Calling All White People, Part 38: Ripping off the masks

Calling All White People, Part 38

(A periodic attempt to mobilize white people for something other than supporting just other melanin-deficient folks and maintaining a status quo of a nation geared toward whiteness as the baseline and the norm)

By An Average White Guy

TODAY’S EPISODE: In this season of wearing costumes, let’s start aiming to be real  

[To find other installments of “Calling All White People,” click here]

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Now, some of you maybe are planning to put on masks today or tonight—maybe you already have for some pre-Halloween costume parties or whatnot. Maybe you’re not dressing up but you’ll be helping your kids fit their masks to their faces. Maybe costumes still aren’t picked out yet and you still need to get a mask (and more) in a last-minute frenzy at the local Halloween store.

Maybe it’s also time—as we do that thing where we take on roles for a few hours to celebrate—maybe it’s time to dedicate yourself to playing fewer roles and being real.

We are in what for many people is an unprecedented (for them personally at least) period of overt racism promoted from on high (the White House and elsewhere) and unfettered cruelty (abandoning the protection of refugees, locking kids in cages and taking them away from their parents and so much more). Many of us weren’t alive for things like the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II. Many of us weren’t alive or were tiny children during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. Even for those people who hate racism and were alive for such things, seeing them return now with literal Nazis marching with torches and police protection and anti-fascists being criticized for punching Nazis is jarring.

Welcome to the horror show. If you didn’t get it before, get it now: The United States was literally built on racism, with slavery a key part of the economy and many founding fathers defending slavery as part of the natural order. The dehumanization of Black and Indigenous people as savages or subhumans has been part and parcel of the American makeup and all its institutions were created with that in mind somewhere, somehow. The educational system has relentlessly hidden this part of history and the media has often been reluctant to highlight it. And so with all that in place, it’s easy for people to be racist, overtly or casually. It’s easy not to challenge things and to accept, on some level, the notion that people who aren’t white deserve less or pose a threat to you and your white kin and peers.

You personally may not feel that way. You might dream of a country were race isn’t a deciding factor in one’s humanity and worth. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t wearing a mask now—that perhaps you’ve been wearing one all along.

Maybe you aren’t racist. Or at least you’re mostly not racist. And that’s not bad. It’s certainly better than being racist. More people like that in this country would be a better thing. It would be progress. But it doesn’t change things when a good chunk of the country is pretty comfortable with racism.

If your kid really, really wants to be an “Indian” for Halloween or dress as Disney’s Pocahontas, will you say “no” and explain why? If they want to dress as a favorite Black celebrity but they aren’t Black and think they should paint their face brown or use literally black blackface, will you put a stop to it? If your kids are grown and in college putting on blackface or whatnot, will you check them? If you have friends dressed as “Mexicans” with sombreros and bushy fake mustaches, will you challenge them on it?

When Halloween has passed and Thanksgiving and Christmas family dinners occur, will you refute your relatives when they spout racist feelings or theories? Will you take the chance to educate and to deflate ignorance, or will you keep on that mask of politeness?

In day-to-day life, will you keep wearing that mask and being as “not-racist” as you personally can while also letting racism grow around you? Will you keep that mask on so that you don’t lose out on your own opportunities because giving up white privilege is too scary and you just want to continue to quietly be as not-racist as you can?

Movements and change don’t happen in silence. They don’t happen when people are quiet. If what the world sees is a mask that says you are OK with the way the world is, then the world will keep spinning on in a horrible direction.

Or maybe it isn’t a mask.

Maybe it’s your real face. Maybe you don’t care enough. Maybe trying to be not-racist is more important to you than actually being an anti-racist.

It’s never too late though. If you’re wearing a mask but you know you can do more, you can take it off now. If the apathy isn’t a mask but your true self, you can turn that around—not put on a mask of anti-racism but get a social and philosophical face-lift.

The face of America is racism; the equality for all idea was always a mask. So, while we are ripping away our masks of quiet civility, let’s rip that one off as well.


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