We need to talk about whiteness -- and then we need to dismantle it

[marmar]

We need to talk about whiteness — and then we need to dismantle it
An encounter with the police when I was 16 played out in my favor because of my race. Here's why it stuck with me

By BAYNARD WOODS
PUBLISHED JUNE 26, 2022 12:00PM


Excerpted from "Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness" by Baynard Woods to be published by Legacy Lit on June 28, 2022


I was 16 years old, I was white, and I was drunk in the back of a police car. The radio squawked. But I was silent.

I had spent the rainy day with a couple buddies drinking beer and that afternoon, when the car in front of me stopped at a yellow light, my car didn't, and I crashed into it.

The driver of that car was an elderly Black man. He didn't seem to be hurt, but my old Volkswagen bug was wrapped around his bumper, and the sheriff's deputy knew I had been drinking. I was in big trouble.

Then, the driver's window of the sheriff's car darkened with the shadow of someone standing there, rapping against the glass. It was my grandfather, who asked for a moment alone with the deputy, whom he knew. A few minutes later, the deputy said he would write up the accident as driving too fast for conditions.

My grandfather was not unique in possessing the power he had as a wealthy, white man in Greenville, South Carolina. We called it the Good Ole Boy System, but it was, in fact, a web of white men looking out for each other. Nor was that system unique to Greenville. Though my family had nowhere near as much money or power as the Murdough family in Beaufort County, SC, the viral unraveling of the impunity surrounding that family's viral saga makes it clear how smoothly the system functioned — up to a certain point — in other times and places.

In that moment, I didn't think of myself as a racist. I wasn't actively trying to harm the Black driver. I held no personal animus against him and yet I was participating in white supremacy. All it required was my silence and my feigned ignorance and I was happy to oblige. I didn't like talking about my whiteness but I was happy to partake of its privileges. But that moment stuck with me, because I couldn't help but realize that race played a significant role in the way an encounter played out. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/26/we-need-to-talk-about-whiteness-and-then-we-need-to-dismantle-it/