth grade came to aclose, the combination of my tenuous connection

to my father, my parents’ combative relationship,and all the deaths in our little corner of theuniverse had left me far more exhausted than anyeleven-year-old should be.

Summer made things a bit better. Although mybaseball team had muddled through anothermiserable year, I had enjoyed a fantastic seasonindividually, making the city’s all-star team. Mydad had been out of town for much of thesummer, doing a play in Atlanta, which meant notonly that he wouldn’t be showing up to my gamesloaded (as he had for much of the previousseason), but that evenings at home with my momwould be blessedly quiet. We would get togetheron many of those evenings to watch old AlfredHitchcock movies, or Twilight Zone reruns, thelatter of which were among my favorite things towatch on TV.

By July, baseball season was over (this was

long before the days of traveling teams and forty-game summer schedules), and I was enjoyingdoing nothing. I’d sleep in late, go swimming inthe apartment’s pool most of the day, and thenspend the rest of my time reading, adding to mybaseball card collection, or hanging out at thelocal game room, trying to master Pac-Man,which had been released just two months earlier.

There were exactly eight weeks left before thestart of Junior High School, that morning of July6, when I was woken by the sound of my motheropening the apartment door to retrieve theSunday paper from the hallway. Though I’dheard the door open, I tried not to wake up,preferring to linger in bed a while. I closed myeyes, hoping to fall back asleep, only to beshaken a minute later by my mother’s cry.

“Oh no,” was all she said.I instantly knew that whatever was wrong had

something to do with the newspaper she had justopened, and that whatever it was didn’t concernnational politics or the Iran hostage crisis, whichwas in its ninth month. I scrambled out of bedand opened my door, afraid to learn what hadhappened, but curious. When I got to the livingroom I saw my mother crying. She turned away,hardly able to look at me.

“What happened?” I asked, as my stomachtightened, clenching around an abdominal herniaI’d had since infancy. My heart was pounding sohard that I could feel its beat, throbbingthroughout my body. Before she could answer, aringing sensation began in my ears, as if my bodywas somehow trying to prevent me from hearingthe reply to my question.

She looked up, her eyes welling with tears,and delivered the news.

“Bobby Bell is dead.”

I heard her but somehow the words failed toregister. It simply made no sense that Bobby,with whom I’d been friends since preschool atTSU, could be dead. It wasn’t conceivable thatBobby, the twelve-year-old who had coined thatword, “douche ’n’ push,” to describe the middleschool theatre teacher’s car, could be gone.

Bobby was one of the people I’d liked best allthrough school. We’d become close friends byfourth grade, and by sixth we were constantly tobe found in class, the halls, or the lunchroomplaying “pencil break” or “thump,” the latter ofwhich was a typically absurd boy game, in whichyou’d coil back your middle finger in the crookof your hand and then flick it forward into youropponent’s clenched fist over and again until oneplayer conceded the match due to pain. Bobbyhad these wonderfully fat knuckles, which madean almost drum-like noise when you’d thump

them. And while the fleshiness of his handprobably provided extra protection to him, it alsoprotected the thumper, since hitting a bonyknuckle by accident when aiming instead for themeat below could be painful. How could thischild, my thump rival, be dead?

In fact I was so sure it wasn’t the same Bobbythat I immediately asked about another BobbyBell we knew, who was a few years older thanme, and a local Little League legend.

“You mean Fruit?” I asked, that being thenickname of the other Bobby Bell.

“No Tim, Bobby, your Bobby,” she said.“How?” was all I could think to ask, still

completely unwilling to get my head around theloss. The answer would be even harder toaccept.

“He was killed last night at his dad’s store.Somebody shot him,” she explained.

And that’s when I knew it was real. It madesense, however horrifying. Bobby often helpedhis dad at one or the other of his father’s stores:convenience markets that also sold some of themost incredible barbecue in town. Bob Bell’sMarket on Twelfth Avenue had not been held upeven once in the eight previous years since itsopening. Not once. But on that muggy Julyevening in 1980, part of the busy Fourth of Julyweekend, it would be. And although Bobby haddone everything the robber had asked—stuffingmoney in a bag quickly even as he cried thefrightened tears that any child would shed,looking down the barrel of a gun poised merefeet from his face—he was shot in the headanyway, at point blank range, and died in front ofhis father. As he fled the store, the shooter, CecilJohnson—later identified by Bob Sr. and otherwitnesses—shot and killed two other men in a

taxi outside.Angry and confused I spun around and shoved

my fist into the wall. Luckily, right before myhand met plaster I had started to ease up on thepunch so that when contact was finally made itwouldn’t hurt so much. I was so numb that Icouldn’t cry, and I would stay that way for days,weeks, months, even years. In fact the first time Ithink I ever really let myself cry about Bobbywasn’t until five years later, when I would talkabout what had happened during a speech class,in which the assignment would be to discusssomething emotionally painful that we hadexperienced growing up.

Both Bobby and his killer were black, theformer the victim of, and the latter a practitionerof, a kind of racial self-hatred that has sadlyclaimed the lives of far too many AfricanAmericans over the years. Only someone who

had long since given up on the notion ofbrotherhood could do something like this. Onlysomeone who had long since concluded thathuman life was disposable—in this case blackhuman life much like his own—could think to firea .45 caliber weapon at a child while his fatherwatched, all for two hundred dollars and somechange. And in turn, the state of Tennessee(represented by D.A. Thomas Shriver, whosedaughter Susan was a classmate of ours) wouldreturn the favor, seeking and obtaining a deathsentence for Cecil Johnson, a rare occurrencewhen the racial identity of both perpetrator andvictim is black. Studies have long found thatdeath sentences are far more likely when whitesare killed, especially by blacks. And in DavidsonCounty, no death sentence had been obtainedbetween 1976, when the Supreme Courtreinstated the constitutionality of capital

punishment, and the time of Cecil Johnson’s trial.But in this case, the death of such a caring andloving child, helping his dad from whom he hadbeen inseparable, was enough to justify, in theeyes of the jury, ending the life of Cecil Johnson.

I cared deeply for Bobby, and was grieved byhis death. So too, I understood why his father sosteadfastly supported a death sentence for theman who had taken his only son from him right infront of his eyes. But even then, at the age ofeleven, I never wanted Cecil Johnson to die. Andeven now, though I would want to kill,personally, anyone who murdered one of mychildren, I steadfastly believe that no matter howmuch a person may deserve to die, the biggerquestion is whether the state deserves to kill. Andthat calculation—given the inherent class andracial biases embedded in the justice system—isconsiderably trickier than a simple consideration

of what a murderer has earned for him or herself.On December 2, 2009, nearly thirty years

after Cecil Johnson murdered three people,including my friend, the state of Tennesseeintravenously delivered to him a lethal cocktail ofdrugs, ending his life, and bringing to a close thischapter in mine. The night of Johnson’sexecution, as I thought about the waste of fourlives—Bobby’s, the other two victims, JamesMoore and Charles House, and his own—Icouldn’t help but wonder what kind of a societywe are that so readily inculcates the notion ofhuman disposability, whether in individuals whocommit such senseless crimes, or in the bodypolitic, which believes against all evidence to thecontrary, that by ratifying that same mentality, itwill somehow render its citizens safer.

JUNIOR HIGH WAS hell. To begin with, it

looked like an industrial building where a callcenter might be housed: one level, bland officepark architecture, and hardly any windows. Itwas (and still is) just one big brick structure,capable of squeezing all the joy out of theeducational process by virtue of its physical plantalone. Though internally it had been constructedas an experimental, even progressive attempt at“open classroom” learning—no walls betweenclassrooms, the idea being that teachers wouldco-teach in learning pods, linking, say, a literaturelesson with a history lesson, and then with ageography lesson—none of the teachers at JohnTrotwood Moore made use of the openclassroom approach. They didn’t seem to believein it, so the internal architecture of the building,which could have been liberatory in the hands ofthe right teachers, became little more than a wall-less, open arena for noise.

Adding to the absurdity of the school, Moorewas part of a larger campus, which included aMetro Nashville Parks and Recreation facility.This meant adults had access to the campusgrounds at all times of the day, even when thekids were in session—a strange arrangement thatled Moore to be considered one of the easiestplaces to buy drugs in the city. A national newsprogram had actually done a feature on drugavailability at Moore a few years after itsopening, contrasting its iniquitous activities withthe otherwise bucolic, upscale neighborhood inwhich it was located. After all (though I don’tthink the news special had mentioned this), theparents of squeaky-clean crooner Pat Boone(and grandparents of Debbie Boone, whose song“You Light Up My Life” would become thebiggest hit of the 1970s) lived right across thestreet from the school. Whites had been shocked

(and I’m sure the Boones were) to learn thatthere were drugs in their communities too, letalone that those who were selling them from theirneighborhood school (and buying them) weremostly white like themselves.

On the first day of seventh grade, as we weretrying to acclimate to the new surroundings ofjunior high, I noticed my old friend Bobby Orrheaded my way. I hadn’t seen Bobby since theend of baseball season (we played on the sameteam), and so I greeted him with a hearty,“What’s up?”

I got no reply.Thinking that he hadn’t heard me, I repeated

myself. “What’s up?” I inquired.This time he looked my way, and his words,

spoken forcefully, stung.“Hey man, ya’ know I don’t speak to white

people anymore.”

“What?” I replied, not understanding whyBobby might have said something like this to me.

He could tell I was hurt, and being a nice guyand a friend, he backed off his previousproclamation of racial separatism.

“You know I’m just kidding!” he said, laughinga bit.

“Oh, okay,” I replied, frankly not sure if hewas kidding, and thrown for a loop by this adhoc discussion of race in what had started as afairly simple greeting at the beginning of theschool year.

As it turned out, that exchange would serve asa bit of a metaphor for the next two years atMoore. The school was so divided racially—withwhites, regardless of intelligence, being placedoverwhelmingly in advanced classes, and folks ofcolor, regardless of theirs, overwhelmingly in thestandard classes—that it’s only a slight

exaggeration to say that most days, we whitekids would hardly see any black students.Perhaps a few in a class here and there, but forthe most part, only in the halls between classes,or in the lunchroom. This, in a school that wasabout one-third African American.

For most white students this separationwouldn’t probably have struck them as all thatbig a deal, but for me it was like social death.Most of my friends in those first six years ofschool had been African American kids, and withthe exception of Albert and two other friends,Zach Vietze and Rob Laird (the latter of whomwent to a different school), I wasn’t really closeto any white people. I was having to relearneverything: how to make friends, how to interactwith people whose interests were different, andhow to basically be white again. At first Iprobably blamed Bobby and other black

students for pulling away from me, but that feelingwouldn’t last long, since it was obvious that theinstitution was doing the dividing, not the blackkids, or the white kids for that matter.

Years later I would understand the context ofBobby’s words to me that first day, aftertraveling across the country and speaking withhundreds of people who’d had similarexperiences: whites and blacks, typically, whohad been close right up until about that same age,and then suddenly the students of color beganpulling away, cleaving to themselves. In almosteach story, the white person had been confusedabout why it had happened, but the people ofcolor never were. It hadn’t been personal, theywould insist, as indeed it hadn’t been for Bobby.It was just business; in this case the business ofself-protection, and the business of developing asecure identity as a black person in a society built

on whiteness. Our experiences had been sodifferent, our treatment so disparate, that byjunior high, we just didn’t have much in commonanymore. The institution had accomplished whatwe alone never would have. It had forced us intoour racial slots, whether we liked it or not. AndBobby, like the other black kids, knew where hisslot was, far before I would realize mine.

WITHIN MONTHS OF beginning school thatyear, even as I tried to carve out some time withmy black friends down at the Metro Park Board,shooting hoops or playing ping-pong or pool, itwas obvious that we were drifting in differentdirections. Still unclear at the time as to what washappening and why, it sent me into an emotionaltailspin for the better part of the year. My gradessuffered miserably, I failed a class for the firsttime, and generally, I had no appetite for school

any more. My dad thought I was on drugs, whichprobably made sense to him because he was ondrugs, but I wasn’t. I was just lost.

I wasn’t really sure how to be white, but Ifigured I could fake it. The music I listened tochanged almost overnight, or at least I wouldclaim that it had. When people would ask mewhat kind of music I liked, I felt compelled to lie,to say things like Foreigner, and Journey, andCheap Trick, even though I hated the first, couldonly stomach two songs by the second, andknew nothing about the third. Albert was a hugeBilly Joel fanatic but I couldn’t abide him either,so when Al would rave about “Piano Man,” oreven occasionally break into the song himself, Iwould just roll my eyes. Alan Green and DavidHarvard tried to turn everyone on to variousmusic—Alan had one of the most extensiverecord collections you’d ever want to see, while

David seemed to wear a different concert T-shirtevery day from the latest heavy metal show he’dbeen to—but I wasn’t into any of that either. Iwas over KISS by then and as for hip hop, I gotthe impression that I wasn’t supposed to like it. Itwasn’t what the other white kids were listeningto, so I figured I should get with the program. Infact, for most of seventh and eighth grade, I thinkI just stopped listening to music altogether.

Adding to the general awfulness of junior high,Moore was the school where all the whiteteachers who had tenure and had steadfastlyrefused assignment in the blacker schools beforebusing, had insisted they be placed after it. By thetime my class would get there, it was filled with agaggle of right-wing teachers unlike any publicschool I’ve seen since. Though a taxpayer-supported institution, John Trotwood Moore’sfaculty and administration might as well have

been culled from a directory of some evangelicalChristian ministry. There was the teacher whotold Albert that his father (a devout Christian andchurch deacon) was likely a communist for takinghim to see the critically-acclaimed movie Reds, in1981, and another who penalized me on aneighth grade term paper concerning the subject ofschool prayer, for ostensibly blaspheming God.Why? Because I had titled the paper, “OurFather Who Art in Homeroom,” which I thought(and still think) was pretty damned clever.

The only exceptions to the right-wing rule atMoore were the two black teachers I had whilethere, who were the only teachers in the schoolfrom whom I ever learned anything valuable:Milton Kennerly and Barbara Thornton. Mr.Kennerly, my geography teacher, made a lastingimpression on me when explaining that Westernconcepts of “civilization” were subjective, and

that the term should not be used when referringto the U.S. or the industrialized world, especiallynot in relation to non-Western societies who havetheir own social and cultural understandings ofwhat a good society should look like. We use theword “civilization” to mean “materially wealthy”and technologically advanced, even thoughmaterial wealth and technology are often used foruncivilized, unethical ends, he explained. It is theonly lesson from junior high that I remember.

I WAS MISERABLE all throughout my twoyears at Moore, but never so much as the daywe were corralled into the auditorium so as tolisten to the personal testimony of some twenty-something fundamentalist Christian, who hadbeen brought in to encourage us all to join YoungLife, a Christian youth group. As one of seven oreight Jews in the school, I sat utterly amazed that

we were being required to attend this modern-day equivalent of a tent revival. I looked aroundthe auditorium, hoping to lock eyes with any ofthe other Jewish kids, wondering what they werethinking, but had no luck. Finally, after about tenminutes of the presentation, I could stand nomore. I stood up and walked out of theassembly. A few seconds after exiting theauditorium, and not really knowing where Iintended to go, I was met in the hallway by theprincipal, Paul Hood.

“Where do you think you’re going,” Mr. Hoodasked, clearly agitated by my having exited thepep rally for Jesus that he’d thrown together,with little or no regard for such niceties as theConstitution.

Thinking as quickly as I could, I offered theonly answer I could conjure on such short notice.“I’m going to call my lawyer,” was my reply,

offered confidently and without hesitation.“You’re twelve. You don’t have a lawyer,”

Mr. Hood replied, calling my bluff.“No, but my parents do,” I responded, not

really knowing if this were true, “and it’s illegalfor you to make us listen to that guy.”

Mr. Hood stood like a deer in headlights in thehallway of the school over which he ostensiblyhad control. Frankly, I’d been scared to death tochallenge his authority that way, but had done itbecause I knew my parents would back me up ifI didn’t get satisfaction—in this case, an apologyand a promise not to let it happen again. And Iknew I’d have their support because they hadmade certain things clear to me from thebeginning of my school experience. As I stoodthere facing down the principal, I flashed back tomy very first day of first grade—the day I’d beengiven the encouragement to do exactly what I

was doing that afternoon at Moore.On Tuesday, September 3, 1974, I had begun

as a first grader at Burton Elementary, sent off toschool with some very clear admonitions from myfather. Rather than the traditional, “Be polite toyour teachers,” or “Have a great day,” I wasgiven two simple instructions: first, that I was tolet no one spank me (corporal punishment stillbeing quite legal all across the South at that time,and even now); and second, that I was to allowno one to make me pray—something that,despite Supreme Court precedent outlawing thepractice for twelve years by that point, was stilloccasionally tried in public schools throughout thearea. It’s hard to put into words the degree ofentitlement that comes from knowing even at theage of five that your parents have your back,and that if some authority figure gets out of line,your mom and dad will support you. But that is

what I was told, before I was told anything elseabout this thing called school. My parents wereletting me know that injustice happens, and thatthey wouldn’t stand for it. And that I shouldn’teither.

So standing in front of Mr. Hood, I feltpowerful. And while I would like to take creditfor the bravery that animated me in that instance,it was white privilege that made the difference, farmore so than some inherent courage on my part.After all, how many kids of color would have feltempowered enough to stand up to the schooladministration to protest the academic trackingthat was relegating most of them to loweracademic tracks than their white counterparts?How many would have felt empowered enoughto stand up to the unequal discipline being metedout to students of color, relative to whites, evenwhen rates of rule infractions were

indistinguishable between the various racialgroups? Likely not many.

In a very real sense, white racial privilege hadempowered me to stand up for myself and forsocial justice more broadly. Knowing that myparents would go to bat for me had meanteverything. But the fact that they would havedone so had nothing to do with their love for me(which love was surely rivaled by that of theparents of the black kids with whom I went toschool). Rather, it was predicated on theprivilege that allowed even a lower-income whitekid like myself to feel certain enough about myrights so as to challenge those who would abusethem. Yes, the story had been about institutionalChristian hegemony and the marginalization of meas a Jew. But it was equally about the way thateven Jews, with our historically inconsistent andsituationally-contingent whiteness, can still access

the powers of our skin in ways that make adifference.

INTERESTINGLY, MY IDENTITY as aJew had never really been something about whichI’d thought until Moore. Around that time, inaddition to the institutionalized Christianity thatcoursed through my school, there was also theday in May 1981, when a group of neo-Nazisand Klan members were arrested as they droveon to the grounds of the Temple with what theythought was a working bomb. They had intendedto detonate it and blow up my house of worshipin the process, only to discover that the devicewas a fake, planted by one of their number whowas an FBI informant. Good times.

I was growing up in a mixed-faith home, inwhich my mom was a Christian, and my dad,though Jewish, was largely uninvolved in my

religious upbringing. I would be sent off toTemple each Sunday (or Saturday, beginning ineighth grade), where the Rabbi would teach mewhat it meant to be Jewish; and if not the Rabbi,surely one of the several classroom teachers inthe Hebrew school could accomplish it.

But I guess I wasn’t a very good student,because I never learned much. I learned vaguelyabout Jewish perspectives on various socialissues of the day, but it seemed as though most ofthe lessons were about victimization: theHolocaust of European Jewry, or mistreatment atthe hands of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Besides thatI can’t recall much, except being constantly hit upfor Tzedakah money by the school director, soas to help plant trees in Israel. Tzedakah is aHebrew word often translated as charity, thoughactually it’s meant to refer to justice. It’ssomewhat similar to tithing by Christians,

although I’ve never heard of Catholic churchesguilt-tripping eight-year-olds into coughing up apercentage of their allowances so as to planttrees in Vatican City. Not to mention, since thosetrees were likely being planted on landconfiscated from Palestinians (whether in 1948 or1967), Tzedakah money for such a purposewould likely run directly counter to the cause ofjustice. But as a kid, I would have known nothingof that.

I also remember being berated and bullied bythe Hebrew teacher, who was fresh from her lastjob with the Israeli Defense Force. I simply couldnot learn the language, nor did I understand theimportance of doing so. Even then it struck me asodd that Jews would be trying to recapture thelanguage of the Torah for everyday use (as inIsrael), when frankly, Yiddish had served most ofour ancestors just fine for centuries, and before

that Aramaic, following the Babylonian exile.Later, of course, I would learn that to many in theZionist movement, Yiddish was a shamefulpeasant language, associated with the diaspora,and so it was to be spurned in favor of thelanguage of King David. If we reclaimed theancient language we could reclaim the ancientgreatness, the ancient power, never to beoppressed again (or so the story went). Themodern Hebrew movement, was, in a real senseborn of a deep shame at having been so mightilyoppressed throughout Christian Europe andexiled from our ancient homeland. At some level,the reclaiming of Hebrew and the post-shoah cryof “never again” both seemed as much internally-directed self-affirmations as outwardly-pointedwarnings to the rest of the world.

I got along with virtually no one at Temple.Most of the kids there went to private school,

and their dads were doctors, or attorneys, orprofessors, or businessmen. Most all of theirparents had college degrees. And while I playedball at the Y with my black friends, they played atthe Jewish Community Center, surrounded byother Jews. It seemed a very cloisteredenvironment, very clubby, and I couldn’t stand it.The few kids there who I went to school withwere okay, but I wasn’t really close to any ofthem.

It took me years to figure out why I’d been somiserable at Temple, why I never felt as though Ifit in. Though I wouldn’t have known it at thetime—nor even the meaning of the word todescribe the problem—in retrospect I can seethat it was principally the classism of it all. Whilethere are far more working class and even poorJews in the United States than most peoplerealize—estimates place the latter number at

around fifteen percent, or about one in sevenAmerican Jews—in places like Nashville, lower-income Jews are almost completely invisible.While working class Jewish communities andneighborhoods are common in larger cities likeNew York, in places with much smaller Jewishcommunities, economically marginal Jews arepretty much out of sight, out of mind. They can’tafford the cost of Temple or Synagogue, or evenif they can, they can’t swing the additionalexpense of participating in the civic events puttogether by the Jewish Federation. So, absent thefinancial resources to make themselves peopleworth knowing, they are effectively excludedfrom Jewish life.

As one of the few Jews at Temple in thosedays from a lower-income, non-professionalfamily, I struggled constantly with the nature ofmy Jewishness, as I think my father did. I’m

certain that the reason he rarely ever set foot inthe Temple, typically coming only for services onHigh Holy days, was that compared to all theseother families, ours seemed a relative failure. Theinternalized oppression—a concept about whichI would learn many years later as it relates topeople of color victimized by racism—was, inthis instance, finding a home in me as well. It wasbad enough to be economically struggling whenyou were white, and expected to succeed. But tobe white and Jewish, and still be struggling was adouble-whammy. What was wrong with us, withme? Much like the Asian kid who isn’t good atmath or science and thereby finds him or herselfcoming up short in relation to the Asian archetypeconstructed largely by non-Asians, so too was Iseeming to fail in relation to the archetype ofacceptable Jewishness: good with money,successful, hard-working.

To be the broke Jew was to grapple with self-doubt as a matter of weekly routine. It was to failto fit in within your own community, even as theother community—the gentile community—wasreminding you, in any number of ways, that youweren’t one of theirs either. My Jewishnesswobbly at best, I would more or less abandon itin any formal sense after my freshman year ofhigh school, right after Rabbi Falk (who had beensomething of a civil rights legend in Nashville)threatened to fail me in Hebrew school if I didn’tattend at least seven Friday night services perschool semester. Though I tried to explain to himthat I couldn’t attend that many Friday services—weekends were when I went out of town fordebate tournaments, and debate was going to bemy ticket to college, not being a Jew—hepersisted in his threats. Having been taught not tosit idly by and suffer fools gladly, nor the petty

injustices often meted out by said fools, I did themost Jewish thing I could think to do in thatsituation: I staged a walk-out, telling him I wasdone—with him and Temple, roughly in thatorder.

I COULDN’T WAIT for the first day of highschool. To be done with John Trotwood Moorewould make Hillsboro seem like heaven, nomatter how much more inviting it actually provedto be. Yes, as a freshman I’d be on the bottomrung of the ladder, but I didn’t care. There wouldbe new people to meet, new activities in which toget involved, and since it had been the school towhich both my parents had gone (and from whichmy dad had graduated), I felt like I belongedthere. It was almost as if I could claim someownership over the space, if only because a mereseventeen or eighteen years earlier my mom and

dad had walked those halls, and some of theirold teachers were still there.

Hillsboro was a “comprehensive” high school,which is just fancy talk for a school that viciouslytracks its students, some into a college-preptrack and others into a vocational track. I’ll leaveit up to the reader’s imagination to guess theracial and class demographic of each in turn. Ofcourse, the teachers there (as with most places)would deny to the death that there was anythingthe least bit racist about this arrangement, or theirown disparate treatment of the students. Rather,they would have said (as teachers mosteverywhere do) that they “treat all kids the sameand don’t see color.”

Putting aside the absurdity of the claim—studies indicate that we tend to make very finedistinctions based on color, and that we noticecolor differences almost immediately—the fact is,

colorblindness is not the proper goal of fair-minded educators. The kids in those classroomsdo have a race, and it matters, because it says alot about the kinds of challenges they are likely toface. To not see color is, as Julian Bond hasnoted, to not see the consequences of color.And if color has consequences, yet you’veresolved not to notice the thing that brings aboutthose consequences, the odds are pretty goodthat you’ll fail to serve the needs of the studentsin question.

To not see people for who they are is to missthat some but not all students are dealing withracism. It is to privilege the norm, which is white,by assuming that “kids are kids,” and thentreating the kids the way you’d treat your own.But with more than eight in ten teachers in theUnited States being white, the children in the careof teachers for eight hours a day often look very

different from the kids to whom those teachersgo home at night. To treat everyone the same isto miss the fact that children of color have all thesame challenges white kids do, and then that oneextra thing to deal with: racism. But if you’ve toldyourself you are not to see race, you’ll beunlikely to notice discrimination based on race,let alone know how to respond to it.

The consequences of artificial color-blindnesswould become apparent at Hillsboro a few yearslater, in my senior year, when we had a smallscale race riot involving about three-dozenstudents—not white against black, but white andblack on one side, against Southeast Asianstudents on the other, most of whom had cometo America after 1975, in the wake of theVietnam War. Had you asked teachers or theadministration if there were racial problems atHillsboro at the beginning of that year, they

would have assured you there were not. Theywould have pointed to the generally positiverelationships between people of different racesand downplayed or ignored the extreme isolationof the Southeast Asian students, much to thedetriment of the institution, as we would laterlearn when we had to have cops in the halls forthree days, just to restore calm.

Having never been asked to think about howwe viewed the newcomers among us (often quitenegatively), or to consider howmisunderstandings often flared because oflanguage and cultural barriers, the school shut itseyes and pretended everything was fine. Bystifling any discussion of racial and cultural bias—and certainly never expecting the rest of us tolearn about Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, and Hmongcultures and interrogate our prejudices—Hillsboro’s colorblindness created the conditions

that gave rise to that riot.But I’m getting ahead of myself here. So let’s

back up.

ALTHOUGH I STILL loved theatre, I didn’treally want to do plays in high school. That hadbeen my father’s thing at Hillsboro, so there wereany number of reasons why I figured I’d best goin a different direction.

Instead of getting involved with the DramaClub, I chose Forensics. When someone firstmentioned it to me, I had no idea what they weretalking about. The only time I’d heard that wordwas with regard to forensic science, as part ofthe introduction to the TV show Quincy, whichmy mom and I loved to watch. Not wanting tocut up cadavers or investigate crime scenes, Ihad said no thanks. Once I learned that this kind

of forensics referred to speech competitions, Idecided to take a look.

Though I would ultimately settle on debate asmy principal activity, I hadn’t thought that wouldbe the case at first. Rather, Albert and I begand o ing Inherit the Wind as a dramaticinterpretation piece at local and regional forensicscompetitions, winning several and placing at theothers. Although I had also been signed up at myfirst forensics tournament to do “ExtemporaneousSpeaking”—which involved drawing a topic froma hat and then having thirty minutes to puttogether a six minute speech on whatever subjectyou’d drawn—I found the prospect terrifying.After drawing my topic, I totally freaked out,leaving the library after ten minutes ofpreparation, and walking around the building untilwell past my time to make my presentation.Thankfully, my coach made me go back in for the

second and third rounds, and I’ve been speakingever since.

Debate would become for me in high schoolwhat theatre had been in middle school: a placeto put my energy and also an escape from thecraziness that was my home life. The idea ofthrowing myself into an activity that allowed meto travel, to get away from home at least twoweekends a month, was more than a littleappealing. I was sure by now that my father wasnot going to kill my mother, so I didn’t fearleaving them alone, and mostly I just needed abreak from the fighting and the drinking.

There have always been debaters of color,and indeed, my high school’s top debater when Iarrived was a black senior, James Bernard.James, who would attend Harvard Law withBarack Obama several years later—and wouldbe one of the founders and first publishers of the

hip-hop magazine The Source—taught me a lotabout debate as well as activism, the latter in hiscapacity as one of the key players in theNashville Youth Network: a loosely-knit coalitionof teens energized around a number of issues ofrelevance to young people at the time. Butdespite James’s debate prowess, the activitywas, and still is, extraordinarily white, not merelyin terms of its demographic, but also in terms ofits style, its form, and its content at the mostcompetitive levels. Debate literally exudeswhiteness and privileges white participants in anumber of ways.

On the one hand, there is the issue of money.Debaters, in order to be nationally competitive,require funding: either a school with a hugebudget to pay for trips to national tournaments,or families that can swing the cost of sending theirkids away for three days at a time, often by

plane, for the purpose of competing. I hadneither, but between what minor help my parentscould offer and the money I made workingtwenty hours a week sacking groceries at a localmarket, we managed to make it work.

Then there are the summer debate camps,which even in the 1980s cost about fifteenhundred dollars, and which run for three to fourweeks. Those who can afford to go to these geta huge jump on the competition. In fact, I don’tknow of any nationally competitive team whosemembers didn’t attend at least one camp duringthe previous summer. During the summer beforemy junior year, my family was unable to afford tosend me to a debate institute, and being unable togo set me back considerably, in terms of my ownskills, for several months at the beginning of thetournament season. It took me most of the firstsemester to catch up to the other national-circuit

debaters who had been at the camps learningtechnique and the year’s topic backwards andforwards, all with the assistance of collegecoaches and top-notch research facilities.

Obviously, given the interplay of race andsocioeconomic status in this country, blacks,Latinos, American Indians, and Southeast Asians(all of which groups have much higher povertyrates than whites) are woefully underrepresentedin the activity, relative to their numbers in thestudent population. But the cost of debate ishardly the only thing that causes the activity to beso white. The substance of the arguments madeand the way in which the arguments are deliveredalso tend to appeal to whites far more readilythan to people of color for whom the style andsubstance are often too removed from the realworld to be of much practical value.

Those who haven’t seen a competitive debate

(particularly in the most dominant category,known as policy debate) may be inclined to thinkthat such a thing is a deep discussion of somepressing issue. But if that is what you expected,and you then happened into a debate at one ofthe nation’s top tournaments and watched any ofthe elimination rounds (those involving the topsixteen or thirty-two teams, typically), you wouldthink you had walked into a world of make-believe. Even if you could understand a singleword being said, which is unlikely since the“best” debaters typically speak at lightning speed(and I was among the biggest offenders here,able to rattle off five hundred words a minute),you still wouldn’t really understand what wasgoing on. The terminology is arcane and only ofuse in the activity itself—terms like topicality,counterplan, permutation, infinite regression ,and kritik.

The purpose of competitive debate isessentially to speak faster than your opponentsso they will “drop” one of your arguments, whichyou will then insist to the judge is the mostimportant issue in the round, warranting animmediate ballot in your favor. Just as critical,debaters are to make sure that whatever thetopic, their arguments for or against a particularpolicy must be linked to nuclear war orecological catastrophe, no matter how absurd thelinkage. So, for example, you might claim thatyour opponent’s plan to extend the retirementage will contribute to global warming by keepingpeople in the workforce longer, therebyincreasing consumption levels, thereby increasingenergy expenditure, thereby speeding up climatechange and the ultimate end of the world.

Though one can theoretically learn quite a bitfrom debate, especially during the research phase

of the operation, the fact remains thatsuperficiality, speed and mass extinctionscenarios typically take the place of nuancedpolicy analysis, such that one has to wonder howmuch the debaters really come to know about theissues they debate at the end of the day. Learningis always secondary to winning, and for the sakeof winning, debaters will say virtually anything.

My own debate experience serves as vulgarconfirmation of this maxim. On the one hand, Iran cases (which in debate terms means theprimary position taken by the affirmative teamupholding the year’s formal resolution) calling forcutting off weapons sales to Venezuela, and alsofor the restoration of voting rights to ex-felons:positions with which I agreed. On the other hand,I also ran cases calling for a program that wouldemploy all poor folks who were out of work tobuild a missile defense system (possibly the most

ridiculous idea ever advocated in a debateround), and for reinforcing the nation’s waterreservoirs against poisoning by terrorists.Although the idea of protecting soft targets fromterrorism might make sense, the evidence weused to make our case was almost exclusivelyfrom the most disgusting of anti-Muslim, right-wing sources (and this was in 1985 and 1986mind you, long before 9/11). I am still takingextra baths to wash off the ideological stench ofhaving read evidence in debate rounds frompeople like Michael Ledeen or Daniel Pipes (thelatter of whom would, several years later, posthighly critical comments about me on his website,so I guess the feeling is mutual).

When we were on the negative side, I wouldargue, among other things, that poverty should beallowed to continue because it would eventuallytrigger a glorious socialist revolution (which isn’t

even good Marxist theory, let alone a morallyacceptable position), or that civil liberties shouldbe eradicated so the United States couldtransition to a society in which resource use waslimited by force, family size was strictlycontrolled, and thus planetary destructionaverted. These kinds of arguments, it should benoted, were hardly mine alone: they wereabsolutely typical on the national debate circuit,and they still are.

The reason I call this process a white one isbecause whites (and especially affluent ones),much more so than folks of color, have the luxuryof looking at life or death issues of war, peace,famine, unemployment, or criminal justice as agame, as a mere exercise in intellectual andrhetorical banter. For me to get up and debate,for example, whether or not full employment is agood idea presupposes that my folks are not

likely out of work as I go about the task. Todebate whether racial profiling is legitimatelikewise presupposes that I, the debater, am notlikely to be someone who was confronted by thepractice as my team drove to the tournament thatday, or as we passed through security at theairport. In this way, competitive debatereinforces whiteness and affluence as normativeconditions, and makes the process moreattractive to affluent white students. Kids of colorand working-class youth of all colors are simplynot as likely to gravitate to an activity wherepretty much half the time they’ll be forced to takepositions that, if implemented in the real world,might devastate their communities.

Because debaters are encouraged to thinkabout life or death matters as if they had littleconsequence beyond a given debate round, thefact that those who have come through the

activity go on to hold a disproportionate share ofpowerful political and legal positions—somethingabout which the National Forensics League haslong bragged—is a matter that should concern usall. Being primed to think of serious issues asabstractions increases the risk that the personwho has been so primed will reduce everything toa brutal cost-benefit analysis, which rarelyprioritizes the needs and interests of society’s lesspowerful. Rather, it becomes easier at that pointto support policies that benefit the haves at theexpense of the have-nots, because others whomthe ex-debaters never met and never had to takeseriously will be the ones to feel the damage.

Unless debate is fundamentally transformed—and at this point the only forces for real changeare the squads from Urban Debate Leagues anda few college squads of color who are clamoringfor different styles of argumentation and different

evidentiary standards—it will continue to serve asa staging ground for those whose interests aremostly the interests of the powerful. Until thevoices of economically and racially marginalizedpersons are given equal weight in debate roundswith those of affluent white experts (whoseexpertise is only presumed because other whitespublished what they had to say in the first place),the ideas that shape our world will continue to bethose of the elite, no matter how destructive theseideas have proven to be for the vast majority ofthe planet’s inhabitants.

Privilege makes its recipients oblivious tocertain things, and debate, as an activity, is one ofits many transmission belts—one that I was ableto access, to great effect, in my life. Lucky for methat I went to a school that offered it, that I hadparents who somehow managed to help meafford it, and that its game-playing format wasn’t

yet a problem for me, ethically speaking. Luckyfor me, in other words, that I was white.

DEBATE WASN’T THE only arena for whiteprivilege in high school. There was also theentirely Eurocentric curricula, the ability to getaway with cheating, or even skipping school inways no student of color could likely have done,and of course, there was partying.

I can’t even remember, because there aresimply too many to recall, the number of parties Iattended in high school at which hundreds ofunderage kids, including myself, were drinkingand taking various types of drugs. These wereparties with up to five kegs of beer, where guyswere taking cover charges at the end of thedriveway and stamping people’s hands, right onthe road, in plain view of everyone, including thepolice cars that would occasionally cruise by to

make sure the noise wasn’t getting too loud. Onmore than a few occasions the cops would evencome onto the property in response to a noisecomplaint, and tell us to cut the music down.There is simply no chance that the officers didn’tknow alcohol was being served; likewise, theyhad to have been able to detect the smell ofmarijuana in the air. Yet not once did they arrestanyone, or even tell us to get rid of the booze andthe weed, so as to warn us that next time wewouldn’t be so lucky. Indeed, next time wewould be that lucky, and the next time, and thenext time, and the time after that, always.

These parties were at the homes of whitepeople, surrounded by other homes lived in bywhite people, and attended almost exclusively bywhite people. There would always be a fewpeople of color around, but for the most part,these were white spaces, which immediately gave

law enforcement officials reason to cut us slack.Had these house parties been in blackneighborhoods they would never have beenallowed to go on at all, as large as they were,even without a single illegal substance on thepremises. But for whites, in white neighborhoods,everything was different. Our illegality waslooked at with a wink and a nod.

Criminal activity was also regularly overlookedon the debate circuit. When debaters atNashville’s prestigious boy’s prep school,Montgomery Bell Academy (MBA), were caughtdestroying law journals at Vanderbilt University’slaw school in 1984, by using razor blades to cutout important evidence rather than take the timeor spend the money to make Xerox copies, theyfaced no criminal penalties. Their parentsprobably repaid Vanderbilt for the damage, orperhaps MBA paid the bill, just to keep the

activities of their elite team quiet. But whateverthe case, no one ended up with a record, andMBA as an institution meted out no collectivepunishment either: no grounding their teams fromcompetition for the year, no public mea culpa.With the exception of those of us in the Nashvillearea who knew the MBA debaters andconsidered some of them friends, most folks onthe national circuit probably knew little of whathad happened. Needless to say, if an urban teammade up of black or Latino kids went into thelibrary of their local college and defaced privateproperty, things would go a bit differently.

When it came to drugs, the debate circuit wasprobably the best place to score. So everyonecould identify the noise when the briefcase of oneof MBA’s top debaters accidentally opened upin the auditorium at Emory University in 1985,spilling its contents in front of 500 students

waiting to hear which teams had advanced toelimination rounds. The clinking of dozens ofnitrous oxide canisters upon the stage—canistersused for doing “whippets,” an inhalant with anasty habit of causing seizures and heart attacks—was hard to mistake for anything else.Everyone knew what the noise signified, and noone did anything but laugh, as the debatersscrambled to put the evidence of theirrecreational activity away.

That summer, I attended debate camp atAmerican University in D.C. Upon arriving, Ichecked in, put my bags on the floor next to mybed, and spent the next two hours in the room ofarguably the best debater in the history of theactivity (who also, interestingly enough, went toMBA) getting baked into oblivion. Everyoneknew what was going on in that room, yet no onedid a thing. Even if you couldn’t smell the weed,

you couldn’t miss the aroma of burning cologne—entire bottles of it—that had been poured outjust inside the door and set on fire to cover upthe real action that was taking place inside. Noseventeen-year-old kid wears that much Polo.

And then there was alcohol.When it came to drinking, I would venture to

guess that pretty much every white student at myschool who wanted a fake ID had one, many ofthem because of my own entrepreneurial efforts.Tennessee, lucky for us, had at that time whatwas probably the easiest driver’s license in thecountry to fake. The state had only switched to aphoto ID in 1984, so many of my classmateswere able to use their paper licenses—thealteration of which took all of about fifteenminutes, a razor blade, and some glue—until theirexpiration dates; but even when the picture IDscame in, they were simple to replicate. All you

needed was a poster board, some black art-supply-store letters for the wording, an orangemarker for the TENNESSEE background at thetop, a light blue piece of paper for the subject tostand in front of, off to the side of the board, anda clear piece of acetate (like for an overheadprojector) onto which you could stencil the stateseal, copying it from the encyclopedia. Youwould then place half of the seal on the bottom-left side of the board, and stand with yourshoulder just behind the other half, hanging off theboard, giving the appearance that the seal hadbeen computer generated and stamped onto thepicture. Although the methods and materials werecrude, they worked.

I began my fake ID business out of my home,shuttling people in and out of my parents’apartment, with their knowledge I should add,occasionally a dozen in one afternoon. The

process was simple: You brought a package ofinstant film, along with twenty dollars. I wouldtake an entire roll. However many seemed usablewere yours to keep, but you had to let them sitfor 24 hours before cutting them to license size sothat the chemicals in the paper would dry—otherwise, the paper would separate and the IDwould fall apart. Then you had only to apply awhite sticker to the back of the otherwise blackinstant camera film so as to mimic the plain whitebacking on a real license. Simple. Tennesseedidn’t laminate licenses in those days, so all youhad to do was pop your fake into the little plasticholder that the state had provided you for yourreal driver’s license and you were pretty muchable to get into any club you wanted, and todrink at most bars.

My fake ID business provided me with amodest but welcome stream of revenue, and of

course every one that I made was punishable bya five hundred dollar fine and up to sixty days injail. Likewise, every occasion when I used onemyself—which would have been probably threehundred times between the age of sixteen and thetime I was finally able to drink legally in my senioryear of college—was similarly punishable. That Ithought I could get away with such an enterprisehad everything to do with the cavalier way inwhich white youth view law enforcement in mostcases. Because we know we can get away withdrinking, and drinking and driving so long as wearen’t hammered, and passing fake ID, we do itwithout so much as a second thought. The worstthat’s going to happen, we figure (usuallycorrectly), is that we’re going to get turned downby someone who knows that we’re passing aphony. But they aren’t going to call the cops. It’slike the guy for whom I made an ID right before

he left to go to college (he of the whippetcanisters mentioned above), who tried to pass offmy artwork at the door of some club inGeorgetown, only to suffer the indignity of thebouncer taking the picture out of its plastic sleeveand bending it back and forth. It fell apart withinseconds, owing not to my own shoddy work, butto the unfortunately crappy quality of instant film.The bouncer told him to get lost, but my clientknew he wasn’t going to jail that night. In fact,we both laughed about it when he had theoccasion to tell me what had happened a yearlater.

I even showed my fake ID to cops on twodifferent occasions, as did plenty of other folks Iknew, and never got busted, even when Ishowed a phony Iowa license to a cop who wasoriginally from Iowa and had to know the ID wasphony, since I had just made up the template off

the top of my head and it looked like crap. Thatwas the same night that another of my friends,also white, showed the same cop an ID that wasreal, but which belonged to a guy who was in hislate twenties or early thirties (my friend Rob waseighteen), with red hair (his was brown), and abeard (he was clean shaven). Not even close, butgood enough for white boys.

IT WAS ALSO in high school that I began todevelop my political sensibilities, aided in thatprocess by the research I was doing for debate,but also by the influence of punk music. Havingspent several years listening to music hardly at all,by high school I had begun to gravitate to punk,in part because it spoke to the sense of personalalienation I felt, still ensconced as I was in mydysfunctional home situation, and also because itresonated with my growing politicization.

Not all punk was political to be sure, and eventhe punk that was wasn’t always progressive.Bands like Fear had a deliberately offensiveright-wing tilt to their lyrics, and the Ramones,who I loved, were an amalgam of two warringpolitical factions—one led by Joey, the NewYork Jewish liberal, and the other by Johnny, thefar-right military brat who stole Joey’s girlfriend,inspiring the song “The K.K.K Took My BabyAway.” Punk had always had a bit of thispolitical tension present, with members of earlypunk acts occasionally sporting Nazi insignia ontheir clothing or instruments just for shock value,though typically this was more in keeping with the“fuck you” ethic of punk than due to any realpolitical sensibilities. That said, most punk actsleaned pretty clearly to the left, at least if they hadany discernable politics at all.

It was through punk records that I first

became aware of any number of burning issues atthe time, especially those concerning UnitedStates’ foreign and military policy. After readinga political zine stuffed in a two-record punksampler—which I’d picked up at the only recordstore in Nashville where you could find punkmusic (and even then, only in the import bin)—Iwas instantly riveted to the growing anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The zinediscussed, albeit briefly, the history of U.S.support for the white racist government there—which although representing only six percent ofthe population, oppressed the black majorityviciously—including Commerce Departmentapproval of the sale of “shock batons” to theSouth African Defense Forces for use on blackprisoners. It was also therein that I learned of thedeath of activist and apartheid foe Stephen Biko,in police custody in 1977, which then led me to

seek out Biko’s collected essays, I Write What ILike, which remains among the most influentialbooks in my own political and antiracistdevelopment.

In fact, I liked that title so much that I adoptedit as a personal mantra of sorts. Thoughobviously I had never faced—nor would I everexperience—oppression the likes of that whichBiko had endured to the end, the concept thatone should write fearlessly and speak one’s truthno matter the consequence was incrediblyliberating. Of course, locally there were noinjustices to combat that could rival what washappening in South Africa. But when you’resixteen, outrage comes easy. Soon enough, I’ddiscover an injustice about which to becomeanimated. By comparison to matters of life anddeath—or even, frankly, the various forms ofwhite privilege and racism that manifested at our

school—the issue that emerged was minor. Butall activists start somewhere I suppose.

And so in spring of 1985, when Hillsboro’sadministration suspended a freshman by the nameof Anton Young for wearing a skirt, andthreatened disciplinary action against any studentswho came to his defense, I put pen to paper andcomposed my first political screed: a short,sweet, 350-word polemic blasting the school’sdress code and standing up for freedom ofspeech. Yes, Anton had been deliberatelyprovocative—it was his style, and what madehim such an iconoclastic element in the studentbody—but he hadn’t been offensive. The skirtcame down below his knees, and was more likea kilt than anything else, as I recall. The fact thatthere was another student (our resident skinheadwannabe) walking around daily with a leatherjacket festooned with a swastika, and yet the

administration had neither said nor done anythingabout that, seemed to indicate that the policywas not only horribly arbitrary, but enforced in away suggesting that school officials were moreconcerned with ambiguous sexuality than racism.Not to mention, to threaten those who spoke outagainst the suspension of Anton was clearly anabrogation of our Constitutional rights.

My essay ran in the school’s “undergroundpaper.” As a side note, any school that has anunderground paper is a school with a lot ofpeople who believe themselves to be writers (andof an especially hip and subversive type at that)against any and all evidence to the contrary—people for whom the regular school paper is too“establishment,” and whose staffs are a bunch ofass-kissers, the literary equivalent of the PepClub. It’s a privileged concept, almost bydefinition, to think that what you have to say is so

important that you can make your own paper,thumb your nose at the administration and theregular student press, and get away withpublishing your truth, no matter who likes it.

Or in this case, who doesn’t like it. I wassitting in third period government class with Mr.McMackin—the unofficial advisor to theunderground rag—when a student worker camein from the principal’s office and told me thatHarry Brunson, the Assistant Principal, needed tosee me. The paper had been out for roughly anhour, which meant there was little doubt it wasthe essay for which I was being summoned. Iexited the room, as Mr. McMackin saidsomething about the First Amendment under hisbreath, and headed downstairs, not knowingexactly what was going to happen.

When I got into Mr. Brunson’s office and heclosed the door behind us, I fully expected that I

was going to be suspended or in some waypunished. I also knew that if so, I would finallyget to track down that lawyer I’d bragged aboutto the principal back at Moore when I’dthreatened to sue him four years earlier.

Mr. Brunson cut right to the chase.“I wanted to speak with you about that article

you wrote. What would make you say suchthings?” he asked.

“Well, I feel that Anton was suspended for nogood reason,” I replied. “And meanwhile, KonMoulder is walking around with a swastika onhis jacket and nothing happens to him.”

“I didn’t know about this, this, what’d you sayhis name was? Kon?” Mr. Brunson said. “Whatdoes he look like?”

“He’s sort of a big guy, bald, like a skinhead.He always wears a black leather jacket, andlately it’s had a swastika on it. He’s pretty hard

to miss.” I explained.“Well, we’ll look into that,” he promised.“Also,” I continued. “My understanding is that

you were threatening to discipline anyone whosigned the petition in Anton’s defense, byremoving us from leadership positions in studentclubs or student council. That’s even worse thanthe original suspension for Anton.”

“I’m not sure where you heard that, Tim, butit’s not true. We would never do that,” heassured me, though I didn’t believe him. I hadheard about this threat from teachers who hadbecome aware of the plan from conversations inthe teacher’s lounge. It wasn’t just someparanoid conspiracy theory spun by disgruntledteenagers.

“Okay then, great,” I said, figuring that even ifhe was lying, he was now on record as opposingany such secondary punishment, so at least that

much had been accomplished by the uproar.“See Tim,” he said, leaning in towards me as if

he had something of the utmost importance toimpart, “We’re just concerned.”

“Concerned about what?” I asked.Mr. Brunson sighed, and then proceeded to

make the one mistake no adult should ever makewith a child—letting that child know that you fearthem.

“I don’t think you recognize your power,” hebegan. “I think you could stand on a table in thelunchroom and tell the students to burn thebuilding down, and they just might do it.”

I laughed immediately, finding this to be thesilliest thing I had ever heard, but it was apparentthat he was completely serious.

“Well, I would never tell anyone to burnanything,” I replied, “but seriously, if I did thateveryone would think I was nuts. They would

throw food at me. I mean, honestly, I’m reallynot that popular.”

“Well, popular or not, I’m telling you, youhave an ability to persuade,” he said. “Last yearwhen we had the presidential debate, I saw whathappened. We’ve got twelve hundred students,and you got a standing ovation from two-thirds ofthem.”

“Yeah but I was pretending to be WalterMondale,” I explained. “I mean, they wereprobably just grateful that I hadn’t delivered thespeech the way he would have.”

“No, that’s not it, Tim. I’m telling you. It’s areal ability you have, but you have to be carefulwith it,” he said, eyes locked on mine, apparentlyconvinced that the revolution was just around thecorner, and that I was Hillsboro’s own Lenin,just returned from the Finland Station.

“Okay, well, is that it?” I asked, still floored by

the seeming absurdity of the exchange.“That’ll be all,” he replied.And with that, I left the principal’s office,

knowing in ways I hadn’t before what I wantedto do with my life. My road was becoming clear.

But as so often happens, there would be adetour.

THE SCHOOL YEAR was winding down.Prom was done, and weekends from mid-Mayuntil the end of the semester in early June werefilled with parties. Though only a junior, I wassuffering a pretty serious case of senioritis, moreor less phoning in the remainder of my work,limping to the academic finish line and lookingforward to summer, at which point I’d be goingto debate camp in Washington, D.C.

The party for Saturday night, May 18, 1985,had been promoted all over campus the previous

week. Fliers were everywhere, meaning thatbasically everyone was invited. It was going to behuge, and frankly, I needed the release. Theweek before, I had learned that my father washaving an affair with a bartender at the dinnertheatre where he had been doing the warm-upand running the lights for the current production.I’d learned of it by accident when one of theother employees at the theatre said somethingabout their relationship to me after a show I’dgone to see there, assuming I knew already. Ihadn’t.

I’d gone home that night from the theatreangry, less about the affair than the fact that onceagain, my father was so drunk he could barelyfunction. He had mumbled through the warm-upand made several lighting mistakes during theplay. I was upset about the fact that he wascheating on my mom, of course. But I always

figured he probably had been, so perhaps thelack of surprise at the official confirmation ofwhat I’d long suspected led me to more or lessshrug it off. When he stumbled in later that night,he woke me to apologize, not for being threesheets to the wind (he never apologized for that,nor even seemed to recognize the impact hisalcoholism had on me), but rather for the affair.He’d thought that was why I stormed out of thetheatre parking lot after the show, rather thanhang out for a while as I sometimes did.

I didn’t say anything. It was late and I didn’twant to get into the real cause for my anger. I justwanted to go back to bed. My dad asked if Iwas going to tell mom about the affair. I said no,that it wasn’t my job; it was his, and I thought heshould do it soon if he intended to continue therelationship with Debbie. If he was done with theaffair, I actually said he shouldn’t tell her,

because all that would do is hurt mom, whiledoing nothing to make amends; it would be forhis benefit, his expiation of guilt and little else.

He didn’t say anything to her that week aboutthe affair, and I kept it under my hat, as I’dpromised. By the time the week had ended, and Iwas gearing up for the party, I was glad for theability to blow off some quickly building steam.

As it turned out, the party was pretty lame;lots of people, yes, but more or less just standingaround drinking punch made with pure grainalcohol. I had one glass of the stuff and wasalmost immediately reminded of the last time Ihad made that mistake. It had been severalmonths before, when having consumed five suchglasses along with two beers and a rum andcoke, I wound up puking all over the back ofsomeone’s car I didn’t even know who’d offeredto give me a ride home. Done with the punch,

and remembering why I’d sworn never to drinkthat swill again, but not wanting to leave theparty, I volunteered to go with a few otherpeople, get some cash, and make a beer run.

From where the party was located, the closestATM machine for my bank was about threemiles away, in the shadow of St. ThomasHospital, which sat up on a hill just off busy WestEnd Avenue. So a bunch of us piled in one of theother kids’ cars and headed down the road. Ihopped out when we got there, inserted my bankcard, and punched in my PIN. As the machinespit out twenty dollars, I heard a car honking as itsped down the road behind me. I turned to seewhat the ruckus was about just in time to watch acar, its hazard lights flashing, pass by the bankand enter the turn lane for the hospital. A strangefeeling came over me as I stuffed the money deepinto my pockets and climbed in the car to go get

the beer we had promised to bring back to theparty. I didn’t say much on the way back to thefestivities. Something about that car with theflashing lights, honking its horn, had unnerved me,though I couldn’t explain why.

We delivered the beer, of which I proceededto drink one, and then, tired and still largely non-conversational, I averred that it was time I gothome. I asked my friend Jon, with whom I’dshown up to the party, for a ride. He wasn’thappy to be leaving so soon, but when I told himI really needed to get home, the seriousness inmy eyes and voice convinced him. Anyway, Itold him, he could always come back. It wouldjust take about twenty minutes round trip.

As I walked down the long hallway of Ebuilding at the Royal Arms—the place I had livedsince I was three days old—I experiencedvertigo for the first time. I was feeling dizzy,

which made no sense given how little I’d had todrink. Maybe I was getting sick, I reasoned, as Iput my key in the lock of our door, turned thehandle on apartment E-7, and entered.

The only light on was a small lamp in the livingroom, putting off just enough of a glow to allowme to make out the physical presence of mymother, sitting on the sofa to the left of the table.She was lying down, propped up on a smallpillow, with her left elbow up against the back ofthe couch, her left hand nestling her head. At myentrance to the apartment she had neither movednor said a word. She wouldn’t look at me,instantly taking me back to that morning fiveyears before when we had learned that BobbyBell had been murdered. Though I am far toogiven to catastrophic thinking—it comes with theterritory when you have an alcoholic parent aboutwhom you worry constantly—I knew that my

hunch about something being wrong was likely toprove correct.

“What?” I asked, trying to keep it simple andget it over with.

“It’s your dad,” she replied. “He’s in thehospital.”

“What happened?” I asked with a sigh.“He overdosed after the show tonight,” she

explained. “They just rushed him to the hospitalan hour ago. I was waiting for you to get back tohead over there. Let’s go.”

I can’t recall if my mom already knew thedetails of my father’s overdose before we got tothe hospital, or if we only learned them uponspeaking with the doctors; in any event, theyweren’t hard to figure out. The overdose hadn’tbeen an accident. He had taken over two dozenanti-depressants, on top of a fifth of vodka.Almost immediately afterward, however, he had

decided that he’d really rather not die. Panickedand regretful, he told his colleagues what he haddone, at which point they had thrown him in thecar and rushed to the nearest hospital, St.Thomas, which was nine miles away, up on thehill, overlooking the bank and the ATM machinewhere I had made my withdrawal at the verymoment the car carrying him to the emergencyroom had passed by, lights flashing, hornhonking. He had been conscious in that car, andwhen they got him to the hospital, he had walkedin of his own accord, only to collapse in thewaiting room.

When we got back to his bed in the ICU, hehad a tube down his throat and was in a coma.The doctors thought he would likely make it, butit had been close. They had pumped his stomachof course, but the long-term effect of the drugsand alcohol on his body, and especially his brain

function, was uncertain. On the side of his bed,sitting in plain sight on the table, was a six-inchstrip of paper that had been ripped from theprintout section of his heart monitor. It showedroughly ten to fifteen seconds of time, duringwhich he had died—a flat line punctuated oneither end by shallow heartbeats. It seemed avery strange thing to place next to a patient—likea macabre souvenir in case upon recovery hemight like to take it home and put it in ascrapbook—but I left it there, after staring at itfor what seemed like five minutes, consideringwhat it signified.

The doctor explained everything to us aboutwhat had been in his system, and as he spoke Igarnered a glance at my dad’s chart, hanging upon the cabinet just outside his room. When hearrived his bloodalcohol content had been 0.41,to say nothing of the pills he’d swallowed. The

booze alone had been enough to kill mostpeople. Ironically, it would be his alcoholism andthe tolerance that came with it that had likely kepthim alive.

Within a day my father would leave thehospital, and the truth would finally come out asto why he had attempted suicide. Turns out,Debbie had broken up with him, and distraughtover the ending of his yearlong affair—andrecognizing that the rest of his life wasn’t goingthat great either—he had opted to check out,only to chicken out in the end. So now mymother knew. It hadn’t been the way I hadanticipated him telling her, but at least there wereno more secrets to keep.

On the surface, this story might seem out ofplace in a book about race. After all, it doesn’tappear to have much to do with such a subject.And yet, as I tried to piece together an

understanding of my father’s addictions—something that would take me many years, andwouldn’t fully come until well after he got cleanon my birthday in 1996—I came to understandhow racial identity (and for that matter maleidentity and even Jewish identity) had all been apart of the larger picture.

Once my dad got clean and started attendingAA, we would occasionally talk about what hewas learning there. For the most part he seemedsatisfied with the AA language and approach—itwas keeping him sober after all—but there wassomething about it that seemed inadequate to me.It seemed as though the operative paradigm inAA was overly individualistic, as in the addict ispowerless in the face of the disease, the addictneeds to make amends, and the addict needs togive control over to some higher power (howeverdefined). There was very little discussion about

the social determinants of addictive behavior, andthe way that individuals exist not in a vacuum butin a social context, which, under certainconditions, can make addictive behavior morelikely.

After all, there must be a reason that theUnited States has so much higher a rate of drugand alcohol abuse than other nations, includingother wealthy and industrialized nations. Andthere must be a reason that, according to theavailable research, white Americans have such adisproportionate rate of binge drinking andsubstance abuse relative to persons of color—contrary to popular perception—and why ratesof suicide are also so high in the U.S. and amongwhites (and especially middle class and abovewhites), relative to people of color.

Though none of this was covered in AA, Ibegan to see it the more I thought about my

father’s situation, and what I came to understandwas this: To be an American and to be white is tobe told in a million different ways that the world isyour oyster; it is to believe, because so manyoutward signs suggest it, that you can do anythingand be anything your heart desires. Althoughpeople of color and folks in other countries haverarely had the luxury of believing that mythology,white Americans have. And so when one’sexpectations are so high—and especially if youadd to that the expectation of a Jewish manseeking to make it in a heavily-Jewish industrylike comedy—and yet one’s achievement fallswell short of the aspiration and expectation, whathappens?

In such a situation, in which the society istelling you that your failings are yours, yourinadequacies yours, that there are no sociallydetermined issues to examine—whether

institutional obstacles in the case of oppressedgroups or the dangerous mentality of entitlementand expectation that comes with privilege—whatcould certainly happen is that one might wellcapitulate to a self-destructive rage; either that, orproject one’s rage outward onto others in theform of abuse (which, on the verbal level, myfather had also done). This is not to excuse theabuse, be it directed inward or outward, but it isto explain it in relation to a social context and notmerely as the personal failing of millions ofindividuals acting in isolation. This is not to saythat all addiction is the result of frustratedexpectations—social pathology can have manydifferent triggers, of which this would be only one—but it is to say that we can’t ignore the waythat such a phenomenon may be part of the largermix, about which we need, desperately, to beaware.

It strikes me that unless we get a hold of this,unless we begin to address the way that privilegecan set up those who have it for a fall—can vestthem with an unrealistic set of expectations—we’ll be creating more addicts, more people whoturn to self-injury, suicide, eating disorders, orother forms of self-negation, all because theyfailed to live up to some idealized type that they’dbeen told was theirs to achieve. We’ll keepcreating for millions of families the pain that I’dgrown up with, and the physical embodiment ofthat pain, which embodiment lay comatose in thebed that night, that little strip of paper at hisbedside reminding us all of how close he’d come.

HIGHER LEARNING FOR MOST OF my senior year, I was able tobreathe far more easily than I could rememberever having done. My dad had left that summerafter the suicide attempt, and although he and mymom remained married, the separation gave me arespite from the insanity that had been my homeenvironment for the previous seventeen years.

We had a successful year in debate, whichwas a good thing, since debate was likely to bemy key to getting into a good college. Mystandardized test scores were awful, barelycracking 1000 on the old 1600-point SAT, andmy grades were a rather mediocre 3.3 on a 4-point scale, so I knew I’d probably need towrangle a debate scholarship somewhere.Initially, I had wanted to go to Emory, in Atlanta.They had a great debate team, and Atlanta,

though away from home, was still close enoughto get back easily for visits.

But as the year progressed, it becameapparent that Emory wasn’t going to be anoption. Over the summer I had fallen in love (orso I thought) with a debater from Lafayette,Louisiana. I’d met her at the American Universitydebate camp, and she was going to be attendingLouisiana State University. When she told me inno uncertain terms that I simply had to go toTulane, in New Orleans, my emotions quicklytrumped whatever previous plans I may havehad. If I went to Emory, Monica explained, wewould never get to see each other. It would betough enough, she insisted, with her in BatonRouge, and me seventyfive minutes down theroad in New Orleans. But at least it would beworkable. So I filled out my application to Tulane—a school about which I had never even thought

once—and kept my fingers crossed, myacademic and romantic future hinging on thedecision to be made by their admissions officers.I wasn’t confident about getting in. Aside frommy mediocre academics, Tulane didn’t have areal debate team at that time, let alone debatescholarships to give out. So my accomplishmentsin the activity weren’t as likely to matter as theywould have at Emory.

Fortunately, it must have been a down year forapplicants, and so Tulane said yes. There wasonly one problem remaining; namely, how to payfor it. Although its cost is far greater today, aswith all colleges, in 1986, with tuition at $12,950,and all costs combined coming in at around$20,000, Tulane was far pricier than anything myfolks could afford. Complicating things further, Iam notorious for procrastination, and so I hadscrewed around and not gotten my financial aid

forms in on time. Since being late with financialaid forms means that one won’t get as muchassistance as might otherwise have been offered,how does one get to go to a place like Tulane? Ithelps—and this is surely an understatement ofsome significance—when one’s mother is able togo down to the bank and take out a loan for$10,000 to fill the gap between what the schoolwas offering in assistance and the overall costsfor my freshman year.

But how does one’s mother get such a loan?Especially when, as was true for mine, she hadnever owned a piece of property? When you’vebeen living paycheck to paycheck, driving carsuntil they stopped running, taking few if anyvacations because you just couldn’t afford them?It helps (again with the understatement) if one’smother’s mother can co-sign for the loan. Whilebanks don’t typically lend money to folks without

collateral, like my mom, they are very willing tolend the same money to someone with it, like mygrandmother, who was able to use her house as aguarantee against the loan.

The house, in which she lived until her death inDecember 2009 (and in which my mother stillresides), was the fourth home she and mygrandfather had owned. Although they had beenof middle-class income—my grandfather havingbeen in the military and then civil service for hisentire adult life—they nonetheless were able toafford several nice homes in “good”neighborhoods, all of which had been entirelywhite, and as with the apartment complex whereI’d grown up, not by accident. Although theSupreme Court, in 1948, had outlawedrestrictive covenants barring blacks from theseneighborhoods, it had remained legal todiscriminate in other ways until the late sixties.

Even then, there was little real enforcement of theFair Housing Act until teeth were added to thelaw in 1988, and even now, studies suggest thereare at least two million cases of race-basedhousing discrimination against people of colorevery year.

So in a very real sense, my grandmother’shouse, without which I could not have gone toTulane, or to any selective (and thus, expensive)college, was there to be used as collateralbecause we were white. Not only did we have ahouse to use for this purpose, but it was a housein a desirable neighborhood, which wouldcontinue to appreciate each year. In other words,we’d likely make good on the loan, but if wedefaulted, so what? The bank would have a nicepiece of property, worth more than the moneythey were giving my mom. They couldn’t lose,and neither could I. Whiteness, institutionalized

and intergenerational, had opened the door forme. After nearly eighteen years of dysfunctionand chaos, I was ready and willing to walkthrough it.

MY MOTHER, HOWEVER, was not nearlyas ready for me to do so. Like many parents whohave kids about to go off to school, she wassliding into a deep depression. For her, the notionof an empty nest was of no small concern. Nowthat my father was also gone, she would truly beon her own.

One day in the summer of 1986, while I waspreparing for my move to New Orleans, Albertcalled and suggested we go to the NashvillePeace Fair, an annual festival with music, crafts,and dozens of information booths set up byvarious non-profit organizations from throughoutthe region. Given my increasing politicization, I

was excited to go, and Al clearly needed theprogressive inoculation that the Peace Fair wouldprovide; after all, he was about to head off to theUniversity of Mississippi, where he’d be unlikelyto see so much as a Democrat in four years (atleast among white folks), let alone anyone truly tothe left of the political spectrum.

Upon returning to the apartment in lateafternoon, I found my mother drinking. Actually,I found her completely in the can, and this wasalarming because although my motheroccasionally drank too much, it was rare for herto get started in the daytime. Even though Iwanted to tell her about the Peace Fair, once Irealized she was in no condition to talk, I decidedto wait. It just didn’t seem like the right time.

Unfortunately, my mother felt otherwise. Notonly did she want to discuss the Peace Fair, andpolitics more broadly, she was itching to pick a

fight, which is something she had never donebefore. It started slowly, with her asking meabout the event, and though I tried to brush it off,she seemed genuinely interested. I began to tellher about some of the information I had pickedup about U.S. foreign policy in Central America,and about apartheid in South Africa and howAmerican corporations were helping to prop upthe racist regime there.

I am not exactly sure how the discussiondescended into the mess it would become. Thewhole episode was so bizarre, I think I was tooshocked to take it all in. What I recall is that atsome point we got on the subject of welfare andwelfare recipients. And when one speaks ofwelfare in this country, whether or not one wishesto acknowledge it, one is almost always speakingof black people, not because black people arethe only folks receiving state aid (indeed more

whites receive benefits from the myriad socialprograms than do blacks), but because that is theimage we have been encouraged to have whenwe hear the term. It’s an image that has becomeimplanted in the minds of Americans, especiallywhites, to such an extent that it’s almostautomatic, and it allows politicians to criticize“welfare” and its recipients without mentioningrace, knowing that their constituents will get themessage.

However we managed to get on the subject, itwas obvious that my mom, angry at me forpreparing to leave her nest, was going to use thisissue—the one she knew would injure mebecause antiracism had been such anundercurrent in our home—as a way to lash out.The next thing I knew, she was spewing one afteranother nonsensical statement about lazy blackwomen and their illegitimate children, and then

launching into some extemporaneous diatribeabout a particular black woman with whom shehad worked (and with whom I always thoughtshe’d gotten along pretty well), who in today’swhite zinfandel-induced haze, had becomeincompetent, pushy, a bigot.

In other words, we had gone from talkingabout a Peace Fair to talking about welfare totalking about a colleague of hers in a matter ofminutes, and now things were getting heated, andI was firing back, which is exactly what shewanted. I was watching her use racism in a waythat would have sickened her in her sobermoments, as a tool to express some totallyunrelated angst—as a way to work out theexistential crisis she was experiencing at thatmoment. It was ugly, and not really understandingwhat was going on—in fact at one point Icontemplated that my mother was either having a

total nervous breakdown, or had been a fraud allof my life when it came to race—I lit into her,and told her never to speak that way in front ofme again.

It was finally at the point where she began toutter the word, the word that was the only word Iknew, growing up, never to say, that I exploded,not allowing her to finish it.

“Goddamn nig”- she started.“Shut the fuck UP!” I screamed.And that’s when she swung at me, for the first

time in my life, but slowly, not as though shereally wanted to hit me. Her right arm came up ina sad and pitiful arc toward my cheek, palmopen, her face contorted in pain—a pain deeperthan any I had ever seen there, even as she hadstood over my father’s hospital bed on the nightof his suicide attempt. The look that night hadbeen a look of exhaustion, of resignation to the

not-so-fairy-tale ending of her none-toofairy-talemarriage. But this was not resignation I wasseeing now. She was imploding, and in theprocess burning away all illusions. She was goingto make me hurt, not physically—as she surelyknew I would stop her arm long before her handcould make contact with the side of my head—but at the core of who I was, by making mequestion who she was.

And for that experience I thank her, becausewithout it, I may never have really seen howdistorted white people could be as a result ofracism. My mom, after all, had been my modelwhen it came to things political. She had beenconsistent, she had been clear, and she had nevergiven me any reason to doubt her. But thatconfidence, that faith in her perfection wasunhealthy; it was downright dangerous, becausethat is not the real world. That world of bedrock

principle and never-wavering resistance in theface of social conditioning is not the world inwhich real people reside.

Racism, even if it is not your own but merelycirculates in the air, changes you; it allows you tothink and feel things that make you less than youwere meant to be. My mother, by proving herown weakness and exhibiting her ownconditioning, taught me that one can never be toocareful, can never enjoy the luxury of being toosmug, of believing oneself so together, so liberal,so down with the cause of liberation that itbecomes impossible to be sucked in, to betransformed. We may only do it once, or perhapstwice, but it can happen. So long as that is true,we mustn’t romanticize our resistance, but fight tomaintain its presence in our lives, knowing that itcould easily vanish in a moment of weakness,anger, insecurity, or fear.

Those moments are the ones that matter, afterall. People never hurt others in moments ofstrength and bravery, or when we’re feeling goodabout ourselves. If we spent all of our time inplaces such as that, then fighting for social justicewould be redundant—we would simply havesocial justice and be done with it, and we couldall go swimming, or dancing, or whatever peopledo. But it is because we spend so much of ourtime in that other place—a place of diminishedcapacity and wavering commitment—that wehave to be careful. And it is for that reason thatwe need these reminders, however ugly, of ourfrailty. Knowing the horrors of which we’recapable is the only thing that might keep usmindful of what and who we’d prefer to be.

I ARRIVED IN New Orleans with my parents

and Monica in late August, though it felt morelike early Hell, the mercury permanently stucksomewhere between ninety-five degrees and heatstroke. Worse still, the humidity was congealinginto solid form, enveloping me like a tight-fittingcoat of phlegm, and causing me to wonderwhether this girl standing next to me on BourbonStreet, for whom I’d made the decision to cometo Tulane, was really worth it. I was starting tohave my doubts, allowing my mind to wander tothoughts of college up North, where it would becooler. I’d be alone, but at least I wouldn’t becovered in sweat.

As we walked along the heavily-traffickedtourist corridor—part of the roughly eightysquare block area that had been the core of thecity at its founding in 1718 by Bienville, theFrench Governor of Louisiana—I had to admit tohaving never experienced anything like it. From

the ubiquitous smell of booze and seafood to thestrip clubs to the architecture, it was certainlyunlike my home town—a city also known formusic and entertainment, but of a decidedlydifferent kind. Lower Broadway, in Nashville,was certainly seedy at the time, but the FrenchQuarter, even at its seediest, had style, it hadculture, it had, above all else, history. Though Ididn’t yet know the racialized component of thathistory, I would learn soon enough. In fact, Iwould begin learning a little something about itthat very day.

“Hey mister,” a young squeaky voice cried outfrom behind me and to the right. I spun around,not sure that the words had been meant for me—after all, I hardly thought of myself as a mister,being only seventeen—and saw a black kid,perhaps ten, hopping off his bike and comingtowards me.

“Yeah,” I replied. “What’s up?”“I betcha’ dollar I can tell you where you got

‘dem shoes,” the child answered.“I’ll take that bet,” I replied, confident that

there was no way this child in front of me couldreally know where I had purchased my footwear.Little did I know it at the time—I had, after all,been in the city for all of two hours—but I hadjust walked into the biggest trap in the history oftraps. Being a big, bad Tulane student, however,I was cocky enough to assume that I had justwon a dollar off some kid in the Quarter, notthinking for even a second that no one wouldhave offered this bet if he didn’t already knowthat he had me from the get-go.

As it turns out, of course, and as I would soonlearn, the young man had never actually claimedto know the point of origin of the shoes on myfeet. He had merely offered to tell me where I

“got ‘dem,” as in had them, at that particularmoment, owing nothing whatsoever to thelocation of the department store in which theyhad been purchased, the name of which meant nomore to him than my own, and neither of whichhe had any real desire to learn. This wasbusiness, after all, not personal.

He asked me to show him the money, which Idid, at which point he sprang the trap. “You gotyour shoes on your feet, you got your feet on thestreet, on Bourbon Street, now give me a dollar.”It was a logic with which—once I learned thehyper-literal meaning of his initial challenge—Icould hardly argue. I was indeed on BourbonStreet, between St. Peter and Iberville to beexact, my shoes planted firmly on my feet, myfeet on the steaming, summer-scorched asphalt,damn near melting in the sun. I gave him themoney gladly, and in the process learned more

than the value of a dollar alone. Transactioncompleted, the wordsmith and street hustler,whose linguistic machinations had probablyworked on a hundred tourists before, not tomention more than a few Tulane students andtheir parents, headed down the street in search ofthe next mark. It was a search that couldn’t havetaken long, filled as the streets of the Quartertypically are, and mostly with persons whosegullibility rises in direct relation to their bloodalcohol levels, the latter of which remaindangerously elevated most of the time. Takingmoney off persons such as this was quite literallywhat the metaphor writer must have had in mindwhen first coming up with the phrase like candyfrom a baby.

There’s something to be said, I thought tomyself, about any place where poor folks, ratherthan just stealing your money, or simply begging

for it, instead earn it by way of winning an entirelyvoluntary game of wits, outsmarting those whoare typically far more educated and no doubtmore socially respected than they. Street hustlingof this sort—the kind that makes a riddle into acommercial transaction—is uniquely American inthat regard, evidence of the ability of those whohave been long neglected by the political andeconomic system to once and again turn thetables on those for whom the rules of the gamewere set up in the first place.

Of course, it’s made all the more sweet by therealization that the kids who pull these scamsknow full well that the only reason anyone fallsfor it, and most everyone does at least once, isprecisely because they are black and poor, andtherefore presumed to lack the brainpower topull one over on those who are white, moreaffluent, and imbued with (at least in our own

minds) superior intellects. Yet they do, over andagain, demonstrating the limitations of scholarlycompetence, which ultimately shrivels up like adead leaf in the face of a far deeper intellectpossessed by children who are seen asuneducable by the larger society, which tells uslittle about those so doubted, but quite a bitabout the society that doubts them.

WHEN I GOT to Tulane, I considered myself ahip liberal, aware of racism and committed tofighting it. Within a few weeks of my arrival,however, I had largely missed the meaning of twodifferent incidents—one fairly minor, the otherpretty significant—and thereby missed anopportunity to respond in a forthright manner.

The first took place during freshmanorientation, when all the bright seventeen- andeighteen-year-olds who had come to Tulane sat

in a hot auditorium and listened to the typical“welcome to our school” routine given to allstudents at all colleges in the country. There werethe expected platitudes about the history of theuniversity, and about the importance of adjustingto life away from home, and warnings about thepitfalls of going to school in New Orleans.Among these snares was the ubiquitous problemof heavy drinking. The drinking age had just beenraised to twenty one, but most students (thoughnot me) had birthdays that fell within thegrandfathering period. We were also warned tostay away from certain neighborhoods and totravel in groups because not all of New Orleanswas as safe as Uptown, where the university waslocated.

At first glance this may seem like nothing morethan good advice, but to the extent the warningswere all regarding black and poor

neighborhoods, it was highly racialized andselective in a way that prioritized the well-beingof whites to the exclusion of persons of color, thelatter of whom might well have been at risk incertain white spaces. This was made all the moreobvious by the second thing that happened,within a month or so of the beginning of school:namely, the announcement by the sheriff ofneighboring Jefferson Parish that he hadinstructed his deputies to stop any and all blackmales driving in the Parish in “rinkydink”automobiles after dark, on suspicion of being upto no good, as he put it.

At no point had Tulane officials suggested thatstudents, even black ones, stay away fromJefferson Parish, even though it was understoodto be less than hospitable to black folks. SheriffHarry Lee—a Chinese American loved by goodold boys from the white flight suburb in large part

because of his anti-black biases—had beenprofiling African American males for a long timebefore he ever went public with his lawenforcement techniques, and Tulane had thoughtnothing of it. School officials had sought to makesure we didn’t make the mistake of straying intothe black and mostly poor parts of town, out of aconcern that we might become victims of randomstreet crime, but at no point did they warnstudents of color of the many areas in themetropolitan vicinity where they might have beenendangered.

This was among the first examples of howwhiteness was privileged in the educationalenvironment of my school, but despite thinkingthat Harry Lee was a real asshole, especiallywhen he went on The Today Show and tried tojustify his racist policies to the nation, I didnothing to protest those policies, even as they

privileged me, by signaling that I (and personslike me) would be allowed to come and go as wepleased, in and out of any part of themetropolitan area we felt like visiting. I failed torecognize how personal this system of privilegewas, no matter how hip I fashioned myself.

Who was I kidding? My very presence atTulane had been related to whiteness. During mytime there I would come to learn that the sameschool that ultimately traveled 540 miles to pluckme out of Nashville had not been recruiting forseveral years at Fortier High, the basically all-black high school located about five hundredyards from the entrance to campus on FreretStreet. There was a presumption that Fortierstudents, as well as those from several otherNew Orleans–area schools, were incapable ofbeing successful at Tulane, so the attempt torecruit them simply wasn’t made. Meanwhile,

there I was, with an SAT score roughly 200points below the median then (and 300 or morebelow it now), being admitted without hesitationand given financial aid. Better to spend moneyand resources on hard-drinking white co-edsfrom Long Island, Boston, Miami, the NorthShore of Chicago, or Manhattan than to spendsome of the same on local blacks, whose parentswere good enough for cooking Tulane food, andcleaning Tulane toilets, and picking up Tulanegarbage, but not for raising Tulane graduates.

Whiteness, as I was coming to learn, is aboutnever being really out of place, of having thesense that wherever you are, you belong, andwon’t encounter much resistance to yourpresence. Despite my lousy test scores andmediocre grades, no one ever thought to suggestthat I had somehow gotten into Tulane becauseof “preferential treatment,” or as a result of

standards being lowered. Students of color,though, with even better grades and scores, hadto regularly contend with this sort of thing, sincethey were presumed to be the less-qualifiedbeneficiaries of affirmative action. But what kindof affirmative action had I enjoyed? Whatpreference had I received? Of course it wasn’trace directly. It’s not as if Tulane had admittedme because I was white. Clearly, my admissionwas related to having been on one of the topdebate teams in the nation, but that wasn’t even atalent that I’d be putting to use in college, so whyhad it mattered? And my academic credentialshad been overlooked. Standards had beenlowered for me, but no one cared.

Nowadays, I lecture around the country indefense of affirmative action and meet plenty ofwhites who resent the so-called lowering ofstandards for students of color but swallow

without comment the lowering of standards forthe children of alumni. Each year, there arethousands of white students who get “bumped,”in effect, from the school of their choice, to makeway for other whites whose daddies are betterconnected than theirs. Studies indicate there aretwice as many whites who fail to meet normaladmission standards but who are admittedanyway thanks to “connection preferences” asthere are persons of color who receive anyconsideration from affirmative action. Yet rarelydo the critics of affirmative action seem to mindthis form of preferential treatment.

Most everyone I met at Tulane who was trulystupid was white and rich, like the guy whothought he was supposed to start every researchpaper with a thesis statement, the way he’d beentaught to do it in seventh grade, or the youngwoman on my hall during sophomore year, who

was stunned when she received an overdraftnotice from her bank—after all, there were stillchecks in her checkbook. I never heard anyonelament the overrepresentation of the cerebrallychallenged white elite at Tulane, and I doubtanyone is challenging the latest round of similarlymediocre members of the ruling class now.That’s what it means to be privileged: Whereveryou are, it’s taken for granted that you mustdeserve to be there. You never spoil the décor,or trigger suspicions of any kind.

IN FACT, EVEN when you should triggersuspicions, or at least a sideways glance or two,whiteness can protect you.

My freshman year was not a good one,academically speaking. In part, my struggleswere in keeping with a longstanding tradition,

whereby I always started slowly at each newschool I attended. Whenever there had been aphysical transition from one institution to the next—Burton to Stokes, Stokes to Moore, orMoore to Hillsboro—I had had a lousy first yearin the new place. This time there were otherdistractions. Although I avoided many of thetraps into which my fellow first-year students fell—I simply didn’t have the money to go out anddrink as much as they did, nor did I make friendseasily enough to smooth the way for heavypartying that first year—I had other distractionsthat kept my mind off of schoolwork. First andforemost was Monica, who started that year atLSU but would transfer in the second semesterto the University of Southwestern Louisiana, inLafayette, to be closer to her family.

Between traveling to Lafayette two to threeweekends per month by bus, going out the little

bit that I did, and becoming involved in a numberof campus political activities, I found little time todevote to my studies. Though I desperatelyneeded to keep up my grades so as to maintainthe meager scholarship I’d managed to wrangle,and hopefully to get the amount of the awardsignificantly increased, I did quite the opposite. Inmy first semester, thanks to a particularly awfulgrade in French class—I had taken six years ofFrench, but as I learned once I arrived at Tulane,couldn’t speak a word of it—and a fewmediocre marks in other classes, I pulled a 2.1GPA.

My barely average performance in class waspunctuated by two monumental screw-ups,which turned out alright, but could have beencatastrophic. First, I overslept for anEnvironmental Science exam, showing up an hourlate into a three-hour test, and then I missed a

Political Philosophy final altogether, showing upin the afternoon for a test that had been given at10 AM In the first instance, I was allowed toenter the testing room, even though studentsweren’t supposed to come in after the test hadbegun; in the second case, despite the fact thatmissing the exam had been my fault, I begged theteacher to let me make it up and he did, in hisoffice, right then and there.

I didn’t give it much thought at the time, exceptto conclude that I had been lucky, and that Ineeded to make sure nothing like that wouldhappen again. I certainly didn’t think at the timeabout either of these fortunate breaks having todo with my being white. But in retrospect I dowonder how things may have been different had Ibeen a person of color, and especially black.Might either or both of the professors have takena more skeptical view of my seriousness as a

student? The first might well have looked at meas irresponsible and not allowed me to enter theroom. That was the policy after all. And thesecond professor could have viewed me as justnot having what it took to be a successful Tulanestudent—a commonly held stereotype aboutblack students there, even when they did well. SoI can’t know for sure, but I also can’t doubt thatin a situation like either of those, I’d rather havebeen white than anything else.

Perhaps this is the most important pointthough: No matter what my professors mighthave thought about my miscues, aboutoversleeping or missing an exam, one thing Iwould never have been forced to consider wasthat they might take either of those things asevidence of some racial flaw on my part. In otherwords, I would not have to worry about beingviewed through the lens of a racial stereotype, of

having one or both of them say, if only tothemselves, “Well, you know how those kinds ofstudents are,” where “those students” meantwhite students. I could rest assured that myfailures would be my own and would never beattributed to racial incompetence. For people ofcolor, the same experience would have beendifferent. They would not have been able toassume that their race would be irrelevant to theevaluation given them by a white professor, justas students of color must always wonder if whiteswill view them through the lens of a group defectif and when they answer a question incorrectly inclass—something else I never had to sweat.Black or brown students in that situation wouldnot only bear the pressure of having dropped theball, they would further carry the burden ofwondering whether they had dropped it, in theeyes of authority figures, on behalf of their entire

group. If we understand nothing else, let us atleast be clear that such a weight is not aninconsequential one to bear. By the same token,to be able to go through life without ever havingto feel as though one were representing whites asa group, is not an inconsequential privilege,either.

ALTHOUGH I DIDN’T have the dough to goout drinking much, even at the ridiculously cheapplaces around campus like The Boot or theMetro (where they had one dollar draft nightspretty regularly), I still did my share, using thefake ID I’d made myself, or when that one fellapart, a replacement that another student madefor me, which looked a lot better than my ownwork. Frankly, the fake ID was barely necessaryin New Orleans. Although the drinking age hadbeen raised to twenty-one the year I got there,

few places really carded. And because the lawsin Louisiana didn’t hold bars responsible for theactions of their inebriated patrons, the way lawsin many other states did and still do, there waslittle incentive for them to refuse service toanyone.

Beyond drinking though, the real game atTulane was weed. Although drugs were every bitas illegal in New Orleans as anywhere else—atleast if you were black and poor—if you werelucky enough to be living at Tulane, which was(and is) a pretty white space contrasted with thecity in which it’s located, you were—and I’dventure to say, still are—absolutely set.

My freshman year, I lived on the eighth floorof Monroe Hall, next door to the biggest dealeron campus (white and from Long Island), and byreputation one of the biggest in the city. Hewould drop quarter-ounce bags in the hallway

and not miss them. And being a dealer who,unlike most, liked to smoke his own stash, hewould just write it off to being high, and never gettoo mad about it. I should say that I very muchliked living next door to him, for obvious reasons.I couldn’t afford his product myself, but betweenthe misplaced freebies and the steady supply thatothers on the hall purchased from him, and wereall too willing to share, I did alright.

There were two black guys on our hall, bothon the football team. One of them smoked andthe other didn’t, but even the one who didlooked at us like we were nuts. The sheer volumeof grass being consumed dwarfed anything hewas used to, and the way we were smoking it—out of two-foot bongs with a gas mask attached,so as to provide that all-important third foot ofchamber—he found bizarre. “Can’t y’all just rolla joint, man?” he would ask, not realizing that no,

we couldn’t just roll a joint. Privileged people liketo overindulge. It comes with the territory. Weweren’t afraid of getting caught, as he was—since things would probably turn out differently ifhe were busted, on a lot of levels—so concealingour habits wasn’t foremost on our minds.

I saw far more drugs at Tulane on my dormfloor alone in any given week than I ever saw inpublic housing projects, where I would work as acommunity organizer many years later, and aswith the drinking and drug use in high school, itwas overwhelmingly a white person’s game,meaning either that whites have some geneticpredisposition to substance abuse (for whichthere’s no evidence), or there’s something aboutbeing white that allows and encourages one totake a lot of risks, knowing that nine times out often everything will work out. You won’t getbusted and go to jail, neither of which black or

brown folks can take for granted in the least.Perhaps this is why national studies have found

that next to having a Division I sports program,the most highly correlated factor with alcohol andsubstance abuse on campuses is the percentageof students who are white. The whiter the school,the bigger the problem—not because there’ssomething wrong with whites, per se, butbecause privilege encourages self-indulgent (andoften destructive) behaviors, and allows thosewith privilege to remain cavalier about ouractivities all the while.

WHEN I WASN’T getting high or visitingMonica, I was deepening my politicalinvolvement on campus and around the city.Although I first got involved with CollegeDemocrats, my political sensibilities had movedwell to the left of the Democratic Party, and

especially its conservative Louisiana contingent.Most of my activist time and energy was insteadthrown into Central American solidarity work,opposing the arming of the contra rebels inNicaragua who were seeking to overthrow thenominally socialist Sandinista government there,and opposing U.S. support for the governmentsof El Salvador and Guatemala, both of which hada penchant for murdering civilians in the name ofanti-communism.

In the case of Guatemala, its dictator in theearly eighties had been Efrain Rios Montt, whomRonald Reagan insisted had “gotten a bum rap onhuman rights” and was “dedicated to socialjustice,” despite his policies of bombing peasantcommunities and other atrocities, which ultimatelytook the lives, in his term alone, of over seventythousand Guatemalans. When I wrote an essayon the matter for the campus paper in the first

semester of my freshman year, I received myvery first (though certainly not my last) deaththreat, phoned in to my dorm room by someonewhose family was closely connected to themilitary there and who promised that he couldmake me disappear. Undaunted, and evenslightly amused, I threw myself into the work full-bore.

Working with the Movement for Peace inCentral America (MPCA), I got my first taste ofreal left activism by organizing protests, teach-insand other activities with a mélange of seasonedradicals, spanning the full spectrum of theideological left. Having come from Nashville,where liberal Democrats were rare, to be in aplace where we had the luxury of five differenttypes of Marxists was interesting and a bitbizarre.

I never really considered myself a Marxist,

mostly because I rejected the notion of anyproletarian/workers dictatorship, which for mostMarxists is a requisite component of their beliefsystem. I was certainly anti-capitalist and still findthe profit system inherently exploitative. Buthaving never seen its opposite work either, I haveremained agnostic on the issue of socialism. I amfar more positively disposed to it than tocapitalism, but am unconvinced that such asystem can avoid falling into heavy-handed statistoppression, ultimately no better than the heavy-handed corporate plutocracy it would replace.

I also have to say, I wasn’t impressed with theorganizational acumen of those who wereproudly calling themselves communists. They hada hard time keeping MPCA functioning, so Inever could figure out how people such as thiswere going to be able to run a government orsociety. The bickering about each faction’s

particular dialectic made for tedious meetings andstrategy sessions, which revolved around some ofthe most inane bullshit you can imagine. It wasMarx versus Lenin versus Trotsky versus Maoversus Che Guevara versus Stalin (yes, therewere actually some committed Stalinists in thebunch who always gave me the creeps and whobelieved Enver Hoxha’s dystopian regime inAlbania was the only truly legitimate governmenton Earth). Even when you exclude from thegroup those members who were FBI plants—part of the ongoing disruption of the NewOrleans–area CISPES (Committee in SolidarityWith the People of El Salvador), which had beenexposed the year before I arrived in the city—there was still an amazing array of folks withwhom one could choose to associate, ordisassociate as the case may be.

By sophomore year, I was growing tired of

MPCA, mostly because of the sectarianinfighting, but also because I was becomingfocused on a different issue that had been burningaround the nation at the time on collegecampuses—namely, the anti-apartheid struggle,and the fight to get universities to divest of stockheld in companies still operating in South Africa,thereby propping up the white minority regime.

Under apartheid, twenty-six million blacks inSouth Africa were denied the right to vote andwere restricted in terms of where they could live,work, and be educated. The white racistgovernment also routinely tortured anti-apartheidactivists and had engaged in military subversioncampaigns in surrounding nations like Angola,Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. All of this it haddone with substantial economic and even militarysupport from the United States government andmultinational corporations. In the case of

corporate support for apartheid, anti-apartheidactivists noted that not only did the presence ofthese companies in the country send a signal thatapartheid was acceptable to them, it also resultedin the economic support of the racist state andthe transfer of technology and capital, both ofwhich helped maintain the system.

Although Tulane was unwilling to expose itsportfolio to scrutiny, the administrationacknowledged that it continued to hold shares inroughly 25 companies that were still doingbusiness with the apartheid government. This,combined with the offer of an honorary degree toSouth African Anglican Archbishop DesmondTutu (who had won the Nobel Peace Prize forhis anti-apartheid efforts in 1984), was too muchfor some of us to stand. To offer a degree toTutu, making him part of the Tulane family, whilewe continued to turn profits from companies that

were propping up the system he had dedicatedhis life to ending, struck us as hypocritical, to saythe least.

In March 1988, a coalition of organizationsjoined forces to form the Tulane Alliance AgainstApartheid. The Alliance made three demands:divestment from companies doing business inSouth Africa; the creation of an AfricanAmerican studies department at Tulane; and theintensification of affirmative action efforts, bothfor student recruitment and faculty hiring. The lastof these was especially necessary, since in the1987–’88 academic year there were no AfricanAmerican faculty in the College of Arts andSciences or Newcomb College, the two principalundergraduate schools.

In the days following the announcement of thenew organization, those of us in the Allianceconstructed makeshift shanties (reminiscent of the

dilapidated housing in which millions of SouthAfrican blacks lived) on the main quad in front ofthe University Center, so as to raise awareness ofthe issue and to pressure the Board ofAdministrators to divest. A few days after thebeginning of the shantytown occupation, wedemonstrated at the Board’s quarterly meeting todemand divestment and to decry the offer of anhonorary degree to Tutu so long as the schoolremained invested in apartheid-complicit firms.The Board was especially unhappy about the co-optation of their meeting agenda that day, as theyhad gathered mostly to announce thereinstatement of the school’s basketball program,suspended three years earlier by PresidentEamon Kelly, due to a point-shaving scandal.While they had been hoping for a celebratorymeeting and media splash, we had tried to steal(and had at least partially succeeded in stealing)

some of their thunder that day.During this time we also sent the Archbishop a

packet of materials concerning Tulane’sinvestments—what little information we had—and requested that he make a strong statementcondemning the school’s role in supporting, evenif mostly symbolically, South Africa’s racistsystem. We hoped he would either turn down thedegree and boycott the school, or come asplanned and deliver a withering indictment of theuniversity’s investments. Either way would havebeen fine with us.

A few weeks later, I was awoken in my dormroom by a call from a National Public Radioreporter. “What do you think of theArchbishop’s announcement today that he wouldbe turning down the degree from Tulane becauseof the school’s investments?” she asked.

Groggy from too little sleep—we had only torn

down the shanties a few days before, inpreparation for the end of the school year—Iwasn’t sure whether the call was real or part of adream.

“Excuse me?” I replied“Yes, I was wanting to know if you’d heard

the news,” she said, “and if so, do you haveanything to say about it? Archbishop Tutu istraveling in Canada right now, and last night atMcGill University he announced that he would beturning down the degree from Tulane.”

I was stunned, but pleased. The administrationwas shaken as news spread worldwide of Tutu’sboycott, and a few days later, his subsequentannouncement that he would return all honorarydegrees he had ever accepted from schools withinvestments in South Africa unless they divestedfully within one year. Clearly, the university hadbeen denied the moment they had hoped for, in

which Tutu would be honored by the school andthereby lend anti-apartheid cover for theirotherwise morally indefensible investmentpractices. Although Tutu’s boycott didn’t changethe board’s mind about divestment, weanticipated that upon returning to campus in thefall, the movement would hit the ground runninghaving obtained such a high-profile victory.

As it turned out, our optimism in this regardwas entirely misplaced. Summer sapped theenergy of the movement considerably as severalof the key movers within the group graduated.Although I returned as a junior, and there wereothers of the original membership back that nextyear, we struggled from the outset to replicate thesuccess of the previous semester. Membershipwaned and our direction seemed unclear.Although we continued to educate the universitycommunity about South Africa and the role of

corporations in propping up the apartheidsystem, we stalled when it came to making anyprogress with the board. Most importantly, theorganization in that second year became almostentirely white, and the alliance between themostly white activists and the black-ledorganizations that had created the movement inthe first place fell apart entirely, in a quiet butnoticeable fashion.

Of course, none of us white folks wereprepared to confront the reasons why such aracial split had opened within the organization,and why African American students, thoughclearly supporting the divestment struggle, hadlittle to do with the formal organization pushingfor that end. We did come up with someconvenient excuses for it though, all of which letus off the hook entirely. As one white memberput it, getting no argument from me in the

process, the black students at Tulane weremostly “bougie,” from upper-middle-classfamilies, and didn’t want to make waves. Asidefrom the fact that this was utterly untrue, who thehell were we to call anyone bougie? As if wewere some hardscrabble working-class offspringof West Virginia coal miners or something.

Never did it occur to us that maybe blackfolks at Tulane were turned off by the way ahandful of whites (myself included) had beenelevated to the status of spokespersons by themedia, and how we weren’t savvy enough toavoid the trap of our own mini-celebrity. Maybethey were pissed because the original focus of thegroup—which had involved not only divestmentbut also black studies and affirmative action—was slowly replaced with a single-minded focuson the one issue that was easiest for whiteTulanians to swallow and would call for no

sacrifice on our part, or alterations in the way thecampus looked and felt. Maybe they fell awaybecause we were so quick to jump to cavaliermethods of protest like taking over boardmeetings and openly inviting arrest if necessary,without consulting anyone, and without discussingthe privileged mindset that treats going to jail likejust another rite of passage for students toexperience.

Whatever the case, the movement flounderedthat next year, and white privilege got in the wayof our seeing why.

IN THE SUMMER between my junior andsenior years at Tulane, living back in Nashville, Iworked for Greenpeace Action, the canvassingarm of the international environmental group,famous for its “Save the Whales” campaigns. I

had worked there the previous summer too, andalthough the pay was lousy (and I was a tragicallyawful canvasser), the camaraderie of the groupwas worth the shitty income. It was a relief just tobe able to hang out with progressives inNashville, few of whom I had known beforethose days.

By that second summer though, I was startingto have serious doubts about the work we weredoing, and even the people in the organizationwith whom I was working. Having thrown myselfinto the study of the civil rights movement inschool the previous year—and having had thehonor of meeting several movement legends at aconference held at Tulane in spring of 1989—Iwas finding myself wondering why theenvironmental movement (and especially itsoverly-white organizational arms likeGreenpeace) said so little about environmental

racism, meaning the disproportionate impact thattoxic waste dumps and other forms of pollutingactivity were having on communities of color.And why were our tactics so utterly lame whencompared to those of the civil rights struggle?

Never were the movement’s tactics—andissue focus—more selfevidently absurd to methan on the day that summer when it wasannounced we would be staging a protest at theBurger King restaurant across the street fromVanderbilt University. Specifically, we would beprotesting the fish sandwich at Burger Kingbecause the fish came from Iceland, andIcelandic fishermen were known for killingwhales. So naturally, the 21st Avenue BurgerKing was complicit with the whale slaughter andwe were going to let them know it. Simple, andquite possibly the most ass-backwardsdemonstration in the history of any social

movement. In fact, from a purely tacticalperspective it had been ridiculous. Who evenknew that Burger King had a fish sandwich?Probably nobody until we alerted them to thatfact, meaning that we had probably helped themsell more fish sandwiches in an hour than theyhad sold in the previous week. Way to gohippies.

Thankfully, I would soon get a chance to be inthe presence of veteran activists with a far morelaudable history and focus. That summer was thetwenty-fifth anniversary of the Freedom Summercampaign in Mississippi—the voter registration,educational and direct action effort organized byan amalgam of civil rights organizations to breakthe back of apartheid there. As those with asense of history will recall, it was during FreedomSummer that three civil rights workers, JamesChaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew

Goodman—the first black and the latter twowhite—had been murdered by Klan members onthe police force and their confederates, andburied in an earthen dam outside of Philadelphia,Mississippi. They had not been found for roughlya month.

An organization called the PhiladelphiaCoalition had formed to commemorate theanniversary and to renew the calls for justice thathad long since been denied in the case, withseveral of the key participants in the murdersnever having been punished for their roles in thecrime. Hearing of the commemoration andneeding to connect to something moresubstantive than a fish sandwich protest, mymother and I decided to make the drive toPhiladelphia.

My mom had been just a bit too young tovolunteer for Freedom Summer, though her heart

had been with the effort, no doubt to the chagrinof her parents, who came from the “why do theyhave to go and stir things up?” school ofsegregationists. They weren’t bigots by a longshot; they just thought Dr. King and the othersshould have left well enough alone. In their world,whites and blacks had always gotten along sowell.

In some ways, perhaps that ho-humindifference had been almost worse than opendisplays of racist contempt. After all, to haveheard your parents cast aspersions upon Dr.King could be seen as almost pathetic, given thetowering greatness of the latter and the ratherordinary mediocrity of the former. But to havehad his greatness and that of this movement metwith blank stares, with nothing, must have beenmaddening. It’s not unlike the difference betweenthe person who seeks to openly justify the death

of civilians in war time with bloodthirsty logic, onthe one hand, and the person who blankly staresat the TV screen as it projects images of thedeath and destruction while not even blinking, onthe other. The latter may not openly celebrate thecarnage, but their refusal to show any emotionwhatsoever is somehow more troubling. At leastthe celebrant of death is willing to demonstrate byvirtue of his agitation that he is indeed alive andcapable of feeling something, however grotesque.I have long thought I would prefer a land filledwith angry and hateful people than one populatedby spectators who watch the drama unfold, andno matter how bad it gets, never miss a singlebeat of their predictable lives.

Kids dying in Mississippi? Gotta remember tocall Betty and make my hair appointment. Watercannons being turned on black people inAlabama? Gotta pick up the dry cleaning and

grab a few things at the grocery. Medgar Eversshot down in his driveway? Did I remember tofeed the cat?

So far as I know, the only reaction mygrandmother ever had to the civil rightsmovement had been to express concern aboutshopping downtown during the sit-ins, which hitNashville in February, 1960. She feared that thecompletely nonviolent black and white kids whowere sitting in at the lunch counters might riot.That the only folks threatening to riot were whitesegregationists, and that the only violence camefrom them as well, didn’t occur to her, nor did italter her perceptions about who the good guyswere and who the bad. Even her concern—feeling put out at the limitations placed upon herability to shop downtown—bespoke numbness.She hadn’t expressed openly contemptuousremarks about the protesters, but simply viewed

the whole episode as an inconvenience. At one ofthe most important moments in the history of hercountry, she, like so many of her compatriots,had had no idea what was happening, nor hadshe particularly cared.

But my mother had, and she had passed it onto me. Now, a quarter-century after that fatefulday when Goodman, Chaney, and Schwernerhad met death at the hands of those whom—although they couldn’t have seen it at the time—the three had been trying to save, she wouldfinally make that trip to Mississippi.

We drove to Philadelphia for the anniversarygathering, which took place on the very site, justoutside the city, where once had stood theMount Zion Baptist Church, the burning of whichSchwerner had gone to investigate that day inJune of 1964. It was that visit to Philadelphia thatultimately had brought Schwerner and his

comrades to the attention of Sheriff Rainey,Deputy Cecil Price, and their assorted Klanbrothers.

The drive from Nashville takes about sixhours, and we made it in almost complete silence.I can remember the miles ticking by as weheaded south, and noticing the ubiquity of thekudzu, consuming everything to the side of I-59:trees, shrubs, old highway signs, everything.Kudzu, for those who haven’t spent much time inthe South, is a particularly tenacious vine that isevery bit as common in Mississippi as the stateflower, the magnolia. It is everywhere, thick,dense, and dark green. It spreads over theditches and gulches just off the shoulder of theroadway. If you were to fall asleep while drivingand had the misfortune of hurtling your car into athicket of the stuff, there is a better-than-averagechance that you might never be heard from again.

Kudzu is more than a vine though, and it’s nocoincidence, I think, that it is to be found almostexclusively in the southern United States. It is theperfect vegetative metaphor for the way in whichwe southerners have so long sought to cover upour crimes, crimes that are not ours alone butwhich we, in so many ways, perfected and turnedinto an art form. Lynchings happened in all partsof the country to be sure, but Mississippi was anentirely different geographic, and, for that matter,historical species. It was the nerve center ofwhite supremacy.

This was so much the case that later that yearwhen I did honors thesis research in the state, Iwould find black folks still afraid to talk about theevents of 1964 for fear that they could even nowdisappear if word got back to the wrong people—people who were still there, and who knewexactly how those black bodies that would

occasionally float to the surface of rivers andlakes had arrived at their final resting places;people who still knew the location of the deepestpoint in the Tallahatchie; people who had neverforgotten, in all those years, how much weightwas needed to keep a body submerged until itbecame impossible to identify it. Mississippi wasdifferent, and it still is.

We arrived in Philadelphia just in time for thebeginning of the day’s events and had to parkwell away from the site of the old church andwalk the rest of the distance. It was unbearablyhot, and there were a few thousand people therealready, many from out of state (including actorsJennifer Grey and Blair Underwood who were tostar in a made -for-TV movie about the murdersthe next year), as well as many from around thePhiladelphia area, including those who haddecided to capitalize on the events by marketing

T-shirts to commemorate the festivities. Whetheror not the locals had cared about Goodman,Chaney, and Schwerner twenty-five years earlier,now, all were quick to wrap themselves in onlythe finest cloaks of racial ecumenism.

Despite some of the cynicism inherent to thelocal embrace of this civil rights reunion, the eventwas incredible, and more than compensated forthe heat or the tacky commercial exploitation ofthe tragedy. I had never in my life been in thepresence of so many heroes and sheroes, whohad put their lives on the line for justice, andespecially never so many white allies in thatstruggle. Growing up in this country, one learnsvery little about the role played by such persons.Not only are the contributions of people of colorto this nation’s history minimized in favor of anarrative that prioritizes the things done by richwhite men, but those whites who resisted and

joined with black and brown folks to forge abetter way are similarly ignored. Growing up, andeven having attended one of the “good” schoolsin my community, in which I took AdvancedPlacement American History, I had learnednothing of these people among whom I nowstood, and whose contribution to human freedomhad been so dramatic, far more so than that ofAndrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, or AndrewJackson, for example, about whom I had learnedplenty in the same class.

To have taught us about these people—andnot merely the ones who had died, but the oneswho had lived and continued the struggle—wouldhave been dangerous. It would have signaled tothose of us born in the years after the height ofthe movement that we had a choice to make. Itwould have dared those of us who were white todream of different ways to live in this skin. It was

no coincidence that school boards and principalsand the lawmakers who make educational policywanted no part of such an enterprise, and stilldon’t.

To see this collection of black leaders andwhite allies and to be in community that day withthem was a source of great inspiration to me attwenty, as it appeared to be to my mother, therewith me, at the age of forty-two. That she hadbeen unable to participate in the battle we werecelebrating was unfortunate. That she had raiseda son to join that battle a quarter-century laterhad made her contribution every bit as vital.

IMMEDIATELY BEFORE WE had left forPhiladelphia, my mother and I had been out atthe home of my dad’s folks, visiting for Father’sDay. We knew that nine days later, mygrandfather would be going into the hospital for

prostate surgery, was none too happy about it,and could use some cheering up.

Paw Paw had never been in good health. Hisleg had been amputated at the age of sixteen, theresult of an infection that had set in after he waskicked by a horse, and throughout his life therehad been various complications from theamputation. Also, his diet was atrocious,consisting so far as I could tell of lox, gefilte fish,butter, and saltines. He also smoked unfilteredLucky Strikes and drank more Chivas Regal thanhe probably should have. That he had made it toseventy was more than a bit surprising to some.

Two years earlier I had become aware of howrapidly his health was declining when he hadcome to New Orleans for college basketball’sFinal Four. He had driven the eight hours withone of his best friends, Cornelius Ridley, abasketball legend in his own right. Ridley had

coached Pearl High School in 1966, the yearthey became the first black team in Tennesseehistory to win the state championship againstwhite players, with Ridley becoming the firstblack coach to win a state title.

Coach Ridley, Paw Paw, and I had gone tothe games, which included one of the mostexciting finishes in championship history, in whichKeith Smart of Indiana hit an improbable baselinejumper at the buzzer to beat Syracuse. But mygrandfather had actually missed the ending,having become ill shortly after halftime, his bloodpressure spiking and causing him to become sodisoriented that he’d wandered back on hiscrutches to the hotel, thinking the game was over.Coach Ridley and I would find him there an hourlater, after both of us had begun to panic abouthis whereabouts. Though his health stabilized inthe months following his trip to New Orleans, by

1989 he was struggling, his kidneysmalfunctioning to the point of requiring dialysis,and his blood pressure dangerously high.

During the Father’s Day visit, I brought him afolder with every article I’d ever written to thatpoint from the school paper and the alternativezine I was writing for in New Orleans. He hadbeen a journalist in college, and because heappreciated my politics, I figured it would mean alot more to him than another pair of socks.

We had no idea that he wouldn’t be comingout of the hospital. Though he definitely wasn’t ingood shape, there was nothing to indicate thatthis would be anything other than a routineoperation. After handing him the folder with myessays, I expected him to put it aside and read itlater, perhaps in a week or so, after returningfrom his surgery. But he read the entire thing,methodically consuming a few dozen short

pieces, leaving my mom, Mabel (who we calledMaw Maw), and me to visit with one another. Itwas as if he knew that if he didn’t read themthen, he wouldn’t be getting the chance.

Looking back, I should have known somethingwas up with him. A few weeks earlier I hadstayed at Leo and Mabel’s house—I still liked togo and spend the night there sometimes when Iwas home from college, to take advantage of thepeace and quiet—and had had a conversationwith him unlike any I had ever had before. Iremember him, for the first time, beginning tospeak of his father. He was trying to tell mestories of what his dad had experienced inRussia, and about his journey to America (a storywe only knew little bits and pieces of, principallythe ones I shared earlier). But every time hestarted to tell a story, to actually provide me witha specific piece of information, his voice would

trail off, and he would start again, usually in adifferent place, and on some totally differentsubject.

He repeated the process a few times until itbecame obvious that he wasn’t going to get muchout. It wasn’t that his mind was going or hismemories were fading. Though his body was atthe end of a journey, his mind was strong. Theproblem was that he literally didn’t have anystories to tell, at least not complete ones. And thereason he didn’t have any stories was becausetales about the old country and a connection tothat immigrant past were often the first casualtiesof whiteness, the first things that had to besacrificed on the altar of assimilation. To hold onto those stories, let alone to pass them down,would be to remain stuck, one was told; it wouldstifle one from becoming fully American (whichmeant white American at the time of entry for

European ethnics). So one had to begin theprocess of transformation: Don’t seem tooJewish, don’t teach your children the language oftheir forbears, nor the customs, don’t talk aboutthe old country. Put all that behind and become anew man—a white man. Only by giving up one’spast could a person like Jacob Wise win a futurefor his children, or so he was led to believe. Onlyin that way could he make others comfortableenough with his presence that they mightwelcome him and his brood into the Americanfold.

It had begun innocently enough, or so itseemed, there on Ellis Island, being told by someimmigration official that they couldn’t understandthe thick Yiddish coming off your tongue, and soit would be necessary to give you a new name, tosimply make one up. What was that, after all,which you were garbling? Shuckleman,

Sheckman, Shuckman, Shankman? Ah, to hellwith it, your name is now Wise; not Weiss, butWise, whitened and sanitized for your protection—with all due apologies to Alex Haley, a JewishToby.

Had the name been the only thing lost, perhapsit wouldn’t have mattered. What’s in a name,after all? Well nothing except one’s past; nothingexcept the intergenerational fiber that had keptyour people together for generations; nothingexcept the story of how you survived. Nothingbut that.

So the process of whitening had begun andnow it was culminating in the inability of mygrandfather, Jacob’s son, to pass down anystory, anything at all about his father, his mother,his grandparents, or the place from which wecame. To know those stories would first haverequired that he had been taught them; and for

him to be taught them would have required thatJacob had been willing to do so; and for hisfather to have been so willing would have meantthat he had been able to resist the pull and lure ofwhiteness; and to do that had been unthinkable.

So my grandfather joined our ancestors, aboutwhom neither I, nor oddly enough, even he,knew much of anything. With him went myconnection to the past, leaving me—and now mydaughters—with nothing other than one-half of aset of gold candlesticks, the only items smuggledout of Russia on that ship Papa boarded so manyyears ago. I don’t even know the story that goeswith the candlestick, but sadly it is all I have left.

All, that is, except for my white skin. Andthough that skin provides me with innumerablebenefits, it is hardly better than the candle in thecandlestick at keeping me warm at night, becauseI know its true price; I know how much my

family paid for it, and for my name. I know,because I saw in Paw Paw’s eyes that day, whatthe cost of white privilege had been for mypeople, what it had exacted of my kinfolk as theyhit the reset button on the game of life and stifledtheir traditions and cultures so they might find aplace in this land. I know the cost incurred andthe penalty paid by those who had to give upwho they were and become something they werenot—white. I know because I saw the bill ofsale, saw it in the silence between my grandfatherand myself. It was a silence louder than anyscream I had ever heard.

SENIOR YEAR BEGAN, and as usual, I wasdistracted from my studies. As had been true myfreshman year, I was once again in a longdistance relationship—this time with a woman at

Vanderbilt whom I’d met working at Greenpeace—and so every other weekend for the severalmonths that our relationship lasted, I was backand forth to Nashville. Luckily, by this point I hadenough credits under my belt to take a light loadacademically, including only three courses in mylast semester, along with finishing up the honor’sthesis on the Mississippi civil rights movement.So even with the distractions, I managed to doalright.

When the year started off, I had planned tofocus most of my activist attentions onreinvigorating the anti-apartheid movement thathad faltered the year before. But even before amonth had gone by, the campus was rocked by aracist scandal quite a bit closer to home. In mid-September, a cross was burned on the lawn ofthe Delta Tau Delta house. Apparently, thefraternity had been targeted because it had just

extended a bid to a black student, DonnellSuares, for the first time in the chapter’s history.Someone, perhaps an alum, wasn’t too pleasedabout it.

When the campus paper broke the news(which had been covered up for roughly twoweeks by the fraternity itself, and then by theadministration once they learned of it), all hellbroke loose. It was bad enough that a cross hadbeen burned, but the fact that the Delts hadn’tseen fit to notify the proper authorities—a movethat the head of campus security blamed forhampering the investigation—was damned nearcriminal. That the president’s office had furtherattempted to keep the incident underwraps,thereby losing the opportunity to make a clearpublic statement condemning the hate crime, onlycompounded the offense. The fraternity clearlyfailed to appreciate the magnitude of the incident.

At a press conference called by myself andseveral members of the school’s black studentgroup, Chet Givens, the frat’s presidentexplained they had remained silent about the hatecrime because they “didn’t believe it was racially-motivated or a campus issue.” Interestingly, oneof the members of the fraternity who remainedstone silent for the two weeks of the initial cover-up, was Andrew Breitbart, now one of thenation’s most notorious right-wing commentators.That Breitbart now claims to have been theperson who pushed for Suares’ membership inthe first place makes his silence and unwillingnessto quit the group in the wake of their non-chalance even more pathetic. Some friend wasAndrew.

As for the administration, protecting the publicimage of the school took priority over forcefulaction, much as it had three years prior, when the

Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity had marchedthrough the middle of campus in blackface,taunting black students with lit torches in a mockMardi Gras parade. At the time, the president’soffice had said they were unable to punishanyone (despite the fact that the fraternity hadbeen banned from campus and the torches wereweapons being thrust in the faces of blackstudents) because they couldn’t identify theperpetrators under all that greasepaint—aninteresting twist on the “all blacks look alike”trope. The fact that the yearbook staff had noproblem identifying each and every one of them afew months later, changed nothing.

In any event, and in keeping with the inventiveways in which white folks so often manage todeny the existence of racism even when itspresence is obvious, there were many beyondmerely Givens and the Delts who claimed the

cross-burning might not be racially-motivated.Because the cross had only been two feet tall,they speculated, it might have had nothing to dowith racism. Of course, because the way todiscern the motives of people who burn crossesis always by use of a handy slide rule.

Though many of us blasted the administration’shandling of the incident and gave them a muchneeded public battering for it, nothing muchhappened. No one was ever caught or punishedfor the act, and thus, there was nothing to deterothers from doing it again. As such, in January,three members of the Kappa Alpha Orderfraternity (the KAs), which celebrates the “OldSouth” and considers Robert E. Lee theirspiritual founder, burned a cross in their ownbackyard. This time the story got out as soon asit happened, thanks to other members of thefraternity who hadn’t been involved in the

incident and reported those who had.But then too, the denial was creative. The frat

boys who had burned the cross actually went sofar as to say they had had no intention to do so,but were merely adding wood to a bonfire in theirbackyard when two pieces “happened to fall in across-like position” in the flames. It was all a bigmisunderstanding. Yes, we dress up inConfederate uniforms and march down St.Charles Avenue every year, all the way to RobertE. Lee circle, waving confederate flags, butwe’re not racists, and that cross thing was just acoincidence. When it was pointed out that aMartin Luther King Jr. Boulevard sign had beentacked to the horizontal bar on the cross, that toowas written off as coincidence, as one brotherpointed out that he had no idea how that mighthave gotten there; after all, they would have tohave gone to the black part of town to steal a

sign like that, and that would have been toodangerous! Yes, it was sure good to know theKAs weren’t racists.

Interestingly, a valuable lesson emerged fromthe community discussion that followed the KAincident. At the outset of the evening, one youngwhite man rose to ask a question, for which heapologized at the outset, so certain was he that itwould prove offensive. He noted that he was aKA himself, and although he recognized why aburning cross was offensive to him as a Christian,he honestly had no idea why it was offensive toblacks. Could someone please explain it to him,he wanted to know?

At first everyone gasped, taken aback by suchlack of awareness, and in a few cases, ready topounce on the kid for his ignorance. But then ithit us: he really didn’t know. He wasn’t trying tominimize the severity of what his fraternity

brothers had done. He simply had never beentold anything about the history of that symbolism,its use by the Ku Klux Klan going back overone-hundred-and-twenty-years, and the wayburning crosses had been utilized to terrorizeblack families in the South and elsewhere forgenerations.

That he didn’t know these things was hardlyhis fault. His schools had never seen fit to teachthem, probably concerned that such lessonswould detract from the far more palatablenarrative of America’s greatness, exceptionalism,openness, and commitment to liberty for all. Hehad been lied to, as had the rest of us. The factthat a few of us had gotten the truth from parentsor mentors was hardly something over which wehad the right to be smug. It simply meant that wehad an obligation to struggle with him, as wewould want others to struggle with us in our own

moments of ignorance. People like that youngman couldn’t be written off, especially by otherwhites, content that our own radicalism somehowmade us superior. He was one of us, after all.And there are plenty of times the rest of us hadn’tseen things clearly either, or wouldn’t in thefuture. As I would soon learn.

WITH A NEW batch of activist students readyand fired up about the divestment struggle, thoseof us who had been leading the charge for twoyears tried to once again jumpstart themovement. In the fall of 1989, our alliance—nowrenamed Tulane Students Against Apartheidbecause of the University’s threat to sue us if wecontinued to call ourselves the Tulane Alliance,thereby implying (supposedly) official universityendorsement—once again took over a boardmeeting. Facing several hundred demonstrators,

and with the divestment petition having grown toinclude the names of over 3,500 students, staff,and faculty, the trustees finally agreed tonegotiations with the protestors.

At our first meeting to discuss divestment withthe board, it became obvious that the university’swealthy white policymakers had no intention oftaking the issue seriously. First, we noted that theuniversity already had an ethical investment policyin place, passed in 1985, which prohibited it frominvesting in companies that contributed to humanrights violations. It seemed apparent thatcontinued investment in the twenty-fivecorporations in South Africa was a violation ofthe board’s own policy. Upon being issued thischallenge, one of the board members—eitherSybil Favrot or Virginia Roddy (rich whitewomen all look alike to me)—responded.

“Well, how do we know if those companies

are actually contributing to human rightsviolations?”

Putting aside the argument that any corporateinvestment in South Africa would automaticallybolster apartheid and thus contribute to humanrights abuses, I posed a hypothetical.

“Imagine,” I asked, “that we were invested inShell Oil” (which given the powerful presence ofthe petroleum industry in and around NewOrleans seemed reasonable, though we couldn’tbe certain given the school’s refusal to open theportfolio). “Since Shell recently called in SouthAfrican security forces to shoot rubber bullets atstriking workers, would that, in your mind,constitute a human rights violation sufficient totrigger the policy with regard to ethicalinvestment?”

“Well,” she began, before clarifying beyondany doubt that money and ethics bear no

necessary relationship to one another, “I guess itwould depend on why they were striking.”

I am rarely at a loss for words, but this was tobe such a time. Suffice it to say that the rest ofthe meeting didn’t go much better.

Fast forward to winter break. I was home forthe holidays when I stumbled upon a bookdetailing the connections between universityinvestments and political and economicrepression in South Africa and Central America.In the book’s index, the author provided asummary of several companies involved in humanrights abuses, and the names of some of theschools that held stock in those companies, alongwith the number of shares held at the time of thebook’s writing. Tulane was listed several times,and was invested in about a dozen companiesthat had contributed everything from oil-refiningtechnology to the South Africans, to military

helicopters to the dictatorships in Guatemala andEl Salvador. It was the material we’d beenlooking for.

Upon returning to campus in January, wecalled a press conference to release the list ofTulane’s “dirty dozen” corporations, and todemand that the school follow its own policy withregard to ethical investment by divesting itself ofstock in those firms and any others about whichwe were unaware. The board, in response,announced they were breaking off negotiationswith the anti-apartheid group, because therelease of the information indicated we wereacting in bad faith—this, coming from peoplewho needed to know why workers were onstrike before they could say, definitively, thatshooting them might be objectionable.

In the third week of March, we again builtshanties, but this time on the lawn in front of the

administration building (Gibson Hall), facing thestreetcar line on St. Charles Avenue. By bringingthe protest to the exterior of the campus, in frontof its most visible structure, we hoped to heightenthe public’s awareness of the school’s practices,and to force divestment, or at least the opening ofthe portfolio to full scrutiny. A week into theprotest, when Jesse Jackson came to campus(for an unrelated speech) and called for theuniversity to heed the protesters’ demands, wefigured we were on our way to victory. Thatevening I announced that several of the group’smembers, including myself, would begin a hungerstrike the following Monday if our key demands,short of divestment itself, were not met by thattime. Needless to say they wouldn’t be, and sothe hunger strike started on schedule.

On the fourth day of the strike we receivedword that the university had agreed to five of the

ten demands, including those we had insistedupon in order for the action to end and fornegotiations to resume. These included theopening of the portfolio and a commitment tobring in ethical investment experts to help planfuture directions for the management of theschool’s general fund.

Though we celebrated this outcome as avictory for the movement, deep down everyoneknew there was something unsatisfying about it.Apartheid was, thankfully, in its waning days, assignaled by the release of Nelson Mandela inFebruary. As a result, the board had recognizedthat before it would really have to make anychanges, the situation in South Africa wouldprobably change, and with it, there would be nomore need to clean out its portfolio. Tulane wasgoing to hold out longer than the racists inPretoria, which was saying a lot.

But what the divestment effort taught me aboutthe moral compasses of the Tulane Board ofAdministrators would prove to be among themore unimportant lessons of the campaign. Farmore intriguing would be the lesson I would learnabout myself and even the best-intended ofactivist efforts; specifically, the lesson I wouldlearn about how even in our resistance to raciststructures we can reinforce racism andcollaborate with the very forces we claim to beopposing.

Though I saw none of this for most of my timeat Tulane, the closest I ever came to having oneof those “lightbulb moments” that people alwaysask about was during that period, on the secondnight of the hunger strike. That evening, with onlya month or so left in my academic career, we hada public debate on campus againstrepresentatives of the New Orleans Libertarian

Party. The Libertarians would argue thatinvestment in South Africa was a good thing forblacks because it provided them with jobs,however unequal those jobs might be, and that ifcompanies pulled out, black South Africanswould suffer most. It was an argument with whichwe had been contending from the outset andwhich all of us knew how to pick apart. By thetime the debate was over, virtually everyone inthe crowd of three hundred or so was on ourside. Confident that we had made our point,Eldann Chandler and I leaned back during thequestion-and-answer period, expecting to furtherdrive home the moral imperative of divestment tothe audience. Most of the questions were prettyroutine and were directed at our opponents,rather than us.

And then it happened. The moderator for theevening called on a young woman in the dead

center of the small but packed auditorium, whowould get the last question of the night. Becauseshe was black, I assumed that she would be onthe side of divestment. She was, of course, butshe hadn’t come that evening to praise themovement. After identifying herself as a first-yearstudent at Xavier University—the nation’s onlyhistorically black Catholic college, located abouttwo miles away—and prefacing her question bynoting that as a New Orleanian she wasembarrassed that Tulane was still invested inthese companies, she got to what was on hermind. In the process, she dropped the bomb thatwould, more than anything, alter the way Iunderstood my own relationship to privilege.

“Tim,” she asked. “How long have you lived inNew Orleans?”

“Four years,” I replied.“Okay,” she continued. “Then tell me, in that

four years, what one thing have you done toaddress apartheid in this city, since, after all, youbenefit from that apartheid?”

She crossed her arms in front of her, andstood, and waited.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi.... Theseconds crept by, each one pounding like a drillinto my skull. By now, the air had been suckedout of the room, she having asked the onequestion for which I had been unprepared, theonly one I had never anticipated, and the onlyone that, at the end of the day, really mattered.

Three Mississippi, four Mississippi.... Itseemed like hours since she had asked herquestion, and I briefly considered the possibilitythat we had been sitting there overnight waitingfor my answer. I’m sure no more than a fewseconds had passed, but in those seconds,enough truth was revealed to last a lifetime.

I began to have the sensation that I was in mycar, speeding away from town, and suddenly sawthe blue lights flashing in my rear view mirror—the lights that say, “Gotcha!” But unlike the lasttime I got a ticket, I wasn’t going to have thirtyseconds to come up with some story that couldget me out of whatever trouble I was in. This timethe officer was at my window, badge out, gundrawn, and it was now or never that I wouldoffer an answer. So I did.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat before thesilent audience, “I mean, um, ya know, um, we allpick our battles.”

Oh.Shit.No. He. Didn’t.Yes, I had, and as soon as the words tumbled

from my lips, I knew something significant hadhappened. More to the point, so did just about

everyone else.The young lady uncrossed her arms and smiled

a knowing smile, her expression betraying a mixof satisfaction and disgust at how easy it hadbeen to expose me.

A buzzing started behind my ears, coupledwith a strange warmth that made me fear myhead might explode like that guy on the stage inthat sci-fi flick Scanners. I started havingflashbacks to all those dreams—I’m sure you’vehad them too—where you suddenly find yourselfnaked in front of your third-grade class or atprom or something.

An earthquake could have hit at that moment—thinking back to it, I probably wished that onewould have—and had it done so, I likelywouldn’t have noticed. I don’t remember anotherthing from that night, so shaken was I by herquestion and my answer, not because I had been

in possession of a better answer that I had simplyforgotten to offer, but because I had had noanswer at all. That had been it. I had told thetruth, and now had to confront what suchdisturbing honesty suggested.

Over the next few days, the administrationwould partially cave to our demands, the shantieswould come down, and the hunger strike wouldend. But even after I began to replenish my bodywith the nourishment I had been denying it, the pitin my stomach remained, because it had nothingto do with food. I tried to put the whole thingbehind me but couldn’t. I kept coming back tothe fact that I had been doing all this work againstracism half-a-world away, but frankly had donenothing to speak of in opposition to the racism inthe town where I had been living. I had donenothing in answer to the de facto apartheidconditions that existed in New Orleans—

conditions that, as the young woman that nighthad pointed out, had benefited me as a whiteman who could count on my privilege to insulateme from their impact.

I began to remember all the things I hadignored or downplayed as I focused on the racialoppression that was occurring on anothercontinent: Harry Lee and racial profiling inJefferson Parish, or Tulane’s lack of recruiting inNew Orleans schools, being two of the mostobvious.

And there was one more, even worse, whichhad just transpired under our noses and aboutwhich we had said and done nothing. Three daysafter our shanty siege had begun, New Orleanspolice killed a black man named Adolph Archie,suspected of killing a white police officer. Whenpolice caught him, beat him, and took him to thehospital, a lynch mob of additional officers had

gathered, after broadcasting open death threatsover their police scanners. Instead of entering thehospital with Archie, they drove him to a precinctstation and over several hours beat him so badlythat every bone in his face would be broken. Hewould die at the hospital after police got tired ofbrutalizing him, and although his death would beruled a homicide “by police intervention,” noofficers involved in his killing would ever bepunished.

As Adolph Archie was being pulverized byNew Orleans cops, my comrades and I had beensleeping the sleep of the just (or at least the self-righteous) uptown, in shacks of our ownconstruction, protected by Tulane police aroundthe clock for the entire two-week period of theprotest. We had never even discussed the killingof Archie, never connected the all-too-obviousdots, never supposed that perhaps there might be

something similar about the way police operatedin New Orleans and the way they operated inSoweto. Remember, we all pick our battles.

I had been completely oblivious to the way inwhich my own privilege and the privilege ofwhites generally had obscured our understandingof such issues as accountability, the need to linkup struggles (like the connection between racismin New Orleans and that in South Africa), andthe need to always have leadership of color inany antiracist struggle. It’s the same lesson stillnot learned by white activists in most cases,whether in the anti-sweatshop movement, thejustice for Darfur movement, or the anti-warmovement. Too often the same mistakes aremade: mostly white radicals, who have the luxuryof picking and choosing issues on which to getactive (unlike people of color who also careabout different issues but have to deal with

racism as a matter of survival), refuse to connectthe dots between the oppression taking place inanother country, and the oppression going ondown the block.

Although we have to forgive ourselves for themistakes we make, we must first acknowledgethem. We must first face up to the fact that in ourresistance we too often reinforce the hierarchicalarrangements we strive to oppose. Only by beingcalled out, as I was, can we learn this in mostcases. Only by being exposed to our flaws,forced to deal with them and learn from them,can we move forward and strengthen ourresistance in the future. If there is one thing I’velearned, it’s that we who are white (andspecifically white antiracists) will screw up moretimes than we care to count, more times than weexpected, and just about as often as people ofcolor already figured we would. Saying this does

not diminish us, and it doesn’t mean that we haveno important role to play in the destruction ofwhite supremacy. It just means that privilegesometimes costs us the clarity of vision needed tosee what we’re doing, and how even in ourresistance, we sometimes play the collaborator.

LOUISIANA GODDAM*

*(WITH APOLOGIES TO NINASIMONE)

IT WAS ONLY during the waning days of theshanty siege that I firmly decided to return toNew Orleans in the fall. I had been thrown for aloop by the young woman at the divestmentdebate, her question, and my miserable answer,bouncing around in my brain for days afterward.Although I had toyed with the idea of moving outWest after taking time off that summer—to dowhat, I wasn’t sure—it was obvious that having

done little to address racism in New Orleans, Ihad some work to do before I could move on.

For several years a group of about a dozen ofus had been publishing an alternative paper calledthe AVANT, and during the two weeks we’dbeen camped in front of the administrationbuilding, we’d begun to discuss creating a presscollective so that those of us interested incontinuing it could live together and work on itsproduction. With five people (initially) in thehouse—which was already being rentedbeginning in August by one of the AVANTprincipals, Don Morgan—rent would be cheap,and we’d all be able to get by with moniesgenerated from ad sales, hopefully, plus whateverodd jobs we might pick up. Having no betterplan and feeling as though I needed to return tothe city to work on issues related to racism, Icast my lot with the press co-op and took claim

to one of the rooms in the large house on RobertStreet.

I spent the summer in Nashville at the oldapartment, living on what little graduation moneyI had managed to get from my parents andgrandparents. I also took the better part of aweek in late June to travel to Kansas City andLouisville with Debbie, my girlfriend at the time,to see Grateful Dead concerts, which were apotpourri of white privilege if ever the word hadmeaning. Needless to say, if black concertgoersever did as many drugs openly as Deadheadsdid, we’d need a lot more prisons to hold themall. But so long as you didn’t do anything violentor disruptive, you could pretty well get as high asyou liked at a Dead show, confident that nothingwould happen to you.

The trip was a fun diversion, but ultimately Iwas disenchanted with the largely apolitical and

disconnected vibe of the whole Dead scene.Traveling the country selling tempeh and falafel inthe parking lot of some stadium is not only notgoing to produce positive social change, it’sterribly self-indulgent. The people who spentyears of their lives following the Dead around—though they might have thought they were doingsomething important and “alternative,” bydropping out of the rat race—were really onlysubstituting a new kind of conformity, in whichtie-dye took the place of slacks or business suits,but ultimately participants were no more trulyindividual than anywhere else in America. Inmany ways, this had long been the problem withhippies: most of them had always been morefocused on living in countercultural ways ratherthan in organizing for social transformation. It hadalways been very ascetic, very self-referential,very much about “doing your own thing,” but not

as often about liberation in the larger institutionalsense. As for the Deadheads, it’s one thing tolike the music, but to turn vagabondism into alifestyle while the world is burning is simply anexercise in privilege and social irresponsibility.

Around mid-July, a few weeks before I wasdue to return to New Orleans, some disturbingnews from Louisiana began to circulate, whichcalled into even starker relief the differencebetween the real world and the world I’d leftbehind after the last Dead show in Louisville.According to polling data from around the state,ex-Klansman and lifelong white supremacistDavid Duke was gaining ground in his campaignfor the U.S. Senate, having picked up a fewpoints on the incumbent Democrat, J. BennettJohnston. Because the conventional wisdom wasthat Duke “flew below radar”—since many whointended to vote for him might be hesitant to

admit their plans to pollsters—even a pollshowing him with one-quarter of the likely votewas disturbing. By now, he was pulling numbersclose to a third.

When Duke had announced he was runningfor the Senate, few had taken him seriously.Although he had won a state legislative seat theyear before, by 227 votes, most had seen thatvictory as a fluke, the result of a lackluster effortby media to expose his ongoing ties to extremistsand his neo-Nazi philosophies.

Frankly, even I hadn’t fully appreciated thethreat Duke posed. Back during the legislativerace, in early 1989, I had gone to Duke’scampaign headquarters with the woman I wasdating at the time to check out his operation.Georgia called his office and asked if we couldcome pick up some campaign materials. She toldthem we were Tulane students and were

interested in getting some information to counterthe liberalism on campus. They were all to happyto oblige, and said to come right away, as they’dbe closing up soon.

David’s office was in the basement of hishouse, so when we arrived, we walked into hishome and saw the volunteers—all female, and allblonde, except for one older woman who lookedlike someone’s grandma—answering phones,preparing mailers, and excited to see us. “Wedon’t get many inquiries from Jew-lane,” onesaid, thinking herself quite clever for havingvoiced a common anti-Semitic slur on theuniversity, seeing as how it included a largeJewish student population.

As I looked around, trying to take in the scopeof his operation, David burst through a curtainseparating the main campaign office from whatseemed like a smaller room—perhaps an alcove

or a walkin closet—to the right of where westood. I hadn’t expected him to be there (indeed,I had hoped he wouldn’t be), and was alarmedwhen he bounded towards us, hand extended,ever the campaigner. Though I had receivedsome media attention for the anti-apartheid workthe previous spring, most of it had been in thepaper, rather than on television, so I wasn’tparticularly worried about him recognizing me.Still, having to shake his hand—the hand of thenation’s most prominent Nazi—so as not to blowmy cover was nauseating.

As we prepared to leave, loaded up withcampaign materials, I looked over to a bookshelfin the office and saw five or six copies of thebook “The Hitler We Loved and Why,” as wellas copies of “The Hoax of the TwentiethCentury,” which argues that the Holocaust ofEuropean Jewry never happened. The sightings

confirmed everything I knew about Duke goinginto the headquarters, yet, for reasons I still can’tunderstand, I didn’t think to go public with whatI’d seen (which would have made for a greatstory, and might have even derailed his legislativecampaign). Later that year, when his Nazi book-selling operation would be exposed by BethRickey, a longtime Republican activist andcommitted Duke foe, I realized how stupid I’dbeen for not having gone public earlier. But atleast the truth would eventually come out.

Among those who took Duke very seriouslywere Lance Hill and Larry Powell, the first ofwhom was a friend and a grad student at Tulane,and the latter of whom had been a historyprofessor of mine. Lance had been on Duke’scase since before the state House race and hadcompiled an impressive array of research onDavid’s ongoing white supremacist activity, most

notably, his leadership at the time of an outfitknown as the National Association for theAdvancement of White People (NAAWP). Thegroup, which Duke had founded after leaving theKlan in 1980, fashioned itself the equivalent ofthe NAACP, but took all kinds of overtly racistpositions, such as calling for eugenics programsto produce a master race of superior whites,advocating the creation of separate racial nationswithin the borders of the United States, andclaiming that Jews were controlling the media soas to destroy the white race. Additionally, Dukesold merchandise from the back of the NAAWPNews, including the books I’d seen on his officebookshelf, praising Adolf Hitler and suggestingthat the Holocaust of European Jewry was ahoax.

All throughout the spring semester of mysenior year, Larry had asked if I might be

interested in coming back to town and workingfor the newly-formed Louisiana Coalition AgainstRacism and Nazism, the group he, Lance, BethRickey, and a few others had formed as a PAC,specifically to defeat Duke in the fall. Initially notplanning to return to town, and really notexpecting Duke to do that well in the election, Ihad always passed. But now, sitting in mybedroom in Nashville, hearing the news aboutDavid’s building momentum, I began to think thatI’d made a terrible mistake, just like the one I’dmade after seeing the inside of his campaignheadquarters and not taking him seriously enoughto have called the press.

I got back to New Orleans in August, movinginto the big yellow house at 1805 Robert Street,which (as I would later learn) was next door tothe home to which Truman Capote had beenbrought from the hospital after his birth, and in

which he had lived for a few years as a child.Truman’s old abode was in far better shape thanours. The house in which we would be living hadbeen divided into two sides, each rented outseparately, and each in equal states of disrepair.It was, simply put, a hovel. Many years later,after Hurricane Katrina, I would go back to seehow it had held up and could discern very littledifference between its condition after the floodingand that fifteen years before.

Within a few months the number of peopleliving in the house would reach probably illegal(and surely unsanitary) levels, growing from fiveto ten, as several of us began moving in oursignificant others, or, in another case, taking intwo high school seniors from the Catholic girls’school down the road whose parents didn’t mindthem living on their own. The only positive thingabout this arrangement was how it kept costs

down. With rent coming to five hundred andtwenty-five a month, and all of us broke, wewere willing to make it work. Fifty-two dollarsand fifty cents per person was awfully good, evenin 1990.

But as the people in the house changed, itsmission as a press collective did too. We wouldonly put out two more issues of the AVANTbefore closing it down for good in March 1991.By the time we had moved in, it seemed asthough we all had different ideas about what wewanted to do, and the paper wasn’t high onanyone’s priority list. Most of the roommateswere still in school, and by then, I was spendingthe bulk of my time at the Louisiana Coalitionoffices, doing what I could in the anti-Dukecampaign.

The job that Larry had offered me beforegraduation was no longer available, it having been

filled by Hari Osofsky, a Yale undergraduatewho was home for the summer. Her task was tocoordinate the anti-Duke network on Louisianacollege campuses, which in places like NewOrleans wasn’t all that complicated, but innorthern Louisiana or at some of the smaller-town schools could prove daunting, given Duke’ssupport in such communities. I’d known Hari fora few years, so when I started volunteering at theCoalition offices, we worked well together. Iknew that the more I ingratiated myself to Lance,and the harder I worked to assist the campaign,the better the chances were that once Harireturned to Yale (which would still be six weeksbefore election day), I would likely be picked asher replacement.

I basically lived at the Coalition headquarters,volunteering all day every day. Within a fewweeks, even before Hari had left, Lance brought

me onto the paid staff to work with her, and thenultimately to take over her position once she wentback to New Haven. My salary was five dollarsand fifty cents per hour, but Lance didn’t put meon a fixed number of hours; as such, since I wascoming in early and staying late, finding plenty todo, I was able to rack up sixty to seventy hoursweekly with no problem, which meant I wasmaking over three hundred dollars a week—waymore than I needed to live in the Robert Streethouse.

To be working in the campaign against Dukewas exhilarating and occasionally scary. Wewould constantly have to monitor our mail,worried as we were that some of Duke’ssupporters might send something other than alove letter or donation our way. As it turned out,we got plenty of angry diatribes, death threats,and envelopes filled with dead cockroaches and

human feces (at least I think it was human), butthankfully, no bombs. Listening to the answeringmachine each morning was always entertaining.Who knew there were so many ways to callpeople “Jew bastards” and “nigger lovers?”

I had known of David Duke since I was nine.That was when I had first seen him on the PhilDonahue Show, at which point he was still theGrand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku KluxKlan, the largest of the various Klan groups in theU.S. People had always commented on howattractive and well-spoken he was, but inretrospect, back in his Klan days, the only reasonpeople could have felt that way is because theywere comparing him to the toothless, semi-illiterate folks who had long been the image of thetypical Klansman. The bar had been set prettylow. Frankly, his high-pitched nasally whine andhis slickeddown mop of hair—along with a

squirrelly moustache that looked like a ferretperched on his upper lip—had always made himappear as an underfed Adolf Hitler, which, cometo think of it, is probably what he’d been goingfor.

By 1990, David had undergone numerousplastic surgeries to Aryanize his look, trading inthe flattened down ’do and moustache for aneatly coiffed and lightened blonde head of hair—all the better to represent the interests of thewhite race. It was a white race, he insisted, thatneeded him to stand up for it, to repel the attackfrom “reverse discrimination,” busing in schools,“parasitic” welfare recipients, immigration, andany other evil under the sun onto which he couldcast a brown face.

Much of Duke’s rhetoric was classic right-wing boilerplate, mirroring mainstreamconservative discourse on such subjects as

affirmative action, anti-poverty programs, andeducation, and sounding quite a bit like previousnarratives spun by politicians like Ronald Reagan,Richard Nixon, and George Wallace for theprevious twenty years. Because Duke steeredclear of his more blatantly racist positions—thosehe’d advocated in the Klan or the NAAWP forinstance, like racial separation—he was able toconvince some right from the beginning that hehad truly changed. The Klan was in his past, hewould insist, and after all, hadn’t Senator RobertByrd of West Virginia, a Democrat, also been aKlansman in his youth?

Of course, there were some differencesbetween Byrd and Duke that the latterconveniently ignored. To begin, Byrd’s youth hadbeen fifty years prior, whereas Duke had onlybeen out of the KKK for a decade. Additionally,Byrd had never joined another white supremacist

group after leaving the Klan, while Duke hadactually started another one, in the form of theNAAWP (of which he would remain the headuntil a few days before the Senate election).More to the point, Byrd had apologized for hisKlan membership and called it a mistake, whileDuke had never repudiated the organization. Infact, Duke said he was proud of the work he haddone in the Klan, and in 1985—just two yearsbefore he turned to electoral politics and beganrunning for public office—admitted that hisideology had “not fundamentally changed” sincehis Klan days.

Obviously, despite Duke’s attempts toconvince voters of his turn from racism, the onlything that had really changed about David was hisface.

YOU MIGHT EXPECT that organizing acampaign against a neo-Nazi would be easy,especially in the sense of settling on the properstrategy for doing so. You might think that sinceNazis are pretty well reviled, pointing out Duke’songoing affiliations with Hitlerian types would bean easy call and a winning plan about which allcould agree. And if you did think that, you wouldbe terribly wrong, as I would learn.

Within the Coalition ranks, there was anongoing battle about how to respond to Dukeand how to combat his candidacy. On one sidewere those of us who came from a moreprogressive tradition—and in this group onecould include Larry and Lance—and on the otherwere several of the Board members from moreconservative and Republican backgrounds, whowere nervous about challenging Duke on thematter of racism at all. As one would put it, “we

need racists to vote against Duke too,” so,presumably, we shouldn’t make a big deal out ofthe fact that he didn’t like black people much.They preferred that we talk about Duke having“dodged the draft” during Vietnam, or failing topay taxes on time, or the fact that he once wrotea sex manual under a female pseudonym.

For the most part, Lance, as Director, wasable to sidestep these unprincipled positionscoming from board members, aided in thatprocess by Beth Rickey, who despite being arelatively conservative Republican, wasmotivated by an intense dislike for racism and arecognition that indeed that was the issue. Lancewould placate the more conservative boardmembers as best he could, but from hisperspective—and all of us on staff agreed—theonly ethically acceptable approach was to focuson Duke’s ties to racial hatred and neo-Nazi

extremism. Yes, we might need people who werefar from enlightened to vote against Duke inorder to beat him, but that didn’t mean we had toignore racism, or pretend that draft-dodging orlate tax payments were equivalent to calling forthe creation of a master race or separatingpeople into their own sub-nations based oncolor.

There were, of course, those who thoughteven this approach was too conservative. I hadseveral friends, for instance, who believed weshouldn’t call Duke a Nazi, not because hewasn’t one, but because to do so was no better,ostensibly, than for right-wingers to call those ofus on the left “communists.” It was, to their wayof thinking, no better than red-baiting. Theypreferred that we simply rebut Duke on theissues: explain why his claims about welfarerecipients were wrong, why his stance on

affirmative action was mistaken, why hisperspective on immigration flawed. One friendand colleague even said that the answer was tojust go into the union halls and tell working classwhite guys that black workers were theirbrothers and sisters, and they should recognizethat all of them were being manipulated by theruling class. Sure. Simple. Just like that.

Fact is, we did try to rebut Duke’s publicpolicy narrative, but with a limited amount of timein which to mount an effective campaign,changing white folks’ minds about subjects likeaffirmative action and welfare spending waspretty unlikely to work; their views on thesematters had taken many years to ossify, andwould take time to dislodge. Rather, we tried toremain focused on Duke’s extremism—hisconnections to assorted white supremacists, aswell as his overtly racist ideology, spelled out in

his own writings—and occasionally (andunfortunately) threw a bone to the conservativeswho wanted to talk about taxes, the draft, andsex manuals, by mentioning those as well.

Because Louisiana’s elections were open—meaning there were no party primaries, so all thecandidates ran in a big pack and the top twovote-getters would face one another in a runoff—we were all nervous about the outcome. With theofficial Republican candidate, Ben Bagert, pullingsix to ten percent in polls, the concern was thatDuke might win the most votes in a three-wayrace, or at least get into a runoff with Johnston,where the outcome would be uncertain. Afraid ofthe same, Bagert dropped out in the waning daysof the campaign.

Having traveled the state in the weeks leadingup to the election, I knew to be worried. I hadorganized students in Lafayette, Lake Charles,

Alexandria, Monroe, Shreveport, and all placesbetween, and knew that Duke had a strongunderbelly of support from scores of disaffectedwhites who were convinced that all theirproblems could be laid at the feet of blackpeople. Although Duke’s personal obsession hadalways been Jews and the role of the Jewishcommunity in undermining the white race,because the Jewish population of Louisiana wassmall, he rarely discussed the matter; but itwasn’t because he hadn’t wanted to. As one ofhis campaign managers would explain, they hadhad to beg him not to talk about Jews too muchbecause it didn’t resonate with people inLouisiana the way going after blacks did, so hehad stuck to the script and built his support baseby doing so.

Sadly, it wasn’t just the racist white folks—orthe desperate whites, convinced by Duke’s racial

siren song to vote their resentments—who poseda threat. There were also more than a fewrelatively liberal and even far-left folks I knewand considered friends who genuinely musedabout their desire to abstain from the election andnot vote at all. To them, both candidates wereunacceptable, and in keeping with their purity-of-arms leftism, they would refuse to vote forJohnston—the “lesser of the two evils.” That J.Bennett Johnston was indeed a conservativeDemocrat whose record on everything fromforeign affairs to the environment was rightlyoffensive was inarguable. That anyone claiming tobelieve in justice could think a bad environmentalrecord was morally equivalent to being a Nazi,however, suggested an intellectual and ethicalmiscalibration so profound as to boggle the mind—but in any event, there it was.

On election day, the Coalition and our

supporters gathered downtown at the Sheratonon Canal Street to watch returns and celebrateDuke’s defeat—which despite our fears, we fullyanticipated would yet be the outcome. Andalthough Duke did lose, the celebration quicklyturned into something more closely resembling afuneral procession or a wake. Unmoved by theevidence of David’s racism and his connectionsto the neo-Nazi movement, a whopping 60percent of white Louisianans had voted for Duke:in some northern Louisiana parishes, and evennext door to New Orleans, in St. Bernard Parish,the numbers climbed closer to 70 percent. Only ahigh black voter turnout had prevented him fromwinning, but even then, his final tally of 43.5percent of the overall vote sent shockwavesthrough the state and nation. As Lance explainedthat evening to the media, the election had been areferendum on hate, and hate had won.

HAVING MANAGED TO score such a greatjob right out of school, I was unprepared for theprofessional insecurity that would follow in thewake of the anti-Duke campaign. Not that I hadexpected to find jobs as easily as I’d wrangledthe one at the Coalition, but still, what wouldtranspire over the next several years was the verydefinition of an occupational roller-coaster.

For at least four weeks after the election Iwould still have work, acting essentially as agopher on the Congressional campaign of MarcMorial, who was running against WilliamJefferson for the House seat vacated by longtimeCongresswoman Lindy Boggs. I had knownMarc for two years, having met him during theanti-apartheid movement; he was a local civilrights attorney and son of the city’s first blackMayor, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, and would

become Mayor himself in 1994. In this race,however, and despite the clout of his late father’spolitical machine, Marc would lose to Jefferson,the latter of whom would go on to serve nearlytwenty years in Congress before being indictedon corruption charges a few years ago, another ina long line of not-quite-honest Louisianapoliticians.

My responsibilities in the campaign wereessentially banal. I answered phones, went to thepost office to mail campaign fliers and othermaterials, ran errands for supplies, and didwhatever else was needed around the office. Itwas boring but it was a paycheck, and I’mgrateful for the experience, if only because ittaught me how much I despised the game ofelectoral politics. Any thought of working oncampaigns for traditional candidates—even thoseI respected, like Marc—went out the proverbial

window by November 1990. There was noaspect of it that appealed to me: not the glad-handing for money, not the ass-kissing for votes,not the pandering to people you didn’t even likejust to seem “electable,” and certainly not thegamesmanship, which turns such efforts into merecompetitions between high-priced consultants,who, if they weren’t selling politicians, would behawking get-rich-quick schemes on late-nightinfomercials, or perhaps Extenze tablets.

At the same time that I was trying to figure outthe direction in which I wanted to goprofessionally, I had just begun a newrelationship with a woman I’d met during theanti-Duke campaign, but who was, to be sure,not the typical activist type. Nicol Breaux was alocal, born and reared in the mostly-whitesuburbs of Jefferson Parish: in other words,David Duke country. Though she didn’t live in

the district from which Duke had been elected tothe statehouse in 1989, she spent a lot of timethere, including at her—and soon to be our—favorite dive bar, Mick’s: a pub run by a youngIrish American kid named Rusty, and frequentedby more than a few Duke supporters.

Nicol was a student at Tulane, a year behindme, and although her social circle included a lotof whites with less-than-enlightened racial views,she was militantly opposed to Duke—she would,in fact, throw a beer on him during a St. Patrick’sDay parade a few years later—and wascommitted to challenging those friends of hers tosee what she saw in the Klansman who was socovetous of, and had likely received, their votes.Indeed, among the things that attracted me toNicol had been her fearlessness in standing up tothe kinds of white people who, frankly, I hadnever spent any significant time around. Coming

from a liberalleft background, where I had beenable to construct a life that allowed me to avoidtoo many overtly racist white people—and evenworking class white folks, period, racist or not—her bravado at telling her mostly male socialcircle where to step off was fascinating to me.Although we couldn’t have been more different—at the time I was wearing tiedyed T-shirts anda woven bracelet in the colors of the AfricanNational Congress, while she coveted Chanelbags and DKNY—there was something abouther that I found alluring.

Nicol would move in with me at the house onRobert Street, despite how its hippie vibe andunhygienic condition no doubt offended herfashionista sensibilities. While there, she wouldput her own mark on the place, lining up a houseparty performance by an old friend of hers, JeffRoberson, whose drag alter ego, Varla Merman

—though now famous—was just beginning hercareer. Varla would perform at a party we allthrew for Dayna Leaumont’s eighteenth birthday,she being one of the two high school seniors whohad moved in earlier that year. I feel certain thatVarla, who came festooned in a Pucci cat suitand performed for an hour, has never sinceplayed in such a truly dreary environment as thatprovided for her at 1805 Robert. Given her nowregular appearances in Provincetown, not tomention a stint on Broadway, let it suffice to say,she’s come a long way.

For the next several months, after the Morialcampaign flamed out, I worked off-and-on forLance at the Coalition offices. Money was stilltrickling in from contributors, and so occasionallyhe would have enough cash on hand to hire meback as a research assistant or handle someleftover media interviews about Duke and what

we thought he might be up to next. It wouldn’ttake long to be able to answer that question, asDuke announced that he intended to run forGovernor of Louisiana in the fall of 1991, thevery next year. Round two was about to begin.

BUT FOR ME, it may have well been overbefore it even started, had it not been for Lance’swillingness to stand up to at least one Coalitionboard member who sought to have me fired.

In November 1990, I penned an article forwhat would prove to be the next-to-last editionof the AVANT. Therein, I discussed my personaloutrage at the way in which the state of Israel hadconsistently supported the racist South Africanregime, all throughout the decades-long struggleagainst apartheid. As an American, I wasoffended by U.S. support of the white minorityregime there, and as a Jew, I was horrified that

this government to which we Jews wereexpected to have some fond regard—if notoutright religious loyalty—would support theoppression of black South Africans by way oftechnology transfers, economic investment, andeven military involvement with the governmentthere.

The essay was scripted in response to anarticle I had read the previous summer in theNashville Jewish Federation newsletter, writtenby Bertram Korn Jr., a spokesperson for amilitantly anti-Arab organization calledCAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in MiddleEast Reporting), the primary purpose of whichwas to insulate Israel from even the mildest ofcriticism. To Korn and the hyper-Zionists whothink like him, nothing Israel does in defense ofthe Jewish state is ever objectionable. Jews arealways innocent, always victims, never victimizers

—and to suggest otherwise is to make one ananti-Semite. In Korn’s view, Israel shouldn’t becriticized for trade and investment with SouthAfrica, since several Arab states also engaged insuch activity—a geopolitical equivalent of the old,“Billy threw the rocks too, Mom” defense, andabout as unconvincing.

In the piece, I detailed the variousentanglements between the Jewish state and thewhite racist government in South Africa, andnoted the special irony of such linkages given theway in which the first four apartheid governmentshad been led by men who were Nazicollaborators during World War Two. What self-respecting Jew would tacitly support connectionsof this sort, by way of their silence, just so theirprecious Israel could avoid well-deservedrebuke?

Apparently, the answer was Jane Buchsbaum,

the treasurer of the Louisiana Coalition (and headof the local Jewish Federation), who decided thatmy apostasy with regard to Israel was groundsfor termination. Upon learning of the article—thanks to the frenetic call of Harley Karz-Wagman, the Rabbi at the Tulane Hillel House,who fashioned himself quite the liberal, and whohad seen it within hours of its release—Buchsbaum called Lance and said that in heropinion, I should have no further role in theCoalition. Blurring the lines between actual anti-Jewish bigots like Duke, and anti-Zionist Jewslike myself (or merely Jews who didn’t think itright to support anti-black racism in SouthAfrica), Buchsbaum and Karz-Wagmansuggested that I was hardly better than the manwhom I’d been working to defeat the pastseveral months.

I learned of Rabbi Harley’s outrage while

having dinner at Nicol’s mom’s house. I wasthere when Shiloh Dewease, one of theroommates at Robert Street and a longtimeAVANT collective member, called to inform meof his present temper-tantrum. Harley had calledthe house, incensed by the essay and demandinga retraction. Shiloh had asked him what, ifanything, about the piece was factuallyinaccurate, to which he had replied, nothing.There was nothing inaccurate about the claims Ihad made—Israel indeed had supported SouthAfrican apartheid—but according to the Rabbi,Jews shouldn’t write such truths, no matter howaccurate. We should not, in Harley’s words, “airother Jews’ dirty laundry.” That such lunacyconfirmed my decision nine years before to leavethe Temple seemed apparent. If this was theorthodoxy required to remain a Jew in goodstanding, by all means, I thought, let me be a Jew

in exile.Lance would have none of it of course. My

views on Israel (which he largely shared,unbeknownst to Jane and Rabbi Harley), wereirrelevant to my work at the Coalition, heexplained. Not to mention, all of three hundredpeople (if we were lucky) might have read thearticle, and I hadn’t identified myself in the bylineas working for the Coalition, so what differencedid it make? Though I received several hostilecalls at the AVANT house from right-wing Jewswho lectured me on my insufficient devotion toour supposed spiritual homeland, the controversyblew over rather quickly. That said, it haddemonstrated to me the tendentious nature ofantiracist allyship.

All of my life I had heard that we as Jewswere almost inherently predisposed to opposeinjustice—the result of our religious teachings and

our experiences as targets for oppression andeven extermination. But as it turned out, we werejust as motivated by naked power and self-interest as anyone. Liberal and left Jews couldturn into apologists for murder and discriminationjust as soon as Israel was in the picture, whetherregarding South Africa or the Palestinians. Janeand Harley had taught me a lesson alright, but ithadn’t been the one they’d set out to impart.What I’d learned was that, politically speaking,we Jews were really just a slightly different brandof white folks.

HOWEVER, IT WASN’T only the organizedJewish community that could prove inconsistenton the ally front. In late spring 1991, funding forthe Coalition hadn’t picked up sufficiently toallow for my full-time re-hiring to work on the

Gubernatorial campaign against Duke. So,worried about finances, but wanting to remaininvolved in progressive activism, I took a job as astatewide coordinator for Students OrganizingStudents (SOS): a New York-based groupworking to secure reproductive freedom forwomen, especially in states like Louisiana, whereabortion access was constantly being threatenedby lawmakers.

Although the job was supposed to be for oneperson, Anneliese Singh (who had just graduatedfrom Tulane and with whom I’d been friends forseveral years) approached me about sharing theresponsibilities with her. It was too much for herto do alone, she said, and since I still hadoccasional work at the Coalition, a part-time gigwould work well for me, so I jumped at thechance. I knew Anneliese to be a first-rateorganizer, and being a staunch supporter of

abortion rights and the full-range of women’sreproductive choices, I saw it as an opportunityto make a difference on an important issue, whilegaining critical organizing experience in theprocess.

The timing of my work with SOS couldn’thave been more propitious, as it dovetailed withDavid Duke’s authorship of a bill in the statehouse that would pay poor women on incomesupport to be temporarily sterilized withNORPLANT contraceptive inserts. As if thelegislature’s annual attempts to prohibit orseverely curtail abortion access weren’t badenough, now Duke was offering to limitreproductive freedom in the other direction, by allbut bribing desperate mothers to undergosterilization so as to limit childbirth. Anneliese andI both thought it would be an excellentopportunity to demonstrate the intersectionality of

three oppressions: racism, classism, and sexism,since anti-welfare sentiment was obviously aimedat women, and poor women in particular, andpoor women of color even more directly; so, inaddition to organizing against proposed abortionrestrictions, we began working against House Bill1584 as well: the Duke sterilization plan.

During this time I co-authored, along withLance, a report critiquing the NORPLANT billfor the Coalition, which we distributed tolawmakers and the media. Therein, we explainedthe connections between Duke’s plan and hislongstanding support for Nazi-like eugenicsprograms. House Bill 1584, we explained, was athrowback to Hitlerian population control efforts.Not to mention, it was based on flawed policypremises regarding women on welfare, includingany number of false assumptions about the linkbetween income support and out-of-wedlock

childbirths, which studies indicate is no real link atall. States with the most generous income supportprograms have lower rates of out-of-wedlockchildbirth, while those with the highest rates ofout-of-wedlock childbirth invariably have theweakest social safety net programs.

Seeing the sterilization bill as an obviousorganizing opportunity for pro-choice forces,Anneliese and I approached Louisiana Choice,the state affiliate of the National Abortion RightsAction League (NARAL), and the largestabortion rights group in the state, hoping to worktogether to defeat Duke’s assault on thereproductive freedom of poor women. Despiteseveral attempts to gain their interest, or involvethem in public events to discuss restrictions onabortion access and restrictions on the right tohave children if so desired, the only reply fromthe NARAL folks was silence. They showed no

interest in fighting the Duke bill. Though their lackof apparent concern may have been due tooverwork at trying to beat back the restrictionson abortion that were pending in the legislature,it’s hard to avoid the thought that they were alsomaking a decision influenced by their own raceand class biases. To the white and middle-classled group, the reproductive freedom of poorwomen, especially of color, to have children inthe face of a society that despises them, took aback seat to securing the rights of mostly middleclass and white women who could affordabortions, to terminate their pregnancies.

In the end, House Bill 1584 was defeated, nothanks to the mainstream women’s rights groupswho ignored it. Sadly, the underlying logic of theproposal—that poor women are too fertile andneed to have their reproduction restricted eitherby force or bribe—remains with us. Indeed,

another state lawmaker in Louisiana proposedsimilar legislation in 2008, suggesting that whileDuke may have been defeated in his attempts toshape the law, Dukism remains a force to bereckoned with, even two decades later.

ALL THROUGHOUT THE early-to-mid-1990s, New Orleans was known nationwide forits crime problem, and by then it had alreadybeen notorious for years for its overzealouspolice force. The combination of these two factsmade it difficult sometimes to know who thegood guys were. For people of color, calling onthe police for help was a dicey proposition,mostly because they could never know whetherhelp is what they’d receive as opposed tobrutality and mistreatment.

One night while we were living on RobertStreet, one of the roommates, Darryl Barthé, got

to experience the brutality of the NOPD up closeand personal. Darryl, who remains to this dayone of the most no-bullshit people I’ve ever met—he says what’s on his mind and could give arat’s ass if you like him or not—was and is acharacter, possessing an almost encyclopedicknowledge about the city of New Orleans, andespecially its color divide, not only betweenblack and white but between Creoles, which heis, and everyone else. Darryl also is imbued witha classic punk-rock mentality, not only becauseit’s among the many styles of music he enjoys,but because it fits perfectly with his politicalsensibilities. He has always struck me as acombination of Jello Biafra (founding member ofthe iconic punk band Dead Kennedys) and Dr.Madd Vibe (lead singer of the ska/punk/funkgroup Fishbone), along with a little Bakunin andHuey Newton thrown in for good measure.

On his way back from a party near theRiverbend area (close to the top of Uptown),Darryl had the misfortune of walking while black,on an evening when apparently someone else,also black, had mugged some white folks.Turning from Freret Street onto Robert, and bythis point only a few blocks from our house,Darryl found his path impeded by a police cruiserwhose occupants hopped out and demanded thathe tell them about “jumping the white people.”He replied that he had no idea what they weretalking about and was just walking home. WhenDarryl proceeded to mumble something aboutthe absurdity of the encounter, one of the officersgrabbed him, prompting Darryl—who was fullyaware of the reputation of the city’s police andrightly concerned about being manhandled—toattempt to push the cop off of him. Enraged bythe act of defiance, the officer then fulfilled his

expected and typecast role by slugging Darryl inthe mouth, splitting his lip in the process.

The police then proceeded to shove Darrylinto the car and drive to the corner of Freret andCalhoun streets, where another officer wasspeaking with a white female college student whohad just been mugged. When the officers pulledDarryl from the car and asked if he was the onewho had jumped her, the young woman insistedhe was not. Unbowed, the police asked her threemore times if she were sure, clearly disappointedby their bad collar and hoping to nail Darryl forthe crime. She stood firm however and repeatedthat Darryl had not assaulted her. In truth, itwould have been pretty hard for her to haveforgotten Darryl had he been the one; after all, hewas wearing a T-shirt that said “Fuck You” inbright red letters.

Rather than release him, though, the police

proceeded to throw him back in the car andbegin the drive downtown, where, theyexplained, he would be booked, presumably forthe shove he’d administered to the cop who hadsought to detain him for a crime he didn’tcommit. On the way downtown, as the officerslectured Darryl about how his family clearlyhadn’t raised him right, as evidenced by his lackof obeisance to the police, he proceeded tomention that his family included police officersand that his uncle had been DeputySuperintendent at one point and Chief Detective.Unconvinced, they asked for his uncle’s name,which he gladly provided, prompting the police topull over, let Darryl know how lucky he was, andthen put him out on the curb to walk back home.

Such treatment would not be that which Iwould receive at the hands of the New Orleanspolice, however, and the difference is worth

commenting upon.Around the same time, I too had encountered

one of the city’s finest. It had been early on aTuesday afternoon. Nicol was in class at Tulane,and I had kept the car that morning while shewas on campus so I could run errands. Afterreturning home for lunch, I headed back out ontothe street to get in the car and drive to NewcombHall to pick her up, at which point I saw that Ihad locked my keys in the car.

Pissed but not panicked—I had, after all,learned how to get into locked cars with a coathanger when I was sixteen, sacking groceries at aNashville market where I’d often been calledupon to help elderly ladies who’d made the samemistake—I ran up the stairs, grabbed a wirehanger, and headed back to the car to break in.Unfortunately, the 1988 Toyota Tercel is amongthe hardest cars on earth into which one may

break, which is ironic, considering how fewpeople could possibly want to steal one. Nomatter my truly veteran efforts to open the door,I was having no luck even after ten minutes.

It was then, as I was furiously bending thehanger back and forth, trying desperately to jamit between the metal door frame and the rubberinsulation around the window, that a police carpulled up. The officer hopped out andapproached me.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, morecurious than accusatory.

“I locked myself out of my car and I’ve got topick up my girlfriend in like five minutes,” Ireplied, exasperated with my shitty luck.

I fully expected the officer to ask me foridentification or some kind of proof that this wasmy car, which only goes to show how little Iunderstood about the value of white skin in the

eyes of law enforcement.“Well, I can tell you right now,” he interjected.

“The problem is, you’re doing that all wrong.”“Excuse me?” I replied, not having expected

to be told by a police officer that I lacked thenecessary acumen to break into a car the rightway.

“Yeah, that’s no way to break into a car,” heinsisted. “Here, let me show you how it’s done.”

And with that he went to his trunk and pulledout a slim jim, which is a long piece of flat metalthat can pop a car door open by being shoveddown behind the rubber seal around the bottomof the window until it meets an interior rod thatcontrols the door function. Once it connects withthe rod, a small hook on the end of the slim jimcan pull up on the rod, thereby opening the door.The officer proceeded to demonstrate the propermethod for breaking into a car, and seemed to

take great glee at the opportunity to demonstratehis own technique for the maneuver. Sadly, hetoo would be unsuccessful, stymied as I had beenby the superior workmanship of the Tercel.

Still unconcerned about my identity orlegitimate claim on the vehicle, he suggested that Ishould throw a rock through the window. When Itold him my girlfriend would be pretty pissed atme for doing that, he said I could always tell hersomeone had broken into the car. Breaking theglass might even be fun, he insisted, making methink that perhaps he was wanting to do thehonors himself.

It is, of course, incomprehensible that had itbeen Darryl (or any black person in his twenties)who had locked himself out of his car and wastrying to break in with a coat hanger, thatanything about the encounter would have beenthe same. To think that an officer would have

simply taken for granted that the vehicle belongedto the wouldbe black or brown break-in artistrequires a level of naiveté almost too stunning tofully comprehend. For whites, innocence waspresumed until proven otherwise, while forblacks, the presumption of guilt was the defaultposition.

BY APRIL, NICOL and I had moved, alongwith two other roommates, from ourovercrowded house on Robert, into a smaller butmuch cleaner place on Dante Street. It was soclean, in fact, that Darryl took to derisively callingit the “aqua fresh condo.” Between SOS and theincreasing volume of work with the Coalition asthe Governor’s race began to heat up, I wasstaying plenty busy.

Duke picked up where he’d left off in theSenate race, rallying angry whites around such

themes as welfare reform, affirmative action, andtaxes, promising that if he were elected he wouldstand up for whites, whom he proclaimed to bethe victims of “massive reverse discrimination.”Likewise, we at the Coalition swung into highgear, coordinating our second “campaign withouta candidate” in two years. This goaround, thechoice was going to be between Duke,incumbent Governor (Democrat-turned-Republican) Buddy Roemer, and former three-time Governor, Edwin Edwards. Once again, asDuke came on strong, the more moderateRepublican faded. In the primary, Duke won athird of the vote, knocking off Roemer andsetting up a runoff with Edwards.

Edwin Edwards had been a fixture on the statepolitical scene for thirty years by 1991. Afreewheeling Cajun from SouthwesternLouisiana, Edwards had built a reputation as a

man of the people, but also as a flamboyantwomanizer, gambler, and occasional practitionerof goodold-fashioned corruption. Once famousfor saying that when it came to unlawful campaigncontributions, it was “illegal for them to give butnot for me to receive,” he quipped now that theonly way he would lose to David Duke was if hewere found in bed with a “dead woman or a liveboy.”

Knowing that there was no way to skirtEdwards’ checkered past, we decided to use itas part of the campaign strategy, developingbumper stickers that would become knownaround the country to people who were watchingthe race. They said simply, “Vote for the Crook.It’s Important.” Soon, it became a battle on theroadways to see which side would claim theallegiance of the most automobiles. On the oneside there were the Duke supporters with their

blue and white DUKE stickers, and on the other,those of us with our red and white NO DUKESstickers (a play on the ‘No Nukes’ slogan of the’70s and ’80s), or the black and white one linersabout the importance of choosing corruption overits opponent, Nazism.

During the Governor’s race, Lance and Idiscussed the importance, ethically if notstrategically, of more directly confronting Duke’spublic policy narrative than we had in theprevious campaign. Having already released thereport on HB 1584 in June, in which we hadsought to confront the widespreadmisperceptions about so-called welfare and thepeople who received it, it seemed like animportant addition to the existing campaignnarrative. And seeing how the unprincipleddiscussions of Duke’s taxes, draft dodging, andother minor matters had failed to move voters in

the Senate race, those sideline distractions wouldnot be making a comeback this time. Althoughmuch was made—especially by the Edwardscampaign—about the likely economic disasterthat would follow a Duke victory (thanks tocorporate and tourist boycotts of the state), eventhat argument rested upon the notion that Duke’sracist extremism is what made him so eminentlyboycott-able. So even the economic argumentrested, indirectly, on an antiracist foundation. Itwas still about the unacceptability of bigotry.

We took out full page ads in newspapersacross the state challenging Duke’s politics ofracial scapegoating, pushing back directly againsthis tendency to blame poor blacks for everythingfrom high taxes to crime to white unemployment,and looking instead at the real sources ofworking- and middle-class insecurity: corporatetax giveaways, downsizing, deindustrialization,

and budget cuts for education. Though it wasn’tto be the key element of our campaign, it wasnice to be inserting a clearly progressive critiqueof mainstream conservatism into the mix, in wayswe hadn’t before. For the sake of movementbuilding, it’s critical to develop a counter-narrative, and not merely to rebut the narrativewith which you find fault. This time around, wewould do that in a much more concerted fashion.

Still, the focus was, as it needed to be, onDuke’s neo-Nazism. And shortly before theopen primary in October, we would come acrossthe kind of bombshell we’d been looking for theprevious year, which would tie Duke, beyondany doubt, to a politics of Hitlerian ideology. Itcame in the form of a series of interviews withBritish researcher Evelyn Rich, who had met withDuke on several occasions in the mid-1980swhile doing dissertation research on the white

supremacist movement. Rich (who ironicallywould later marry one of the nation’s leadingwhite nationalists, Jared Taylor) turned out tohave done some of the best work for theCoalition, without even knowing she had doneso.

Lance had found the recordings of Duke’sinterviews with Rich, as well as some transcripts,and had me go through them piece by piece, overeight hours of recordings in all. There were gapsin the transcripts, often at key points of thedialogue, which Lance wanted me to fill. Hehoped that we’d be able to pull enough extremistcontent from the tapes to use in the campaign.Sure enough, the recordings were filled with openadmissions by Duke that his views had reallynever changed after leaving the Klan, as well aslong, manic rants about Jews and theirpernicious, conspiratorial designs on world

domination. Listening to his hours-long ramblingwas like listening to the ravings of a woefullyunder-medicated psychotic, peppered as it waswith references to Jewish responsibility forpornography, obscene poetry, race-mixing,drugs, suicide, and incest. And of course, Dukeexpounded at length in the interviews about hisbelief that the Nazi Holocaust had been entirelyfabricated by a “Jewish writer in Hollywood.”

But best of all was a recording from February1986, in which Duke had discussed strategy withan open Nazi by the name of Joe Fields. WhileFields had no problem proclaiming his devotionto Hitler, to whom he referred as the “ultimate”role model for whites, Duke cautioned him to becareful, because “if they can call you a Nazi andmake it stick . . . it’s going to hurt.” AlthoughDuke noted it was “unfortunate it’s like that” (inother words, it’s a shame people can’t just

openly embrace Nazism), he counseled Fields to“leave his options open” when it came to beingso brazen about his views. Finally, when Fieldsexclaimed that “Hitler started with seven men,”Duke chimed in, excitedly noting, “And don’t youthink it can happen right now, if we put the rightpackage together?” When Fields again insistedthat he would never deny he was a Nazi, Dukeended by saying, “I wheedle out of it becauseI’m a pragmatist.”

Although the audio quality on the recordingswasn’t spectacular—they had been made oncassette tapes, which by then were four to five-years-old—I took them to a recording studio atXavier University, where the background noisewas taken out and the audio quality boosted,thereby leaving us with a clear articulation, notonly of Duke’s extremism in his own words, butalso his admission that he was conning everyone

into believing he had changed. We turned therecordings into radio commercials which ran onhundreds of stations across the state, and plantedthe story in virtually every print outlet inLouisiana. The state Democratic Party picked upon the recordings too, running TV ads featuringDuke’s comments in the final weeks of thecampaign.

There was no question by election night thatDuke would lose. The only real issue was, aswith the Senate race, how resounding a defeatcould be handed to him. Although the result wasbetter than that from the previous year—Edwards prevailed by a 61–39 margin—thevictory for the saner forces in our state wasdampened once again by the vote tally amongwhites. Although we had managed to help pareoff a few percentage points of Duke’s whitesupport, he had still managed to capture nearly

55 percent of all white votes cast. In otherwords, most whites in Louisiana had beenperfectly prepared to elect a Nazi as Governor ofthe state. As had been true in the previouselection, black folks had saved us fromourselves, turning out to the polls in recordnumbers to defeat Duke, and to defeat whiteracism.

The two anti-Duke campaigns had been eye-openers. On the one hand, I knew that mostwhites in Louisiana were not Nazis, or overtracists who believed in the creation of a masterrace or the carving up of the United States intodistinct racial sub-nations. But what I also knew,given the election results, was that most whiteswere willing to vote for someone who was all ofthose things. Sitting alone with my thoughts in thedays following the election, I was forced tocontemplate what that fact meant, not only about

white people generally, but for me, specifically.After all, as easy as it would have been tobecome smug in the face of such a thing—topride oneself on having been enlightened enoughand perhaps even evolved enough to know betterthan to vote for the Nazi—the truth was, therewas very little separating me from those sixhundred thousand-plus whites who had voted forDuke. I had had one set of experiences growingup that delivered me down a particular path, andthey had had a different set of experiences thatdelivered them down another one. It could easilyhave gone the other way. I could no morecongratulate myself for my insights than I couldbash them for their decided lack of the same.These were my people, after all, and if we whoaspire to be white allies cannot or will notstruggle with our people—as we would hopeothers would struggle with us (and often have)—

then who is going to do it?One thing I knew at that moment was that it

wasn’t the job of people of color to fix us; it wasour job. It was on us to practice that “personalresponsibility” about which we so readily preachto people of color. It was time for self-help.

AFTER THE GOVERNOR’S race, theCoalition went through another financialimplosion, as contributions dried up, the job ofdefeating Duke seemingly accomplished. That thename of our organization was the LouisianaCoalition Against Racism and Nazism, and notDavid Duke per se, always seemed to escapesome people. Getting folks to see racism as abroader matter was often a struggle, so mucheasier as it was to remain fixated on the blatantlyobvious example of bigotry dominating the newscycle. As contributions flatlined I was laid off

again, but would be brought back within a fewweeks as Duke, unbowed by his two defeats,announced he was going to run for President andwould enter the Super Tuesday primaries in theSouth, in March 1992.

We went back to work, making sure thatmedia across the region understood what theLouisiana media had come to realize; namely,that Duke was a white supremacist not merely inhis past but also in his present. The effort washardly needed. Not only did most everyoneknow by now, but any concerted anti-Dukeeffort was superfluous by the spring of ’92.Duke’s luster was gone, less because his brandof politics was passé—far from it—but becausehis thunder was being actively stolen by PatBuchanan, who became the voice andembodiment of white resentment for thepresidential race: a political commentator without

the Klan baggage, and a member in goodstanding of the conservative cognitariat.Buchanan pushed all the same buttons as Duke—the anger over affirmative action, crime,immigration, and welfare moms—but he did itwithout the obvious ties to extremist groups thathad characterized Duke’s entire adult life. BySuper Tuesday, Duke was relegated to pullingdouble digits in only one state, Mississippi.Meanwhile, Buchanan had already stormedforward in places like New Hampshire, stealingfrom what the columnist himself described asDuke’s “winning playbook” of issues. David hadbeen out-Duked, beaten at his own game.

In the larger social sense, Duke’s electoraldemise was a huge victory for antiracist forces,and never has anyone been so grateful for havingworked himself out of a job as I was in thatmoment. That said, I had indeed worked myself

out of a job. Little did I know that it would be awhile before I really had another one.

Unemployed and uncertain as to what I mightdo next, I could hardly put up much of a fightwhen Nicol got offered a job in Houston anddecided to take it. Though I couldn’t imagineliving in Texas, I was in no position to argue thepoint, and so in April of 1992 we packed ourthings into a large U-Haul truck and headed offto the only place capable of making NewOrleans look temperate.

PROFESSIONALDEVELOPMENT

WE HAD ONLY been in Houston for a littleover two weeks when Los Angeles went up inflames. On April 29, 1992, a jury in Simi Valley,California, acquitted the four white officers whohad beaten Rodney King in the aftermath of thenow-infamous high-speed chase the previousyear. As word spread of their acquittal, SouthCentral Los Angeles exploded. With no job, I satand watched the drama unfold on television bythe hour, the story being one of the first toreceive virtually twenty-four-hour news coveragefor days on end. Images of neighborhoodsengulfed in smoke and fire sent shock wavesthrough the nation. Folks who had enjoyed theluxury of ignoring the rage of the dispossessed

were now having to stare it dead in the face, andthey were none too happy with what they wereseeing. The black and Latino communities ofL.A. had reached their boiling point, having seenfar too much police corruption and brutality gounpunished over the years (and by the mid-90seven more evidence would emerge about policeillegality on an epic scale in the city’s Rampartsdivision). Though most of white America couldn’tunderstand the anger, it was only privilege thatallowed such obliviousness.

Much was made by commentators and thepublic of the horrific attack on Reginald Denny, awhite truck driver, by four black men at thecorner of Florence and Normandie avenues.Denny was pulled from his truck and beaten—acinder block smashed onto his head—in full sightof helicopter cameras, the scene playing out formillions to witness during the live coverage. The

viciousness of the attackers was, to some,evidence of black barbarity and criminality—thiswould be the take of Pat Buchanan, for instance,who would use the riots as a political chit duringhis presidential bid. Interestingly, and in keepingwith the way in which people are so quick to findevidence to suit their pre-existing biases (andignore that which contradicts them), few seemedto notice the decency and heroism of the twoAfrican American men (Bobby Green, Jr. andRev. Bennie Newton) who came to the defenseof Denny and another of the mob’s victims, FidelLopez. While the negative acts of four black menwere somehow evidence of a larger group flaw,the positive acts of the other two black men weretaken to mean nothing in the opposite direction.

By the time our first month in Houston wasdone, I was sure I was going to lose my mind. Istill couldn’t find work, and except for excellent

food and a decent nightlife—we would go to thecity’s gay dance clubs, mostly because Nicoldidn’t have to worry about getting hit on, and Icould gauge my fashion sense by the extent towhich I did—it was tough to find much to likeabout Harris County. Furthermore, as nationalevents unfolded in which race was clearlyimplicated, I realized how much I missed workingon matters of racial equity, and how importantthe subject matter had become to myunderstanding not only of the nation, but also ofmyself.

Then one day in mid-May, I answered aphone call that would, in a number of ways,change my life. On the other end was a producerfor a new syndicated television show based inBoston, who had been told to contact me aboutappearing on an upcoming broadcast. She hadgotten my number from Lance, who thought I

might be perfect for an episode in which the host,Jane Whitney, would have a former Klan familyon as guests, as well as a husband and wife whowere still active members of the group. I wouldserve as the expert on the white supremacistmovement. Initially, she had contacted theSouthern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery,Alabama, to see if someone from the groupwould appear on the show, but SPLC’s policy isnever to appear opposite racists and thereby givethem more credibility than they deserve. Though Iunderstood that logic, I also knew the show wasgoing to proceed, with or without an antiracistanalyst on the panel. Rather than leave it up tothe host to know how to respond to the Klanmembers, I figured it was better to have someonedo it who knew something about them.

Though I was skittish about the way talkshows typically dealt with these subjects—with

good reason, since it had only been four yearsearlier that the infamous skinhead fight onGeraldo had broken out, during which the hosthad suffered a broken nose—I decided to do theshow. Earlier in the year, while still in NewOrleans, I had turned down an offer to appear onJerry Springer, fearing the circus atmospherethat was already by that point his hallmark. Butthis time, something about the way in whichLaura, the producer, described the episode,convinced me it could be a legitimate discussion.

I knew something of the ex-Klan family’s storyalready, having seen the wife and mother, JanRalston, the year before on the Sally JesseRaphael Show. She had first appeared as aproud member of one of the most militant andterroristic Klan factions in the country—theSouthern White Knights. Rather than the whitehoods associated for years with the KKK, the

Knights preferred battle fatigues and blackberets. But after spewing viciously racist diatribesfrom the stage, and then seeing the tape of theprogram provided her by the producers, Jan hadexperienced something of an epiphany. Shockedby her own demeanor, she had called up Sally’sproducers and asked to return to the program,this time to denounce the Klan and announce herdecision to leave the organization.

By the time of the Jane Whitney appearance,Jan had convinced her husband Gary and two oftheir children to leave the Klan as well. Theywould be the primary focus of the show,opposite Ken and Carol Peterson, a Klan couplefrom Wisconsin. When Laura explained that thePetersons would appear by satellite, rather thanlive in the studio (because Ken was afraid to fly),I was convinced that my role in the programcould be constructive. There was no chance that

the show would descend into chair-throwingchaos with the unrepentant racists thousands ofmiles away.

The studio was outside of Boston, so about anhour and a half before the taping, I camedownstairs to the lobby of the Bostonian Hotel,only to find myself face to face with the Ralstons,with whom I would be sharing the limo ride to thenetwork affiliate. Despite knowing that they hadleft behind the white supremacist movement, Icouldn’t help but feel a momentary twinge ofanxiety. These were, after all, people who just ayear earlier would have wanted me dead.

I nervously introduced myself and wasimmediately heartened by the warmth of theRalston family. Jan was as sweet and kind as shecould be, and Gary, though gruff, was also politeand probably just as nervous as I was—in hiscase, wondering to what extent I was judging him

and his family. With Jan and Gary were their twosons: Steven, who had been forced to join theKlan by his dad, and Allan, who had refused tojoin and had been initially disowned by hisparents after telling them he was gay.

On the ride to the studio we talked about theirstory, which, as it turns out, was far deeper than Ihad known. Not only had the family disownedAllan, but Gary had actually been plotting withsome of his Klan brothers to murder his son afterlearning of his sexuality. In part, it was Jan’shorror at realizing that her husband was planningto kill her flesh and blood that had begun to snapher out of the white supremacist coma into whichshe and the family had fallen three years earlier.At one point, as Allan was planning on cominghome to Stone Mountain, Georgia, for a visit, Janhad pleaded with him to stay in Texas for fearthat had he returned home, Gary and other

Klansmen would have murdered him.The show went well, as the Ralstons and I

effectively dismantled the incoherent ramblings ofKen and Carol Peterson (or really just Ken,since he rarely allowed his wife to speak). Afterreturning to the Bostonian, we sat in the hotel barfor two hours, discussing how they had come tojoin the Klan, how they had come to realize theerror of their ways, and how they werecommitted to making it right by speaking outagainst racism. I told them about my life as well,after which point Jan said I was one of the firstJewish people she had ever really talked to atlength, and how she was so sorry about all thethings she had said and felt about Jews in thepast. I quickly forgave her of course, thankedthem for their courage, and as night became earlymorning, we all said our goodbyes and went offto bed.

I didn’t sleep. Putting aside the exhilaration athaving been on my first national television showand having solidly represented the antiracistperspective, I was more excited by what I hadcome to realize, sitting in that limo with theRalstons, or later having beers with them anddiscussing race. What I had learned was thefundamental redeemability of even the mostdistorted human soul. Staring at these folks,looking deeply into their eyes and witnessing thepain only barely concealed behind them, I hadcome to know that although David Duke had notchanged, those who thought as he did werecapable of transformation; that even the mostvicious of racists is damaged, before ever joiningsuch a movement, and even more once there.And if people such as that can be redeemed, thenperhaps anything is possible—even justice andthe end of white supremacy altogether.

THOUGH IT HAD been nice to be on TV, theappearance still hadn’t opened up the floodgateswhen it came to job offers. To make ends meet Istarted working in the stockroom of the BombayCompany, the furniture store where Nicol wasmanager. Then in August, Nicol somehowmanaged to wrangle a decorator’s contract todesign the VIP suites at the Republican NationalConvention, which was being held in Houstonthat year, as well as the official “Bush familyresidence.” The residence, as it happens, wasjust a hollowed out game room at the HoustonianHotel: the Bush family’s permanent Houstonaddress so they could avoid paying state incometaxes in Maine, where they actually lived whennot at the White House.

Not having other work, I was immediately

drafted into Nicol’s decorator’s army for theGOP shindig. Though I dreaded being that closeto so many Republicans—especially so many ofPat Buchanan’s supporters—I thought it might bea good opportunity to do some enemyreconnaissance, and to peek behind the curtainsof the right-wing machine that was gearing up totake on Bill Clinton in November.

To a large extent, it wouldn’t be necessary topeek behind any curtains, as much of theextremist lunacy present at the convention wouldreceive ample coverage in the press. On openingnight, Pat Buchanan delivered his infamous“culture war” speech, in which he raised thespecter of the L.A. riots, repeating an utterfabrication that the rioters had been prepared toattack an old folks’ home until brave soldiersstopped them, and then noting that just as thesoldiers had reclaimed Los Angeles, block by

block, so too must conservative Christians “takeback their country” block by block from the un-American pornographers, feminists, andhomosexuals who were seeking to hijack it.Referring to Democrats as “cross-dressers,”Buchanan suggested that if elected, Bill andHillary Clinton would usher in an era wherechildren would be encouraged to sue theirparents, and the institution of marriage would beutterly eviscerated by militant lesbians and Hillaryherself. I was in the convention hall that night,bringing furniture to the VIP rooms in theAstrodome, and was reminded of nothing somuch as old footage of rallies at Nuremberg,sixty years prior, led by a certain GermanChancellor to whom Buchanan had once referredas “an individual of great courage.”

Although the convention’s hostility seemedmostly focused on the LGBT community, there

was always room for a little racial anxiety too. Soearly on the first day of the convention, asdelegates were beginning to arrive (and as Nicoland I were hauling boxes of furniture from the carto the VIP lounges), I happened to look out atthe mostly-empty floor of the convention space,to the Jumbotrons overhead that would soonshow up-close coverage of the event toattendees in the nosebleed seats. There, in full-screen color, snarling out over the hall, as if toremind those entering who the enemy was, was afreeze-frame image of the rapper Ice-T.

The previous month, Ice had come under firefrom law enforcement (and groups like TipperGore’s Parent’s Music Resource Center) for thesong “Cop Killer,” which appeared on the firstalbum of his speed metal band, Body Count. Thesong, which told a story of revenge being takenon law enforcement because of police brutality,

was seen by some as a call for murderingofficers. Although no one really believed JohnnyCash had wanted to “kill a man in Reno, just towatch him die,” when violence fantasies are spunby black men, naturally, they are never justfictionalized accounts intended as art, but are tobe viewed as ruminations on the inherent natureof the person singing them. And there he was, thebig, bad rapper (though “Cop Killer” was not arap song), scaring the Republican faithful as theyentered the Astrodome. Let it suffice to say,subtlety was not their strong suit.

BUT THE WILLINGNESS of conservativesto exploit racial fears for the purpose of revvingup the troops was hardly a revelation. It wasn’teven remotely surprising. What was instructive,however, was coming to understand moreviscerally than I ever had before, just how much

my white skin insulated me from the harshjudgments or suspicions of others.

After we were done with the rooms at theconvention hall, Nicol and I headed over to theHoustonian, where we were to meet two of herBombay Company colleagues, so as to beginsetting up Barbara and George H.W. Bush’s“living room,” from which place they would beinterviewed throughout the convention by thenetworks. It was an interminably hot and humidday, and we made the drive from one side oftown to the next (which, in Houston, routinelytakes over an hour) without air conditioning, inthe Tercel, the back seat and hatch area filled tothe brim with boxes of cheap imitation antiquetables, chairs, and accessories. By the time wearrived at the checkpoint for the hotel—whichwas set up near the road, just inside the drivewayto the main building—we were more than a little

ragged around the edges, covered in sweat, anddesperate to get out of the heat.

Despite the way we looked, and despite theway in which the car was stuffed with closedboxes (in which, frankly, could have beenanything—weapons as easily as furniture), whensecurity asked us why we were there, and wetold them, they did nothing more than brieflyglance through the back window and then waveus on. They did not ask for identification or acontact number for the persons with whom Nicolhad contracted for the job in the first place—nothing.

We proceeded to spend the next four hourssetting up the room in which the President of theUnited States and First Lady would be stayingthroughout prime time convention hours. Werearranged furniture from the hotel, brought innew furniture from outside, and did all of this with

no oversight or security whatsoever. There wereno cameras in the room and we finished a merefive minutes before the Bushes were to enter,which is to say, there was no time for anysecurity sweep once we had exited.

Simply put, no one considered that perhapsthey might want to check out who we were andwhat we were doing. Had we been black,security would never have been so sanguine. Hadwe appeared to be Arab, it is highly unlikely thatour car and furniture boxes would have goneunchecked. But white twenty-three-year-olds?What could there possibly be to worry about?The fact that I had been told four years beforethat I couldn’t even ride in a campaignmotorcade with Michael Dukakis because Icouldn’t pass a background check—the result ofmy already-extant FBI file—didn’t matter. Theysimply hadn’t thought to ask or do their

homework. Fact is, had I been the least bitinclined to kill the president, he would have beendead, and Dan Quayle would have inherited theoffice. We could have planted a bomb in thatroom or climbed one of the trees that sat notthirty feet from the room’s large floor-to-ceilingwindows and shot him. Of course we neverwould have done such a thing (and not onlybecause Dan Quayle would have inherited theoffice), but the sickening fact is, we could have,because we’re white, and therefore, presumednot to be dangerous.

THOUGH THE JANE WHITNEY SHOWhad only been seen in about thirty-five markets,and thus, my television debut had been witnessedby a pitifully small number of people, there wasone person watching that evening upon whom Ihad made a significant impression.

I received a call at our Houston apartment aweek after the show aired from a man in SouthHaven, Connecticut, who told me his name was“Coach Jimmy Jackson.” Coach Jimmy, as Iwould come to know him, had quite a story totell, and felt that I was just the person with whomhe could share it. Normally, this would have beenthe kind of thing I would likely have blown off—merely humoring him until he got tired of talkingand then politely saying ‘goodbye,’ never tospeak again—but there was something aboutJimmy that struck me as genuine, and kind.Furthermore, his story of discrimination rang truefor me, such that I offered to take a closer lookand do whatever I could to help.

Jimmy Jackson had been everything from acop to a recording artist with Buddha Recordsback in the late 1960s. He had also joined theNew York Jets in 1966, only to suffer an injury

in training camp, thereby ending his footballcareer before it had started. But mostly, andwhat he wanted me to know, was that he was afootball coach, and a damned good one, havingwon two national semi-pro championships, beenin three semi-pro Super Bowls, compiled anoverall winning percentage of 73 percent, andhaving been voted General Manager of the Yearand three-time coach-of-the-year in the minorleagues. Why all of this mattered was that CoachJimmy was in the process of suing the NationalFootball League and the fledgling World Leagueof American Football for racial discrimination.The World League had formed a few years prioras an experimental operation, with teams in theU.S., Canada, and Europe, but despite hisimpressive accomplishments and therecommendations he had received from personslike Jack Pardee, head coach of the NFL

Houston Oilers; Gene Burrough, former GM ofthe New Jersey Generals (of the United StatesFootball League); legendary quarterback JohnnyUnitas; and Tim Rooney, Director of Personnelfor the NFL Giants, Jackson had been passedover for a coaching gig with the league. Not onlyhad Jackson not been hired for a job in theWorld League, no black coach had been, despitethe claims of the league director that a diversecoaching pool was among their top priorities.Jimmy promised to send me the supportingmaterials for his lawsuit, and I promised I wouldlook them over.

When the first packet of information came, Ihave to say, I wasn’t immediately sold on thestrength of Jimmy’s case. He had representation—a pretty established law firm in downtownManhattan—but all he had for me at the timewere some clippings regarding his prior coaching

experience, and some publicity materials he hadput together, as well as various articles aboutdiscrimination in the NFL, including one piecefrom Sports Illustrated, which detailed thedifficulties that African Americans were havingobtaining jobs on the sidelines. Still, and despitethe paucity of hard evidence up to that point, Ienjoyed talking with Jimmy and felt there mightbe more to the case. So I insisted that he stay intouch as his attorneys proceeded through thediscovery phase of the lawsuit, and to let meknow what they came up with. I would be gladto serve as an expert consultant of sorts if hislawyers thought I might be of some assistance.

Of course, I reminded Jimmy on numerousoccasions that I was only twenty-three, the merepossessor of a Bachelor’s Degree, and could inno way be presumed an expert on discriminationthe way many others could. So, I explained, he

might want to get someone with more formalcredentials to serve as an actual expert witnesscome time for trial. But Jimmy would have noneof it. He had seen me on Jane Whitney and feltthat I was the right person for the job. I thankedhim for his confidence and promised to do all Icould.

Though there would be no pay for any of thework I did over the next two years on Jimmy’sbehalf, ultimately, that work would become someof the most important I’ve ever done, if not forJimmy, then certainly for myself. Indeed, myinvolvement with Jimmy would ultimately serve asthe best education I could have received abouthow racism works, specifically at the institutionallevel. In fact, my work on Jimmy’s case was oneof the few high points during a period of my life inwhich most everything else was going wrong.

From mid-1992 until late 1994, my

professional life would remain in constant crisismode. We would leave Houston in September toreturn to New Orleans, but although I had moreconnections there than in Texas, I still had noluck finding activist work upon getting back.Broke, unemployed, and unable to contributeanything to the household that Nicol and Ishared, I found myself desperate enough at onepoint to sell off my treasured baseball cardcollection, which I had cultivated as a youth.Although the cards were worth about thirtythousand dollars then (and, sickeningly would beworth nearly half a million dollars today), I felt asthough I had no choice, ultimately letting them gofor only about 15 percent of their value at thetime. I also took a job in early 1993 as a stockboy at a local wine store, until finally landing aresearch position with economics writer andauthor Walter Russell Mead in June. But even

during the work with Mead (for which those ofus hired to assist him were paid two hundreddollars a week, and even then never on time), Iwas far more interested in Jimmy’s case thananything Walter had us looking up oninternational trade and development policy.

By mid-’93, the lawsuit was in full swing, andover the next several months, as Jimmy’sattorneys would depose the principals from theother side, they would load me up withdeposition transcripts to look over, as well asinternal NFL and World League documentsuncovered during discovery. Whereas the initialmaterials Jimmy had sent me had left quite a bitto be desired, the new documents seemed atreasure trove of useful evidence. Though WLAFofficials claimed to be concerned about the lackof black coaches in professional football, theyhad passed up several opportunities to hire

African Americans for the league. Jimmy wasonly one of the black coaches ultimately ignoredby team GMs and the league itself, which hadhiring authority over the clubs in Barcelona andLondon.

Rather than hire any blacks who applied forhead coaching jobs with the World League—several of whom were assistant coaches in theNFL by that point—teams ultimately stocked upon white has-beens, most of whom had failed inprevious positions. So, for instance, Sacramentohired Kay Stephenson, formerly the head coachof the Buffalo Bills, but whose record had beenso bad that he’d failed to land another job afterbeing fired several years earlier, and who wasselling real estate in Florida at the time of hishiring. Likewise, Montreal hired JacquesDussault, who had previously served as anassistant for two failed Canadian Football League

teams, and Raleigh-Durham hired RomanGabriel, a former star quarterback with the LosAngeles Rams, but who had been working as theGM of a minor league baseball franchise at thetime of his hire, and who had only coachedbriefly at Cal Poly-Pomona, a school whosefootball program was so bad it had beendisbanded after Gabriel’s tenure there.

Although the league claimed in its defense thatit had made offers to black coaches, a carefulexamination of those claims suggested the offershad been in bad faith, and were more to keep upappearances of fairness than to truly bringdiversity to the professional coaching ranks.Offers were made to three coaches in particular:Dennis Green (at that time the head coach atStanford), Tony Dungy (at that time an assistantcoach with the Kansas City Chiefs), and MiltJackson, a veteran wide receivers coach in the

NFL. But Green and Dungy were already beinggroomed for NFL coaching jobs and wereknown to be within a few years of securing suchpositions; as such, there was very little chancethat either of them would have taken the risk ofjoining an experimental league, for less pay andprestige, and potentially derailing theirprofessional trajectories. In fact, Green had toldLeague president Jerome Vainisi that he had nointerest in coaching in the WLAF. As for MiltJackson, he had made it clear that he would onlyaccept an offer for the Sacramento franchisebecause it would allow him to live close to hisfamily. But rather than even interview him for theSacramento job, the League offered him theposition in Barcelona, knowing there was no wayhe would accept it.

To see how the League and its team GMscontinually “moved the goalposts,” jiggling the

job qualification requirements and relying on oldboy’s networks in a way that worked to thebenefit of whites and detriment of blacks, was anincredible lesson in the way institutional racismoperates. Far from the bigotry of a David Duke,this was slick and systemic racism, the kind thathad worked to marginalize not only JimmyJackson and other black coaches, but millions ofblack job applicants across the nation in anynumber of professions for decades, ever sincethe passage of civil rights laws.

Even more instructive was the way in whichthe League had employed a hiring criteria that,while facially race-neutral, was guaranteed toproduce a racially-exclusionary impact on blackcoaching aspirants. So according to JeromeVainisi, the League had been looking for coacheswith experience in one of three prior arenas:either as head coach of a pro team, head coach

of a “top fifty” college program, or as anoffensive or defensive coordinator in either theNational Football League or the short-livedUnited States Football League (USFL). Ofcourse, as I would explain to Jimmy’s attorneys,such a criteria—even assuming the WLAF hadbeen using it, rather than just going with thepersonal preferences of the white GMs—couldnot but produce an all-white outcome. At thatpoint, there had never been a black head coachor offensive or defensive coordinator in aprofessional league, and the only AfricanAmerican college coach in a top program wasDennis Green, whose success in the college gameensured he would be holding out for a muchmore prestigious NFL gig. The World Leaguecertainly knew that the criteria would have thateffect, so it seemed reasonable to conclude thattheir intent in using it had been to produce the

disparate impact that was predictable from thestart. But with or without intent, the exclusion ofblack coaches would be the result of such acriteria.

It was a perfect example of institutional racism,which allows racial disparity to be produced andmaintained with or without the deliberate andbigoted intent of those producing the disparity,but merely as the product of normal operatingprocedures so common to employers. So often,the way in which qualification requirements areused favor those who have been in the pipelinefor the best opportunities previously. Because ofhistoric white privilege, relying on so-calledexperience indicators or seniority—as isnormative on the part of most companies—willalmost always screen out people of color who,through no fault of their own, haven’t beenafforded the same opportunities to accumulate

credentials over time. It’s not unlike having aneight-leg relay race, in which one runner has hada five lap head start, and then when the runnerwho started out behind fails to catch up andsurpass the one with the unfair advantage,blaming that second runner for not being as goodas the first.

Though the case seemed strong to me,sometimes circumstances work against thedesired outcome in ways that can’t easily beavoided. As it turns out, American jurisprudenceon racial discrimination law makes it very difficultto prove a case without clear evidence of intentto injure. Although it is possible to sustain a caseof disparate impact without proving intent,typically courts require such cases to involvehuge classes of plaintiffs, statistically large enoughto demonstrate a clear disparity over a longperiod of time. In the case of the NFL and

World League, the potential numbers of injuredblack coaches would have been only in thedozens—and the case before the court was noton behalf of even that many, but rather, onlyJimmy—so the Judge classified the action as adisparate treatment case, meaning that the burdenwould be on Jimmy’s attorneys to prove that theLeague had deliberately excluded him fromconsideration because of race.

Although I felt there was still strong enoughevidence to suggest disparate treatment,ultimately the jury would disagree. By the timethe trial was held, Jimmy had ballooned to overfour hundred pounds, his health suffering from theemotional impact of the mistreatment to whichhe’d been subjected, striking a visual that nodoubt would make it difficult for any jurors to seehim actively coaching a team from the sidelines.That, and the evidentiary limits imposed by the

court, created long odds for Jimmy that heultimately couldn’t overcome. I felt terrible,having taken this ride with him for so long, only tosee it end in defeat. I was especially upset that hisattorneys hadn’t warned me about the evidentiaryrules for expert witnesses—rules that make itquite clear such witnesses are not allowed totestify to the ultimate issue (in this case whetheror not the defendants had engaged in unlawfuldiscrimination). Having not been advised as towhat I could and couldn’t say, I had prepared anexpert report in which I said, in no uncertainterms, that I thought the defendants haddiscriminated—a position I would repeat withouthesitation at my deposition, much to the delight ofthe opposing attorneys (from the prestigiousCovington and Burling law firm in D.C.), whowere then able to successfully have me struckfrom the case for having overstepped the

boundaries of expert testimony. Whatever Iknew about racism and discrimination didn’tmatter. It was what I didn’t know about theevidentiary standards of the American legalsystem that would make the biggest difference. Itwas the only time I would ever regret not havinggone to law school. Still, what I’d learned aboutthe way racism operates at the institutional levelhad been worth the experience, whatever theoutcome.

OTHER LESSONS WOULD be forthcomingduring this time too, specifically, lessons aboutwhiteness and its consequences even for whitepeople, which were nearly as disturbing as theones I had just learned about its effect on folks ofcolor, thanks to the Jimmy Jackson case.

Back in late 1991, amid the generally

heightened racial consciousness that had emergedthanks to the David Duke campaigns, NewOrleans councilwoman Dorothy Mae Taylor hadproposed a citywide antidiscrimination ordinanceaimed at the prestigious private clubs thatparaded during Mardi Gras. The parade kreweswere targeted by Taylor because the clubs didfar more than just throw parties every Lentenseason—they were also the location ofsubstantial business dealings and high-poweredconnections, ultimately linked to the opportunitystructure in the city. Among the old-line elitekrewes, it was also known that they had neverhad black or Jewish members. Because theconnections made in the krewes often led tocontracts with the city, and because the citysubsidized the krewes’ activities (by providingclean up and security related to their parades),Taylor and other African Americans on the

council believed it was only proper to insist thatthey be non-discriminatory in their operations.Ultimately, Taylor proposed that unless thekrewes could prove they weren’t discriminatingby the end of 1993, the organizations would beprohibited from parading in the following year’sfestivities.

Almost as soon as the ordinance had beenproposed, white New Orleanians had begun withthe gnashing of teeth and the rattling of politicalsabers. How dare anyone tinker with the city’scare-free celebration of debauchery by turning itinto a political football, they would say. Howdare Dorothy Mae Taylor spoil our fun. Taylorbecame, almost immediately, the “Grinch whostole Carnival,” with whites across the politicalspectrum condemning her proposal and all whosupported it as racial bomb throwers andtroublemakers. One white gay civic organization

actually compared her to David Duke andsuggested the two should be married, given theirpresumably equivalent racial bigotries. Otherswould crow that people should be able to picktheir own friends and club associates, no matterhow racist they may be—an argument that wasnever the point, of course. Taylor was notseeking to restrict the krewes’ freedom ofassociation; rather, she was suggesting that if onewants to do business with the city, or exploitprivate connections to do such business, or havethe city clean up after one’s mess, one can andshould be expected to play by the public’s rules.

By the time Nicol and I had moved toHouston, the ordinance had passed (though ithad been altered a bit, placing the burden ofproof on those who would claim they had beendiscriminated against), and four old-line kreweshad decided to take their toys and go home like

children, announcing they would no longerparade, rather than abide by the new law. Whilewe were gone, I hadn’t kept up very much withpublic reaction to the ordinance, but by the timeMardi Gras season arrived in early 1993—thelast year before the law was due to go into effect—the anger on the part of whites was stillpalpable.

On the one hand, it was never surprising thatthe uptown blue bloods would be upset about therule. The sense of entitlement and untouchabilitythat has long animated them all but ensured thatoutrage would meet any attempt to regulate theiractivities, or even to criticize their privatepractices as being bigoted in the first place. Richpeople rarely take well to being told by therabble that occasionally, their shit does indeedstink.

But what was disconcerting about white

hostility to the antidiscrimination ordinance washow quickly and completely it emerged amongthe kind of white people who would never in amillion years be invited to join an elite MardiGras krewe. When working class whites withouta pot to piss in begin defending the prerogativesof wealthy folks who hate them too, you knowinstantly that something troubling is going on. Andthat was what we were witnessing—low-incomewhites in Metairie, holding signs on parade routesthat read, “Hands Off Mardi Gras,” and whichpictured Dorothy Mae Taylor in grotesquecaricature, with exaggerated lips and bulgingwhite eyes against a coal black face (despiteTaylor’s far lighter complexion).

This is what Marx had no doubt been thinkingof when he talked about “false consciousness” onthe part of working people, ultimately causingthem to identify more with their bosses and the

owners of capital than with others in their ownclass, with whom they had far more in common.And surely it was what black scholar andsocialist, W.E.B. DuBois had meant manydecades later when he discussed the“psychological wage of whiteness,” whichallowed struggling white folks to accept theirmiserable lot in life, so long as they were doingbetter than blacks. To the white masses in Dukecountry, they had more in common with themulti-millionaires along St. Charles Avenue andon Audubon Place (the wealthiest street in thecity) than with African Americans, struggling foropportunities much as they were. Racial bondingtook priority over class unity, or in this case,common sense.

Of course, it probably shouldn’t have beensurprising. The same thing had animated whitevoting behavior during the Duke campaigns. It

had been lower-income and working class whiteswho had made up the bulk of Duke’s supportbase, despite the fact that none of his policyproposals would have helped them. He hadpromised to hold the line on taxes for wealthyhomeowners and corporations, and had no planfor job creation, except for forcing welfarerecipients to work off their checks, which actuallywould have displaced currently employedlowskilled labor (including a lot of his whitesupporters), to make way for those personsbeing required to work off their measly $168 permonth average income support.

Rich whites, on the other hand, hadoverwhelmingly rejected Duke, not so muchbecause they disagreed with his views aboutblack people—they were likely every bit asprivately racist as anyone else—but because aDuke victory would have reflected badly on the

Republican Party. A Duke victory would havemade it more difficult to distance the party fromthe racism that had animated so much of itsprevious thirty years of political activity—fromGoldwater’s opposition to civil rights legislationto Nixon’s exploitation of “law and order”themes so as to scare whites about big city crimeto Reagan’s deft use of stories concerningmythical black “welfare queens” driving Cadillacsto the food stamp office. Conservatives,especially rich ones, placed a premium onkeeping up appearances, and Duke would haveripped away the veil making the subterfuge evenremotely believable.

So for the past several years, struggling whitefolks had cast their lot with racism—all so as tomake themselves feel superior to somebody,anybody—even as the wealthy had rememberedhow the game was played. In the process,

Louisiana had served as something of a metaphorfor the history of race relations in the UnitedStates. This, after all, had been exactly howracism and white supremacy had taken root inthe colonies to begin with: with the elite passinglaws to divide and conquer workers, andconvince indentured servants from Europe (whowere only one level above slaves) that they hadmore in common with the rich who abused themthan with the African slaves next to whom theyoften worked. It would be the same process thatsouthern elites would use to convince poorwhites to support the Confederacy despite theopen admission by the aristocracy that thepurpose of secession had been to preserve theinstitution of African slavery, which institutionactually harmed the wages of lower-incomewhites, by forcing them to compete with no-costlabor. It would be the same process that would

animate the attempt by labor unions to excludeblacks from membership, even though doing soweakened organized labor relative to the bossesfrom whom they often sought to force betterwages and working conditions. Howeverpathetic, by 1993, the process had becomeentirely predictable.

As a side note, a few years later, I’d reallycome to understand the impact of thepsychological wages of whiteness during anonline exchange with a young white collegestudent from South Carolina. He would beagitated by an article I’d write, criticizing thecontinued flying of the Confederate flag. Wewould go back and forth over the course of twodays, he insisting that the flag was an honorablesymbol of the South, and I trying to explain whyit wasn’t. After I pointed out to him the way theSouth had been harmed by racist thinking, and

how our economic vitality had long been sappedby white supremacy, with wages being helddown due to opposition to unions—oppositionpredicated on a fear of racial wage equality—hereplied that although I was probably right, itdidn’t matter. As he put it, “I’d be willing towork for one dollar an hour if we could just goback to segregation.”

The exchange would teach me something elseabout white people; namely, that some of us arejust too damned stupid to save.

1994 WAS AN all-around terrible year. TheRepublicans took over Congress, catapultingNewt Gingrich to the position of Speaker of theHouse, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnsteinreleased The Bell Curve—five hundred pluspages of nonsense proclaiming white-blackdifferences in measured IQ to be the result of

inferior black genetics—and I couldn’t findsteady work to save my life. Nicol and I alsobroke up in May, although because we wouldcontinue to live together until January of 1995,the full emotional weight of the split wouldn’t hitme for several more months.

At the outset of the year, I was still workingwith Walter on the trade and development stuff,sponsored by the New School for SocialResearch, in New York. However, I wasgrowing steadily frustrated. First, there was thetedium of the subject matter. I simply wasn’texcited by data tables about the differencesbetween the Asian model of development (orAMOD, as the ever-original Walter liked to callit) and the European model of development(predictably, EMOD, in Walter’s terms).Apparently, my lack of excitement was shared byothers, as none of the work we were doing for

Walter was ever published or taken seriously byanyone, an outcome that can’t be blamed on ourefforts, but rather and only on the uselessness ofhis own theories. Then, there was the largermatter of Walter’s personal ambitions to becomeaccepted into the nation’s foreign policyestablishment, which required, by definition,accepting that the U.S. was an unquestionedforce for good in the world, and in his casepontificating about the fundamental oxymoronknown as “Jacksonian Democracy,” and thatmythical creature so worshipped by Sarah Palin,known as American “exceptionalism.” Finally,there was the shitty and inconsistent pay, aboutwhich Walter seemed utterly unconcerned. Livingin his phat Royal Street apartment, paid for eitherby the same New School that refused to pay hisresearch staff on time, or perhaps by his parents,Walter had a way of making us all feel guilty for

expecting something approaching a living wagefor the work he was asking us to do. I began todrift away from the project by February,ultimately resigning, preferring the uncertainty ofunemployment to the sure drudgery of theprevious seven months. Although I would bebrought on to conduct research for a progressivetax policy organization in Baton Rouge in May,the next three months would see me bouncearound in a number of jobs that were decidedlynon-political.

By then Nicol had taken a position with amanagement firm that operated one of the city’smalls on the west bank of the river. Needing helpwith various things from time to time, she hiredme to set up displays, co-plan and DJ a fashionshow, and even to dress up as the Easter Bunnyand hand out candy to about three hundredchildren during the weekend before the

celebration of Christ’s proclaimed resurrection.Needless to say, later that year when I would bedeposed in the Jimmy Jackson case as an expertwitness on racial discrimination, I would neglectto mention my professional stint as the belovedholiday mascot. Of course, I had told Jimmy thathe should probably call Cornel West, who likelywasn’t having to moonlight in this fashion, so it’snot as if he hadn’t been warned.

After two months with the Louisiana Coalitionfor Tax Justice, I was let go, in part because theBoard didn’t see the value of a position thatinvolved only research and no direct communityorganizing, and in part because some of theBoard members thought I was having aninappropriate romantic relationship with the boss.Neither she nor I had any idea what they weretalking about, but in any event, the deed wasdone, and I was once again out of work.

Three more months of unemployment werefollowed by my being hired to write grants for theLouisiana Injured Worker’s Union: a wonderfulbunch of mostly oil and chemical workers—aswell as poultry plant processors and formeremployees of a local sugar refinery—who werefighting for a more fair and just worker’s compsystem in the state. Sadly, I was horrible atwriting grants, procuring only about ten thousanddollars for the group over the next eight months.As a result, I did very little good for them, andeven less for myself. In my continuing downwardfinancial spiral, I was now earning only $150weekly, which was my draw against the 15percent commission I was being paid for anygrant monies I brought in. By the time I securedthe one grant, I was into my draw well beyondthe fifteen hundred I was owed, so I wouldreceive no payout. Now earning even less than I

had made eight years earlier bagging groceries inNashville, and seeing very little prospect thatthings would get better any time soon, I sank intoa deep emotional funk.

As 1995 began, I felt certain that things couldonly get better, and although they would, within afew days I came to understand what peoplemeant when they say that sometimes things haveto get worse first. On January 4, Nicol and I hada huge blow-up, which ultimately made itimpossible for us to live together for even anotherday. Because the fight had been my fault, shedemanded that I vacate the premises while shearranged to move her things out over the nexttwo days. I agreed. I had no money for a hotel,so the first night I crashed on a friend’s sofa; butthe second night, self-conscious about intrudingon anyone else’s space, I opted to sleep in mycar, despite the fact that the weather was going

to dip down below thirty degrees. Aware of howoften cars got broken into in the city whenparked on poorly-lit side streets, I parked on St.Charles, right in front of Tulane (about thirty feetfrom where I had spent two weeks camped outduring the anti-apartheid struggle five yearsearlier). Afraid of being rousted by police, I sleptno more than forty-five minutes all night onJanuary 5, 1995, my mother’s fortyeighthbirthday.

The next day I went back to the house, Nicolhaving finished moving out, and was confrontedby how bad things had really gotten. As Iclimbed up the back stairs and opened the doorto the apartment, I was met by an almost entirelyempty eighteen hundred square feet of livingspace. Other than a sole mattress on the floor inthe bedroom, all that remained was my desk, aside table on which sat a phone in the hallway, a

sofa that we had previously put in storagebecause it was so stained, intending to ultimatelythrow it away, a steamer trunk, a stereo, aportable seven-inch black-and-white television, atennis ball, and my dog. When I entered thehouse, Bijoux looked at me like he was afraid hehad been totally abandoned. Realizing this wasn’tthe case he became instantly excited, went andgrabbed the tennis ball, and brought it to me,apparently presuming that with all this openspace, we’d now have the perfect abode forplaying catch. As I sank down onto the floor andgrabbed the ball from his mouth, I couldn’t helpbut laugh out loud. The absurdity of it all—andthe recognition of what emotional rock bottomlooked like—left me with no alternative but toengage in a bit of self-mockery. I laughed until Icried, and then fell asleep on the filthy sofa,hoping that when I woke up, things would be

better.

THEY WOULDN’T BE, at least not rightaway. For the next month I had no money foranything, including food. Rent was paid throughthe end of January, but I had to buy groceriesusing a gas station credit card, meaning that forseveral weeks I subsisted on bean burritos,frozen meals, and assorted junk food from theCitgo market. But mostly, I bought beer, hopingthat if I drank a six-pack every night, I might beable to forget how bad things looked. Worst ofall, the brakes on my car were totally shot andthe Citgo was five miles away in Metairie. To getthere, I had to drive on the interstate and hopethat I wouldn’t need to stop too often. If I did, Iwould have to use the hand brake and time thestop just right so as to avoid running into anothercar.

In February, things started to look up. I gothired by Agenda for Children, a child advocacygroup with an explicitly antiracist philosophy, towork as a researcher and community organizer.Back in the fall of the previous year I had pennedan essay for Agenda’s newsletter in response tothe persistent attacks on income supportprograms (so-called “welfare”) that werebubbling up again in Congress. Knowing that theattempt to roll back various social safety netprograms would accelerate now that the GOPwas in charge of the legislative agenda, JudyWatts, the group’s director, felt it might be goodto bring me on to do some research and writingon the subject, and also to work with residents inthe city’s poor communities to organize againstthe pending assaults.

The cornerstone of the Republican plan forwelfare was to turn cash assistance into a state-

level block grant, with a fixed amount of fundseach year, regardless of the strength or weaknessof the economy, the poverty level, or the volumeof need. Knowing what that could mean in aplace like Louisiana, we focused special attentionon educating state lawmakers and crafting analternative welfare reform proposal that wouldencourage employment for those on assistance,but which would have been less punitive.

I had only done limited community organizingbefore, but being brought around and introducedto the leaders in the city’s public housingdevelopments by Donna Johnigan (herself aresident of the Guste Homes) made the learningcurve far less steep than it otherwise would havebeen. Rather than just turn the white Tulane gradloose on the community, which would have beena disaster, Agenda had me serve essentially as anapprentice to Donna, whose full-time job was as

the office manager for the organization.That Donna had any confidence in me was an

honor, as her nose for bullshit was pretty fine-tuned. Despite my naiveté, she took me around,showed me the ropes, and taught me the fine artof listening, as the residents in the communitiestold me their stories, described their hopes andfears, and discussed—in a way far moreinstructive than any college professor had—thetopics of racism and economic oppression.

Seeing the depth of poverty that characterizedNew Orleans’ public housing was breathtaking.It’s one thing to understand such matters in theabstract, from reading books or discussingdestitution in a classroom; it is quite another,however, to see it up close. And the contrastbetween economic immiseration on the one hand,and the abundant wealth of knowledge andwisdom possessed by the people there, on the

other, was even more difficult to fully take in. Inshort, people in this kind of economic conditionwere not supposed to be this smart. That theyare lacking in fundamental intelligence and abilityis what we are told, daily, by politicians and mosteveryone with an opinion. Although I wasashamed to admit it, I guess I had come tobelieve some of that too. Though I waspaternalistically prepared to acknowledge thatthe system had produced whatever personaldysfunctions the poor in public housing mightmanifest, I was not at all prepared for thecompetence, insight, and utter normalcy of theresidents there.

Once I realized the wisdom of the folks inpublic housing, I became downright belligerentwhen talking to others about the folks with whomI was working. Invariably they would start talkingbadly about public housing residents, having

never met a single one of the folks about whomthey felt entitled to rant, and they would starthanding out unsolicited advice about what “thosepeople” should do to improve their lives.

Sitting at a bar one night having a drink, Ifound myself in a conversation with a guy whothought he had the perfect solution to theproblems of the poor; namely, they all needed tobe required to take a class on “moneymanagement,” which could be taught by localC.E.O.s, who would be paid for their insights bythe state. If they could learn how to beresponsible with money, the cycle of povertycould be broken, he insisted.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I exploded.“Have millionaires go into the projects and tellpoor people how to manage money? Jesus, theydon’t even manage money on their own. Theypay investment experts to do that shit for them! If

anything, we should be sending these poorwomen I meet every day out to the suburbs, orto Tulane, so they can teach spoiledmotherfuckers like the ones I went to school withhow to get by on three hundred motherfuckingdollars a month: Now that takes fucking skill!”

I was asked to leave the bar, and was all toohappy to go.

WHAT I LEARNED about poor folks from mytime as an organizer was how little I understoodthem and what their lives were like. Contrary topopular perceptions, many if not most of thepoor folks I met worked hard every day,whether in the paid labor force, where theirwages were still too low to allow them to affordrent in the private market, or at home, trying toraise children into productive citizens.Interestingly, when cash welfare had first been

created back in the 1930s (and when access hadbeen restricted to white women), allowingmothers to stay home and raise kids, and nothave to work in the labor force, had beenarticulated as the very purpose of the program.Only when women of color began to gain accessto the same benefits did the nation suddenlydecide that welfare was bad for you, made youlazy, and needed to be replaced with compulsoryemployment.

In a few of the projects where I wasorganizing, residents averaged twenty to thirtyhours of work each week, but still couldn’t affordprivate market rent. Instead, they paid one-thirdof their pay (whatever it was) to the HousingAuthority of New Orleans, so as to remain insubsidized housing. They were not living for free,as most to whom I spoke about my job assumed.And as for the work ethic of such folks, Donna

herself provided perhaps the best example in thisregard. A few months after I started workingwith her, her son was murdered, becoming oneof about three hundred and fifty black folks killedthat year in the city. While it would have beenunderstandable for her to have taken a few daysoff, she was at work the next day, insisting thatshe had a job to do and intended to do it. I hadcalled out of work plenty of times because of aheadache, or because I just hadn’t felt like goingin; yet here was Donna, whose son had just beenkilled, keeping it together and working throughthe pain. But in America, we are to believe thatshe is the one with the bad values. Go figure.

People with whom I’d discuss my job alsowondered, constantly, if I was scared working inthe communities where the projects werelocated. Although I was quick to tell them thatI’d felt out of place when first arriving in a new

location—and especially being the only whiteperson around—I also would point out that, ifanything, I was probably the safest person in thecommunity on the days I was there. Indeed,precisely because I was white, most residentswould view me as one of two things: either a copor a social worker, neither of which they weretoo likely to want to mess with. If I were theformer, I might arrest them, and if I were thelatter, I might have the power to take theirchildren away. So unlike other black folks, whomight be mistaken for rival gang members (sincethe gangs in New Orleans were pretty much allblack at that time), I was relatively protected inthat space, despite the generally higher crimerates that existed in the communities where publichousing was to be found.

Over the fifteen months that I worked as anorganizer, I learned more about race and class

subordination than I had ever learned in aclassroom up to that point, and far more than Ihave learned since from having read hundreds ofbooks on the subjects. What I also came tounderstand was how critical it is to follow thelead of the community where you’re working,and its leadership, rather than assume you knowthe agenda around which to organize.

This last point came into view for me one daywhile sitting around talking with a communityleader about some of the things they wereworking on in the neighborhood. I was there tobuild support for blocking punitive welfarecutbacks and the ill-advised Balanced BudgetAmendment, which invariably would result in theslashing of any number of vital safety netprograms as well as education spending. Butwhat the local leader explained to me was that asimportant as those things were, they were not

and could never be the first order of business.Yes, fighting racism and classism, which weagreed were inherent to these legislative items,was important. But to be an effective organizer,you had to start small.

I asked him to explain, and was surprised byjust how small he’d meant.

“Well, for instance,” he said. “See that cornerright there?” He was gesturing to an intersectionabout fifty feet from where we stood.

“Yeah, sure, what about it?” I replied.“Well, we’ve been trying to get a stop light

there,” he noted, causing me to realize for the firsttime that, indeed, despite it being a natural placefor a light, there was none. The lack of the lightintrigued me, but I didn’t really get theimportance of it all.

“Why a stop light?” I asked, puzzled, andwondering how such an item fit in with the larger

struggle against institutional injustice.“Well,” he continued, “for a couple of reasons.

First, three kids have been hit there on their bikesbecause folks just barrel on through withoutlooking. And second, because we can get thestop light. It’s a winnable fight. See, peoplewho’ve been getting their asses kicked for yearsneed to know they can make a difference. Theyneed to know that they can fight and occasionallywin.”

He went on to explain the strategic value ofsmall victories. Yes, the goal was social justice,the eradication of poverty and racism, and all therest that went with it. But good organizerscouldn’t make those things the front-burneragenda items. Even a slightly smaller goal, likeblocking federal legislation you didn’t like, wastoo big for starters. The odds were againstwinning those battles in the short run. So if you

started there, you’d accomplish little, excepthelping folks to burn out when, as so oftenhappened, defeat was in the cards. But if youcould “help the community gain a sense of it’sown potential,” he would say, “now you were onto something.”

It wasn’t the way I’d been taught how historywas made. But then again, the folks who hadtaught most of us history hadn’t exactly beencommitted to radical change, so little details likethis were easily overlooked.

BY NOW, THE lessons were coming fast andfurious: lessons about systemic injustice and howto fight it, lessons about how easy it was to fallprey to some of the stereotypes so common tothe larger culture, and lessons about privilege.

In the latter case, I was starting to realize howmy job insecurity and shaky financial situation for

the past few years had said very little about mylarger access to opportunity and advantage. Yes,I had struggled, and those struggles had beenreal. But the fact had remained that I was acollege graduate, educated at one of the nation’sfinest universities, which I had only been able toaccess because my mother could take out thatloan using my grandmother’s house as collateral—a house that had only been accessible to ourfamily because we were white. What’s more, Ihad built up a solid work history beginning withthe anti-Duke effort, which ultimately was goingto pay off (a work history that had been madepossible because I had known the two guys whostarted the anti-Duke organization, whom I’d metat Tulane, which place I had only been able toaccess because of the loan and the collateral andthe white thing mentioned above); and, if thingshadn’t worked out, I could always have moved

home for a while. I had options, in other words.They were options that almost no one I wouldmeet in public housing had, and options that hadfar more to do with privilege than with my ownhard work.

As bad as 1994 had been for me—and evenas bad as the first six weeks of ’95 had gone—by the middle of the year things were headed inthe opposite direction. The work with Agendawas the most rewarding in which I had ever beeninvolved. Especially important was the antiracistanalysis that animated their efforts on behalf offamilies and children. While many groups thatwork on matters of poverty give short shrift toracism, preferring to discuss class issues in acolorblind vacuum, Agenda rejected thatapproach. In large part, this was due to theiraffiliation with the People’s Institute for Survivaland Beyond, a New Orleans–based group

founded in 1980 by Ron Chisom and the late JimDunn, which by the mid-1990s had become oneof the premier groups in the nation working toundo racism. As a condition of working atAgenda, all staff had to attend an UndoingRacism workshop, put on by the Institute, withinthe first year of becoming employed there. A fewmonths after joining the team, it would be my turnto go.

As excited as I was to attend the Institutetraining, I was also a bit nervous. I had met someof the key players in the Institute and had greatrespect for them all, but I also had heard horrorstories from others about what their trainingswere like. “Oh, they’re gonna make you feelguilty for being white,” some had warned. “Oh,they’re gonna try and make all the white peoplecry,” added others. Though I had a hard timereconciling those warnings with the people I was

meeting thanks to my connections with Agenda—not only Ron, but also Barbara Major, andcertain key white trainers with the Institute likeDavid Billings, Marjorie Freeman, or Diana Dunn—I couldn’t help but wonder. The people givingme these warnings were friends, after all, andpeople whose political sensibilities I trusted.

Several years earlier, I had been so convincedthat the Institute’s modus operandi was theprovocation of white guilt that I’d refused to sitthrough a discussion on white privilege andantiracist accountability led by Bay Areaorganizer (and now good friend) SharonMartinas. Sharon had been brought to LoyolaUniversity by the Institute, and although I hadattended, along with a local activist from PaxChristi—the Catholic Peace and Justiceorganization—we ended up leaving early, soincredulous were we about the supposed guilt-

tripping that we saw as the root of the group’sanalysis. I can recall walking to John’s car,imitating Wayne and Garth from the recurringSNL skit, “Wayne’s World,” saying, “We’re notworthy, we’re not worthy,” as if somehow thathad been the message of Sharon and the Institute—that somehow white people were inherentlybad and unable to be antiracist allies. Fact is, wehadn’t wanted to look at our privilege; so muchso, in fact, that rather than process it, we droveover to the back of Audubon Park, parked in adark gravel lot, and proceeded to smoke a joint,entirely missing the irony.

But once the first day of the training began, itwas obvious that it was to be nothing like thewarnings I’d received. The trainers engaged us indiscussions and exercises that calmly but clearlyallowed all the participants to see howinstitutional racism operated (often in spite of the

people in certain institutional spaces beingperfectly lovely and caring folks), and how theflipside of oppression—namely, privilege—adhered to members of the dominant racialgroup, irrespective of our own personal“goodness.” Although there was certainlydiscussion about the way that all whites hadinternalized certain biases, having been raised in aculture that so readily teaches them, there wasalso a discussion of how people of color hadinculcated those biases against themselves, andoften acted from a place of internalizedoppression. In other words, the Institute wasclear that we were all damaged by this system. Itwasn’t just white folks who’d been messed up.There was nothing about the training that wasintended to produce guilt. A sense ofresponsibility, both individual and collective?Yes. But guilt? Absolutely not.

Most impactful was how clear the trainerswere about the damage done to whites in theprocess of internalizing white supremacy andaccepting privilege. One of the most tellingmoments came when Ron asked the participantswhat we liked about being whatever it is that wewere, racially speaking. What did black folks likeabout being black? And what did whites likeabout being white?

For most whites, it was a question to whichwe had never given much thought. Looks ofconfusion spread across most of our faces as westruggled to find an answer. Meanwhile, peopleof color came up with a formidable list almostimmediately. They liked the strength of theirfamilies, the camaraderie, the music, the culture,the rhythms, the customs, their color, and theymentioned most prominently, the perseverance oftheir ancestors in the face of great odds.

When it was our turn, we finally came up witha list, and it was the same one offered prettymuch every time I ask the question to white folksaround the country. We like not being followedaround in stores on suspicion of being shoplifters.We like the fact that we’re not presumed out ofplace on a college campus or in a high-rankingjob. We like the fact that we don’t have toconstantly overcome negative stereotypes aboutintelligence, morality, honesty, or work ethic, theway people of color so often do.

Once finished, we began to examine the listsoffered by both sides. The contrast was striking.Looking at the items mentioned by people ofcolor, one couldn’t miss the fact that all of theattributes listed were actually about personalstrength or qualities possessed by theparticipants, and in which they took real pride.The list was tangible and meaningful. The white

list was quite different. Staring at the entries, itwas impossible to miss that none of what weliked about being white had anything to do withus. None of it had to do with internal qualities ofcharacter or fortitude. Rather, every responsehad to do less with what we liked about beingwhite than what we liked about not being aperson of color. We were defining ourselves by anegative, providing ourselves with an identityrooted in the relative oppression of others,without which we would have had nothing tosay. Without a system of racial domination andsubordination, we would have been able to offerno meaningful response to the question.

As became clear in that moment, inequalityand privilege were the only real components ofwhiteness. Without racial privilege there is nowhiteness, and without whiteness, there is noracial privilege. Being white means to be

advantaged relative to people of color, and prettymuch only that. Our answers had laid bare thetruth about white privilege: in order to access it,one first had to give up all the meaningful cultural,personal, and communal attributes that had oncekept our peoples alive in Europe and during ourjourneys here. After all, we had come fromfamilies that once had the kinds of qualities wenow were seeing listed before us by people ofcolor. We had had customs, traditions, music,culture, and style—things to be celebrated andpassed down to future generations. Even more,we had come from resistance cultures—mostEuropeans who came had been the losers of theirrespective societies, since the winners rarely feltthe need to hop on a boat and leave where theywere—and these resistance cultures had beensteeped in the notion of resisting injustice, and ofachieving solidarity. But to become white

required that those things be sublimated to a newsocial reality in which resistance was not thepoint. To become the power structure was toview the tradition of resistance with suspicion andcontempt.

So while the folks of color in the room wouldhave dearly loved to be able to claim forthemselves the privileges filling the white folks’pages on the flipchart, we would have just asdearly loved to be able to claim for ourselveseven one of the meaningful qualities mentioned bypeople of color. But we couldn’t.

To define yourself by what you’re not is apathetic and heartbreaking thing. It is to standbare before a culture that has stolen yourbirthright, or rather, convinced you to give it up;and the costs are formidable, beginning with theemptiness whites often feel when confronted bymulticulturalism and the connectedness of people

of color to their heritages. That emptiness getsfilled up by privilege and ultimately forces us tobecome dependent on it, forcing me to wonderjust how healthy the arrangement is in the longrun, despite the advantages it provides.

IN ADDITION TO Agenda for Children, thespring of 1995 brought with it yet anotherprofessional opportunity. In the summer of theprevious year, one of the only good things tohappen had been that a progressive speaker’sbureau in California, Speak Out, had called to letme know that they’d like to add me to theirroster of speakers, educators, and artists.Though they couldn’t promise me that I’d get anyspeaking engagements, they were going to addme to their catalog, which they sent each year tothousands of colleges and other organizations.

I had actually sent them a packet of material

back in 1993, thinking that perhaps the lessons ofthe anti-Duke campaigns would be of interest tofolks across the nation, but they had turned medown. Undaunted, I had applied again the nextyear and this time they had found a place for me.“Don’t quit your day job,” they had counseled(which was no problem, seeing as how I didn’thave one at the time), but hopefully they’d beable to get me out on the road, where I couldshare my own insights and meet with organizersand activists around the country.

In March of 1995, I got my first speakingengagements, at the Chicago Teacher’s Centerand Northeastern Illinois University, respectively.It was bitter cold and I was running a fever bythe time I got to Midway airport. But I did thebest I could under the circumstances.

At Northeastern I spoke to a number ofsociology classes about everything from

affirmative action to hate crime activity to media-generated racial stereotypes. After one of mytalks, a young white woman in the front rowraised her hand somewhat tentatively and askedhow I was received doing this work, as a whiteman, by black people. I asked why she wascurious about this, trying to figure out themotivation for her question.

“Well,” she said, “I would love to do the kindof work you do, but I’m afraid black peoplewon’t trust me, won’t accept my contribution,and so I’m just wondering how you think blacksfeel about you. Do you think they like you, orthat they still don’t really trust you?”

Although I was brand new to nationwidelecturing, I had been doing antiracism work insome capacity for several years (and wasworking in several black communities in NewOrleans), so I explained that based on my

experience, I had never personally felt any hatredor resentment on the part of black folks. Ofcourse there is going to be some mistrust upfront, and in fact, I’d be worried about anyperson of color who didn’t look at whites whochoose to fight racism a bit suspiciously. They’vebeen burned too many times to take it for grantedthat we’re serious and in it for the long haul.

It was then that I noticed a young blackwoman in the back row who had her hand upand wanted desperately to talk. I had observedher facial expressions all throughout my speech,and could read her body language well enough toknow that she simply wasn’t buying anything Iwas selling. Thinking this might make for aninteresting interaction given the white woman’sfears and concerns—not to mention, the AfricanAmerican woman clearly wanted to be called on—I pointed to her and asked her for her input.

Her response was classic, and perfect for thesituation.

“Make no mistake,” she insisted, “We do hateyou and we don’t trust you, not for one minute!”

I thought the white woman in the front rowwas going to come unglued, as if her classmate’scomment had only confirmed her worst fears.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said to theblack woman who had made the statement,“since after all, you don’t know me. But that’sfine, because I’m sure you haven’t got muchreason to trust me, and anyway, ultimately I’mnot doing this for you.”

The room was deathly silent at that point, noone knowing quite what to make of aproclamation such as that.

“I mean no disrespect,” I explained. “It’s justthat I’m not fighting racism so as to save youfrom it. That would be paternalistic. It would be

like saying that black folks aren’t capable ofliberating yourselves from white supremacy. Ithink you are, though it might be easier with someinternal resistance from whites. But regardless, Ifight racism because racism is a sickness in mycommunity, and it damages me.”

I explained to the young white woman that ifshe wanted to do this work for black people,then of course they wouldn’t trust her. Whitemissionaries have rarely brought things of lastingvalue to peoples of color. If, on the other hand,she wanted to do it because it was the right thingto do, and because she no longer wanted tocollaborate by way of her silence, then what thewoman in the back thought of her sincerityshouldn’t matter. And if she really did the workand proved herself, black and brown folks—including the woman who had made her sonervous that day—would likely recognize her

seriousness and work with her. Or not. Eitherway, why should it matter?

People of color don’t owe us gratitude whenwe speak out against racism. They don’t owe usa pat on the back. And if all they do is respondto our efforts with a terse “about time,” that’sfine. Challenging racism and white supremacy iswhat we should be doing. Resistance is what weneed to do for us. Although people of color haveoften thanked me for the work I do, it’s a thanksthat I am not owed, and whenever it’s offered Imake sure to repay the compliment.Accountability demands it.

While much discussion had recently beenabout whether or not America should apologizefor slavery—and I happen to think apologies arepretty empty absent substantive reparations andrecompense—perhaps before we focus onapologies, we could simply say thank you to

people of color for pointing the way when itcomes to resistance. People of color owe usnothing, but we owe them at least that much, anda lot more. Being able to teach that to anotherwhite person, and on my first day out, suggestedthat perhaps there was something to this travelingeducator thing after all. Perhaps the potentialimpact of such work was far greater than I’dimagined.

BY LATE 1995, I was really starting to growfond of the road. Though there was part of methat intuitively recognized the dangers of goingdown that path—it was eerily similar to what myfather had done for all those years as a comicand actor—there was another part of me thatthrived on it. And it wasn’t because I wasspeaking to overflowing auditoriums or reapingthe standing ovations of adoring crowds, because

in neither case was that true. Fact is, almostnobody knew who I was. I was only twenty-seven by the fall of that year, and hardly acommon name within the antiracism community.Far from receiving rock star treatment, that firstfew months of the circuit had been more likesome struggling band riding around in a grimy vanthan anything else, but I still loved it. Maybe itwas because as an only child (and the child of analcoholic), I had grown up having to be self-directed and find ways to engage my brain withno one else around. It was one of the reasons Inever really proved to be very good working inorganizational settings, no matter how much Iloved the organizations for which I was working.My wiring, going all the way back to childhood,was set to solo mode. I liked being alone with mythoughts, having to represent no one’s views butmy own; not to mention, I also loved getting to

meet activists, especially young activists, all overthe United States.

There would be high points that first year, likebeing picketed by anti-gay bigot Fred Phelps andhis family during an event at Kansas University,and also several low points. Among the latter, mytwo favorites were speaking at the University ofWest Alabama to five people in the basement ofthe student center, two of whom were playingpool; and then speaking in Rennselear, Indiana atSt. Joseph’s, and staying in a hotel room infestedwith flies, from which the only relief would be afly swatter, handed to me by the clerk when Iasked if there was any way I could changerooms. Glamorous it wasn’t, but it was what I feltI needed to be doing.

Of course this posed a bit of a dilemma. I wasstill at Agenda, and dearly loved the peoplethere. But by early 1996, I knew I would need to

make a choice. Though I wasn’t traveling much,even the little bit I was doing was becoming aproblem for my job. This would be especiallyobvious after I went to New York to appear ona television show only to get stuck in the city forthree extra days by the worst blizzard New Yorkhad seen in a century. Returning finally to NewOrleans, it was pretty apparent that my workwas suffering for my other commitments.

Additionally, I was coming to realize that asmuch as I loved the organizing work, I wasn’tactually that good at it. I never had been, thoughI’d hoped that I might grow into it over time. Butfeeling that the work was too important to bedone halfway, or halfway well, I decided to moveon. In fact, not only did I leave Agenda forChildren in February, I decided to leave NewOrleans altogether by summer. As much as Iloved the city, it was time for a change. Being

untethered to any particular organizationalstructure, I was free to go wherever I might feellike living. Since I wasn’t sure where I might wantto live next, I decided to start by moving home toNashville. Although my mom had moved fromour old apartment, she was still there, living withmy grandmother for the previous two years atthat point, and my best friend Albert and his wifeDana were too. If one had to start anew, whatbetter place than from home? As the middle ofAugust rolled around—and as the life-deadeningheat that came with it rolled in too—it was easyto walk away from New Orleans. So I did.

BEFORE GETTING HOME, however, therewould be one more lesson about white privilegeto learn. But first, a little backstory.

Each morning, until shortly after 9:00, it wascommon for those of us at Agenda for Children

to have the office television on, just to stay up onthe day’s early events. But on April 19, 1995,before we would have a chance to turn off theset, breaking news came over the networks,followed by some of the most shocking footageany of us had seen up to that point, or wouldever see, at least until a little more than six yearslater.

As we stood slack-jawed before the smallscreen, video from Oklahoma City was comingin, where the Murrah Federal Building had justhad its front end blown off by a five-thousand-pound bomb that had been planted in a truckoutside. Speculation immediately focused on oneor another “Muslim terrorist.” Perhaps it wasSaddam Hussein, some said, or Hezbollah, saidothers. Within hours, mosques around OklahomaCity would be raided in hopes of finding evidenceto implicate those whom most assumed were

responsible.Of course the perpetrators would be none of

those. As we would learn within the next twodays, the terrorists were white men namedTimothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who hadno compunction about killing innocent people(including children in the building’s day carecenter) just to make some twisted political point.Ultimately, 168 would die and hundreds morewould be injured thanks to the fulfillment of TimMcVeigh’s bloodlust, fueled by right-wing anti-government hysteria and his admiration for racistfantasy novels like The Turner Diaries, parts ofwhich were found in his car and the details ofwhich he copied almost perfectly in theOklahoma City bombing. That the Army hadtrained this lunatic to kill (and to view enemies asutterly expendable) only added pathetic andmaddening context to a crime that was already

bad enough.Fast forward now to August 1996. McVeigh

is awaiting trial, and I’m moving home toNashville. To make that move, in spite of the factthat Nicol had virtually cleaned me out eighteenmonths earlier, I had by then accumulated enoughstuff to require the renting of a truck to completethe task. The closest moving truck company tomy home happened to be a Ryder Truckfranchise (the same company that had been usedby McVeigh), so when I was ready to loadboxes and furniture, I headed down to the Ryderlocation and asked for a truck. It would be thesame size and model as the one Tim McVeighhad used to bring down the Murrah building.

I walked in, put my license and credit card onthe counter, and within fifteen minutes washeaded to my house to load up. I am white. I ammale. I have short hair. At the time I was clean

shaven. My name is Tim. All of which is to saythat I fit the profile of the nation’s deadliestterrorist five different ways. Yet no one at Ryderthought to ask for an additional security deposit,just in case I decided to fill their truck withexplosives and take out a city block. No onelooked at me funny, ran a background check, orsaid anything at all, other than, “Mr. Wise, willyou be needing a map?” That was it. They couldtell the difference, or thought they could, betweenthat Timothy and this Timothy.

That’s what it means to be white: themurderous actions of one white person do notcause every other white person to be viewed inthe same light, just as the incompetence orcriminality of a white person in a corporation (oron Wall Street, most recently) does not result inother whites being viewed with suspicion asprobable incompetents or crooks. Whites can

take it for granted that we’ll likely be viewed asindividuals, representing nothing greater than oursolitary selves. Would that persons of color couldsay the same, even before September 11, 2001,let alone after.

HOME AND AWAY AS MUCH AS I loved New Orleans, Nashvillewas a welcome sight that evening of August 15,1996, when I pulled up to the home of my momand grandmother, just outside the city. As wewould learn later, it was an interesting night tohave been getting into town. At roughly the sametime as I had turned from Old Hickory Boulevardonto Hillsboro Road so as to head the final fourmiles or so to the house in Franklin, a localattorney by the name of Perry March had beendisposing of the body of his wife, Janet, at aconstruction site only two miles from that sameintersection. He had killed her earlier thatevening, and although he would later dig up herbones and re-bury them with the help of hisfather in a culvert off the side of the interstate inKentucky, no one could have known any of this

at the time. Odd that I had left the murder capitalof the nation only to enter a place where theremight not be as many murders, numerically, butwhere the ones that happened were of aparticularly salacious and high-profile nature.

The evening didn’t start out well. I backed theRyder truck into the basketball goal on which Ihad played since I was a kid, and mygrandmother wasn’t the least bit happy that I hadBijoux with me. As a matter of fact, the dayhadn’t started out well. I had been meaning toleave town quite a bit earlier, even before the sunhad come up, with the goal of getting to Nashvilleby mid-afternoon; however, upon packing upand placing the keys on the driver’s seat while Iwent to make sure the back door to the truckwas closed tightly, I watched as Bijoux, alreadyriding shotgun and ready to go, bounded over tothe driver’s side window, jumped up to greet me

as I approached the door, and managed, with aprecision unheard of in the history of his breed, tobring his paws down upon the lock. I ran aroundto the passenger’s side door, hoping to get in thatway, only to watch him follow me, excited andthinking that we were playing some kind of game,and do it again to the lock on that door. ThoughI could probably have gotten into the Ryder witha coat hanger (unlike the Tercel, which I wasleaving in the street to be towed), the sad factwas that I didn’t have any coat hangers. As Icleaned out the house, I had thrown them allaway and they had been hauled off the daybefore I left by the garbage collectors. It was tooearly to wake my neighbors to ask for one, andthe Ryder facility wouldn’t be open for severalmore hours. I would have to wait, and so wouldBijoux.

In any event, after a long and tedious trip,

involving multiple bathroom breaks for my weak-bladdered dog, we were home. Well, at least Iwas. Bijoux had no idea what was going on,having always lived in New Orleans, and he likelydidn’t think too highly of Nashville at first, seeingas how the very next day my grandmother mademe take him to the vet for boarding. He wouldstay there for four days while I looked for a placeto live and until I went to stay with my dad’smom, who didn’t mind the dog being there, forthe final week or so before finding an apartment.

In early September I moved into a house in theHillsboro Village area of Nashville, exactly whereI had wanted to be. It was in the middle of prettymuch everything in the city, and since I didn’thave a car, that was a major plus. Myroommates were two women, my age, who hadbeen looking for someone to rent the thirdbedroom in their place. As one of the women

would explain to me on the day I was offered theroom, I had gotten it mostly because, out of allthe potential roommates they had interviewed, Iwas the one that seemed least likely to be a serialkiller. Quite an endorsement, that.

Bijoux and I moved into the house on 19thAvenue and more or less kept to ourselves forthe first month. I was on the road for speeches,and for that first several weeks, didn’t do muchinteracting with Liz, Shelly, or their social circle.But eventually, though I determined Shelly was abit of a flake—and her Army boyfriend Mike abit of an asshole—Liz and I became friends.

In November, having decided that I was apretty good guy, Liz resolved that I should meetone of her co-workers. I had never been muchfor blind dates, but in this case it wasn’t really adate, but rather just a meet up with a bunch ofpeople at a bar in our neighborhood. It sounded

good to me, having just returned from aparticularly horrendous trip to Washington State,in which most of my events had been canceleddue to snow and ice, and during which I’d beentrapped for fourteen hours in the Yakima airport—a nightmare from which I still had not fullyrecovered. So I went to the bar with Liz, lookingto make friends if nothing else. In the process, Imet the beautiful, funny, intelligent, and incrediblewoman who would two years later become mywife.

Kristy Cason was everything I had neverfound in any woman with whom I’d been in arelationship. She wasn’t an activist—wasn’t evenparticularly political—but she shared my values,supported my work, and yet made it clear fromthe beginning that she was not a fan. She was nogroupie. She had her own life, every bit asinteresting as mine, and I’d best be as in to her as

she was in to me, or we’d not last long. Turnsout, our parents had known each other for morethan twenty-five-years. At one point, in fact, Ihad been in her home and we’d played togetherat the age of perhaps three, my parents unable tofind a babysitter on a night when her folks hadbeen throwing a party. Some things, it seemed,really were fated, and like I said before, I’venever much believed in coincidences.

HAVING LEFT NEW ORLEANS , I had allkinds of folks giving me advice on where I shouldgo next: New England, some would say, whileothers insisted that I simply had to move to theBay Area, or the Pacific Northwest. Fact isthough, I was a born and bred southerner, and asmuch as I liked those places, was having a hardtime seeing myself in any of them.

Having grown up in the South, I had long been

familiar with the ways in which my people,regionally speaking, had long wished to bury theissue of racism, to remove it from the publicconsciousness, the history books, and certainlyfrom our understanding of the land we loved. ButI hadn’t been prepared for the same kind ofdenial and hostility elsewhere, in those parts ofthe country that so prided themselves on theirracial ecumenism, if only by comparison to thepart of the nation from which I hailed.

At least southerners know the language; atleast we know that race is an issue, howeverincredibly deformed our understanding of thatissue may be. The problem is, white folks in theNortheast or the West Coast—oh God,especially the West Coast—find it hard toimagine that racism is an issue there too. Andwhen you tell them it is, prepare for the backlashbecause it’s surely coming.

Over the next several years I would learn thiswith a vengeance. In April 1997, I received a callat home from the organizers of an upcomingevent at Cal State–San Marcos, informing methat there had been what they perceived as alegitimate bomb threat made against me and aprofessor at the college. The threat, sentelectronically by someone identifying himself as amember of White Aryan Resistance (WAR)came from the campus, and indicated that if theevent went ahead as planned, we would both bekilled. After giving me the news, they asked, veryplainly, if I was still willing to come. Having hadmy life threatened plenty of times over the pastdecade, it wasn’t especially frightening to have ithappen again, so I said of course. They promisedthey would have security, I said that was great,and within a few days I headed off to California.

Nothing ended up happening in San Marcos,

but frankly, had anyone really wanted to hurt meit wouldn’t have been difficult. The campus hadcontacted law enforcement about the threat,which prompted them to secure an FBI agent asmy bodyguard for the day; the problem being, helooked like an FBI agent. In fact, he was sodirectly out of central casting that had anyonewanted to hide out on the hill overlooking thecampus and splatter my brains all over the stageas I spoke at the big outside rally that day, theycould have pulled it off. Just shoot the big guywith the dark suit, flattop, sunglasses, and fuckingearpiece first. While they took bomb-sniffingdogs through every room into which I wouldenter, and while the FBI guy shadowed meeverywhere I went, including to the bathroom orwhen I went to call Kristy, the outdoor rally wascompletely unsecured, which scared the hell outof me. Had a car backfired in the parking lot, I

probably would have had a heart attack.A year later I would once again learn the limits

of the much presumed liberality of white folks inthe Golden State, when speaking in Lafayette,California—which is part of Alameda county,along with Oakland, but likes to think of itself aspart of Marin, the much wealthier and moreprestigious county next door. I had been invitedto speak at Acalanes High School, a well-resourced public school that was as differentfrom the schools of East Oakland as day was tonight. But naturally, there were parents whodidn’t like their children being reminded that theyhad privilege, despite how glaringly obvious itwas by merely looking around, and so theypicketed my speech. Not in Tennessee. Not inAlabama. Not in Mississippi. In California, andmore to the point, in northern California.

When asked about their protest by the press

they explained that I was “viciously anti-whiteand anti-American.” Really? To criticize racism inthe United States means that I hate white peopleand my country? Under what rational definitioncould either of these things be true? If this wasthe kind of logic to which these mostly whitechildren were being subjected in their homes, Ithought to myself, there was very little that eventhe best formal education could do for them.When I noted during the assembly that parents inEast Oakland loved their children just as much asthose students parents loved them (a point I wasmaking so as to get them to think about why,other than parental values, they might have suchbetter resources than the kids in East Oakland), Iwas accused by one student of saying that whiteparents didn’t love their children. So much for thevalue of honors classes.

Sometimes, however, the protests would

prove funny. In October of 1998, I would be metat Central Washington University, in Ellensburg,by two neo-Nazis, David Stennett and Justinsomething-or-other, who reminded me of nothingso much as George and Lennie from Steinbeck’sOf Mice and Men, or even better, Lenny andSquiggy from Gary Marshall’s Laverne andShirley. David was the smarter of the two, andJustin the clear sidekick. If Hitler had needed awingman, Justin would have been his guy. Theywere among the founders of something called theEuro-American Student Union, and dressed injaunty black berets and T-shirts. Stylish fascismis important, after all.

Upon arriving to campus, I was handed a flierthey had been passing around, in which Davidproceeded to “out” me as a Jew—a trick whichwould be tantamount to “outing” Perez Hilton asgay, or revealing for all the world to hear that that

Captain guy from the 1970s supergroup, TheCaptain and Tennille, had never actually piloteda boat. Being a Jew, he explained on the flier, Iwas unfit to discuss white privilege. Rather, hesuggested, I should discuss my role as an agentof Jewish subversion, seeking to destroy thewhite race. I would have been happy to do that, Isaid at the outset of my talk, but unfortunately, Ihad left my “Agent of Jewish Subversion” speechnotes sitting on my table at home. Maybe nexttime, I promised.

Undaunted, the Skipper and Gilligan stuckaround for the Q&A, at which point, the littlebuddy said something about how awful the Yugowas as an automobile, and how, given itsreputation, he would never buy one. Though Ifound his consumer advice fascinating, I had toinquire as to his point. Simple, he said: just as thereputation of the Yugo meant he would never

want to buy that car, so too, the reputation ofblacks as criminals meant he would never wantblacks as neighbors. If one prejudice wasrational, so was the other.

Actually, I pointed out, if there’s a lesson to belearned from the automotive inadequacy of theYugo, it wasn’t that you don’t want blacks asneighbors, but rather, that you don’t ever want tobuy cars made by white people from CentralEurope—in other words, from his kind ofpeople. Better to stick with the Japanese or themultiracial teams of assembly line workers inDetroit, because those fucking Slavs are apathetic lot of craftsmen.

After the event, the school threw a receptionfor me, to which Justin and David came. Amidlemon squares and punch we proceeded to talkfor about an hour. I have no idea why I indulgedthem, but I found them fascinating, much like the

Ooompa-Loompas in Charlie and theChocolate Factory, if only they had beenracists. In any event, I was glad I did. Fact is,nothing is more amusing than to have a Nazi lookyou in the eye, mouth full of lemon square, andinsist that whereas jazz music is really just adiscordant fad, polka is a permanent art formthat will never die, tied as it is to the inherentlyEuropean diatonic scale, which scale serves asmathematical confirmation of the unity of thewhite soul. Uh huh, and good luck selling that lastpart in Mississippi.

A month or so after I left, I noticed that Davidhad posted a personal ad on Stormfront—theleading white nationalist and neo-Nazi web boardin the world—hoping to connect with a modern-day Eva Braun, or, short of that, some skinheadgal. Therein, he noted that he was looking for a“true lady” who could also “get down and dirty,”

preferably while whistling the Horst-Wessel-Lied, hopping on one foot, while the other foot,firmly inserted in a Doc Marten boot with redlaces was happily curbing some kid fresh from hisBar Mitzvah. That last part is a joke, but the“down and dirty” part was hilariously real. I toldthe students of color at CWU that they shouldimmediately blow up the personal ad on twenty-four by thirty-six paper and wheatpaste it all overcampus, with a big bold headline reading, “FindThis Nazi a Date: Even Assholes Need Love.”I’m not sure if they did it, but David dropped outof Central shortly thereafter, bringing to three thenumber of colleges from which he had failed tograduate. So much for the master race.

OF COURSE, IT would be so much easier if allthe racists were Nazis. Nazis, after all, are hardto miss. They tend to give themselves away,

going all giggly before a finely-woven lederhosen,or adorning their chat room identities with bad-ass avatars (like pics of Edward Norton’sskinhead character, Derek Vinyard, in AmericanHistory X), intended to suggest a toughness thatthey typically lack, living in their parents’basements and all.

Most racists are less vicious than Nazis, and atthe same time, they’re considerably harder todeal with. It is precisely the way thatgardenvariety racists don’t think of themselves assuch that makes it tougher to address them,especially because, despite their lack of self-awareness when it comes to their biases, theirwillingness to deploy the same is legion.

Several years before I got on the road, Ibegan to notice a disturbing tendency wheneverissues of race would come up in a group ofwhites who really didn’t know each other that

well, but who happened to be together at a partyor other social event, or for that matter, in a pub.In these situations it seemed almost inevitable thatsomeone in the group would take the opportunityto make some kind of overtly racist comment, ortell a racist joke, as if it were perfectly acceptableto do so, and as if no one else in the group wouldmind. “White bonding” was what I called it forlack of a better term.

At first I thought I was the only one having thisexperience so I kept it to myself, but then when Ibegan to mention it to others, they talked ofhaving the same thing happen to them. In fact, Iwould later learn that others whom I had nevermet were actually using the same term I hadchosen to describe it—white bonding. Given thefrequency with which it seemed to be happening,it became apparent that I would need to developsome kind of interruption strategy.

This became even clearer to me when I beganlecturing around the country and was asked howbest to respond to racist jokes or comments.Although it seemed like a relatively minor matter—especially when compared to the larger issuesof institutional injustice to which I was mostlyspeaking—I had to apply the logic of theorganizer here too: after all, if we can’t figure outhow to respond to the “small stuff,” so to speak,we’ll never be able to deal with the bigger issues.

At first, I didn’t have an answer. One thing Iknew though, was that my own normal responsesweren’t sufficient. Sometimes, I wouldn’t knowhow to respond any more so than the peopleasking me for advice had known. At other times,I might respond with a pissed-off reply like, “I’mreally offended you just said that, and I’dappreciate it if you wouldn’t say those kinds ofthings around me again.” Though such a reply lets

everyone know where you stand, it’s almostguaranteed to make the offending partydefensive, and to reply the only way a person inthat situation can, which is to make you theproblem—the one without a sense of humor, theone who needs to “loosen up,” or to understandthat “it’s just a joke.” Not to mention, tellingsomeone not to engage in racist commentary infront of you isn’t the same as getting them to stoppracticing racism. It amounts to seekingprotection for one’s own ears rather than tryingto truly challenge the offending individual andmove them to a different place.

So I decided I would try an experiment. If itworked, I would have something to tell thepeople who asked me the question—somethingmore productive than for them to simply shut theoffending party down. I thought about it for awhile, began to rehearse the approach in a

mirror, and waited for the opportunity to try itout.

Then one night, while speaking at a college inMontana, I was out with a group of people, all ofthem white, including several students who hadbrought me in for the presentation at their school.As the evening went along, one young man whoknew some of the other students at the table (butwho was unaware of the purpose for my visit)joined us. At some point, and for reasons I can’trecall, conversation turned to race, and I bracedmyself, knowing that things could turn bad, veryquickly.

The young man asked if we wanted to hear ajoke, and then, without waiting for a response, hesimply launched into it. As expected, it was everybit as racist as I had feared it would be when hebegan.

When he was done, most everyone remained

quiet or rolled their eyes. A few people laughednervously and a few others said something to theeffect that the joke had been terrible, and that he“really shouldn’t tell jokes like that.” I, on theother hand, laughed as though it had been thefunniest joke I’d ever heard, which naturallyconfused my hosts who had just paid for me tocome in and be an antiracist, not the kind ofperson who would likely appreciate racist humor.But I stayed in character because I needed togain the young man’s confidence for the set-upthat was to come.

“Hey, I’ve got one. Wanna hear it?” I asked.Naturally, he did.

I continued: “Did you hear the one about thewhite guy who told this really racist joke becausehe assumed everyone he was hanging out withwas also white?”

“No, I haven’t heard that one,” he replied, not

seeing where this was headed, and apparentlyexpecting a genuine punch line, all the whilemissing the fact that he was it.

“Actually there is no joke,” I explained. “Thatwas just my way of telling you that I’m black. Mymom is black.”

This is the part I had had to rehearse in themirror, since it wasn’t remotely true. But all thatpractice had paid off. I had sold him. Indeed, Icould have been black. There are lots of AfricanAmericans lighter than myself, or folks with oneblack parent who may look white but who wouldcertainly have been classified as black back in theday, and who identify themselves as such now.

His response was as immediate as it wasrevealing.

“Oh my God,” he demurred. “I’m so sorry. Ididn’t know.”

It was at that point that I confessed: I wasn’t

really black, but as white as he. Now his look ofembarrassment turned to one of confusion. Afterall, whites don’t normally claim to be black whenwe’re not. There isn’t much in it for us.

“I’m not black,” I said, “but I find it interestingthat when you thought I was, you apologized. Inother words, you know that joke was messedup, so that if you’d been around a black personknowingly, you never would have said it. So whydid you feel comfortable saying it in front of us?Why do you think so little of white people?”

Now he was really confused. It was one thingto have someone imply that he didn’t much likeblack folks—which he no doubt already knew—but to be told that he must have some kind ofbias against whites, against his own group? Thatwas a new one.

“What do you mean?” he asked.“Well,” I explained, “You must think all whites

are racists, and specifically, that we’re all thekind of racists who enjoy racist jokes. Otherwiseyou wouldn’t take a chance making that kind ofcomment around white folks you don’t evenknow. So tell me, why do you think so little ofwhite people?”

He stammered for a few seconds, but insteadof getting angry, instead of telling me to get asense of humor, he began to actually engage, andwe proceeded to have a conversation aboutrace. There is no way we’d have had that talkhad I chastised him in the traditional manner. Butby engaging him in a process, a reflective processthat called into question how he knew what heknew—how he knew we were white, and howhe knew we would all approve of racist jokes—Iwas able to stretch out the dialogue andcontribute to making it more productive than itotherwise would have been.

For whites to resist racism this way sends amessage to other whites: they can’t take anythingfor granted; they can’t presume to know ourviews; they can’t be sure that we’ll accept theirefforts at white bonding. Far from merelyproviding a feel-good moment, planting thoseseeds of doubt is an important step in the processof resistance, because racism, especially of aninstitutional nature, requires the collusion of manypersons; the lone bigot can’t accomplish it. Bythrowing racists off balance, we increase thecosts associated with putting their racism intopractice. In the case of joke tellers, they cannever be too sure that the next stranger they trythat with isn’t one of those whites—the “blackwhite” people, or the kind of white person whowon’t appreciate the commentary—and as such,may dial back their tendency to act in racistways.

If we can impose enough self-awareness anddoubt into the minds of those who engage inracist behavior, we make it harder for suchpersons to blindly act on it. Racism, like anything,takes practice in order to be really effective.

YET RACISM ISN’T the only thing that takespractice—so too does antiracism. It takespractice, and a consciousness of mind, the truthof which statement came home to me in anespecially glaring way during the last year of mypaternal grandmother’s life.

My dad’s mom, Mabel (McKinney) Wise,was a central figure in my life. She was theperson to whom I would often turn for emotionalsupport when things got too chaotic at home. Iflife with my father turned especially volatile, itwas to her and Leo’s that I would flee, spendingthe night until things blew over.

When Leo had died in the summer of 1989,my grandmother had begun to disintegrate. WhenI arrived at the hospital shortly after he hadpassed and first saw her in the arms of one of hisdoctors, it was as if even then her system hadstarted to shut down.

As it happened, she would live until 1998,though only a few of those years would be ofmuch quality. A year after Paw Paw’s death,while I had been at home following collegegraduation, she had a car accident. It was nothingserious, but when I got the call to head to thescene, just a half-mile or so from our apartment,it was obvious that the fenderbender had shakenher up. As the years went by, it became apparentthat she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s,and had probably begun succumbing to thedisease at the time of that accident.

We would watch as her grip on reality slowly

slipped away. It was a process that, in its earlyyears, is hard to categorize because a certainamount of mental slippage is inevitable as we getolder. Since there are still moments of clarity,there are times when you’re inclined to think thatthere really isn’t anything all that serious going on.Then you see the person on one of their cloudydays and you’re snapped back into reality,unable to ignore that your loved one is dying, andit’s not going to be a pretty thing to watch.

By the mid-’90s, Mabel was still able to liveon her own, in the house she and Leo hadpurchased four decades earlier, but she neededconsiderable help during the day. For the last twoyears of her life she relied on a couple of differentnurses who would stay with her for several hours,make her lunches, clean up after her, and, nearthe end, bathe her as well. We always worriedthat after the nurses left she would burn the house

down because she was a smoker, and in thedepths of her growing dementia she could easilyhave fallen asleep, cigarette in hand, and thatwould have been the end of her.

In 1996, when I moved back to Nashville andwas looking for a place to live, I had spent aweek or so with her, sleeping in my father’s oldroom, and witnessed the deterioration up close.At any given moment she would have as many astwo-dozen open Diet Coke cans in therefrigerator, having started to drink one, thenplacing it back in the fridge after a few sips andopening another, forgetting about the first. Shewould repeat this process until she ran out ofshelf space, or until someone—myself, a nurse,or another visiting relative—would pour themout. At night, she would forget that I was in theback room, and if she heard me moving around itwould scare her, so she would come to

investigate the source of the noise. I would haveto remind her, several times a night, that it wasjust me. A few mornings, when I came into theden to see her, she would be startled, havingforgotten that I was staying with her.

By 1998, her deterioration had rapidlyaccelerated. Seemingly at once she began toforget who people were, confusing me with myfather or even calling me Leo on occasion. InJuly, she came down with an infection and had tobe hospitalized. While there, it became obviousthat she could never return to her house. Uponrelease, her mind barely functioning, she wasplaced in a nursing home, on the Alzheimer’sward. She would live a little less than a month,dying two weeks before Kristy and I weremarried.

That a story about a little old lady withAlzheimer’s might somehow be related to the

subject of race, or whiteness, may seem like astretch. But once you know the rest of the story,the connections become pretty clear.

First, it’s important to note that Mabel Wisewas no ordinary white woman. Though not anactivist, she very deliberately instilled in herchildren, and by extension in me (as her oldestgrandchild and the one with whom she spent themost time), a deep and abiding contempt forbigotry or racism of any form. She was veryproud of what I had chosen to do with my life,and although her antiracism was of a liberal sortthat didn’t involve an amazingly deepunderstanding of the way that institutionalinjustice operates—it was an interpersonal levelat which she tended to think of these issues—itwas nonetheless quite real.

That she saw racism and rebelling against it asa personal issue made sense, because it was at

that level that she had learned to deal with itmany years before. Her father had actually beenin the Klan while working as a mechanic inDetroit in the 1920s, and after moving back toTennessee shortly thereafter. It was anassociation that would become a problem for herseveral years later when, at the age of fifteen, shewould meet and eventually fall in love with LeoWise, a Jew.

Around the age of seventeen, she could nolonger abide her father’s racism, and that,combined with his anti-Semitism, which she nowtook very personally, led her to confront him, totell him in no uncertain terms that either he wasgoing to burn his Klan robes, or she was going todo it for him. I can’t begin to imagine the kind ofstrength it would have taken to issue such achallenge in 1937, especially to a large man,given to anger, and hardly used to being accosted

in such a way by a young girl, or any woman. Butit worked. My great-grandfather, having beengiven an ultimatum, burned his robes, quit theKlan, changed his life, and would later accept theman who was to become my grandfather into hisfamily.

From that experience, I suppose Mabeldecided that standing up to racism wasn’t sotough, and so she would do it again often. Forinstance, once when a real estate agentannounced that the house he was showing to herand Leo was desirable because it was in aracially-restricted neighborhood, she informedhim that he had best get in his car and leave, orelse she would run him over in hers. That’s whoshe was, and had always been, so long as anyonecould recall.

Which brings us then to the rest of the story,the part that provides dramatic evidence of the

way in which racism is capable of diminishingeven the strongest of us, even the ones who havelong made a point of resistance.

If you’ve ever had a loved one who wassuffering with Alzheimer’s, you know that the lossof memories is among the more benign symptomsof the disease. The others are far worse; namely,the paranoia, anger, and even rage thataccompanies the slippage of one’s mentalfaculties.

As she went through these stages of the illnessthat would ultimately contribute to her death, shebegan to work out the contours of her deepeningcrisis upon the black nurses whose job it hadbeen to take care of her. And how might a whiteperson treat a black person when they’re angry,or frightened, or both? And what might they callthose black persons in a moment of anger, orinsecurity, or both?

Resisting socialization, you see, requires theability to choose. But near the end of mygrandmother’s life, as her body and mind beganto shut down, this consciousness—the soundnessof mind that had led her to fight the pressures toaccept racism—began to vanish. Her awarenessof who she had been disappeared, such that inthose moments of anger and fear, she wouldthink nothing of referring to her nurses by theterm Malcolm X said was the first wordnewcomers learned when they came to thiscountry.

Though I’m not sure when white folks firstlearn the word, Maw Maw made clear a moreimportant point: that having learned it, we willnever, ever forget it. It was a word she wouldnever have uttered from conscious thought, butwhich remained locked away in her subconsciousdespite her lifelong commitment to standing

against racism. It was a word that would makeher violent if she heard it said, and a word thatfor her to utter it herself would make her anotherperson altogether; but there it was, as ugly, bitter,and no doubt fluently expressed as it had everbeen by her father.

Here was a woman who no longer couldrecognize her children, had no idea who herhusband had been, no clue where she was, whather name was, what year it was; yet she knewwhat she had been taught at an early age to callblack people. Once she was no longer capableof resisting this demon, tucked away like a timebomb in the far recesses of her mind, it wouldreassert itself and explode with devastatingintensity.

She could not remember how to feed herself.She could not go to the bathroom by herself. Shecould not recognize a glass of water for what it

was. But she could recognize a nigger. Americahad seen to that, and no disease would strip herof that memory. It would be one of the lastwords I would hear her say, before she stoppedtalking at all.

Importantly, it wasn’t just some free-floatingword bouncing around in her diseased brain,which she was tossing about as if it had no largermeaning. She didn’t call any of her family by thatword, even though we were the recipients ofplenty of her anger and fear as well. She knewexactly what she was saying, and to whom.

Given Mabel’s entire life and thecircumstances surrounding her demise, herutterance of a word even as hateful as this sayslittle about her. But it speaks volumes about hercountry and the seeds planted in each of us byour culture; seeds that we can choose not towater, so long as we are of sound mind and

commitment, but seeds that also show aremarkable propensity to sprout of their ownaccord. It speaks volumes about how even thosewhites committed to living in antiracist ways andpassing down that commitment to their childrenhave been infected with a deadly social pathogenthat can fundamentally scar the antiracist whocarries it, whether or not they are fully aware ofthe damage. Maybe this is why I tire of whitefolks who insist, “I don’t have a racist bone in mybody,” or, “I never notice color.” Maw Mawwould have said that too, and she would havemeant well, and she would have been wrong.

Watching all this unfold, it was especiallyinteresting to observe how the rest of my familydealt with it. Whenever she would say the wordin the presence of either of her two daughters,they would quickly reassure the nurses that shedidn’t mean anything by it (which was patently

untrue), and that it was just the illness talking(which the nurses already understood, far betterthan my aunts). While apologizing for racialepithets is nice, I suppose, far nicer would be theability to learn from this gift my grandmother wasgiving us—and it was a gift, her final way ofsaying look at this, see what is happening here,do something about this. What those women atmy grandmother’s nursing home need anddeserve, much more than sincere but irrelevantapologies from embarrassed family members, isan end to this vicious system of racial caste andthe conditioning it provides to us all.

Those nurses knew, and so do I, why mygrandmother could no longer fight. For the rest ofus, however, there is no similar excuse available.We don’t have Alzheimer’s, and yet we all gothrough our moments of fear, anger, andinsecurity. It doesn’t take a disease to usher us

into those states of mind from time to time. Weare all at risk, all vulnerable to acting on the basisof something we know is wrong, but which isthere, ready to be used if the chips are down, orif we simply aren’t paying enough attention to thedetails.

THE NEXT TWO years were defining ones forme, personally and professionally. I startedwriting in March 1999, for an online commentaryservice operated by Z Magazine. It was the firstregular writing I’d done in about four years, and Iquickly remembered how much I enjoyed it. Butat the same time, I was getting nervous about thefinancial sustainability of the lecture circuit.Though I had never prioritized money, the factremained that having grown up under conditionsof persistent fiscal insecurity, I also knew betterthan to glamorize monetary struggle. There was

nothing cool about it, nothing radical, nothingpolitical. People who think starving for their art ortheir politics is somehow tantamount to making astatement have almost never done without; andthey sure as hell never spent much time speakingto people who had, not one of whom wants to bepoor. No, living hand to mouth was something Ihad had more than enough of. I wasn’t about tocontinue that cycle in a new family, whether itwas just Kristy and me, or whether the familywould come to include children.

When summer came and I didn’t have manyspeaking engagements booked for the fallsemester, I panicked. Thinking that perhaps itwas a sign from the universe that I should go in adifferent direction, I applied for and wasultimately hired as the Director of the TennesseeCoalition to Abolish State Killing (TCASK), thestatewide anti–death penalty organization.

Unfortunately, almost as soon as I began workingfor TCASK, I started to think I’d made a terriblemistake. I cared deeply about the issue, but as Itried to go about the task of running an office,coordinating chapters around the state, andpaying bills (even simply remembering to paymyself on time), I started to realize howincompetent I was at almost everything but thatwhich I had been doing the past several years.Literally, writing and speaking were my onlytalents, and my time at TCASK would finallyprove it.

The organization and I would part ways inApril 2000, after just eight months. In part thiswas due to my incompetence as an organizationalmanager, and in part it was because my personalbiography became a liability for the group.Working for TCASK meant that among thecondemned for whom I’d be advocating would

be Cecil Johnson, the man who had killed myfriend, Bobby Bell, in 1980. I guess I shouldhave figured that those who supported statemurder would potentially seek to exploit thatconnection in the eyes of the public, and bash meto Bobby’s dad. What kind of person, after all,would support the continued heartbeat of a manwho had killed one of his good friends? When Imanaged to embarrass the associate D.A. in adebate at Vanderbilt Law School and again onthe nationally-televised Nancy Grace show—along with Nancy herself, who I managed tofluster to such an extent I thought her head mayexplode—it was clear that the only way to getback at me would be to call Bob Bell Sr. andaccuse me of “using” his son’s memory to argueagainst capital punishment. This, all because I hadmentioned having lost a friend to murder when Iwas a kid, and yet, still opposing the death

penalty. I hadn’t mentioned Bobby’s name, butall the D.A. needed was an opening to discreditthe far more informed side against which he wasarrayed. Opening provided, he took it.

When word got out that pro-death penaltyforces were planning on having Bobby’s fathermake some kind of public statement against meand TCASK, I knew that it was time to go. Icertainly didn’t want to put Mr. Bell through anymore pain, nor did I want the group’s importantwork to be harmed by my continued presence astheir director. I prepared to resign, but ultimatelywouldn’t need to. A few days before I wasplanning on leaving, Joe Ingle, a TCASK founderand board member, called me to his office andvery graciously suggested that things weren’tworking out, on multiple levels. He was right, andI was relieved.

By then, fortunately, the speaking engagements

were starting to roll in again, but even if themoney was going to be tight, I knew that theroad was where I belonged, and so back to thegrind I went.

In October, we learned that Kristy waspregnant and we’d be having a child that comingsummer. Though pregnancy becomesimmediately real for the woman who’s carryingthe child-to-be, for the man (or nongestatingwoman) in the relationship, it really doesn’tregister fully, in most cases, until that child isactually born. So although I was thrilled at thethought of being a dad—though scared, given myown lack of a real role model when it came tofathering—I had no idea how powerful theexperience would be until our daughter, AshtonGrace, was pulled from her mother by C-section,early in the morning of July 2, 2001. At the firstsight of her I was overcome by the emotion of it

all, and literally dropped to my knees, my tearsflowing like water through a city fire hydrant afterbeing opened by children attempting to cool offon a hot summer day.

Trying to make the world a better place hadsuddenly taken on an even more immediateurgency. Little did I know how much morecomplicated creating that world would become,and how quickly.

KNOWING THAT THE baby was due in July,I had cleared my calendar for about two monthsafter the due date, so I could be at home withKris and Ashton. By late August though, it wastime to head back out again. I far preferred beingwith my family, even though at that stage Ashtonwas mostly sleeping and eating. Just holding her,or getting up to do midnight feedings while Kristried to squeeze in some badly needed sleep, was

like heaven to me. I looked forward to going intoher room early in the morning, warming up abottle and feeding her while sitting in the glider,lights dim, the sounds of Meshell Ndegeocello’sBitter album coming from the CD player justbehind my head.

By early September, I was to be out for thebetter part of two weeks. Beginning onSeptember 10, I was scheduled to serve as avisiting scholar at the Poynter Institute, in St.Petersburg, Florida, where several such visitingfaculty were to conduct five days worth ofseminars on race and reporting. About twentyjournalists from around the country would beattending the session, where we would examineeverything from how to productively framestories on racial inequality to how to avoidinadvertently replicating stereotypes in print andbroadcast media. As fate would have it, the

timing for such a series of discussions could nothave been better.

The morning of Tuesday, September 11, wasa beautiful day in St. Petersburg: blue skies, nottoo warm, a pleasant breeze meeting the seminarparticipants as we walked the five blocks or sofrom our hotel to Poynter. We began filing in tothe main seminar room a little after 8:30, wherewe grabbed some coffee and started to plot theday’s events. Each of the visiting scholars was tomake a presentation over the next few days andthen facilitate discussions with the visitingjournalists when it was one of the other scholars’turns to present. Within a few minutes though,whatever schedule we’d intended to keep wouldbe scrapped.

Shortly before 9:00, Keith Woods, apermanent faculty member at Poynter (whowould later become Dean of the Institute and

eventually V.P. for Diversity at National PublicRadio) came into the room, a nervous look on hisface, and headed for the television. As he turnedit on, I heard him mutter something about a planehitting the World Trade Center in New York.Already the cameras were covering the smokebillowing from the North Tower, which had beenstruck by an American Airlines jet about tenminutes earlier. As we sat, transfixed by thetragedy unfolding in front of us, hardly able tounderstand what was happening, CNN cut awayto a local station’s coverage, which began with atight shot of the damage to the north tower,indicating a hit somewhere near the eighty-fifthfloor of the giant structure.

After about a minute of commentary andspeculation as to what had happened, thecameras pulled back, just in time for us to watcha new image come into view over on the right

hand side of the screen. It came into the frame soquickly and proceeded to move to the left sorapidly that at least for me, it didn’t immediatelyregister as to what it had been. Was that a plane?Wait, what? Another plane?

As a huge fireball shot from the side of thesouth tower, we all recognized that not only hadit been a plane that we’d seen, but more to thepoint, it was history we were witnessing, in all itshorrific splendor. There was no question nowwhat was happening. The odds of two planesaccidentally smashing into the tallest buildings inNew York were so ridiculously small as to beincalculable, although one of the New York–based commentators speculated about thatpossibility for a few more minutes, perhapsunwilling to face the terrible truth. This was nocoincidence. These had been deliberate attacks.About a half hour later it became obvious how

deliberate, when yet another plane was reportedas having smashed into the Pentagon, and anhour after that, when a fourth plane crashed intoa field in rural Pennsylvania after having beenhijacked.

We all scrambled to call loved ones from thelower level of the Institute, as most people didn’thave cell phones in 2001. Patient, but worried,we waited to place calls on the pay phones,many of us checking on people we knew in NewYork to make sure they were alright. Of course,it was almost impossible to reach anyone in thecity in the midst of the chaos, as all the lines inand out were tied up. I reached Kristy, andasked if she had heard from Wendy, a friendwho lived in the city and passed through theWorld Trade Center subway stop each morningabout the time of the tower strikes, beforeheading on a train under the Hudson to New

Jersey where she worked.“Why would I have heard from Wendy?” she

asked.“Oh shit,” I said, “are you not watching the

news?”“No, what happened?” she answered.“Just turn it on,” I said. “Two planes just hit

the twin towers.”“Oh my God,” she replied, placing the phone

in the crook of her neck and grabbing theremote. As she did, I could hear our baby girl inthe background making the sweet nonsensenoises of a ten-week old, and it almost broke myheart, thinking about the kind of world into whichshe had just been born. She would not, I thoughtto myself, know even three months without war.

With Kris on the phone my mind flashed backto our honeymoon, three years prior, the first fewdays of which were spent in New York. We had

looked out over the city from the observationspots at Windows on the World, and takenpictures of the rest of Manhattan and Wall Streetbelow from that vantage point—a vantage pointthat no longer existed except in my mind. Iimagined all that empty space below where wehad stood, and below that, now lying stackedforty stories high, millions of tons of steel, plaster,and human remains. I felt instantly nauseous.

After getting back to the session, we all agreedthat although events had altered the trajectory ofthe seminar, we’d continue. No one was going tobe able to fly home anytime soon, so we might aswell get back to work. Not to mention, as mediabegan to speculate about the role that Araband/or Muslim terrorism may have played in theattack, the need to examine the tragedy withoutfueling racial or religious bias became even moreapparent. Several years earlier, after the bombing

in Oklahoma City, Muslims in the area had beenbriefly targeted until the white, Christian identityof the perpetrators was announced a day or solater. That such targeting could happen again wassomething about which we were all aware,especially given the magnitude of the acts thatwere unfolding at that moment.

As a first order of business, we were all askedto write something, anything, about our feelings inthe midst of the attacks. Whether faculty or“students,” the assignment was the same. Yes,we needed to think about the professionalimplications of what had happened—how couldwe bring an anti-bias lens to reporting at such acritical time—but first, we needed to check inwith how we were doing. Anger, fear,hopelessness—all that and more would spill outas we listened to each others’ journal entries,poems, essays, and rants over the course of that

initial day.For some reason, I couldn’t write anything at

first. Perhaps it was my unwillingness to thinkabout the implications of what had happened,given the newness of my daughter’s life, ormaybe I was just trying to think of how to saysomething in a way that hadn’t been said alreadyby someone else—ever the writer, looking for anangle. Whatever the case, I wouldn’t writeanything until late that night, after watching hoursof news coverage and hearing the first inklings ofwar talk and massive retaliation againstwhomever was responsible, streaming from themouths of enraged Senators, ready to use theattack as justification to drop bombs anddemonstrate American military prowess.

What would ultimately emerge would be aletter to my little girl, not really meant for herconsumption, but spoken as if to her at some

later date, when she might understand. It wouldbe the most emotionally exhausting piece ofprose I’ve written to this day, and when I read itto the seminar participants, several cried, as didI. Five days later, I would read it at theUniversity of North Carolina at Greensboro, to acrowd of about eight hundred people, fullyexpecting to be booed from the stage for its openchallenge to U.S. militarism, bombastic retaliatoryrhetoric, and talk of launching a “war on terror.”Quite the opposite, the piece would receive astanding ovation from two-thirds of thoseassembled, signaling that the unanimity of supportthat some would proclaim for the nation’s warplans was a lie. There were more peoplequestioning the wisdom of that approach thanmany realized.

Back at Poynter, Heidi Beirich, who hadrecently been hired by the Southern Poverty Law

Center as a researcher on the far-right, and whowas attending the seminar, said she thought therewas something I might find interesting being saidon one of the neo-Nazi chat boards she regularlymonitored. Curious as to the take of whitesupremacists on the day’s events, she had loggedin to one of the boards and started reading theposts. Almost immediately she had come acrossone racist who praised the attacks on the WorldTrade Center and Pentagon, and said he wishedthat whites had even half the “testicular fortitude”to carry out similar actions. Billy Roper, head ofrecruitment at the time for the Hitler-worshippingNational Alliance (whose founder had been theauthor of The Turner Diaries, which McVeighhad found so inspiring) added that anyone whowas willing to fly planes into buildings in order tokill Jews (whom Roper naturally assumedpredominated in the buildings since it was in the

New York financial district), was “alright” byhim. Another chat room member said the attacksmade him feel “excited and more alive than ever.”

One after another, these white warriorsexpressed their glee, their unbridled exuberancefor the mass killing that had just transpired, butthere would be no news coverage of thisanywhere. Rather, the media would showcoverage from the Palestinian West Bank, inwhich residents were seen cheering and dancingas if to say they were happy about the death ofthousands of Americans at the hands of the Saudiand Egyptian hijackers (whose identities wewould come to know because the luggage ofMohammed Atta, the lead hijacker, had notmade it onto the fatal flight he boarded andwould be discovered within hours).

Of course, neither the Nazis nor thePalestinians had played any role in the attacks,

but whereas the media thought the celebration bythe latter was worth covering, that of the formerwas conveniently ignored. It was much like theL.A. riots in 1992, during which a news crewhad taken footage of a white woman lootingdesigner dresses from an expensive clothingstore, piling them into a BMW, and justifying theactions by saying “everyone’s doing it.” Whenthe footage came into the possession of reportersin Milwaukee who wanted to show it on theirbroadcast, they had been blocked from doing soby their producer, who told them the footage wasirrelevant, since the story wasn’t about rich whitepeople looting, but rather, angry black andbrown folks who did.

Soon, the journalists who were at Poynter forthe seminar started getting requests from theirhome offices to go interview the local Arab orMuslim communities in and around St. Pete. Go

ask people at the local mosque how they werefeeling about what had happened, and if theycondemned the attack. One reporter fromDetroit was asked to get home as soon aspossible so she could go to neighboringDearborn (which has the largest concentration ofArabs of any city outside the so-called Arabworld), and ask the same questions. Realizing theabsurdity of such a request—after all, she wouldnote, they never sent her there to ask Arabs orMuslims about anything but terrorism—she haddeclined the request, as did everyone else whenasked to get local Arab and Muslim feedback.The seminar was becoming more than aneducational experience. It had become a tool forresistance.

UNABLE TO RETURN home by plane, asflights remained grounded through the end of the

week, Heidi rented a car and asked if I wantedto share the ride. Having no better plan as to howI might get home, I agreed. I would take her toher house in Montgomery and then drive the restof the way to Nashville, dropping the rental offthere. All the way home it was apparent that thenation was headed into full-froth revenge mode.Callers to one after another talk show (and notjust on right-wing radio) demanded massiveretaliation and even the use of nuclear weaponsagainst Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, whomever. Manycallers weren’t discriminating; they wereprepared without hesitation to turn the MiddleEast, in their words, into a “parking lot.” Ofcourse, calls for racial and religious profiling wereheard everywhere, with very few willing tochallenge the position in those first weeks.

It was only rational to profile Arabs andMuslims, most folks insisted, since they were the

ones who posed the greatest threat. That nosimilar calls for the racial profiling of whites hadbeen issued after Tim McVeigh’s crime, or thoseof the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski), or theOlympic Park Bomber (Eric Rudolph), or thedozens of abortion clinic bombers and arsonistsover the years (all of whom had been white andostensibly Christian), went largely unmentioned.That al-Qaeda operated in more than fiftynations, and that the physical appearance ofpersons from those nations ran the gamut fromthe lily-white skin of the Chechen rebels to theolive color of most Indonesians and Filipinos tothe blue-black of the Sudanese (and thus,profiling was an almost Sisyphean task,regardless of the ethics of the matter) was evenless important, it seemed.

Immediately, I could notice the differenceduring my travels. Anyone who looked even

remotely Arab, or just brown, was searchedmore intently than anyone else, like the family offive named Martinez, who were headed fromNashville to Guadalajara, Mexico, during the lastweek in September, and who were given the redalert treatment from security. I was about to saysomething to the officials when they finally let thefamily go, after contenting themselves that theinfant’s diaper bag was not an incendiary deviceand that the Spanish they were speaking was notsome form of coded Arabic.

The only thing more maddening than the callsfor profiling or apocalyptic violence was the wayin which whites seemed so oblivious to whyanyone might have attacked the United States inthe first place. “Why do they hate us?” became acommonly heard question, asked by folks whenthey would be interviewed by news crews acrossthe country. But not one of the persons who I

saw issue this query—and I saw it hundreds oftimes if I saw it once—was of color. Not one.Yet no one seemed to notice the monochromaticnature of the naiveté, or if they did, they didn’tthink it interesting enough to remark upon.

The lack of inquisitiveness on the part of folksof color as to why anyone might hate Americawasn’t due to insensitivity, of course. It surelywasn’t because they were any less horrified bythe slaughter of three thousand innocent people,or any less scared about future attacks. But to beblack or brown is to know that there are reasonsto feel less than giddy about the United States; itis to have a love-hate relationship with the nation.Only whites have the luxury of thinking the worldsees us as we see us, and that the U.S. has beena force for unparalleled and uninterrupted good,doing nothing around the globe that couldpossibly explain America-hatred the likes of

which we discovered on that fateful day. Butpeople of color know that things have been a bitmore complicated, that terrorism isn’t new, thatinnocent people have been targeted before, andby the very same empire that now seemed tobelieve it had been victimized in ways neverbefore seen in human history. People of colorhave never had the luxury of believing the nationalfairy tales upon which white Americans havecome to depend.

The events of September 11 would makequite apparent the glaring experiential dividebetween whites and folks of color in the UnitedStates. Over the next several months I wouldkeep track of how many cars I saw with “UnitedWe Stand” bumper stickers, and the racialidentity of the persons behind the wheels of thosecars. Whereas I saw plenty of people of colordriving cars with “support the troops” stickers

(likely because they had a relative in the armedservices, given the disproportionate number ofpeople of color in uniform), I saw literally zerovehicles driven by black or brown folks thatsported a sticker proclaiming national unity. Iencountered over five hundred such cars drivenby whites, by the time I stopped counting, butnone driven by African Americans, Latinos,Asian Americans, or indigenous persons. Peopleof color know that national unity is not somethingthat we can make real by simply proclaiming it;nor are they likely to think war a sufficient basisupon which to rest a claim for togetherness. Unityrequires a unity of opportunity, treatment, andexperience in everyday settings: on the job, in theschools, or in the justice system. What people ofcolor knew, but whites had the luxury of ignoring,was that being attacked by foreign forces haddone nothing to bring unity in those areas. The

bumper stickers, for them, would have to wait.The extent to which whites and blacks have

almost completely different lenses through whichwe see the country and the world was madeglaringly apparent the night in 2002, whenprofessor Michael Eric Dyson and I were onPhil Donahue. We were there to discusscomments made by Republican leader TrentLott, in which he had praised arch-segregationistStrom Thurmond, suggesting at Thurmond’s onehundredth birthday party that the country wouldhave been better off had we all listened to Stromback in the day. In attempting to make the pointthat whites and blacks remember our historydifferently, Mike noted, as an example, thatalthough 9/11 had been a tragedy of greatmagnitude, black folks had known aboutterrorism for a long time. As he put it: “I know alot of you here in New York were running for

your lives on 9/11, and that was terrible, but mypeople have been running for four hundred years,so what else is new?”

Immediately, a young white woman in the thirdrow blew up as if he had called her momma aname. Her agitation got Donahue’s attention,prompting Phil to bound over to her seat, in histrademark fashion.

“How dare you compare the experience ofblack America with 9/11,” she exclaimed, furiousthat he would have made such a comparison.

How dare he? “Oh no sister,” Dyson retorted,“How dare you compare the events of 9/11 withfour hundred years of oppression. Don’t get ittwisted.”

The ability of whites to deny nonwhite reality,to not even comprehend that there is a nonwhitereality (or several different ones), indicates howpervasive white privilege is in this society.

Whiteness determines the frame through whichthe nation will come to view itself and the eventsthat take place within it. It allows the dominantperspective to become perspectivism: theelevation of the dominant viewpoint to the statusof unquestioned and unquestionable truth.

White reaction to 9/11 reminded me of thewhite man in his midthirties, who I’d seen onnational TV after the not-guilty verdict in the1995 criminal trial of O. J. Simpson, wholamented, “I now realize that everything I wastaught in the third grade about this nation havingthe most wonderful justice system imaginable wasall a lie!”

Now he realized it! He had lived severaldecades believing the patriotic, pep rallypropaganda of his teachers, preachers, andparents, but because of O. J., he had concludedthat the system might not be fair. Had he grown

up around people of color, they could have sethim straight on how not-so-wonderful theAmerican system of justice was by the time hewas eleven. But he had had the luxury ofbelieving the lie and then assuming that only theO. J. case demonstrated a crack in the system.Everything in his world had been fine until O. J.walked; then, and only then, was it as if the worldwas about to stop spinning on its axis.

With the attacks of September 11, the naivetéthat had begun to crack for whites because of theO.J. verdict now lay shattered among thewreckage at the foot of Manhattan. Between thetwo events, not to mention a string of suburbanschool shootings that had transpired from themid-’90s until early 2001—which were alwaysmet by cries of disbelief that such things couldhappen in places like that—it had been a toughfew years for white denial. The only question was

whether or not we’d be capable of learninganything from the truths being revealed.

SOMETIMES, THE TRUTHS that arerevealed to us are difficult to accept, after all.Especially when they tell you something aboutyourself that you’d rather not face.

In April 2003, I boarded a plane bound for St.Louis. From there I would fly to Iowa for aconference. Prior to that day, I had flown on athousand or so individual flights in my life, but as Iwalked down the jet bridge that morning, Iglanced into the cockpit and saw something I hadnever seen before, in all my years of air travel:not one, but two black pilots at the controls ofthe plane—a rare sight for any air traveler,considering the small percentage of commercialpilots who are African American.

Given the paucity of pilots of color in the

United States, and given what I had at that pointbeen doing professionally for thirteen years, onemight think that two black men in the cockpit thatmorning would have been a welcome sight to me.And upon sufficient reflection it would be. Butupon a mere instantaneous reflection—which isto say, no reflection at all—this had not been myinitial reaction. Sadly, my first thought uponseeing who would be in charge of delivering mesafely to St. Louis was more along the lines of,“Oh God, can these two really fly this plane?”

Now don’t get me wrong, almost as quickly asthe thought came into my head, I was able todefeat it. I knew instantly that such a thing wasabsurd; after all, given the history of racism, I hadevery reason to think that these two men wereprobably among the very best pilots that theairline had—had they not been, they would neverhave made it this far. They would have been

required to show not only that they could fly, butthat they could do so over and above theprejudices and stereotypes that black folks havehad to overcome in any job they do.

I also knew that in the months before thisflight, several white pilots had been hauled off ofplanes because they had been too drunk to flythem, or because, in the case of two pilots forSouthwest, they had decided to strip down totheir underwear and invite the flight attendantsinto the cockpit as a practical joke: the kind ofstupid human trick that no person of color wouldhave imagined he or she could get away with. So,from a purely rational standpoint, I suppose Ishould have been glad to see anyone but a whitepilot on my plane that day. But we don’t alwaysreact to things on the basis of intellect, or on thebasis of what we know to be true; rather, wesometimes operate from a place of long-term

conditioning, which, having penetrated oursubconscious, waits for just the right moment tobe triggered, and invariably manages to find it.

In this case, no matter what I knew, I hadbeen conditioned no less than anyone else to seepeople of color and immediately wonder ifthey’re really qualified for the job—toautomatically assume they aren’t as good as awhite person. The fact that I’d been working onmy conditioning, and therefore was able to get agrip on my racist reaction is nice, but ratherbeside the point. All that really matters is that ithappened, and could happen again. Maybe itwouldn’t happen every time, and maybe itwouldn’t happen to you (though don’t be sosure; until it happened to me, I might havedoubted it too), but the fact is it could. All ittakes is a situation that calls forth theconditioning, prompts the stereotype, and cues

the response.When I first told this story publicly, about a

year after it happened, other white folks and evenpeople of color responded by sharing their ownstories of internalized racial supremacy orinternalized oppression—stories in which theytoo had reacted to people of color in leadershippositions skeptically or nervously, despite theirown conscious commitments to equity andfairness. The lesson was clear: advertising works,and not just for toothpaste, tennis shoes, andtoilet paper, but also for the transmission of racialstereotypes.

As I had sat in my seat on the airplane thatday, I found myself shaking, not so muchbecause of what I’d learned about myself, as forwhat I’d learned, yet again, about the waysociety can distort us. And with Kristy expectingour second daughter in just three months, the

realization was fraught with even more emotionthan it might otherwise have carried. No matterwhat Kristy and I would teach our girls, nomatter how we would raise them, Ashton, andvery shortly, Rachel, would be exposed to theculture’s presumptions and prejudices; and onceexposed, they too would always be vulnerable, atrisk for having those presumptions and prejudicestransform them.

CHOCOLATE PAIN, VANILLAINDIGNATION

ON AUGUST 29, 2005, the city I loved andhad called home for ten years ceased to exist.Though there is still, today, something calledNew Orleans, whatever it is cannot compare towhat once was. Its zombified transformation to aplace neither truly dead nor really alive wasaccomplished not because of that thing to whichwe so often refer as “mother nature,” notbecause of an act of God, however defined, andnot directly because of the Hurricane known asKatrina. New Orleans as we knew it wasdestroyed by the acts of men: first and foremost,the men who constructed faulty levees for theCorps of Engineers, so that when Katrina cameashore in late August, though it did very little

damage to the city itself, the storm surgeovertopped and collapsed levee walls in dozensof places, leading to the inundation of roughly 80percent of the town.

As the news began to filter out that the waterswere rising, and as over fifty thousand peoplecrowded into the Superdome and ConventionCenter, which were being used as evacuationfacilities of last resort for those who hadn’t fledthe city (or couldn’t, as there were one hundredthousand people in New Orleans without accessto cars), I sat glued to my television, unable tolook away. Most of my friends had been able toget out in the days leading up to the storm makinglandfall. But others had not been so lucky. And Iknew that those persons with whom I’d workedin public housing were likely trapped.

The media broadcast images both enragingand heartbreaking: people stranded on rooftops

waiting to be rescued by helicopters; the elderlyand small children sitting outside the ConventionCenter in the scorching August heat, no food,water, or medicine to provide relief; peoplewading through waist-deep water to find dryland, their clothes drenched with the fetid fluid ofLake Ponchartrain, mixed with whatever streetfunk had joined it on its journey downtown. Theyalso showed us endless footage of looters,though it was often the same five or six incidentsshown from different angles, giving the impressionto a public already inclined to think the worst oflower-income black folks (the disproportionatecomposition of those left behind) that theft wasmore common than it really was. And there werethe reports of massive violence as well: murders,rapes, and even the killing of small babies,dumped in trashcans, according to one report.That these allegations would be investigated and

found almost entirely false wouldn’t matter. Mostpeople probably never even heard that theviolence claims had been debunked by fivedifferent national and international news outfits,so ready were most to believe the worst aboutthose who had been left behind. Even fewerwould probably learn of the real violence duringthose days; namely, the white vigilante terrorsquad that formed in the Algiers community onthe city’s west bank and shot at least a dozenAfrican Americans for being in theirneighborhood—a story that wouldn’t break until2007, and even then, would receive very littlemedia attention.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent hoursbrowsing the comments sections of storiesposted on NOLA.com, the main web-basednews and information outlet for New Orleans,which remained operational throughout the crisis

thanks to a server located outside of the city.There, one could read hundreds of hateful, evenpsychotically racist remarks about local areablacks. Commentators took an almost sadisticpleasure in referring to looters as “sub-humanscum,” “cockroaches,” “vermin,” “animals,”“slime,” and any number of other creative anddehumanizing slurs. Others openly called for thebuilding of a separation wall between OrleansParish and the much whiter Jefferson Parish, ifand when the area was reconstructed, so as to“keep the animals out” of the areas with “decentpeople.”

One poster, discussing those who were looting—even though most were taking necessities likefood, water, medicine, or clothes to replace therotting rags on their backs—wrote, in big, angry,unhinged capital letters: “TO ALL POLICE:PLEASE KILL THESE INCENSIVE (sic)

FOOLS! KILL THEM ALL! WE DON’TNEED THEM ON THIS PLANETANYMORE . . . THEY DON’T DO US ANYGOOD . . . GOD BLESS AMERICA.”

The individual who wrote those words wasthen outdone by another who said, “If I had myway, the National Guard would round thesepieces of garbage up, make THEM clean up themess Katrina left for us, and then machine gunthe whole lot of them into the Gulf. The onlygood looter is a DEAD one. There are noexceptions.”

And then, from a commenter who used his realname (Jim Hassenger), so I will too, there wasthis: “My city is destroyed and what is left thebastards are looting . . . I don’t like living herewith this disease anymore. I HATE YOU fromthe bottom of my heart. It’s times like these Ihave to fight racist thoughts.” Apparently, Jim

was losing that fight.While many refrained from comments of such

a vicious nature, they nonetheless showed adisturbing insensitivity towards the suffering ofthose on the ground in New Orleans, calling them“unintelligent” for not evacuating. People seemedutterly oblivious to the real burdens ofevacuation. If you didn’t have a car, or money,or a place to go, how were you supposed toflee? Some argued that the city should havecommandeered school buses to get folks out oftown, but there weren’t enough people to drivethem, and they would have had no cleardestination in any event. Unless the federalgovernment mandated that hotels open theirdoors to the displaced and offered to pay for therooms—which they never did—buses wouldhave had no place to go, and few people wouldhave agreed to just hop on them, drive into the

night, and hope for the best.Of course, sometimes when New Orleanians

did try and flee the city, they were met withhostility and blocked from escaping. On thesecond day of the tragedy, a group of mostlyblack residents tried to walk out of the city bycrossing the bridge to the west bank of the river,only to be shot at by sheriff ’s deputies fromGretna who wanted to keep blacks out of theircity. And there were, of course, the AfricanAmericans on the west bank who tried to reachthe pier in Algiers so as to get ferried out of thearea, only to be shot by the white terror squadthat presumed every black person in theneighborhood was a criminal.

Other voices suggested the city should neverbe rebuilt; its location, they would say, makes ittoo susceptible to a similar storm in the future, soit would be impractical to let people return. It’s

an argument that no one ever makes about small,white, Midwestern farm towns that get blownaway each year by tornadoes, or to whiteretirees in Florida, just because they live in ahurricane zone, but which many felt was perfectlyreasonable in the case of New Orleans and thefolks who lived there. Whatever compassion anddecency had animated the first few hours of thecatastrophe on Monday was quickly vanishing bythe middle of the week.

BY THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, most whowere stranded at the New Orleans ConventionCenter had no food or potable water, and whatprovisions existed at the Superdome had run out,yet to be replaced by FEMA. Indeed, PresidentBush’s FEMA director would say later that daythat he hadn’t realized there were people trappedin such centers until that morning, despite the fact

that the rest of us had been looking at them onnational television for seventy two hours.

When desperate folks attempted to get intofood pantries at the Convention Center, knowingthat the supplies would spoil and never be usedfor their original purposes, National Guardsmenaimed guns at them and told them to “step awayfrom the food or we’ll blow your fucking headsoff,” according to reports from those among thecrowd. Things were getting uglier by the minute.

Meanwhile, I wondered why there was noapparent presence of the Red Cross in the city,either to provide relief supplies or tend to the sickand injured. There were reports of their activitiesthroughout the rest of the Gulf Coast, and in partsof Louisiana other than New Orleans, but nothingin the Crescent City itself, which seemed bizarre.Rather than a structured relief operation, the taskwas falling to private citizens, like Harry Connick

Jr., who drove into the city to bring supplies tothe stranded when no one else would do so, orlike my former boss at the Louisiana Coalition,who did the same.

Lance and his family would never flee the city,and would make several relief runs downtown,seeing first-hand the orderly and largely peacefulway in which desperate folks were behaving andtrying to survive. The need for private citizens tofill the relief gap had been intensified by theabsence of the Red Cross, whose absence,Lance discovered, had been deliberate—theresult of a relief blockade. Though he tried to getmedia to cover the blockade as a story ofinstitutional injustice, few agreed to discuss it;this, despite the fact that the evidence for theembargo was right there on the organization’swebsite, where one could read that, “TheDepartment of Homeland Security continues to

request that the American Red Cross not comeback into New Orleans following the Hurricane.Our presence would keep people fromevacuating and encourage others to come into thecity.” Government officials, more desirous ofevacuating the city than helping the sick anddying, told the premier relief group on the planetto stand down and to do nothing within NewOrleans. Nowhere else in the hurricane zone wasthis order given, but it was there. It was hard toavoid the conclusion that the demographicmakeup of the effected might have had somethingto do with the different levels of concern.

That afternoon, I went with Kristy and the girlsto a local Mexican restaurant, La Paz, for lunch. Ihad been riveted to the television for the betterpart of three days by that point, not even goingout of the house, and needed a break from thecoverage. As we waited for our food to arrive, I

couldn’t help but overhear the commentaryemanating from the table to my left, filled witheight employees from a local call center, whosecompassion for the suffering masses in NewOrleans had clearly been exhausted.

The group prayed over their food—because,after all, God was responsible for the flakiness oftheir chimichanga—and then proceeded to heapscorn upon the people of New Orleans in waysthat managed to only thinly veil the race and classbias at the heart of their critique. Betweenrepeated “amens,” the white men and women—the former appropriately preppy and the latterappropriately made-up with big blonde hair,bangs reaching for Jesus—wondered why thepeople of New Orleans hadn’t left, or why theywere looting, rather than helping one another, orshooting at relief helicopters (a story that turnedout to be untrue—people on rooftops had been

using guns as makeshift flares to gain the attentionof helicopters, not to bring them down). One ofthe men attempted to draw a contrast betweenthe decency of New Yorkers in the wake of 9/11and the savagery of folks in New Orleans amidthe current tragedy, and wondered why thedifference? The neatlycoiffed female to his rightquickly offered up an explanation.

“Well,” Buffy explained, “It’s probablybecause, in New Orleans, it’s mostly poorpeople, and they don’t have the same regard.”(Regard for what? I wondered to myself. Forlife? For the sanctimonious and self-righteousconsumption of chips and salsa?)

She then averred that police needed to shootall looters. As I watched guacamole tumble fromher mouth, she trying hard not to accidentallyscrape off any of her lipstick with the side of hertortilla chip, her tablemates praised the Lord at

her suggestion. That they were not struck down(I believe the Biblical term is smote), right thenand there, may be the best evidence one canmuster that there is no God—at least not one thatactively intervenes in the affairs of mankind.Because I know that if I were God, there wouldhave been a quickly available, albeit smolderingeight-top at the Nashville La Paz that afternoon.

Our food had come by now, but my appetitehad vanished. I picked at the edges of my dish,unable to shut out the cacophony of contempt afew feet away. Kris asked what was wrong but Ijust grunted something about not being veryhungry and that I was listening to the table next tous. The kids continued to eat. After a few moreminutes I looked up, unable to bear any moreand told them to hurry, that I really needed to go.I knew that if I stayed there any longer and hadto listen to any more of the calumnies dripping

from the lips of the call center lunch bunch, I wasgoing to end up making a scene. Four days intothe tragedy—a tragedy that was devastating theplace and many of the people I loved—I was onedge, and I knew it wouldn’t take much more tosnap. Had I been alone or with only Kristy Imight not have cared. Sometimes dumping quesoon a person’s head can be cathartic. But with thegirls in tow, only four and two, I knew that suchaggression and the inevitable expulsion from therestaurant that would have followed would onlymanage to scare them. I also knew that as awriter, I had better ways to get back at them thanassault, be it verbal or physical.

I was starting to shake by the time my familyfinished their meal and we stood up to leave. Iglared at the table as we passed by but to noeffect. They never looked up from their beanburritos, and never stopped speaking of the

people of New Orleans as animals unworthy ofconcern.

I told Kris that I needed her to drive. As wepulled away from the restaurant parking lot Ibroke down, tears cascading down my face asmy sobs turned to the early stages ofhyperventilation. Rachel asked what was wrong,having never seen me cry before, and certainlynot like this. Kristy tried to explain it to her.

“You know those people we saw on TV inNew Orleans, where daddy used to live, whowere standing on their rooftops and stuck in thewater?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s so sad,” she replied, theinnocence of her words breaking my heartfurther.

“Well, daddy’s just worried about them, andthose people next to us in the restaurant weresaying some mean things about the people there,”

she explained.“Why would they say mean things about

them?” Ashton wondered.“Because some people just aren’t kind,” was

all I could think to say. I knew the answer wasmore complicated than that, and one day I’dexplain it to them in greater detail. But in thatinstant, it would have to suffice.

OVER THE NEXT few days, the narrativesthat began to develop from the Katrina tragedyshowed how little most people understood eitherthe city of New Orleans itself, its people, thepolitical system under which we live, or thehistory of race and class subordination inAmerica.

On the one hand, right-wing commentatorsholding forth on the nation’s airwaves took theopportunity to bash the people of New Orleans

for their “dependence on government.” To theRush Limbaughs of the world, the welfare statehad sapped the individual initiative of the peoplethere, and that was why they had remainedbehind, waiting on the government to save them.After all, he and others argued, they were livingoff the public dole anyway.

Having lived in the city for ten years andhaving worked with some of the poorest peoplethere, I knew how incredibly and criminallyinaccurate this meme was, but also realized thatthere would be very little chance of countering it,so ingrained were the race and class biases of thelarger white public. Facts don’t matter to thepunditocracy or to those who hang on their everyword like pliant sheep.

So for instance, no one mentioned that prior toKatrina, there were only forty-six hundredhouseholds in the entire city receiving cash

welfare payments: this, out of one hundred andthirty thousand black households alone, whichmeans that even if every welfare recipient in NewOrleans had been black (and they weren’t), still,less than four percent of such households wouldhave qualified for the derision of the right. And ofthose few receiving such benefits, the averageannual amount received was a mere twenty-eighthundred dollars per household , hardly enoughto have managed to make anyone lazy.

In the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardesthit communities, and a place about which somuch was said (and so much of it inaccurate),only 8 percent of the income received by personsliving there came from government assistance,while 71 percent of it came from paidemployment. In other words, folks in NewOrleans were by and large poor in spite of theirwork ethic. Forty percent of employed folks in

the Lower Ninth worked full-time and hadaverage commutes to and from work of forty-fiveminutes a day. But the media didn’t tell us that. Ihad to discover it by looking at the relevantCensus Bureau data that investigative journalistswere too busy or too uninterested to examine.

On the night of September 2, during theConcert for Hurricane Relief, broadcast acrossthe nation, hip-hop artist, Kanye West, injectedanother narrative into the discussion, saying whathad been on so many folks’ minds, but which fewhad been willing to verbalize. Kristy and I werelying in bed, watching the concert when suddenlyWest, standing next to a stunned Mike Meyers(he of Austin Powers and SNL fame), went offscript, discussing the media representation oflooting and the way in which it stoked racialstereotypes. It wasn’t what the cue cards in frontof him said, but Meyers rolled with it, picking up

at the end of West’s soliloquy with another pleafor financial contributions. Once Meyers finishedreading his card, West blurted out the line forwhich he became instantly infamous in the eyes ofmany, including the president: “George Bushdoesn’t care about black people.”

I have to admit that when we heard thesewords, both Kris and I roared. I, for one,laughed so hard I almost fell out of the bed.Although I knew the comment was simplistic—fact is, what was happening was less about anyone individual’s biases and more about asystemic and institutional neglect, by both majorparties, that had jeopardized the lives of mostlyblack and poor folks in New Orleans—itprovided a moment of almost comic relief. It wasso unexpected, and the look on Meyers’ face ashe realized what had just happened waspriceless. The comment would be edited out of

later re-broadcasts, or even the first broadcaston the West Coast later that evening, but by thenit was out there, for good or ill.

By the next week, other narratives would belaunched, some of which were well-intended, butultimately wrong. Filmmaker Spike Lee, forinstance, who would go on to make awonderfully poignant film about the tragedy, wasquoted early on as saying that what hadhappened in New Orleans had been a “systemfailure of monumental proportions.” Though I hadalways been a fan of Lee’s films and most of hissocial commentary, I knew in this case that hehad it wrong.

For the displacement of hundreds of thousandsof poor, mostly black people in New Orleans tobe considered a system failure would require thatprior to the so-called failure, those individualshad been doing just fine by the system; it would

suggest that the system had been working forthem, and not failing, in the days, weeks, months,and years leading up to Katrina. But had thatbeen the case? Of course not. In fact, it wasn’teven the first time such folks had been displaced.

Although most Americans remain unaware ofit, mass displacement of people of color,especially when poor, has been common, and notbecause of flooding or other so-called naturaldisasters, but as with New Orleans in 2005,because of man-made decisions. For example,from the 1950s to the 1970s, urban renewal andthe interstate highway program had devastatedblack and brown communities in the name ofprogress, with hundreds of thousands of homes,apartments, and businesses knocked to theground. In New Orleans itself, the I-10 hadsliced through the city’s largest blackcommunities in the 1960s, the Tremé and the

Seventh Ward.The Tremé—the oldest free black community

in the United States—is bordered on one side byClaiborne Avenue, above which the interstatewould be constructed. The Claiborne corridorhad been home to as many as two hundredblack-owned businesses in its day, and includeda wide median (known to locals as a “neutralground”) lined with huge oak trees and plenty ofspace for recreation, community picnics, familygatherings, and cultural events. Once completed,the I-10 had destroyed what was, for all intentand purposes, a public park sixty-one hundredfeet long and one hundred feet wide, along withhundreds of businesses and homes. In theSeventh Ward, home to the city’s old-line Creolecommunity, residents saw the same kind ofdevastation, also from the construction of the I-10 along Claiborne, including the virtual

elimination of what was once the nation’s mostprosperous black business district.

No, there was nothing new about the currentdisplacement, and it hadn’t been the result ofsystem failure. The people being affected hadnever been the priority of government officials.The system had let them down so many timesbefore, and so consistently, that, indeed, onecould even say that what happened in late Augustand early September 2005 was perfectlynormative. If a system was never set up for youto begin with, and it then proceeds to let youdown, even injure you, that’s not failure; rather,it’s a system operating exactly as expected,which is to say, it was a system success, asperverse as the implications of such a truth mightseem.

Lee’s comments about the system failing wereonly outdone for their historical lack of

perspective by the remarks of columnist DavidBrooks, who opined in the New York Times that“the first rule of the social fabric—that in times ofcrisis you protect the vulnerable—was trampled.”But what kind of fantasy world could allow oneto believe something as pitifully quaint as that?For some, including poor black folks in NewOrleans, every day had been a time of crisis, andthey had never been protected from it. Sowhatever social fabric Brooks may have beenreferring to, it clearly had never meant much tomillions of people whom he appeared only afterKatrina to have discovered.

Brooks went on to say that because of thegovernment’s “failure” in Katrina, “confidence inour civic institutions is plummeting.” Butconfidence can only plummet when one hasconfidence to begin with. And who among uswas saddled with such an affliction of naiveté?

Surely not the black folks of New Orleans, andsurely not the poor anywhere. Only middle classand above white folks have had the luxury ofbelieving in the system and being amazed when itdoesn’t seem to work as they expected.

IT WOULDN’T TAKE long for the revisioniststo begin whitewashing (pun very much intended),the racial element of the Katrina story. First,you’d hear rumblings that the real issue in NewOrleans hadn’t been race, but rather, class.Money, it was claimed, is what really determinedwhether or not you’d been likely to have sufferedmajor property damage or displacement becauseof the flooding. And true enough, there was adefinite economic element to the damage, withlower-lying and mostly working classcommunities bearing the brunt of the inundation.However, within a few months, research from

Brown University would bear out that race wasan even better predictor of property damage anddisplacement than economic status, with AfricanAmericans far more likely to suffer either, relativeto whites.

In New Orleans, 75 percent of the people indamaged areas were black, compared to only 46percent of the population in the undamagedareas. In Mid-City, 83 percent of the populationwas black, and 100 percent of the area sustaineddamage from the flood; in New Orleans East, 87percent of the population was black and 99percent of the community suffered damage; in theLower Ninth Ward, 93 percent of the populationwas black, and 96 percent of the area wasdamaged. Likewise, in Tremé, Gentilly, and all ofthe communities with public housing, save one,significant damage tracked the blackness of thecommunity.

Among white communities, only Lakeviewsustained massive destruction: 90 percent of thearea damaged, while being only 3 percent black.By comparison, the almost all-white GardenDistrict sustained virtually no damage; the nearlytwo-thirds white Uptown area had damage inless than 30 percent of the community; most ofthe Audubon and University district remaineduntouched; the 80-plus percent white Marignyhad damage in less than 20 percent of the area;and the almost entirely white French Quarter hadvirtually no damage at all. So much for classbeing the main issue, rather than race.

While in New Orleans for a conference insummer of 2006, I came across the second formof revisionism, spelled out in a letter to the editorof the Times-Picayune. Therein, the author putforth the newest meme going around the city,especially among conservatives; namely, that

whites had actually been disproportionatelyvictimized by Katrina and that blacks had beenunderrepresented among the fatalities, since,after all, blacks had been 68 percent of the city’spre-storm population, but comprised only 59percent of those who had died. Whites, on theother hand, were merely 28 percent of thepopulation before Katrina, but comprised 37percent of the deceased.

Intrigued by the claim—and fascinated by theimplicit racial animosity behind it (since it seemedto suggest blacks hadn’t suffered enough)—Iwent in search of the statistics the author hadused to make his argument. There appeared tobe conflicting data, some from the LouisianaDepartment of Health and Hospitals, and otherdata reproduced on right-wing websites that hadcome from the Knight-Ridder news service.While both sets seemed to suggest that blacks

had died at rates lower than their share of theNew Orleans population, while whites had diedat higher rates, more recent data from the stateshowed no real imbalance in the aggregate, withblacks comprising 65 percent of the dead andwhites 31 percent—roughly equal to pre-stormpopulation percentages.

But upon closer examination, which of coursethe revisionists saw no reason to perform, theproblems with the conservative argument aboutdisproportionate white suffering became clear.Fact is, the dead were overwhelmingly elderly,with three-fourths of all fatalities concentrated inthe over-sixty age group. It was a statistic thatmade sense. Older folks are more likely to be inbad health to begin with, less able or willing toevacuate in a crisis, and are more susceptible to amajor health event (like a stroke or heart attack)during a trauma. And since whites were far more

likely than blacks in New Orleans to be elderly(more than twice as likely, in fact), that whitefatalities might be slightly disproportionate shouldhave been no surprise. Once mortality data wasadjusted for age, so that only persons in the sameage cohorts were being compared, blacks died ata much higher rate than whites, in every agecategory.

But the ultimate revisionism actually began justa few months after the catastrophe, when whitesdecided it was the city’s black leadership thatwas racist, and especially Mayor Ray Nagin. Thecharge was leveled at Nagin for his off-the-cuffcomment during an MLK day celebration thatNew Orleans should be and would be once againa “chocolate city,” when displaced blacks wereable to return. To whites, the remark wastantamount to saying that they weren’t welcome,and to prove how racist the comment was, critics

offered an analogy. What would we call it, theyasked, if a white politician announced that theirtown should be a “vanilla” city, meaning that itwas going to retain its white majority? Since wewould most certainly call such a remark racist,consistency required that we call Nagin’s remarkracist as well, they maintained.

Of course, such reasoning was sloppy. For awhite politician to demand that his or her city wasgoing to remain white would be quite different,and far worse than what Nagin said. When cities,suburbs, or towns are overwhelmingly white,there are reasons (both historic andcontemporary) having to do with discriminationand unequal access for people of color.Restrictive covenants, redlining by banks,racially-restrictive homesteading rights, and evenpolicies prohibiting people of color from living inan area altogether—four things that whites have

never experienced anywhere in this nation (aswhites)—were commonly deployed against blackand brown folks throughout our history. On theother hand, chocolate cities have not developedbecause whites have been barred or evendiscouraged from entry, but rather, becausewhites long ago fled in order to get away fromblack people, aided in this process bygovernment subsidized loans. So, to call for avanilla majority is to call for the perpetuation ofobstacles to persons of color, while to call for achocolate majority in a place such as NewOrleans is to call merely for the continuation ofaccess and the opportunity for black folks to livethere.

It was especially interesting to note howNagin’s comments calling for the retention of achocolate New Orleans brought down calls ofracism, while the real and active planning of the

city’s white elite at the time—people like JoeCannizaro and Jimmy Reiss—to change it to amajority white town, by razing blackneighborhoods in the flood zone, elicited noattention or condemnation whatsoever from whitefolks.

That Nagin had actually been the candidate ofwhite New Orleanians—receiving nearly 90percent of their vote, but less than half the blackvote—did nothing to assuage the anger over theMayor’s presumptive “reverse racism.” He hadpromised to cater to white needs during thecampaign, and had been amply rewarded fordoing so. Now that he was stating a simple truthabout the cultural and historic core of the city—and demanding that it be retained—his formersupporters turned on him. As Nagin discoveredhis blackness, white New Orleanians did too,and it scared them. To hear many tell it, they

were now the victims.

OVER THE COURSE of the next year, Iwould regularly run into youth groups—sometimes with churches and other times withschools—on their way to New Orleans to helpwith rebuilding efforts, or on their way home fromthe same. Whenever possible, I would try tostrike up conversations with a few of the studentsor their chaperones, to find out what they’d bedoing (or had already done) while there. If theywere headed down, where would they beworking and staying? With whom would they bemeeting? What did they hope or expect to learnfrom the experience? If they had alreadycompleted their trek, I would wonder the samethings, only in the past tense.

Occasionally, the answers I would receivesuggested a very high level of critical engagement,

which was heartening. By this I mean, thepersons who had organized the trip hadrecognized the importance of preparing thestudents for the experience by having pre-arrivalconversations regarding racism, classism, thehistory of the city, and the political and culturalcontext within which the tragedy had occurred. Inthose cases, the volunteers were not simply goingto New Orleans to “get their help on,” orperform some version of perceived Christianduty; rather, they were going to bear witness toinequality, learn from local leaders about theirexperiences, and work in real solidarity with thepeople struggling to rebuild the city—workingwith, not for.

I was especially impressed by the studentsfrom Northfield Mt. Hermon—a prep school inMassachusetts—whose preparation for theirNew Orleans service trip included an intensive

class on the city, the storm, and the role of raceand economics in understanding the tragedy,taught by veteran English teacher Bob Cooley. Inthe case of Northfield, the school had enrolled afew students from New Orleans who had beendisplaced, and not just the kids from the privateschools, but public schools as well. One who Imet while there was serving as something of amentor and co-teacher to his classmates, and hadclearly gained the respect of everyone on thecampus for his wisdom and insights, despite thefact that he was basically their same age.

But sadly, this kind of preparation was rare forthe people I met either going to, or coming from,service trips to the city. In most cases, when Iwould ask about their plans or experiences, theanswers I got from the volunteers and their adultmentors indicated very little critical thinking orunderstanding of race, class, and the role of both

in the disaster.Most of the groups I met said they were going

to be working, or had worked, not in NewOrleans itself, but rather, in neighboring St.Bernard Parish, and specifically the community ofChalmette. Of those headed to New Orleans,most said they’d be working in Lakeview: theonly wealthy and almost entirely white communityhit hard by the flooding. I found this interestingand would always inquire as to how they gotmatched up with those communities, as opposedto the Lower Ninth Ward, or Mid-City, or NewOrleans East, all of which were hardhit, mostlyAfrican American communities.

Mostly, they would say, it was because thepeople who had organized the trips didn’t knowanyone from those black spaces, but hadconnections—be they with church pastors orcivic leaders, or even family members—in the

whiter locales. Others said that they werehonestly afraid to go into the Lower Ninth Wardbecause of all they had heard about thecommunity in the media (most of it false, ofcourse). Still others didn’t really know why theywere headed to places like Chalmette: apparentlythe people through whom they were working hadsimply matched them up with those communities.

I found the placements in St. Bernard Parishespecially interesting. On the one hand, there wasno doubt that “da Parish,” as it’s known bylocals, had been devastated by the flooding. Nextto the Ninth Ward (literally), Chalmette wasprobably the hardest hit area in the metropolitanvicinity. But on the other hand, the fact that somany volunteers were being sent there to helprebuild struck me as telling, given the racialdynamics of the area. Whereas the Ninth Wardwas 93 percent black before the storm,

Chalmette was the exact opposite: 93 percentwhite. More to the point, it was a communitywhere more than seven in ten whites had votedfor neo-Nazi David Duke in the 1991Governor’s race. And it was a place where, inthe immediate wake of the flooding, Parishofficials had sought to prevent people of colorfrom moving into the community by passing a“blood relative renter law,” restricting rentalaccess to persons who were blood relatives ofthe landlords from whom they’d be renting. Thepurpose of the law, quite obviously, was to blockblacks from returning to the area and settling inSt. Bernard, since almost all the property ownersin the parish were white.

Did the volunteers know these things? Didthey know that they’d be helping people whowere actively advocating institutional racism, andwho, in many cases, had supported a Nazi for

Governor? Especially if the clean-up groups wereintegrated, did they realize that the volunteers ofcolor would be helping a community where, hadit been up to local officials, they couldn’t havelived? In almost no instance had they heardanything about this. They were shocked. Localorganizers of volunteer efforts had neglected tomention these details to the clean-up teams,mostly because they believed the racial tensionsor inequities to be irrelevant: people were inneed, they would say, and shouldn’t be neglectedbecause of their racial views. But shouldn’t thathave been left up to the volunteers? Didn’t theydeserve to know? Apparently not, according tosome.

The way in which the racism of St. Bernardwhites was glossed over was amazing. At onepoint, the generally liberal Sierra Club gave aleadership award to Henry “Junior” Rodriguez,

the Parish Council president, because of hisenvironmental record; this, despite his history ofusing racial epithets publicly, and supporting theblood relative renter law right up until it wasultimately blocked by the courts. Even to whiteliberals, racism was a secondary issue, hardlyworth discussing when compared to a politician’srecord on, in this case, wetlands restoration.

What was most disturbing about thewhitewashing of St. Bernard’s racial dynamicwas how implicated it had been in the tragedythat had transpired in the first place. After all, itwas nothing if not ironic that those who had hadthe luxury of believing themselves superior toblack people ended up in the same boat as thosethey so feared and despised. What did it say thatthe same elites who hadn’t cared much for thelives of blacks in the Lower Ninth also hadn’tcared enough of white lives in Chalmette to

prioritize proper levee construction that wouldhave protected both? Perhaps if whites therehadn’t been so busy scapegoating black andbrown folks for their misfortunes, they might haveextended their hand to blacks in the Lower NinthWard, and together they could have marched onthe Corps of Engineers, on Baton Rouge, or onWashington to demand a more people-centeredset of budget priorities. But they hadn’t, and nowthey had all ended up with their stuff jacked, soto speak. Skin color had trumped solidarity. Andfor what?

WHETHER IN ST. Bernard Parish or NewOrleans itself, the rhetoric of white victimhoodwas ubiquitous within months of Katrina. For abunch who always seemed exasperated by thevery real claims of victimization coming frompeople of color, white folks sure had learned

quickly how to play victim ourselves; this despitethe relative lack of power held by the black orbrown, with which they could truly oppresswhites as whites had oppressed them over theyears. In a place like New Orleans, despite thirtyyears of black political leadership by the time ofKatrina, whites still controlled the reins ofeconomic power. Even political power was oftenin the hands of whites, who had been able toelect Ray Nagin as mayor, despite the majority ofAfrican Americans voting for his opponent.

Even when people of color hold positions ofpower, their ability to oppress or in any wayimpinge upon the lives of whites is typicallynegligible. Though I had come to recognize this inNew Orleans, it would become even clearer tome the first time I traveled to Bermuda. I visitedthis crown jewel of the dying but never fullydeceased British Empire in the fall of 2005,

invited in to discuss race and racism—issues thatpermeate much of what goes on there.

Of course, to hear many whites there tell it—be they native-born Bermudians or expatriatesfrom the U.K., the U.S., or Canada—race is notan issue in Bermuda. In this island paradise, oneis assured, they have conquered the demons thatstill bedevil we lesser intellects in the states, or inother lands around the globe. Bermuda, they say,is different. Indeed, in some ways it is, but inother ways, Bermuda is all-too similar to theUnited States, and its history is intertwined withthat of the United States, especially as regardsthe history of white racial supremacy in thehemisphere.

It was, after all, Captain Christopher Newportwho sailed the largest of the ships carrying whites(though they weren’t called that yet) to whatbecame Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and who

then shipwrecked on Bermuda with AdmiralGeorge Somers in 1609, while returning to thecolony with supplies from England. Newport(who I recently discovered is my seventeenthgreat-grandfather), by virtue of his seamanship,ultimately contributed directly to the initiation ofNorth American genocide and white conquest,beginning at Jamestown. And his hurricane-forced landing on Bermuda began the process bywhich Great Britain would come to hold the tinyAtlantic island as property of the empire.Newport—who had made his name as a pirate,raiding ships of other nations and delivering theirriches to wealthy investors back home—carriedwith him on the shipwrecked vessel John Rolfe,who would later introduce export tobacco to theAmericas, which development would then lead tothe enslavement of Africans for the purpose ofcultivating the cash crop.

That neither Rolfe nor Newport died in thewreck has proven to be among the lynchpinmoments in history. Had they done so—ratherthan remaining alive, repairing their ship, andsailing on to Jamestown—the colonists wouldlikely have perished, and with them the hopes forpermanent colonization of the Americas. Havingfailed to plant adequate crops, and without thearrival of the supplies expected from Englandthanks to the shipwreck in Bermuda, thecolonists in Jamestown were starving and dying indroves. Only Newport’s arrival in 1610, almost ayear after he was anticipated, had allowed forcolonization to be sustained. And had that initialexperiment failed, as it would have withoutNewport, the Tsenacommacah confederacy, ledby Chief Powhatan, would have likely had timeto organize against future attempts to penetrateinto indigenous lands. Although I suppose I must

be grateful for Newport’s having survived, since,as a direct contributor to the genetic line fromwhich I derive, I would literally not exist withouthim, the fact remains that his survival has been adecidedly mixed bag so far as persons of colorare concerned.

As for Bermuda, it is not only divided by race,demographically—about 55 percent of the sixtyfive thousand persons there are black, roughly athird are white, and the rest are a mix of othergroups of color, including a growing number ofAsians—it is also divided by a vast gulf ofperceptions. Blacks there believe race to beamong the island’s most vexing issues, whilewhites generally do not; and as with the UnitedStates, it is blacks who have a firmer grasp onreality, to say nothing of the history that hasbrought them to the place where they findthemselves today.

As with the United States, Bermuda was anation whose early economy was built largely onthe backs of slave labor. And although slaverythere was abolished in 1834, immediately uponemancipation, blacks were confronted with lawsrestricting voting to those who didn’t ownsufficient property. As a result, less than fivepercent of votes for a century after the end ofslavery would be cast by blacks, despite blacksbeing a majority on the island for this entireperiod. Among the methods employed to dilutethe black vote and reinforce white racist rule wasplural voting, whereby rich whites could buy upproperty in each precinct of the island and thenvote in each place where they owned land, aswell as syndicate voting, whereby groups of richwhites could buy up property and then gethowever many votes in a precinct as there wereowners on the piece of property. If fifty whites

went in together on a piece of land (which noneof them alone could have afforded), they wouldsuddenly find themselves possessing fifty votes inthe given precinct, whether or not they livedthere. So although blacks were the majority ofeligible voters in Bermuda, even by the early1900s these various schemes intended to allowmultiple votes by whites meant that the clearmajority of votes being cast on the island wouldremain white votes, well into the late-twentiethcentury.

As in the United States, hospitals, schools,churches, the civil service, the military officercorps, theatres, restaurants, neighborhoods,hotels, and even graveyards were segregated byrace for most of the nation’s history. For most ofthese forms of formal institutional racism, legalchange came only in the 1960s. As in the U.S., itwas common practice throughout the twentieth

century for land to be confiscated from blackowners and communities to make way forcommercial development benefiting whites, oreven so as to develop a country club, or privatecommunity, which would then practice racialexclusivity in terms of membership or residency.

Electorally, universal suffrage has only existedin Bermuda since the late ’60s, with whiteBermuda long having viewed blacks as incapableof self-government. Indeed, the founder of theUnited Bermuda Party (which ruled the islandfrom the ’60s until 1998, when it was defeatedby the majority-black Progressive Labour Party)famously argued against universal suffrage byclaiming that it would be disastrous for the islanduntil black Bermudians had become sufficientlyeducated and “disciplined.”

Equally troubling for black opportunity inBermuda has been a longstanding preference for

foreign guest workers (who are overwhelminglywhite), in housing and employment. Guestworkers are given housing subsidies unavailableto locals, and often procure jobs that are all butoff-limits to local blacks as well. Thesepreferences not only push black Bermudians outof job opportunities, but also drive up the priceof housing and other goods and services bydistorting market rates for land, making Bermudaan extremely expensive place to live. BlackBermudians are especially resentful of guestworker preferences, since their purpose hasalways been seen as a way to whiten the island.Though white elites insist guest workers areneeded to fill certain professional positions forwhich locals are unqualified, the claim fails towithstand even a moment’s scrutiny. Mostforeigners working on the island do not work inprofessional positions requiring a particularly

intense level of education or skills, and less thantwo in ten have management level positions. Thatmost foreign workers are found in medium- andsemiskilled jobs calls into question the extent towhich worker importation is really about fillingskills gaps and economic necessity, as opposedto being for the purpose of achieving a whiterBermuda.

Interestingly, the largest opportunity gaps onthe island appear between natives, either black orwhite, and not between black natives and whiteforeigners. Although black Bermudians withcollege degrees are roughly as likely to havemanagement-level jobs as white foreigners in thecountry, relative to white Bermudians, blacks arenot doing nearly as well. Forty-three percent ofwhite Bermudians with college degrees havemanagement level jobs, as opposed to only 28percent of similarly educated black Bermudians.

Black Bermudians are 54 percent of all nativeswith college degrees, while whites are only 38percent of similarly educated natives. Yet, 60percent of natives with top-level managementjobs are white, and slightly less than a third areblack. While 38 percent of white Bermudianswith college-level educations have positions insenior or executive management, only 22 percentof similarly educated black Bermudians do.

But despite the solid evidence of ongoingwhite hegemony in Bermuda, many whites thereseem mightily anxious about the way that politicalpower—having been assumed by a black-dominated party—may tilt the balance againstthem. Despite the advantages they have obtainedand continue to enjoy, many whites in Bermudaseem convinced that they are the targets ofreverse discrimination and that their victimization,if not in evidence yet, is never too far around the

corner.While I was in Bermuda, a prime example of

perceived white victimhood emerged. In the daysleading up to my arrival, a controversy hadexploded when the premier at that time, AlexScott, fired off an angry e-mail regardingsomething said to him by a white conservative onthe island, Tony Brannon. Brannon, who has areputation for berating politicians (especially inthe mostly black PLP) for what he perceives astheir incompetence and corruption, had sent ane-mail to the premier, in effect blaming him forBermuda’s sorry economic state and a decline intourism. The premier, thinking he was sending areply only to his close associates, apparently hit“reply all” to the message, letting loose with theimpolitic and offensive remark that he was tiredof getting flak from “people who look like TonyBrannon.”

Brannon, naturally, went to the press about thepremier’s remarks, and it had become somethingof a scandal by the time I arrived on the islandthat October. The premier, chastened bysignificant public backlash to his remarks,backpedaled, insisting that he hadn’t meant thecomment as a racial remark against Brannon orwhites generally. Virtually no one believed him,because frankly, the claim of innocence waswholly unbelievable. The remark had obviouslybeen about color.

Since I was there at the time, talking aboutrace, the local press sought my opinion on thematter, as did individuals, black and white, duringmy stay. To me there seemed to be a couple ofkey issues, both of which spoke to the largersubject of institutional white privilege. On the onehand, I made clear that I thought the premier’scomments had been inappropriate and offensive.

But that was the easy part. In a larger sense,whites in Bermuda desperately needed to imaginethemselves in the position of the premier, andespecially as the head of a majority-black party.After all, there has been a long history inBermuda of whites verbalizing their doubts thatblacks were capable of self-government.

So against that background noise, for a whiteman like Brannon to criticize the premier bycalling into question his competence wouldnaturally cause alarm bells to go off in the ears ofvirtually any black person hearing it. ThoughBrannon may well have meant nothing racial byhis critique, for a black premier to have hiscompetence questioned (which is different than asimple disagreement over a particular policy) is totrigger a litany of negative stereotypes and callinto question the extent to which the white personissuing the challenge may be offering it from

behind the veil of those prejudiced beliefs aboutblacks as a group.

That whites wouldn’t understand this (andlargely didn’t when I explained it) was due almostentirely to privilege. If a white politician iscriticized for being incompetent, or not intelligentenough to run a country, for example (andcertainly one heard barbs regularly about GeorgeW. Bush’s intellect during his presidency), nowhite person would have to have worried that thecritique might have been intended as a groupslam against whites. We wouldn’t have towonder whether the individual white politicianhad somehow triggered, by virtue of his or heractions, a larger group stereotype about whiteintelligence as a whole, because there is no suchnegative stereotype when it comes to whiteintelligence. But stereotypes about blackintelligence are common. So when a comment is

made that could be perceived as stemming fromthat stereotypical view, it is understandable that ablack person on the receiving end of the critiquemight react in a way that seems hypersensitive.The larger social context didn’t make Scott’scomment acceptable, I explained, but it did allowus—provided we as whites are willing toconsider it—to understand the way privilege andits opposite work.

But even more significant than putting thecomment in historical context, the most importantaspect of the incident, to me at least, was Scott’sapology and the fact that he had felt compelled toissue it. The very fact that the premier had feltcompelled to backpedal after his remarks weremade public is testimony to how little power hehad, in effective terms. After all, if power trulyresided in his hands, or the hands of other blackssuch as himself, he (and they) would be able to

regularly insult whites, say terrible things aboutthem, and never have to apologize at all. PremierScott would then have been in a position to say,in effect, “screw Tony Brannon” and everyonelike him. But he couldn’t, and that was the point.A black man was forced to apologize to whitepeople for a simple comment, while whites havestill never had to apologize for the centuries-longcrimes of slavery, segregation, and whiteinstitutional racism.

Alex Scott, despite holding political power inBermuda, had essentially no power to effectuatehis biases against whites. Even were we to grantthat he was a vicious antiwhite bigot (and frankly,as unfortunate and inappropriate as his remarkswere, this charge seems extreme), the fact wouldremain that he would have been utterly impotentto do anything with those biases. He couldn’thave expelled whites from Bermuda, taken away

their right to vote, or imposed discriminatory lawsagainst them in terms of hiring and education. Hecouldn’t have done any of the things that hadbeen done to blacks in Bermuda over the years,political power notwithstanding. Totallydependent on tourist dollars—most of them spentby white tourists—and white-dominatedcorporate investments, to say nothing of ultimateBritish control of the island, black politicians inBermuda could be as racist as they like, but to noeffect, except insofar as they might be able tohurt white feelings. That’s about it.

It is also worth noting that the very samewhites who were so incensed by Premier Scott’sremarks had said nothing when the black premierof the more conservative (and white-dominated)party told blacks in 1989 to “lower their voices”regarding the issue of racism. In other words,telling black people to shut up is fine; telling white

folks to do so makes you a racist. And so whitesin Bermuda, as with the United States, insist thatracism is no longer a barrier for blacks—despitethe evidence of widespread disparities that havevirtually no alternative explanation but racialdiscrimination—but has become one for them: acharge that takes white denial to a pinnacleunrivaled in the annals of human irrationality. Toavoid dealing with the legacy of white supremacy,we will change the subject, blame the victims,play the victim, and generally do anything toavoid confronting the truth that rests just in frontof our eyes.

SPEAKING OF WHITE victimhood, forgetNew Orleans, forget Bermuda; all you reallyneed to do is take a look at Champaign-Urbana,Illinois.

I went there to speak at the University of

Illinois during the spring semester of 2007. Whilethere, I had the occasion to meet with a numberof different groups: residence hall advisors,fraternity and sorority members, student lifepersonnel, faculty, staff, and students of all types.The timing of my visit couldn’t have been better,or worse I suppose, depending on yourperspective. For the previous year, Illinois, likemany other schools, had been under intensepressure from the National Collegiate AthleticAssociation (NCAA) to no longer caricatureAmerican Indian peoples, by way of their teammascot: Chief Illiniwek. The chief had been astaple of U of I athletics for over eighty years, atleast thirty-five of which had involved protests ofthe mascot from indigenous students and theirsupporters. As with Indian mascots around thecountry, the chief had come under fire for makinga mockery of Indian traditions, reducing Indian

peoples to a stereotypical image of warriors or“noble savages,” and papering over the very realoppression faced by indigenous persons, pastand present, in the United States.

In the case of Illiniwek, the chief had alwaysbeen played by a white man (most recently avery blue-eyed, blonde-haired white man at that),and he wore an outfit that bore no resemblanceto what actual Illini Indians would have wornprior to being driven off the land where thecollege now stood. Furthermore, the danceperformed by Illiniwek at halftime shows, thoughtouted as a traditional “fancy dance,” was, intruth, a mix of inauthentic Indian dance movesand gymnastics, and had been largely created byremnants of the local Boy Scouts, early in thetwentieth century.

The NCAA, in 2005, had announced thatschools with Indian mascots would no longer be

allowed to host basketball tournament games.Some schools complied and changed theirmascot names while others, like Illinois, dug inand tried to challenge the NCAA in court. But bythe time I arrived on campus in early 2007, thegoverning board of the university had decided togive in, realizing that continued legal opposition tothe NCAA’s move would likely prove fruitless,and concerned about the loss of revenue thatwould follow from enforcement of the newregulations.

A few weeks prior to my time at the U of I,the chief had done what was billed as his “finaldance,” during the halftime of the Illinois-Michigan basketball game. A somber, tight-lipped white man, in a regionally inappropriateheaddress, covered in buckskin, gesticulatedaround the gym floor, on national television, whilethousands of white Illinois fans (especially the

ones with the big Greek letters on their chests,signifying fraternity or sorority membership) weptopenly in the stands. The sight was nothing shortof amazing; here were white people having anexistential meltdown in front of millions oftelevision viewers, all because they weren’t goingto be allowed to play dress-up anymore. It wasas if someone had cut off the limb of a parent, orkilled a small puppy in front of their eyes. Theywere being victimized, to hear them tell it, bypolitical correctness.

There were young women, cute littlescrunchies in their hair, tears flowing down theircheeks, standing next to young men withbackward baseball caps, wearing looks of icy,future-corporate-executive rage on their faces.These were people who had likely never spentone second of their lives crying over the fact thatindigenous peoples had lost some ninety million

souls, their traditional cultures, religions, andalmost all of their land to make way for folks likethemselves, but who couldn’t help but sob at thethought of losing a few seconds of entertainment.

Tradition. It was the word on the lips of justabout everyone I met at Illinois. For thosedefending the chief, and who were besidethemselves at the thought of losing him, traditionwas being ripped apart and discarded, all tomake a handful of militant Indian activists happy.What were the feelings of native peoplescompared to tradition? Tradition, to these folks,was a noble and worthy thing, in need of beingdefended and carried on, though for reasons theycould rarely articulate. To the opponents of thechief, tradition was also an important word,though one spoken with far less reverie.Tradition, to these folks, was something used tooppress, to vilify, to spread racism, and to further

marginalize students of color on the campus.Yet, what neither group seemed to realize was

that tradition is a choice we make. In otherwords, there are many traditions in our culture,and the ones we choose to venerate are notforegone conclusions but are the result ofconscious and volitional acts, for which we haveto be responsible. By ignoring this aspect oftradition—which ones we choose to discuss andremember, and which ones we discard—therhetorical combatants at the University of Illinoisfell into a trap from which extrication seemshighly unlikely. If defenders of the chief feel asthough there is only one tradition to which theycan cleave—the tradition of impersonation, orwhat they like to call “honoring” Indian peoples—and if the opponents feel that that, too, is theonly thing meant by the term tradition, then bothsides dig in, and the development of constructive

resistance to racism becomes less likely. Toabandon or preserve tradition becomes an all-or-nothing gambit for both sides in the debate.

But what if students had understood that therewas another tradition they could choose touphold? What if they had been made aware longbefore, and during their time at the university, ofthe tradition of resistance—resistance to Indiangenocide and racism, not only by people ofcolor, but also whites?

What if they knew about, and had beenencouraged to identify with, Europeans likeBartolomé de Las Casas, who wrote eloquentlyagainst the crimes of Columbus, having traveledwith the “peerless explorer” and having witnessedhis depraved treatment of the Taino onHispaniola? What if they knew of and had beenencouraged to identify with whites like HelenHunt Jackson, Matilda Gage, or Catherine

Weldon, all of whom spoke out forcibly againstthe mistreatment of indigenous persons in themid-to-late 1800s? What if we were encouragedto follow the example set by Lydia Child, whonot only demanded justice for Indian peoples butwas also the first white person to write a bookcalling for the abolition of slavery? What if whitesknew of and had been encouraged to emulate thebravery of Jeremiah Evarts, a white man whospearheaded opposition to Andrew Jackson’sIndian Removal Act and the forcible expulsion ofthe Cherokee peoples from the Southeast?

But we haven’t been taught these histories.We know nothing, by and large, of thesealternative traditions; and so we are left, all of us,but especially white folks, with a pre-fabricatedand utterly inaccurate understanding of what ouroptions are. Whites like those at Illinois seem tofeel as though the only or best way to “honor”

Indian peoples (to the extent they honestly thinkthat’s what they’re doing) is to portray them, todress like them, to act as we assume they act, oronce did.

Yet if the alternative tradition were the one towhich we had been exposed, we might chooseresistance, as other whites have done, andcommit our schools to something moremeaningful than symbolic representation by wayof mascots. We might uphold that alternativetradition by pushing for the quadrupling orquintupling of indigenous students on ourcampuses, or by working towards theestablishment of well-funded Native Americanstudies programs. Even better, we could upholdtradition—the tradition of folks like Weldon andEvarts—by partnering with organizations thatwork with indigenous peoples, so as to improvethe economic and educational opportunities

available to such folks, on and off campus.Tradition is, after all, what we make it. The

definition of the term is simply this: “a story,belief, custom, or proverb handed down fromgeneration to generation.” There is nothing aboutthe word that suggests tradition must beoppressive, or that it must necessarily serve touphold the status quo. It is simply the narrativewe tell ourselves, and as such, could just as easilyinvolve resistance to oppression or injustice, asthe perpetuation of the same. But if we aren’tclear in articulating the alternative tradition, wecan hardly be surprised when persons don’tchoose the direction in which it points, havingnever been appraised of its existence.

In the South, for instance, too many whitefolks cleave to the tradition of the Confederacy,and one of the battle flags most commonlyassociated with it. But that is not because the

Confederacy is southern history, or synonymouswith the South. Rather, it is because of anideological choice those white southerners maketo align themselves with that tradition as opposedto the other, equally southern traditions withwhich they could identify. White southerners whowave that flag are choosing to identify with agovernment whose leaders openly proclaimedthat white supremacy was the “cornerstone” oftheir existence, and who over and over againmade clear that the maintenance and extension ofslavery into newly stolen territories to the westwas the reason for secession from the Union.

But white southerners could choose to identifywith and praise the forty-seven thousand whitesin Tennessee who voted against secession—almost one-third of eligible voters—or the whitesin Georgia whose opposition to leaving the Unionwas so strong officials there had to commit

election fraud in order to bring about secession atall. We could choose to remember and tocelebrate abolitionists in the South likeKentuckian John Fee, a Presbyterian minister,who was removed from his position by thePresbyterian Synod for refusing to minister toslaveholders, so unforgivable did he considertheir sins. Instead of venerating Jefferson Davis,the Confederate president, we could praise thebrave women who marched on Richmond in1863 to protest his government and the war,shouting, “Our children are starving while the richroll in wealth,” and who Davis then threatened toshoot in the streets if they didn’t disperse. Insteadof identifying with soldiers who perpetratedatrocities against black Union forces—likeNathan Bedford Forrest (for whom there is agarish statue a few miles from my home, and withwhom one of my relatives fought, sadly, at the

Battle of Sand Mountain)—we could proudlynote the bravery of those one hundred thousandor more white Southern troops who deserted theConfederate forces, many because they hadcome to see the battle as unjust. Or the thirtythousand troops from Tennessee alone who notonly deserted the Confederacy but went andjoined the Union army, so changed did theirbeliefs become over time.

White southerners could choose to veneratethe tradition of the civil rights movement, whichrose from the South and lasted far longer than theconfederacy. We could choose to valorize thetradition of historically black colleges anduniversities, which grew throughout the South asa form of institutionalized self-help because of thedenial of educational opportunity to persons ofAfrican descent. We could choose to identifywith the tradition of resistance to racism and

white supremacy by black southerners to be sure—John Lewis, Ella Baker, Ed King, AmzieMoore, Unita Blackwell, Fannie Lou Hamer, orE. D. Nixon, to name a few—but also by whitesoutherners: persons like Thomas Shreve Bailey,Robert Flournoy, Anne Braden, Bob Zellner,Mab Segrest, and hundreds, if not thousands ofothers throughout history.

That we are familiar with few of these names,if any, leaves our ability to resist compromised,and limits us to playing the role of oppressor, orat least quiet collaborator with that process. It isalways harder to stand up for what’s right if youthink you’re the only one doing it. But if weunderstood that there is a movement in history ofwhich we might be a part, as allies to people ofcolor, how much easier might it be to begin andsustain that process of resistance? For me, Iknow that such knowledge has been

indispensable. And what I know also is this: thewithholding of that knowledge from the Americanpeople, and especially white folks, has beennothing if not deliberate.

AS THE PRESIDENTIAL campaign began toheat up early in 2008, it became obvious thatrace was going to be in the picture, howevermuch folks did or didn’t want to speak of it.Though most voices tried to mute the racialelement of the campaign, occasionally theunderbelly of racism made itself known.

Dozens of You Tube clips emerged in whichwhite supporters of Republican candidate, JohnMcCain, slung blatantly racist derision at BarackObama: saying they would never vote for “ablack,” or that if Obama were elected he wasgoing to “enslave white people,” or that he was a“secret Muslim” who “hated whites.” They said

he wasn’t born in the U.S. and was a terrorist.Some said we should “bomb Obama,” andparaded with stuffed monkey toys, intended tosymbolize the Illinois Senator and DemocraticParty candidate.

Others sent around e-mails with pithyquestions like, “If Obama wins, will they still callit the White House?” or suggesting that Obamawanted to tax aspirin because “it’s white and itworks.” White racial anxiety, in other words, wason full display for the better part of thepresidential campaign season.

At no point did this become more apparentthan after the media, led by FOX News, beganrunning with a story concerning certain commentsmade by Senator Obama’s former pastor, theRev. Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Churchof Christ on Chicago’s south side. Wright hadbeen the minister who had brought Obama to

Christianity and the pastor who had married heand Michelle, but in the media narrative thatbegan to spin out of control in March 2008, hewas only relevant as a symbolic weapon withwhich to beat up on Obama. He was a radical,an anti-white bigot, an America-hater. And uponwhat evidence were such arguments made? Inpart it was because he had discussed the historyof U.S. foreign policy, including the indisputablebombing of innocent civilians in Hiroshima andNagasaki at the end of World War Two, and thehistory of racism in the country. In part it wasbecause he had dared suggest that people ofcolor owed no automatic allegiance to a nationthat had neglected them for so long. But mostly, itwas because he had said that the events of 9/11had a predicate: they were not simply the acts ofcrazy people who hated our freedoms (thedominant and inherently narcissistic explanation

offered by most whites, and certainly the BushAdministration), but rather, the acts of peoplewho believed, rightly or wrongly, that suchattacks would serve as payback for the history ofU.S. actions in the Middle East and Arab world.The symbolism of “chickens coming home toroost,” which Wright had deployed shortly afterthe attacks (and which now was being used as apolitical weapon against candidate Obama), wasnot meant to justify the horror of that day, butmerely to place it in historical context. Whiteness,of course, requires a lack of context; it requiresthat historical memory play no role inunderstanding anything. To whiteness, the past isthe past and the present is the present, and neverthe two shall meet: historical amnesia is a virtue,even a pseudo-religious sacrament.

I was traveling during the initial dust-up overthe Wright videos that had begun to circulate,

often edited and cropped to suggest that far moreincendiary things were being said than actuallyhad been at the time of the original sermons. Iknew of Trinity, and had communicated withRev. Wright’s daughter, Jeri, a few years before,when she had asked if they could reprint some ofmy articles within their church newsletter. I hadsaid yes, of course, and felt perfectly comfortablein doing so. The church was a progressive,community-centric place, from which amazinglocal programs were being directed aroundAIDS awareness, economic injustice, and anynumber of other issues. Trinity was solidly withinthe mainstream of the United Church of Christ,and Rev. Wright had developed an intensefollowing among not only his black parishioners,but his white ones as well, of whom there werefar more than commonly believed.

What seemed to bother white America was

that Rev. Wright was unapologetically black, andhe endorsed what he referred to as a black valuesystem, extending back to Africa, in whichcommunity well-being took precedence overindividualism and the me-firstism that has longcharacterized much of white evangelicalChristianity. His was the opposite of theprosperity gospel so popular around that time(including among many black preachers), inwhich ministers insisted Jesus wanted nothing somuch as for people to drive a Bentley and wear aRolex, or at least for their pastors to do so; this,despite nothing in Scripture to suggest such athing, and much to indicate the opposite.

Whites never minded that—no beef withCreflo Dollar, he being perhaps the most venaland cynical of the Christian money-hustlers in theblack community—but to tell the truth aboutAmerica was a no-no. Wright called bullshit on

that, and that was the problem. He said that thepurpose of Christians was to stand in solidaritywith the poor, the oppressed, the prisoner, the ill,the despised (which had been, of course, exactlywhat Jesus had said, no matter the words put inhis mouth later by everyone from the ApostlePaul to Billy Graham), and this, as much asanything, is what much of white America couldn’tstand. How dare this black man tell us what itmeans to follow Jesus! Seeing as how whites hadlong had the luxury of believing Jesus was white,the reaction should not have been particularlysurprising, I suppose.

Concerned about the lack of historicism thatanimated so much white reaction, I penned apiece defending not just Rev. Wright, but thelarger historical point he had been trying to make:namely, that the United States was not allgoodness and light. Yes, we had killed many

innocent civilians over the years as a result of ourmilitarism and imperialism; yes, we wereimplicated in global suffering. Although I didn’tagree with everything Wright said or implied (likethe part in which he speculated the governmentmay have created HIV/AIDS deliberately so asto destroy certain “undesirable” populations), Ialso knew the historical basis for the claim, andwas well aware that the U.S. government hadindeed released diseases deliberately in poorcommunities of color before—as documented inHarriet Washington’s award-winning book,Medical Apartheid, released around that time.So although I didn’t think that had happened thistime out, it wasn’t insane to engage the question,as Wright had, given the history.

When my essay ran, Rev. Wright was with hisfamily on a long-scheduled cruise to celebrate hispending retirement from Trinity after many years

of service. They had been on the cruise when thecontroversy blew up surrounding his commentsfrom seven years earlier, about which no one hadcared until they could be used against BarackObama. After the family vacation ended, I heardfrom Jeri Wright that it had been a nightmare:others on the ship who were watching the newswere shooting her father dirty looks, takingpictures of him, and making him feel like a pariahbased on the misinformation they were gettingfrom media. What should have been acelebratory moment, to relish thirty-six years ofdiligent service on behalf of the people in hiscommunity, became an exercise in self-defense,in which the family had to protect their fatherfrom the glares and comments of people whoknew nothing about the man they were beingencouraged to hate, but knew that they hated himnonetheless.

Jeri noted that her father had gotten to see myessay while on the cruise and was eternallygrateful; it had been one of the only bright spots,she said, in a larger miasma of hostility. I told herit was the least I could do, and that I was equallygrateful to her dad and the entire Trinity family fortheir work. Allyship required that I come to Rev.Wright’s aid in that moment, and I was only tooglad to do so.

Sadly, the political reality in America is suchthat Barack Obama felt he had little choice but tosacrifice his former pastor on the altar of electoralexpedience. And so, one week after proclaimingthat he would never throw Rev. Wright under thebus, and could no more disavow Wright than hisown mother or grandparents, he did just that:condemning Wright in particularly vicious terms,so as to curry favor with white voters who all butdemanded the obeisance as a condition of their

vote. Putting aside whether Obama had actedethically in doing so, the political meaning of theact was clear: white power was still in full effect.As with Alex Scott in Bermuda, Barack Obamahad to pander to the feelings of white people inorder to secure his political future. When he wonin November, his victory (given the raciallyneutered dance he was forced to perform inorder to achieve it) confirmed white privilege,rather than argued for its eradication.

PARENTHOOD THE WEEK BEFORE the presidentialelection, the school that both of our girls nowattend held a mock vote for the students in whichthey got to cast their ballots for the candidate oftheir choice. Barack Obama won handily, andcan rest assured that he received the vote ofAshton Wise (and would have secured Rachel’s,but she was still in pre-school at the time). Wehadn’t tried to push either of the girls to supportone candidate over the other, but it seemedalmost intuitive on their parts that they wouldsupport Obama. They appeared to instinctivelysense something terribly wrong with Sarah Palin,and something angry and menacing about JohnMcCain. At one point, Rachel asked me whatSarah Palin’s “problem” was, entirely unbidden Ishould add, to which I responded, somewhat

tongue-in-cheek, “she doesn’t care if the polarbears die and she likes to shoot moose.” BothAshton and Rachel were horrified. When myfather-in-law went to dinner with them one night,wearing a button with pictures of McCain andPalin on it, Rachel took one look at the buttonand said, “There’s that crazy lady who hatespolar bears!” Some things, as you see, get lost intranslation.

I tell this story mostly because it symbolizes,for me at least, how children pick things up; howthey are, indeed, always picking things up, forgood or bad, from their parents, the media,peers, and any number of other sources. By ourstatements, our actions, or alternately by oursilence and inactions, we teach lessonsconstantly, and children are incredibly adept atlearning them, even when we think they aren’tpaying attention at all. This is why, when it comes

to race, parents have to be very deliberate andmindful of the lessons we’re imparting to ourkids.

Sadly, too often parents (and especially whiteparents) begin by sending the wrong messages tochildren when it comes to race. Over the years,I’ve asked several hundred people in workshops,“When was the first time you really noticedsomeone of a different race or color thanyourself, and what happened?” And by far, themost common reply has had something to dowith having seen a person of color in asupermarket or mall, while shopping with one’sparents. Time after time, whites will describe asimilar scene: they noticed the person wholooked different, they tugged on their mom ordad’s clothes to get their attention, theyreferenced the person they’d seen while pointingat them, and then they were met by a forceful and

immediate, “Shhhh!” from the parent.To the parent, the shush means one thing, but

to the child it means quite another. To the adult,the shush is likely intended as a short, sharp wayto convey the notion that pointing is rude. But tothe child, especially if very young, the shushsuggests that something is wrong, specifically withthe person being referenced. It says, don’tnotice that person, or even, that person is bad,or dangerous, and one should be quiet aroundthem so as not to attract their attention—the kindof thing you might be told were you to happenupon a dangerous wild animal while on a campingtrip. When white parents shush their children,when those children have merely pointed outsomething different for which they have no wordsor explanation, they send a message of negativitywith regard to the difference being noticed.

The other problem with the way parents, and

especially white ones, deal with race, is that theydon’t deal with it at all when it comes to theirchildren. They largely ignore it. Over the years,hundreds of white parents have proudlyproclaimed to me that they rarely ever discussracism with their children. “I want my kids to beable to hold on to their innocence,” some say.Others insist that “children don’t see color untilwe make them see it,” as justification for theirsilence about race. “We’re raising our kids to becolorblind,” still others maintain, as if such aparenting plan were the ultimate antiracisttechnique, and as if avoiding the topic of racismcould instill such colorblindness in the first place.

But colorblindness doesn’t solve the problemof racism. First, it doesn’t work. Kids see color,and research suggests they begin to drawconclusions about color-based differences earlyon. As early as preschool, children have begun to

pick up cues about race and gender from popularculture, from parents and from peers, such thatthey begin to form hierarchies on the basis ofthose identities. Kids observe the world aroundthem and draw conclusions about that world,with or without our guidance. When it comes torace, unguided conclusions can prove dangerous.

Children can discern, for instance, that thereare vast gaps in resources between the parts oftown lived in mostly by whites and the parts oftown in which mostly folks of color reside. Theycan see people of color disproportionatelyrepresented on the news in stories about crime orpoverty. They can see mostly whites in leadershiproles, the president notwithstanding. Havingobserved disparities, children, like anyone else,will seek to make sense of them, subconsciouslyif not consciously; and if they’re being told—asmost everyone is in the United States—that

“anyone can make it if they try hard enough,” butthen they see that some have decidedly not madeit to the extent others have, why should it surpriseus that some (perhaps many) would concludethat there was something wrong with those at thebottom: that they were, in fact, inferior? And ifthe disparities have a distinct racial cast to them,how surprising can it be that those conclusionswould be linked to notions of racial groupinferiority?

So unless parents are discussing inequity withchildren, and placing it in its proper sociologicaland historical context—in other words, unlessthey are talking about discrimination and racism,past and present—those children will likelydevelop an internal narrative to explain theinequities they can see, which will lean heavilytowards a prejudicial, even racist conclusion.

This is why the old saying that “you have to be

taught how to hate,” has always seemed overlysimplistic to me. Yes, if you’re deliberately taughtto be a racist it certainly makes it more likely thatyou’ll turn out to be one. But a child can betaught bias—perhaps not hatred, but certainly aform of racism—indirectly too, by combiningtheir recognition of social inequities with thestandard message of their society that where weend up on the ladder of life is all about our owneffort. As such, only color-consciousness (andespecially a consciousness of the way colorcontinues to divide our society) can reallyprepare children to confront the world aroundthem honestly and effectively.

Perhaps even more importantly, kids pick upon inconsistencies between what we say asparents and what we do, paying far closerattention to the latter than the former. If you tellyour kids not to fight, for instance, but then they

see or hear you fighting with your spouse orpartner, they will have a hard time internalizingthe “no fighting” message given the actualbehavior they’re witnessing. Likewise, we cansay we believe in diversity and equity, and valuemulticulturalism and integration, but if we sendour children to monoracial, monocultural schools,live in monoracial, monocultural neighborhoods,and expose them to social settings in whicheveryone looks like them, they will see theinconsistency, translate it as hypocrisy, andconclude that we, as parents, are lying to themwhen it comes to that which we value.

What’s more, because children tend to beegocentric, they commonly presume that theirstuff is the best: their school, their neighborhood,or their circle of friends, for instance. If thoseschools, communities, and friendship circles areoverwhelmingly white, it becomes natural for

those children to conclude that the reason blackand brown folks are not to be found in them mustbe because they aren’t as good as whites; if theywere, after all, surely they’d be around us. Only ifa parent is committed to living an integrated andmulticultural life can they effectively preach thesame to their kids. And only if we are committedto challenging the way in which our kidssometimes presume the normalcy of the racialdivisions they see, can we hope to imbue themwith enough of a sociological imagination tocritically assess the world around them and thenchange it for the better.

THE GOOD NEWS is, kids are incrediblycapable of engaging these matters, and at a muchhigher level than that for which we normally givethem credit.

In the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity

to speak in dozens of middle schools, and even afew elementary schools, to kids between the agesof seven and twelve. In a few cases, I’ve evendiscussed issues of race and racism with pre-school children as young as five. Contrary towhat many parents seem to believe, not only canthey handle the subject matter, they can oftenlead the conversations, with very little formalfacilitation.

I’ve often asked children where we get ourideas about people who are different thanourselves, especially when it comes to color;inevitably, it takes them no time to begin offeringanswers. “From the media,” is the most commonanswer, and when I ask them what they mean,they demonstrate a savvy grasp of the way thatvarious sources of racial imagery effect theirconsciousness, from television to music videos tovideo games to things they see on the internet. In

fact, at several schools when I’ve engaged kidson these matters, they can talk for a half hourstraight, with almost no active facilitation, justpointing out example after example of racialimagery, as well as gender and class imagery inmedia, and the way those images can sometimesgive false and misleading impressions aboutmembers of certain groups.

One young woman at a middle school in SanFrancisco, for instance, told me (and her peers,all gathered in the gym for a discussion) that shehad been afraid of homeless people because ofthe stories she had heard on the news aboutvarious crimes committed by the homeless, orhow the city had been trying to move thehomeless out because of so-called “aggressivepanhandling” in commercial and tourist districts.She then mentioned how she had gotten to knowa homeless man who often walked up and down

the street where she and her family lived, byspeaking to him one day after he had asked her aquestion. Through their conversation she came torealize that most of her assumptions had beenwrong. Yes, she understood, there may be somehomeless people who fit the stereotype socommonly believed to be true, and so oftenportrayed in the news, but she also realized thatshe couldn’t and shouldn’t be so rigid in herthinking as to assume those things to be true ineach and every case, or even most cases.

Other students have been able to discuss, in avery sophisticated manner, the way that mediagives negative impressions about poor folks,Arabs, Muslims, immigrants (especially of color),and, of course, young people. In each case, thestudents often know far more about the problemswith the images than we likely give them creditfor, but rarely, they note, has anyone ever

discussed these kinds of things with them orasked them to really think about the issue.

Almost as soon as Ashton had turned two(and Rachel was coming into the world), I hadbegun to think about how media images wouldimpact their consciousness around race, gender,and class, and how those dynamics interact.From Disney films to advertisements, I wonderedhow their image of themselves and others couldbe misshapen by outside influences, and howKris and I might best inoculate them against theworst aspects of those influences. Especiallygiven the way in which female body image isinfluenced by advertisers—and how whitewomen are especially given, according to theresearch, to heightened concern about weightand body type—these were the kinds of thingsthat I knew we’d need to think about by the timethey were in school.

Yet, we didn’t want to be the kind of parentswho overly policed what they would see, to thepoint of sheltering them, unrealistically. I wasn’tgoing to be the parent who plopped the “KillYour Television” sticker on his car, or who self-righteously preened about how there was no popculture in our home, or how Mickey Mouse wasevil and so there would be no Disney either. Fullyaware of the problems with pop culture, andmore than a little aware of how troubling much ofthe Disney brand has been over the years, Inonetheless would prefer that my child beconversant with the dominant culture and developa way to eventually critique it—to see its goodand bad elements—than to be kept from it, onlyto covet it more than ever. One thing that hadalways bothered me about many of mycompatriots on the left was that their ability torelate to average, everyday folks seemed

compromised by their desire to view, withcontempt, all aspects of the dominant materialculture—to look down on the cultural diversionsof working class folks, even as they claimed tobe fighting for the interests of those same people.I’ve been guilty of it too, frankly, taking morethan a few sideways glances at NASCAR, forinstance, but the truth is this: if progressives can’tfigure out a way to speak to the people I seewalking down Main Street U.S.A. in Disney’sMagic Kingdom—and that doesn’t mean tellingthem how the Disney-fication of the culturereinforces racism, classism, and patriarchy—thenall hope is lost for a better society.

EVERY NOW AND then, Disney evenmanages to provide a moment of opportunity fordeeper discussion about important issues, though

that might not have been their intent. Forinstance, of all the problematic Disney films outthere, the only one that I really didn’t want mykids to see was Pocahontas. Something aboutthe way that Hollywood (or in this case,Burbank) had managed to characterize Matoaka(Pocahontas’s real name)—as an intenselyspiritual stereotype whose ability to communewith nature allowed her to converse at length withan old lady in the form of a tree—struck me asdeeply troubling. Not to mention, Matoaka’sstory is quite a bit less romantic than the Disneyversion, involving as it does her forced abductionby Englishmen, from which abduction she wasonly able to obtain release if she agreed to marryJohn Rolfe, whose lust for her overrode concernslike her young age at the time of their first sexualencounter. Not only does Disney ignore thecoerced relationship with Rolfe, they fabricate a

love interest between she and the mercenarycaptain, John Smith, which historians agree neverexisted. When descendants of Matoaka offeredto help Disney tell a more accurate version of herstory, Roy Disney, nephew of Walt, refused.

But as much as I had hoped not to bring thefilm into our home, I ultimately capitulated whenAshton, at the age of 4, pleaded for me topurchase it while visiting Disney World in 2005. Iagreed to do it, but knew in my own mind thatwe’d have to process it together and discusssome of the elements of the film, if not the firsttime we watched it, at some definite point in thefuture. I’d be watching it, pen and pad in hand,taking notes for later conversation.

The film was dreadful. Disney’s Pocahontas isdrawn as a thin, angular, somewhat Asian-looking beauty, while her father, Chief Powhatan,is portrayed as a large, threatening Indian leader,

and her native suitor, Kocoum, as an overly war-like brat. The white characters are often drawn inless-than-flattering ways too, although in the endthe message seems to be that even we can get intouch with nature and live peacefully, if subjectedto the wisdom of Grandmother Willow—the treeto which Pocahontas introduces Smith. That inthe wake of Matoaka’s capture the Englishwould come to decimate the Powhatan peoplecalls into question such a sanguine account, but toDisney, historical details such as this can’t beallowed to intrude upon the telling of a goodprincess story.

Frankly, Ashton wasn’t really crazy about themovie. It didn’t really hold her interest, butnonetheless, I knew I’d want to speak with herabout some of the details. Fortunately for me,that task was made easier after watching a few ofthe “extras” on the DVD. After the movie ended

we watched some of the special features and onein particular stood out: it was a few minutesduring which the chief illustrator on the film wasdescribing his artwork to an auditorium filled withpeople, either at an illustrator’s convention, orperhaps a Disney function of some sort. As hestood on the stage, an overhead projectordisplayed an image of his Pocahontas, and thencontrasted it with the actual image of Matoaka,drawn during the time she was in England, afterbeing taken there by Rolfe. Needless to say, shelooked nothing like the image he had created—afact about which he proceeded to joke, notingsarcastically something to the effect that “as youcan see, we remained very true to the original.”Laughs all around. Hilarity reigns. My what a cut-up!

I saw it as my opportunity.“Hey Ashton,” I said.

“Yeah?” she replied.“Why do you think they decided to make her

look different like that?” I inquired.“What do you mean?” she responded“Well, you saw that picture right?” I continued.

“The one of the real Pocahontas? And howdifferent she looked from the way the moviemade her look? Why do you think they did that?”

She looked puzzled for a minute, like she wastrying hard to come up with a good answer. “Idunno,” she said. “Maybe they thought she wasprettier that way.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “I bet your right. In fact, itsorta seemed like he was making fun of the wayshe actually looked, huh?”

“Yeah,” Ashton responded.“Hmmm,” I noted. “So, how do you think

you’d feel if someone wanted to make a movieabout your life and decided they didn’t like your

red hair, or the color of your skin, or somethinglike that, and decided to change it?”

“I think that would hurt my feelings,” shereplied.

“Yeah, I bet it would,” I said. “So how do youthink Native Americans might feel, seeing himjoke like that about how much prettier his versionof Pocahontas is, compared to the actualPocahontas?”

“I think they might feel bad about that,” sheresponded, clearly taking in the point I washoping for her to see. “I think it would hurt theirfeelings. I don’t see why they couldn’t just makeher look the way she really looked.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” I replied. “I guesssometimes the people who make the decisionsdon’t always take everyone’s feelings veryseriously, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said, disturbed by the implications

of what she’d come to see.Lesson learned, I was glad we’d watched

Pocahontas.

DON’T MISUNDERSTAND THOUGH: mykids are no less susceptible to internalized biasesthan anyone else’s children. I’d love to tell youthat wasn’t the case—that growing up in theWise/Cason home was the perfect inoculation forsuch a thing—but if I told you that, I’d be lying.

It was early 2008, on a rainy Sundayafternoon at the beginning of the summer, when Ifully came to appreciate just how deep the rootsof racism can be planted in children, even whenyou think you’ve done everything you can toprotect them from the poison.

We were sitting at home, unable to doanything outdoors because of the weather, thekids—at that point six and four—growing bored

and restless, and looking for anything to occupytheir time. Not up for playing any games, theyrequested to watch a movie on cable, to whichwe quickly agreed. If it would keep them fromwhining about how bored they were, and couldbring us up to dinner time, we were all for it.

I queued up the On Demand cable satellitemovie thing, looking for any films that might begood for kids and families, and preferablysomething they hadn’t seen already. Within a fewseconds the trailer for Evan Almighty poppedup. The comedy, which stars Steve Carell as anewly-elected Congressman and MorganFreeman as God—the latter of whom hasapparently chosen the former to build an ark andrecreate the Biblical story of Noah—is a cuteflick, which, as it turns out, my kids and wife hadalready seen when it was still playing at the localtheatre. As such, they didn’t really want to see it

again; but because they recognized the dialogueand the actors in the trailer, it got their attention.

Rachel looked up, saw Morgan Freeman inthe role of God, in the flowing white robes, andsaid exactly what any four-year-old would say.

“Daddy, is that God?”Realizing that she knew nothing of the Screen

Actor’s Guild or casting directors at that age, Ilaughed, thinking her innocent query to be amongthe cutest things she had said in a while.

“No sweetie, that’s not God,” I explained.“That’s an actor named Morgan Freeman. Hejust plays God. Often. But he’s just an actorplaying a part.”

I really assumed that would be the end of thediscussion, but sadly, I was mistaken. By now,Ashton was curious as to what we were talkingabout, and had looked up from the book she wasreading. She too saw Morgan Freeman in the

role of God. It took her no time at all to chime in,dismissively to her sister.

“Rachel, that can’t be God,” Ashton saiddefiantly, as if to suggest that claiming otherwisewould have been the most preposterous thingever spoken into the universe.

In that moment I hoped that her doubt as toMorgan Freeman’s divinity was going to turn ona technical point—for instance, that God wouldbe far too busy to bother making a feature film,or that if he did so bother he’d surely make onecapable of getting better than a 23 percentapproval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website—but somehow I knew it wouldn’t be thatsimple, or innocent. I felt certain I knew why shehad been so sure that Freeman couldn’t be God,and though I hardly wanted to have mysuspicions confirmed, I knew I’d have to ask.

“Why not Ashton? Why can’t that be God?” I

inquired, hesitantly.In the split second before she answered I had

this fantasy, in which she replied with an answerquite different from the one I anticipated. I hopedthat perhaps she would say that Freemancouldn’t be God because God was a woman.Better still, I wished for some existentialistanswer like, “Oh Father, what is God, anyway?”A proclamation of transcendentalist skepticismwould have been a welcome relief in thatmoment. But I got nothing of this kind; rather, sheresponded as I knew she would, without anysense of irony or misgiving.

“That can’t be God because God isn’t black.God is white.”

Now it probably won’t surprise anyonereading this book to learn that in our home, thereare no racialized images of a deity; there are nopictures that would have given my child the

impression at such an age that God had any racialidentity, let alone that the said identity matchedher own. We hadn’t allowed those perniciousBible Story picture books for kids, in whichAdam and Eve are drawn in such a way as togive the reader the impression that they hadresided in the Garden of Sweden. But still, atsome point Ashton had seen those images—perhaps in the church she attends with her momand sister; perhaps in bookstores or libraries; orperhaps on the Christmas cards sent to our homeevery year with pictures of Jesus on the front thatwould give one the impression he had been bornin a manger somewhere in Bethlehem,Pennsylvania. No matter our own efforts, she hadinternalized the notion that divinity was white likeher, not black like Morgan Freeman, or for thatmatter, like several of her friends and classmates,or her kindergarten teacher that very year.

At first, I asked why she had said that, and ofcourse she offered the stand-by six-year-oldanswer, given for pretty much every question, nomatter the subject: “I dunno.”

I thought a while about how to process theevent, and a little later decided to revisit thesubject.

“So Ashton, let me ask you about that wholecolor of God thing,” I said.

“What about it?” she replied.“Well, let’s think about it for a second. So, tell

me something: What did God do, so far as thestory goes?” I inquired.

“Um, God created everything I guess,” shesaid.

“Okay,” I replied. “So, God created people?”“Yeah,” came the answer.“Okay,” I continued. “So where were the first

people?” I asked this knowing that she knew the

answer. The previous year, there had actuallybeen a bulletin board in her pre-school class thatshowed, visually, how humans had arisen inAfrica and branched out from there, so I figuredshe would remember what she’d learned.

“Um, Africa, right?” she replied, concentratinghard, wanting to get the right answers.

“Right, okay,” I said. “So, God createdpeople and the first people were in Africa. Now,what color are people in Africa?”

“Black,” she shot back, not having to thinklong about that one.

“Okay,” I replied. “So God created people,the first people were in Africa, and Africans areblack. Now, in whose image were peoplecreated?”

This one stumped her a bit. After all, she wasno Biblical scholar. Although she and her sisterare being raised Episcopalian and attend church

with their mom, she hadn’t really committed tomemory little scriptural details such as this.

“Um, I don’t know,” she said. “What do youmean?”

“Well,” I replied. “According to the story,God created people in the image of someone orsomething. In whose image do you think thatmight have been?”

“Uh, in the image of God, I guess?” sheanswered.

“Exactly,” I replied. “So, let’s think about it.God created people, the first people are inAfrica, Africans are black, and they were madein the image of God. So, final question: Whatcolor is God?”

Her eyes got wide as the implications began tosink in.

“I guess God could be black?” she exclaimed.End of lesson.

Now of course, one could say that the lessonwas meaningless, and perhaps it was. Obviouslythese kinds of matters will have to be revisitedmany times over the years, and frankly, I nomore want Ashton to believe in a racialized blackGod than a racialized white one. But simply toget her to challenge her own assumptions ofwhite divinity was sufficient for that particularmoment. We’ll deal with the rest later. Seeing ashow I’m a militant agnostic myself (I know, acontradiction in terms, but still), the odds arepretty good that she’ll end up somewhatskeptical of any supernatural being. Indeed, shealready seems to be headed in that direction(unlike Rachel, who comes across as a primecandidate for the Episcopal priesthood). Butwhat the incident and conversation suggested tome was that kids are capable of thinking thingsthrough if we believe in them enough to engage

the difficult issues, and if we do so in a way thatleads them to the conclusions we hope they’llreach, rather than just hit them over the head withthose conclusions.

Interestingly, the lesson seemed to have stuck.Several months later, during which time we hadnever revisited the matter, Ashton came up to meone morning before school and with a puzzledlook on her face asked if I really believed Godcould be black.

“I don’t know, what do you think?” I replied.“I don’t know, I guess so,” came the answer.“Very good then,” I said. “Have some cereal.”Little victories are nice.

PERHAPS THE MOST important thing I’velearned about kids when it comes to racism ishow important it is for them to learn of rolemodels from whom they can take direction. In

our home, obviously, it’s a bit easier than formost. Ashton and Rachel know what their daddoes, and what both their parents’ beliefs arewhen it comes to these matters. And because I’mvery careful not to berate them about thesesubjects, they don’t feel the need to backlashagainst my views just to get back at dad whenthey’re angry at me. It’s a lesson I learned in myown home growing up. My mom and dad nevertried to indoctrinate me into any particular way ofthinking. They just made clear what their valueswere, exhibited a consistency between what theysaid and what they did, and encouraged me toalways think critically—this last trait being onethat almost by definition tends to mitigate againstthe adoption of right-wing or consciously racistviewpoints.

I’ve met plenty of parents who worry,however, about how to teach these lessons

without scaring their children about oppression(especially children of color), or instilling guilt intheir white children once the latter become awareof the history of racial subordination and whiteprivilege. The concerns are understandable.Learning about injustice can be frightening,especially if the injustice has been directed atpeople like yourself. And learning aboutunearned advantage can cause kids to feel guiltyif the subject is not handled carefully.

A year or so ago, I was having a conversationwith a teacher whom I’d met at a workshopsession I was facilitating. She taught kindergarten,and around Martin Luther King Jr. day haddiscussed with her class who Dr. King was, whathe had done, and ultimately what had happenedto him in the end. She didn’t want to pull punchesor soft-pedal the matter, she said, and so she hadbeen brutally honest and straightforward about

the subject.A few days later, she noted, she got calls from

both white and black parents, complaining aboutthe lesson. The white parents expressed concernthat she had made their children feel bad. One ofthe white students had apparently said somethingat dinner about white people being mean becausea white person had killed Dr. King. The blackparents expressed concern that she had scaredtheir child to death and made him wonder if hiswhite classmates were going to hurt him becausehe was black, or if some other white personwould at some point in his life. Both the whiteand black parents asked the teacher to refrainfrom discussing these matters any further in theclass, and both said something about wantingtheir kids to retain their innocence around thematter of race for as long as possible.

“What should I have done differently?” was

the question she put to me.On the one hand, I told her, she had done the

right thing by broaching the subject with thestudents. Whatever “innocence” parents maybelieve their children possess around these kindsof issues often doesn’t exist—as they are alreadybeginning to think about matters of race andcolor whether they mention it to us or not—or isgoing to be stolen soon enough. The onlyquestion is whether we can burst that bubble in adeliberately controlled way, not whether it’sgoing to be popped at all. And frankly, I’d ratherteachers speak honestly about what Dr. King andthe movement were about, rather than water itdown the way so many do nowadays. Too oftenI’ve met kids who seem to think King’sfundamental message were he alive today wouldbe “don’t hit back if someone hits you,” or “don’tjoin a gang.” While there is little doubt that the

good Reverend would agree with both of thosepoints, to suggest that the fulfillment of such banalplatitudes were the purpose of his life’s workcheapens that work and the larger movement ofwhich he was a part.

But, I noted, one of the things that might helpin the future would be to teach about King andthe issue of racism and discrimination through alens of resistance and allyship, rather than a lensof oppression and victimization. Imagine, Iexplained, how different it might sound to astudent of color to hear about the oppressionmeted out to members of his or her group, butbeginning with a narrative of rebellion andresistance: in other words, discussing slaverebellion at the outset of a discussion on slavery,discussing the sit-in movement and freedom rideswell before discussing the murder of King orother civil rights martyrs. Likewise, imagine how

different it would feel to a white student in theclass if the lesson spent time on white allies whostood in solidarity with people of color andopposed racism, rather than merely mentioningthe white folks who clubbed protesters, shot civilrights leaders, or blocked schoolhouse doors.

By beginning with resistance and allyship, boththe students of color and the white students get amessage that they have choices to make. Thestudents of color do not have to be passiverecipients of other people’s mistreatment; theyare not inevitable victims to whom things aresimply done and who have no agency to exercisein the matter. And the white students are morelikely to see that they needn’t be either activeoppressors of others or passive observers,standing on the sidelines while people of colorhave to go it alone; they too have agency toexercise, and they can exercise it in an anti-

oppressive way. By focusing on resistance andallyship, both the fear and the guilt that comeswith the victimization and oppression lens can belargely avoided. So too with discussions aboutsexism, heterosexism, classism, or any other formof oppression.

I knew as I described this method to theteacher that it could work. I’d seen it in childrenas young as five, in fact. Back when Ashton hadbeen in pre-school, her teachers had asked me tocome in and discuss racism with the class.Honestly, I was petrified. The night before theevent I had been speaking at the University ofNorth Carolina, and as with all of mypresentations to “big” people, I had no hesitation,no fears, no trepidation whatsoever. With myown kids, I didn’t worry too much either,because I knew that even if I screwed up, ortried to teach a lesson that flopped, I’d have

plenty more chances to get it right. But with otherfolks’ kids—especially kids in my owndaughter’s class—I was utterly terrified. I stayedup all night, caught the early flight home, andwent to the pre-school bright and early.

As it turned out, there had been no reason toworry. Although Ashton didn’t say much—shewas so excited and proud that I had come tospeak to her class that she just sorta sat theresmiling—the other kids were amazingly engaged.I spent just a few minutes talking about why it’sso important to speak out against discriminationand racism, and then asked them, point blank,what they would do if they saw someone beingmistreated because of the color of their skin.Hands shot up in the air immediately, as thechildren all but fell over one another to get achance to answer. Their answers, though basic ofcourse (they were only five, after all), nonetheless

betrayed a seriousness of commitment. I had noidea if they would likely maintain that commitmentover time, but it was clear to me in that momentthat if the spirit of resistance is nurtured andcultivated, children can become teens whobecome adults who become and remain allies inthe struggle against injustice. Their sense of fairplay at that age and their almost instinctiveresistance to unjust treatment of anyone makesallyship and solidarity natural and normativebehaviors. But unless we are encouraging them tothink about injustice, and empowering them tospeak out and do something about it, that naturaltendency for resistance can become muted overtime, to the detriment of us all.

REDEMPTION

“Life is tragic simply because the earthturns and the sun inexorably rises andsets, and one day, for each of us, the sunwill go down for the last, last time.Perhaps the whole root of our trouble,the human trouble is that we willsacrifice all the beauty of our lives, willimprison ourselves in totems, taboos,crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples,mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, inorder to deny the fact of death, which isthe only fact we have. It seems to methat one ought to rejoice in the fact ofdeath—ought to decide, indeed, to earnone’s death by confronting with passion

the conundrum of life. One is responsibleto life: It is the small beacon in thatterrifying darkness from which we comeand to which we shall return. One mustnegotiate this passage as nobly aspossible, for the sake of those who arecoming after us.”

—JAMES BALDWIN, THE FIRE NEXT TIME, 1963 AS I WAS writing this book the first time, Istopped to read a few of the stories to Kristy,some of which she had heard me speak ofbefore, but several of which she had not. Once Ifinished reading a few of the more disturbingvignettes to her, it was apparent that she wasupset. “Sometimes it seems so big, so awful,” shelamented. “It makes me wonder if things are ever

going to really change.”Though I’m sure some might be alarmed by

such a thought—the notion that perhaps racismisn’t ever going to be finally vanquished—I mustsay that as horrible as such a truth may be, ifindeed it’s true, it doesn’t make me feel the leastbit defeated. The fact is, I would have liked to beable to tell her not to worry, to remind her thatgood people have done great things and havechanged the world before, that committedmovements of committed people can shiftmountains, and that the evidence for this kind oftransformation was all around us. But I didn’t saythat, not because it wasn’t true, but because itwasn’t the point.

Several years back, when legal scholarDerrick Bell wrote Faces at the Bottom of theWell, in which he suggested that racism may be apermanent feature of American life, never to be

fully and finally undone, I remember the uproar itcaused in many a white liberal circle, and amongwhite liberal students who were often assigned toread it in class. White liberals, and radicals forthat matter, place a huge amount of faith in theinevitability of justice being done, of right winningin the end, of the triumph of all that is good andtrue. And they take even the smallest victories—which are sometimes what we have to settle for—as evidence that in just a few more years, andwith a little more work, we’ll arrive at that placeof peace and goodwill. Bell was challenging thatfaith, at least as it applied to race, and white folksdidn’t like what they were hearing.

When you’re a member of the privilegedgroup, you don’t take kindly to someone tellingyou that you can’t do something, whether thatsomething is making a lot of money or endingracism. What do you mean racism is permanent?

What do you mean we’ll never have justice?How dare anyone imply that there might be someproblems too large for the determined will, orperhaps I should say the determined white will,since clearly the determined wills of black andbrown folks haven’t been sufficient.

But Bell’s assessment, at least for me, was aliberating tract—no cause for pessimism butrather cause for recommitment to the purposeand mission at hand. This may seemcounterintuitive, since for some, committing tofighting a battle you may never win seems futile.But fighting that battle is what people of colorhave always done and will continue to do, nomatter the outcome. Is it appropriate then for meto say that if the fight wouldn’t end in victorythere was no purpose? What would that kind ofattitude say to black and brown folks who havealways fought injustice as if ending it were

possible, but who always knew they might wellnever see change come about?

What whites have rarely had to think about—because as the dominant group we are so used tohaving our will be done, with a little effort at least—is that maybe the point is not victory, howevermuch we all wish to see justice attained andinjustice routed. Maybe our redemption comesfrom the struggle itself. Maybe it is in the effort,the striving for equality and freedom, that webecome human.

Kristy’s pessimism—which was nothing if notunderstandable, given the magnitude of thechallenge—took me back to a letter I hadreceived many years ago from Archbishop Tutu,during the divestment battle at Tulane. It wasalmost as if he were reading our minds, or at leastmine, knowing that I was doubting the relevanceof our efforts. After all, it wasn’t looking as

though we were going to be able to force theboard to capitulate to our ultimate demand, andeven if we (and every other college) did obtaindivestment, would things really change in SouthAfrica as a result?

His letter was brief, but in its brevity offered anobvious yet profound rationale for the work ofany freedom fighter: “You do not do the thingsyou do because others will necessarily join you inthe doing of them,” he explained, “nor becausethey will ultimately prove successful. You do thethings you do because the things you are doingare right.”

There’s much to be said for such simplicity, asit’s usually a lack of complication that allowspeople to feel, to remain in touch with theirhumanity—a humanity that can sometimes bedistorted by too many layers of analysis andtheory. There is redemption in struggle.

If you ask those who believe in God—anyGod, any creative force from which we comeand to whom (or to which) they think we areaccountable—whether they can prove theexistence of that God, they will likely say no.Most will tell you that such matters are matters offaith, and that they live their lives, or try to, on thebasis of that faith. Believers do this, even thoughthey could be wrong. Although I’m agnostic onmatters of God, I’ve always found that aspect offaith somewhat beautiful. And frankly, we all takesomething on faith: whether the existence of ahigher power or the possibility of justice, becausenone of us have seen either of those thingsbefore. All I am suggesting here is that we shouldlive our lives as if justice were possible too, butwhether or not it is, treat it no differently than onetreats one’s perceived obligations before God.Indeed, if there were such a being, such a force,

surely struggling to do justice would be one ofthose obligations, would it not? And surely onewouldn’t be relieved from this obligation merelybecause justice was not finally obtainable.

Let’s be honest: there is no such place called“justice,” if by that we envision a finish line, or apoint at which the battle is won and the need tocontinue the struggle is over. After all, even whenyou succeed in obtaining a measure of justice,you’re always forced to mobilize to defend thatwhich you’ve won. There is no looming vacation.But there is redemption in struggle.

Of course, that there is redemption in struggle,and that victory is only one reason for fighting,only seems to come as a surprise, or rather, as asource of discomfort to white folks. Invariably, itseems it is we in the white community whoobsess over our own efficacy and fail torecognize the value of commitment, irrespective

of outcome. People of color, on the other hand,never having been burdened with the illusion thatanything they touched would turn to gold, usuallytake a more reserved, and I would say healthierview of the world and the prospects for change.They know (as they must) that the thing beingfought for, at least if it’s worth having, will requiremore than a part-time effort, and will not likelycome in the lifetimes of those presently fightingfor it. And it is that knowledge that allows astrength and a resolve that few members of thedominant majority will ever know.

This is not to sentimentalize suffering or thestrength often born from it. In fact, this laststatement should be taken less as a commentabout the strength of persons of color than as anobservation about the weakness of those withoutit. For it is true, at least in my experience, thatwhites, having been largely convinced of our

ability, indeed entitlement, to affect the worldaround us and mold it to our liking, are verymuch like children when we discover that at leastfor some things—like fundamentally altering thesystem of privilege and domination that firstvested us with such optimism—it will take morethan good intentions, determined will, and thatold stand-by to which we euphemistically refer as“elbow grease.”

Regardless, there is something to be said forconfronting the inevitable choice one must makein this life between collaborating with or resistinginjustice, and choosing the latter. Indeed, it isamong the most important choices we will everbe asked to make as humans, and it is a burdenuniquely ours.

I have no idea when (or if) racism will beeradicated. I have no idea whether anything Isay, do, or write will make the least bit of

difference in the world. But I say it, do it, andwrite it anyway, because as uncertain as theoutcome of our resistance may be, the outcomeof our silence and inaction is anything but. Weknow exactly what will happen if we don’t do thework: nothing. And given that choice, betweencertainty and promise, in which territory one findsthe measure of our resolve and humanity, I willopt for hope. Letting go of the obsession withoutcome, even while one fervently fights forvictory, can in the end only make us moreeffective and stronger in our resistance—healthiereven. After all, if one is constantly looking for thepayoff, but the payoff is slow in coming (as ispretty much always the case), burnout is nevertoo far around the corner. But if we arecommitted to the struggle because we know thatour very humanity depends on it, that the fight forhuman liberation is among the things that give life

meaning, then burnout is far less of a threat. Wedo the work to save our lives morally andethically, if not physically.

Many years ago, the first time I spoke at theUniversity of Oregon, I gave a workshop in theBen Linder room of the student center—a roomnamed for a man who, in April 1987, inNicaragua, was murdered by contra forcesarmed and trained by my government and his,killed for the crime of helping bring running waterto rural villagers. And as I sat there, inspired by apainting of the village where Ben died, and thetribute to his work that greets visitors to thisroom, I reflected on how I’d felt as a collegefreshman upon hearing of his assassination. Iremembered why both he and the revolution ofwhich he was a part ultimately had to be crushed.They both posed, as we used to say, the threat ofa good example. That’s when I realized that Ben

Linder’s life and death sum up, as well asanything I could say, why I do what I do, andwhat I have come to believe is required of us.And what is required is that we be prepared todie for our principles if need be, but even moreso, to be unafraid to live for them.

So let us begin.

© 2008, 2011 by Tim Wise

Soft Skull PressAn Imprint of COUNTERPOINT

1919 Fifth StreetBerkeley, CA 94710

www.softskull.com

www.counterpointpress.com

Distributed by Publishers Group WestWhite like me: reflections on race from a privileged son / by

Tim Wise.p.cm.

eISBN : 978-1-593-76470-8 1. Racism—United States, 2. United States—Race relations.3. Wise Tim J. 4. Whites—United States—Social conditions.

I. Title.E185.615.W565 2005305.8’00973—dc22

2005001052

Table of ContentsTitle PageIntroductionPrefaceBORN TO BELONGINGAWAKENINGSMIDDLE PASSAGEHIGHER LEARNINGLOUISIANA GODDAM* - *(WITH

APOLOGIES TO NINA SIMONE)PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTHOME AND AWAYCHOCOLATE PAIN, VANILLA

INDIGNATIONPARENTHOODREDEMPTIONCopyright Page