Book Overview: Understanding & Dismantling Racism: The Twenty First Century Challenge to White America, by Joseph Barndt

I wrote this last year for my clergy study group. I find it helpful in understanding systemic racism.    

            Understanding & Dismantling Racism: The Twenty First Century Challenge to White America, by Joseph Barndt is the book I have chosen.  I have offered an overview of the book. This is followed by some of my own (brief) conclusions. Please note that I have not rigorously followed the rules for citation, etc. The bulk of this my attempt to summarize the book. In some places I use quotes from the book, and some are slightly reworded excerpts. One final note of introduction: I am white. And since our study group is made up of people from our majority culture, I am writing from the assumption that the readers of this paper are coming from the perspective of being white.  The author writes with primary address to white people.

Defining Racism:

Racism is race prejudice plus the misuse of power by systems and institutions. Racism is more than race prejudice and more than individual attitudes and action. It is the collective actions of the dominant group. Racial prejudice becomes racism when one group's racial prejudices are reinforced by the systems and institutions of a society, giving power and privilege to the racial group in power and limiting the power and privilege of the racial groups that are not in power.

               Racism is not an individual, relational or attitudinal issue; it is a systemic, institutional issue. People of color are not hurt by white individuals so much as they are hurt by white institutions.

               Systemic racism cannot be measured accurately in terms of how it hurts people of color. The correct measurement is how it helps, benefits and empowers white society. The purpose and result of racism is the creation and preservation of power and privilege for the white society. Hurting people of color is in truth a consequence, not an end goal (p. 83)

               The misuse of power by systems and institutions is the goal of racism. Systems and institutions function to produce, manage, and distribute the resources of a society. Power functions primarily in two ways- through those who control the institution and those who have access to the institution. Racism exists in a society when one racial group acquires the power to control an institution in such a way that they have more access to benefits and privileges, while other groups have less access. (p. 84)

               Three ways in which systemic and institutional power is misused by racism are:

Power: Racism’s destructive power over people of color

Power: Racism’s beneficial power for white people

Power:  Racism’s ultimate power to control and destroy everyone.

PowerRacism’s destruction power over people of color: (pp. 47-48)

·        Economic gap: an enormous economic and poverty gap has formed a permanent underclass in the US, which is the world’s richest society. The odds of economic and social success are stacked against children born into communities weakened by poverty, broken families, substance abuse, violence, unemployment, and sub standard schools.

·        Education gap: the key to increasing income and wealth over a lifetime is higher education. Rates have improved across the board since 1960 but there is still a significant gap.

·        Housing gap: home ownership gap. In 2003 72.1% of whites owned homes, 48.1% of African Americans, and 46.7% of Hispanic/Latinos.

·        Social Service Gap: Between 1985-2005 there was an average 40% decrease in funding for low income housing, low income unemployment services, child care, health care for migrants, and maternal and child health. Military spending went up 37% in the same time period. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that our society’s response systems are much more effective for white people than for people of color.

·        Criminal Justice Gap: The system is weighted against people of color; a disproportionate number go to prison.

Power: Racism’s beneficial power for white people

To white readers: we are not only trying to solve the wrong problem; we are also studying the wrong people. We need to study us. We need to study white power and privilege. To study people of color is study the results, not the problem. Thus the real problem is Power, the structures of our society that are designed to create and preserve power and privilege for the white society.

If we think of institutions using the image of a body, the feet are used to kick communities of color, hurting, controlling, dominating, disempowering, and destroying people of color. This is Power1. The rest of the body of the institution- hands, arms, head, and heart- serve white people. This produces white power and privilege, Power.

Color blindness may have the intention of correcting inequality, but it has the effect of covering it up and making the person of color invisible so that we are unable to see how being a person of color is detrimental. Color blindness is also a way of not seeing our whiteness, our privilege and power.

White power is collective power; white privilege is individually experienced. White power is rooted in our history as a nation and the belief that only white people were human. All of our institutions were built to serve humans (whites). The civil rights movements (the second revolution) brought fundamental changes, but it was a revolution of intentions. White power lives on. The halls of power are still populated by mostly white people. The true revolution has yet to take place- 90% of our history has been dedicated to white power while 10% to the intention to change. We are only now discovering how difficult a challenge this presents.

White power produce white privilege: benefits that accrue only to white people. It is inaccurate for a white person to claim we have what we have because we have worked hard. The truth is we many benefits because of the structure of white power. A definition of privilege: when a right that theoretically should be extended to everyone is still reserved for less than everyone, then a right has become a privilege.

Examples of privilege include the majority of white people earn more than the majority of people color earn, better education, homes, health care, better treatment by criminal justice system, better representation in elected officials. Day to day privileges of smaller scale include easier banking and loan applications, the ability to shop without suspicion, and may have our ideas more readily listened to accepted. White people are featured positively in history books and in the media, and in art and theology whiteness is often assumed and well represented. There are many more examples of privilege, but this is a summary.

Steps in responding include becoming more aware of our privileges (exercises on p.99-106), acknowledging this elephant in the room within our relationships, and exchanging our guilt and shame for anger at racism. We cannot simply walk away from our privilege, but we can use our collective power to change institutions.

Power:  Racism’s ultimate power to control and destroy everyone.

This chapter begins with a quote by C. Eric Lincoln: the same fetters that bind the captive bind the captor. “We who are white are prisoners of our own racism. We hold the power of racism in our hands, but we are unable to let it go. Not only do we receive power and privilege from racism, but in doing so, racism gains power and control over us. All of the good intentions in the world of not being racist do not change the reality of white power and privilege. We have this monkey on our backs, and each of us is made- willingly or unwillingly- into an instrument of daily and ongoing construct of white racism.” (p.111)

At the core of racism is not simply the way it promotes inequality by taking from some and giving to others, but rather its capacity to crush the humanity of everyone it touches, to tear apart the fabric of society. If a living body is cut in half, it dies. White racism has cut the body of human society in half, and now both parts are bleeding to death. This is Power- racism in its most deadly form.

The author tells a personal story of his own experience of being active in the civil rights movement and present when the ‘black power’ movement was born from within it. He and many other white colleagues were told to ‘go home and free your own people.’ At the time he was hurt and angry at being lumped together with other white racists. Looking back, he realized the black power movement had shoved him in the right direction. Having heard Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say “so long as one person is not free, none of us are free” and initially taken it to mean he should work for the freedom of people of color. “Going home to free my people’ meant facing the truth that my people (whites) are not free.  A people whose privilege, status and privilege are built upon the foundation of the oppression of others and on a belief of their own superiority are a sick people. A society that takes away the freedom of others is not free. The problem is not that white people are not free because people of color are not free; people of color are not free because white people are not free.

This is a challenging concept: that white people are not free. Racism is a prison not only for people of color, but also for white people. This is the premise of the author’s book: individually and corporately, white Americans- all of us- are enslaved in racism and need to be set free.

A racist is any white person who, willingly or unwillingly, participates in and benefits from white power and privilege (Power). Whether you like it or not, you were made into a racist. It should make you angry. The author hopes that it does. (p.115)

Whites are imprisoned by the truth that we have no power to stop being the beneficiary of racism. White people are imprisoned by the fact that we have no power not to be a racist. The prison people of color experience is that they are made into casualties of racism. Understanding racism from this perspective provides a much different framework than guilt and shame. The questions shift from “should I or shouldn’t I feel guilty?” to “how were we misled into becoming someone we don’t want to be?” A far more useful response than guilt is anger at our unwilling captivity, and determination to join the struggle to free our own people, along with everyone else. (p.116)

People of color live in a prison that most Americans are aware of. The prison in which whites live is deceptively warm and comfortable. The walls are comprised of residential, cultural, relational, and institutional boundaries which separate white America from the rest of America. These invisible bars evoke frustration, loneliness, fear and anxiety. Tragically, as inmates of our white prison, we have a desperate need to pretend the prison does not exist.

How is racism able to imprison both whites and people of color? Through a process of systemic socialization, racism perpetuates itself by ensuring that each one of us conforms to our racial identities. The foundation of identity becomes internalized by the age of four. Consciously and unconsciously we absorb the fears, hatreds, prejudices, and unhealthy beliefs of those around us. This happens to individuals and to groups of people in society.  We are taught there are upper and lower classes, superior and inferior genders, greater and lesser nations, true and false religions, beautiful and ugly people. Even if we don’t consciously believe these messages, we learn to fit into a society that does.

To illustrate: In 1968, Iowa school teacher Jane Elliott began an annual experiment with her third grade all white students. She separated her blue eyed and brown eyed students into separate groups. The first day, she taught the students blue eyed children are better. Within the day, the blue eyed children adopted superior and oppressive behavior and the brown eyed children became docile and submissive to their position, and their learning ability plummeted. The next day, she reversed the instruction saying brown eyed children are superior and their behavior patterns flipped. She has run this experiment hundreds of times and the results are the same every time.

Racism is perpetuated by our institutions and culture, which were constructed to produce white power and privilege. Transformation of these systems is what is necessary to dismantle racism. This is different from transactional change that makes modifications to the system, but leaves the overall goals and outcomes in place.

Dismantling Racism

“The walls of racism must be dismantled. Facing up to these realities offers new possibilities, but refusing to face them threatens yet greater dangers. The results of centuries of national and worldwide conquest and racial domination, of military buildups and violent aggression, of over consumption and environmental destruction may be reaching the point of no return. The moment of self-destruction seems to be drawing ever more near, nationally and globally. A small and predominantly white minority of the global population derives its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of color. For the sake of the world and ourselves we dare not allow it to continue.” (p.220)

Dismantling racism means building something new- new structures of power and justice. Building communities of anti-racist resistance and dismantling institutional racism are the steps the author puts forward as the way forward. Here the author shifts audience. Previous chapters were addressing primarily white people. This chapter also addresses people of color.

The journey to freedom begins while still in chains. Freedom has a dualistic nature that has been attested to through the ages; it may be held onto even while behind prison walls. St. Paul wrote about freedom while in a jail cell. Mahatma Gandhi and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. demonstrated that being in prison can be a means of promoting freedom. Nelson Mandela emerged from twenty one years in prison with a strengthened identity as a free person. Enslaved Africans in this country never lost sight of freedom; this informed many spirituals they composed. Slave masters could “kill the body, not the soul.” It is possible to be simultaneously imprisoned and free. This requires community.

Antiracism describes the work of dismantling racism and antiracist describes a person or people who are committed to the task of bringing racism to an end. For white people, we can admit that we are racist by virtue of being born and raised in a racist society but this is not the sum of our identity. We can also be antiracists, committed to the dismantling of racism.

An antiracist community of resistance can form in a range of settings- in a school, church, business, neighborhood, city, social service agency, governmental agency, etc for mutual support, with a goal of growing into the identity of antiracist and becoming a group that then takes action together. Antiracist communities of resistance are multiracial and multicultural. Building these support groups has been practiced for centuries by people of color, but will likely be new for white people.

Crossroads Ministry and People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond are two organizations that have established hundreds of these communities throughout the U.S.

To develop such a community requires hard work. The steps are

1.      Developing a common analysis of racism

2.      Undoing internalized socialization by developing cross-racial relationships that lead to deprogramming and new self understanding

3.      Learning to be accountable by building new relationships of power and accountability with white people learning to follow the leadership of people of color

4.      Maintaining spiritual roots

5.      Learning to organize

To plan a jailbreak and dismantle the walls of racism is work in community to destroy the imprisoning and dehumanizing power of systemic and institutional racism. In order for change to happen, an institution must develop a long range plan of implementation.

This process begins by developing an institutional sense of antiracist identity, then making a commitment to become an antiracist institution committed to antiracist transformation. This will happen only when an institution realizes this is not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but a necessary step that serves the self-interest of the institution itself. Often, institutions will try making changes that are superficial within the personnel, programs and services, and community constituency to address racism. Real change must happen where the power resides in an institution: in its organizational structure of its mission, purpose, and identity. (p.233). Attached is a chart outlining what this can look like in an institution.

“Don’t mourn, organize. Yearning, praying, studying and talking about issues of injustice are all important, but unless these things are done in the context of intentional collective organizing for action that actually make change happen, they can be a waste of time.”

To organize:

1.      There must be a crisis, creating opportunity to organize

2.      There must be a common analysis

3.       This is an inside job: identify the inside leaders and stake holders who can make change

4.      Establish trained organizing teams to guide the change who

a.      Analyze systemic racism

b.      Research and analyze based on context

c.      Educate, provide tools and strategies

d.      Organize and implement change

5.      Recognize this is a step by step long term change

a.      Institute programs of antiracism training to create common analysis of systemic racism

b.      A consciousness of white power and privilege emerges in the institution

c.      Cross racial relationships deepen and white people begin to develop accountability to communities of color

d.      Analyze all levels of institution through auditing and evaluation

e.      Critical mass leadership develops antiracist identity and vision for antiracist institution

6.      Structural transformation

a.      Redesigning, restructuring and institutionalizing antiracism identity

b.      The restructuring ensures full participation of communities of color in decision making and other forms of power sharing at all levels

c.      Ensure inclusion of worldviews, values, and lifestyle of communities of color

d.      Establish authentic and mutually accountable antiracist relationships at all levels

e.      Similar changes toward other oppressed groups (women, LGBTQ, immigrants, etc)

f.       There is within the community a sense of restored relationships

7.      Changes must then begin in affiliated institutions so the change can spread.

Conclusion

Now that I have summarized the book, I offer a few thoughts. I appreciate the definition of racism presented by this author. I especially appreciate his emphasis that guilt is useless and anger at the current state of our institutions is a more helpful response. Just as I find original sin freeing in the knowledge that I am sin sick by virtue of being human, I find this definition freeing in that I am born and raised racist and rather than deny this truth, it is helpful to acknowledge the sin and then work toward repentance. I also appreciate the focus upon racism as being primarily systemic, and not about the state of someone’s heart. I did not find his argument about the harm racism causes white people as persuasive as I would like for the argument to be, because at a visceral level it make sense to me. Hopefully, additional study, reflection, and dialogue will lead me to a deeper understanding of this point.

The chart from the book is also helpful.
Use the second image to read the bottom of the longer columns... I couldn't get it all in one image.