The Great American Whitelash
Is Black progress a threat to Black safety?
For the past month, I've been deep in my research bag for a documentary I'm developing. One of the texts I'm reading is The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America by Lawrence T. Brown. The primary thesis of this book is that "America is splintering politically because it is fractured spatially." Brown dives into the longstanding history of the forced displacement of Black communities starting during Reconstruction, lasting up until now with redlining, urban blight, gentrification, and the over-policing of hypersegregated Black communities. The primary reason these spatial disparities (which strengthen socioeconomic disparities) have been able to persist for so many decades is because of the phenomena of whitelash. Originally coined by Van Jones in 2016, whitelash is the combination of the words white and backlash. Brown co-opts whitelash and defines it as "the racist American tradition of backlash against Black progress rooted in a zero-sum framework". Though the word whitelash is a relatively new term, the concept is not. For those of us who may have been naive enough to believe Obama's presidency was an indication that America was moving towards being a post-racial society, now is an opportune time to understand the history of whitelash to identify these patterns when they emerge.
The first American whitelash, according to Brown, began during the Reconstruction Era. Of the limited Black History education I received when I was in school, I learned the least about the Reconstruction era. During this time many Black communities were thriving economically. There were Black business and entertainment districts, schools, churches, doctors, politicians, and lawyers. Many of these communities thrived without depending on white people, which created competition and later physical threats to the lives and livelihoods of Black folks. If you too are not as familiar with the Reconstruction era, you’re not alone. According to Equal Justice Initiative, which published a report in 2015 documenting 4,440 lynchings of Black people that took place during this era, “Most Americans know very little about the Reconstruction era and its legacy. Historians have frequently overlooked this critical 12-year period that has had a profound impact on life in the United States. Our collective ignorance of what happened immediately after the Civil War has contributed to misinformed stereotypes and misguided false narratives about who is honorable and who is not and has allowed bigotry and a legacy of racial injustice to persist.”
To put it plainly, in a time when Black people were finally getting a taste of freedom after hundreds of years in physical and psychological bondage, white terrorism ensured that true equity and equality would not be theirs to have. Whether it was the lynchings documented by the incomparable Ida B. Wells, or racially motivated massacres in communities like Tulsa and Rosewood, whitelash spreads like wildfire and it reminds us that Black progress is a direct threat to Black safety.
The second whitelash would happen during the civil rights movement and would be carried out by COINTELPRO, the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program which worked with police departments to exile, kill, incarcerate, or neutralize Black activists who threatened to subvert the oppressive status quo of American politics. The second whitelash was underscored by President Nixon's "War on Drugs" which targeted Black communities through overpolicing and mass incarceration. During the period after the second whitelash and before Obama was elected, Black liberation movements, while still active, were less effective. The suppression led to (and was perhaps designed for) collective complacency with the few rights people of color were afforded during the Civil Rights movement. To many, Obama’s election was proof that we were now in a post-racial society, that was until we started to experience the third American whitelash which coincided with the start of Obama’s presidency and the forming of the Tea Party Movement. This whitelash became even more pervasive during Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign. It is no coincidence that this era has also been marked by an uptick in police brutality towards Black people.
Drawing these parallels leads me to believe that anytime Black folks take one step forward, whitelash will send us ten steps backward. But how do we hold onto these truths without succumbing to fear, defeatism, and complacency? How can we better safeguard ourselves against the inevitable pushback that will keep our necks under the feet of our oppressors? And is it even possible? If it is, then it can’t be something that fully lies on the shoulders of Black people. It is also up to those with the most privilege and power to begin unpacking these patterns and parallels and understand there is much work to be done in this regard. The fact that many liberal whites were shocked at the racism that has unearthed itself since Trump’s presidency speaks to this point. How insular is your experience that you truly believed that racism was a blip of the past when our country was founded and continues to operate through the lens of racism?
Lately, there have been conversations about how all of the pledges made for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the aftermath of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd have fallen short (see here and here). The hard truth is that the amount of financial and personal investment is a higher cost than most people in our hyper-individualistic capitalist country can bear. It’s not enough to call for more diverse representation, or to virtue signal. The hard messy work of racial equity requires people to understand the framework of their privileges and how it permeates every aspect of how they regard, commune, and show up for Black people professionally and personally.
Whitelash is not just the flagrant actions of racial terrorism, insurrections, or police brutality. Whitelash also looks like viewing DEI as a threat, stonewalling Black people out of proper recognition of their work, favoring white homogeneity for “aesthetic” reasons, and witnessing an era of increased Black representation in film and television slowly die out in favor of shows with all white casts. Whitelash lies underneath all forms of white fragility which is just as harmful as more overt forms of racism because it is normalized and therefore goes unchecked. Its main objective is suppressing Black voices and centering white feelings, even in their attempts to be inclusive. Unfortunately, the performative (re: fake) allyship that occurs every year during, MLK day, Black History Month (and now Juneteenth as well) is rampant with this kind of behavior. Weaponizing misused quotes of Black leaders to justify bigotry and willful ignorance is one example of this. In general, the “celebration” of Black culture without making strides that include investment and reeducation feels like another way that the ruling class attempts to keep us complacent while absolving themselves of accountability.
I don’t speak for all of Black Americans but personally, I would like a lot of ya’ll to stop playing in our faces. Do the work, the hard work, work that requires you to get busy in real life and not just in the form of social media reshares and empty words of reverence for the Black community. Ask yourself in what ways are you proactively working towards lightening the load of the people who provide your privileges to you? Who are you advocating for at work? What uncomfortable conversations are you having with your family and friends? Which Black voices are you amplifying? How often do you consider the biases that influence how you perceive the behavior, presentation, and emotional responses of Black children, men, women, and people? How often do you consider how differently your response to a Black person you’re in disagreement with would’ve been if you were talking to a white male instead? How many times have you carelessly co-opted AAVE as a way to appear more fun and interesting without regarding the cultural significance of the language you’re using? Do you consider the realities of racial-based trauma before chatting it up with your Black co-workers about how awful (re: guilty) you feel about the latest police shooting as if it’s a normal water cooler topic? Have you openly advocated for reparations, if not, have you examined what privileges and blindspots have impeded you from doing so? Do you know what epigenetics are, have you you thought about how they might impact the mental health of not only Black people but also you, a person who likely has inherited trauma from people who have committed heinous acts towards people of color?
The work required is uncomfortable and deeply spiritual, even so, what is required is only a modicum of what Black people have endured for centuries. I understand that this level of commitment to unpacking is a rarity for anyone regardless of race or privilege. It requires a level of self-awareness that is out of reach for a lot of people whose ability to be introspective is diminished by an attention economy that is shaping their minds to be less agile, present, and emotionally regulated. But these barriers to evolving our understanding of the space we occupy in the world and what we owe to one another are exactly what makes this work critical, especially with everything happening in the world right now.
My hope for this Black History Month is that we can imagine a future where Black progress is indestructible and incites inspiration more than resentment. I dream of a future where it’s no longer the norm for people to scratch the surface and tell us to be satisfied with the progress. I pray we can all muster the strength to resist these played-out patterns of regression before they fulfill their goal of tarnishing our hearts and minds because if we continue to let this slide, none of us will survive with our integrity intact.
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With love,
LaChelle