What I Want White People To Know and Do

Hello Everyone,

I’m Lauren Nile.  I’m African American, and I’m happy to take advantage of the opportunity to share with my European sisters and brothers, some of my thoughts and feelings regarding two specific questions that I have been asked to address about racism in the United States today, what I want European Americans to know and to do.

First, what I want you to know about race.  I want you to know the following:

Know that our human species was born in Africa……..

That all human beings are equally human.  Equally.  No matter what we look like. There is no superior race.  There are no inferior races.  We are biologically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, one human family. Period.  Full stop.  Know that all human beings share 98% of our DNA with our closest non-human relatives, the chimpanzees, and that no human beings alive today share anymore DNA with them than that.  Know that we are one human species, and that that’s why we can all procreate together (including people who look as different as Pygmies and Swedes) and why we’re all in this worldwide pandemic together.

Know that as a species, we have so many different looks because when between 90,000 and 180,000 years ago, the first modern-day African human beings began walking out of Africa on then-existing land bridges, they eventually found their way to every continent on Earth except Antarctica, and over a period of 20,000 years, slowly and gradually adapted to their new environments, their new climates.  So, humanity’s different races represent only a physical adaptation to climate, not as I believe many people unconsciously believe, an evolution “up from” Africans to Europeans, who, according to that theory, are the apex of the human species.  I want you to know that once we achieved human form, the “races” of humanity resulted from an adaptation (to climatic differences), not from evolution.  Further, I want you to know that if you took every African alive today and put them in Europe, and if you took every European alive today and put them in Africa, in only 20,000 years, a drop in the bucket, evolutionarily speaking, they will have totally exchanged physical appearances.  All of the African people would look European, and all of the European people would look African.  But…..their insides – their hearts and their minds, would still be the exact same.

I want you to know that you are thus literally our children.

I want you to know that when in the past, we have had equal opportunity, we have often thrived.  We have excelled, in education, in business, and in other arenas, sometimes, outperforming you.

I want you to know that the racial reality of Americans of Color and European Americans in the United States is vastly different.  You don’t have to think about being white.  Subconsciously, for many white Americans, being white is the “human default”.  In other words, being a white person is synonymous with just being a person.  BUT…….not so for people of color.  Being a black person isn’t just being a person, it’s being a black person.  Being a brown person, isn’t synonymous with just being a person.  It’s being a brown person. Being an Asian person…….Being an Indigenous, or Native American person……Being a person of color, of any color, is not synonymous with just being a person.  That is one of the roots of racism.  Understanding why that is, is one of the seminal tasks of those who wish to seriously work on eliminating racism from the human species.

So now, what I want you to do? 

In terms of institutional racism, actively work on dismantling it.  Whether you work in the field of education, or social work, or law, or medicine, in a non-profit, in government, or in corporate America,  wherever you work; and furthermore, wherever you live, shop, recreate, worship…..in all areas of life, notice who isn’t present, ask about equality of  access to whatever  the arena –  employment, housing, education, whatever, and take specific steps to eradicate inequality of opportunity in that regard.  Be not only non-racist.  That’s a start, but it isn’t nearly enough.  Be anti-racist in your life – all aspects of it.

In terms of personal racism, I have a list of seven things that I would like you to do:

1. Stop engaging in aggressions, or aggressive behavior of all kinds directed at us. Whether they be microaggressions, macroaggressions, whether the source be unconscious bias, conscious bias…….Just Stop it!  Stop all of it. Stop assuming that we’re criminals.

• Stop following us in public places, when we’re cycling, or just taking a walk. Stop following us when we shop.
• When you see another white person engaging in that behavior, interrupt it. When you see something, say something.
• Stop engaging in the denial/defensiveness responses when we tell you that these things happen to us on a regular basis – that we are followed around in stores, all the time, that we are profiled and followed in our own neighborhoods, that when we shake a white person’s hand, we sometimes see them swipe their hand down the side of their pants, that in restaurants, and other public places, white people often stare at us. Don’t respond by saying, “Well that happens to everybody”, or “Well what were you wearing?” or “Well, the same thing would happen to me if I were I were in a black neighborhood”, or “That waiter was probably just having a bad day.”  Don’t do that.  It is horrible to have the experience, and then have you deny it. Just listen and believe that what we are telling you is true.
• Stop calling the police on us for asking you to put your dog on a leash, or entering the apartment building in which we live, or studying, or barbecuing in the park, or sleeping in a car, or sleeping at in our own bed, at home! Stop calling the police on us for just being black!  Stop it!
• And for God’s sake, stop killing us!………..

1. Stop trying to connect with us on an individual basis as a black person. When you meet us, don’t tell us about all the black people you know, or about the Temptations concert you went to last month, or that you had dinner at a soul food restaurant last night, or about the only black kid in your high school, or about the fact that you have a half-black grandson.  It is exhausting to be objectified, i.e., to be dehumanized in that way.  Just connect to us as a person first.  See our humanity first.  If you’re in a beautiful setting, for example, talk about the beauty of the landscape.  Just do not mention all of your “black stuff”.  It’s absolutely exasperating.
2. Stop making assumptions about our intelligence, about our likes and dislikes, about our tastes, our interests, our childhood, or anything else, based upon our race. In other words….know that we are just as diverse in our taste of music, and food, and recreation, and politics, and religious beliefs, and in every other facet of life, as every other human “race”.  I want you to know that we are not all the same.
3. Educate yourselves about the facts that:

Most of us learn about the greatness of the ancient Asian cultures in school.  Learn the history of our ancient civilizations in Africa, the Americas, and India as well, and the significant contributions that they made to human civilization, before the ascendance of Europe.  Learn about the contributions that African Americans and other Americans of color have made to American society as well.

Human intelligence spans the same bandwidth in all races.  In order for there to truly be differences in intelligence based upon race, the most intelligent race would have to have a larger brain than other races.  Understand that there is no difference in brain size among the people of humanity’s different races.

1. Become self-aware. Work on your unconscious bias…..just work on it.  Do so by:

• Taking the online Harvard Implicit Association Test, and taking the “Waking Up White” course or any other course designed to de-couple, or uncouple from a person’s race, your unconscious associations regarding their intelligence, criminality, morals, and all other character traits. And if that course is too advanced for you, start with a basic Diversity 101 course, and then take the more advanced Waking Up White course.

1. Educate Other White People

Advocate to your family and friends, that they take the Harvard IAT Test followed by a basic Diversity 101 course, and then the Waking Up White course or some other course designed to break up their unconscious bias, and talk to them about the critical importance that they do so.  And finally…….

1. Continue to be activists. Continue to support us in our demonstrations; when we testify before legislative bodies; when we call for a boycott of businesses, and in other forms of activism…making phone calls, stuffing envelopes…..whatever you are asked to do to be supportive.

SHOW UP!  Show up for justice.  Show up for your fellow human beings.  Show up for yourselves, for your own sense of personal dignity, responsibility and just your own goodness. And show up for our country, because I just don’t know how much longer we can continue, as a nation, with our current level of racial inequality.  I just don’t know.  You asked what I want you to know; what you can do.  Those are my answers.  Those are the things I want you to know.  Those are the things I want you to do, that I hope and pray that you do them.

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