{"id":3689,"date":"2020-08-27T18:40:52","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T18:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amybanksmd.com\/?p=3689"},"modified":"2021-03-09T20:51:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T20:51:27","slug":"how-can-white-folks-join-the-fight-to-end-systemic-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amybanksmd.com\/2020\/08\/27\/how-can-white-folks-join-the-fight-to-end-systemic-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can White Folks Join the Fight to End Systemic Racism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Racism lives in our minds and bodies\u2014to end it, we must first find and feel it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Like so many in our country,\u00a0I am sick\u2014not from the\u00a0coronavirus, but by the ways systemic\u00a0racism\u00a0continues to shackle and kill people of color in our country\u00a0and\u00a0by the ways in which too many white Americans continue to deny it,\u00a0look the other way and\/or\u00a0fail to see how there lives benefit from it.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., systemic racism is one of the primary default programs all citizens use to filter day-to-day experiences. The random fact of being born white comes with unearned power and an unseen advantage over people of color. I have learned from antiracist friends and colleagues that racism is so deeply embedded in our societal structures and subconscious minds that if you live your life without examining your biases and the biases of people who were instrumental in shaping your beliefs, you will inevitably replay the learned racism consciously or unconsciously.<\/p>\n

For many white people, it is too easy to believe that you care deeply about social justice but are too busy with work, taking care of kids, or\u00a0paying the bills to join\u00a0an all-out war on racism. It\u2019s been too easy to only think about Black lives mattering immediately following the killing of another Black person by the police. The mass of diverse\u00a0protesters\u00a0across our country are screaming in one voice that inaction is no longer tolerable. It is time for white people to take responsibility for changing the\u00a0culture of racism by changing themselves and the unequal social structures they have created. Silence is not an option.<\/p>\n

In more intimate groups of well-meaning white people, I have heard\u00a0many share\u00a0how they feel\u00a0stuck,\u00a0frozen by\u00a0guilt\u00a0or fearful of doing or saying the wrong thing. They want to jump in but don’t know how or where to start.\u00a0Taking responsibility must begin\u00a0with an increased awareness of\u00a0one\u2019s own biases\u2014how they were created and how they benefit all white people.\u00a0Only then can any of us\u00a0honestly own the role we\u00a0are playing in perpetuating the status quo.<\/p>\n

Racism lives in our bodies and therefore we cannot simply think our way of it.\u00a0We can not escape into our heads and create a new community ideal without first feeling\u00a0the impact of racism. We must feel\u00a0the pain that people of color have endured\u00a0and to use that pain to fuel action for change.<\/p>\n

Examining my own whiteness and unearned privilege takes me back to my roots in Maine, which remains the whitest state in the nation (2020). Here I can begin to understand how seamlessly my own racist education started and how deeply it lives in my cells. This is not an exercise in self-flagellation, but rather an attempt to see where it stills lives in me. I understand that it is impossible not to be racist when you grow up in an environment with toxic levels of bias, judgment and misinformation about people of color. I can not become an anti-racist without owning and identifying where racism lives within me and in my communities.<\/p>\n

To say that race relations were not on my radar growing up would be an understatement. In fact, in high school I was just coming out to myself as a lesbian and I was preoccupied with the injustices in the LGBTQ community in the later ’70s. In Maine, there was plenty of homophobia to worry about. However, for my family, that changed in the spring of 1979 when my father traveled on business to New Orleans. On his first day in NOLA, after eating dinner in the French Quarter, he and a colleague walked back to the Hyatt Regency. At the entry to the hotel, they were held up by two young men, and my father was shot and killed.<\/p>\n

Within hours, my family was told that \u201ctwo Black men\u201d had tried to rob my father and his colleague. This was my first substantive exposure to someone from the Black community. My family had been shattered by the murder and na\u00efvely believed that the legal system in New Orleans would help us seek justice for the death of my father. We had no idea that what we were told was filtered through the New Orleans legal system well known for its racist attitudes. When the photos of the suspects, Isaac Knapper and Leroy Williams, popped up in our local newspaper, I remember looking at them closely and wondering what in their lives would have caused them to rob and kill. It never occurred to me that the prosecution would withhold exculpatory evidence at the trial and that one of the young men, Isaac Knapper, would be wrongly convicted for murder and sent to prison for the rest of his life. My family did not question the arrest and verdict for many reasons, but the biggest was that my family was solidly part of the white, dominant culture. One does not have to be an avowed white supremacist to be racist\u2014you simply have to be brainwashed 24\/7 by a culture that defines health and acceptability as the birthright of all white people and associates people of color with violence.<\/p>\n

When I found out in 2005\u00a0that the alleged killer of my father, Isaac Knapper, had been exonerated in the early 1990s, I was shocked and sickened. By then I had become a psychiatrist with a deep interest in issues of social justice and was well aware of the gross inequities\u00a0that existed in America between people of color\u00a0and white people\u2014in health care, life expectancy, educational opportunity, housing, wealth \u2026\u00a0the list goes on and on. However, until I learned of Isaac’s exoneration I had no way of knowing how\u00a0entwined my own story was in America\u2019s racism. The\u00a0traumatic\u00a0memory\u00a0of my father\u2019s murder was now exponentially more painful as it now involved the wrongful conviction of a 16-year-old boy. The anguish\u00a0was now compounded by images of Isaac as a young man in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola\u00a0where he was sent to live out the rest of his life with no chance of parole.<\/p>\n

By 2015, I was both curious and furious. Eric Garner, Freddie Grey,\u00a0Michael Brown\u2014the killings of Black men by police just kept happening. I decided to take personal action to more fully understand the horrendous racist event that my family had unwittingly been involved in. With much\u00a0fear, I reached out to\u00a0Isaac Knapper (who had been released after 13 years and was living in NOLA) and asked to meet. In December\u00a0of that year my sister, Nancy, and I met with Isaac and his wife in New Orleans. The meeting and our\u00a0friendship\u00a0have transformed my life.\u00a0What surprised me the most was how easy it was to be together\u2014how we didn\u2019t stop talking and sharing the entire weekend we spent together. What disturbed me to my core was hearing Isaac\u2019s personal experience of police brutality. How much worse his experience had been then I could even imagine.\u00a0He shared\u00a0his violent arrest at 5:45 a.m. when he was awoken with guns pointing at his head, the\u00a0brutal interrogation where police beat him to within an inch of his life in an attempt to force a confession (it failed), and the utter disregard for his humanity at every turn of the legal proceedings. Yet, despite all he had been through (and continues to go through as a Black man in this society),\u00a0he also listened to our story and our pain with deep compassion and caring.<\/p>\n

One lesson I have learned from Isaac and his family is that the process of healing racism\u00a0will hurt and at times, the risks you will need to take will be terrifying. But\u00a0the pain is not penance for bad behavior (though there is room for that as well). When you hurt so badly you feel you will die\u2014pay close\u00a0attention. Feeling unspeakable pain may mean you have finally begun to feel clear\u00a0empathy\u00a0and resonance with the relentless agonies and indignities faced by people of color.\u00a0You must walk directly into that pain to fully understand the price Black and brown people have paid for your\/our white privilege. If you can\u2019t stand it, don\u2019t stop feeling, find someone who can help you hold it.\u00a0Do you dare to risk everything to be part of the movement to repair\u00a0the racial divide that has plagued our country since white people enslaved Black people over 400 years ago literally using their Black bodies to build America?<\/p>\n

Isaac and I have established a deep friendship\u2014one that feels more like family. It is a chosen family that I cherish.\u00a0Within it I have had the opportunity to heal and to grow and to witness my own biases in a way that humbles me. We have chosen to write our story in an upcoming book,\u00a0Fighting Time. In sharing our story\u00a0we hope to inspire people\u00a0to move into the fear and the pain of systemic racism and to have the conversations that are desperately needed to see and feel one another and to help our society grow beyond our tragically\u00a0racist roots.<\/p>\n

Fighting Time<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0by Isaac Knapper and Amy Banks, M.D., will be published by Regal House Publishing\/Pact Press<\/a> in 2021.<\/p>\n

\n

References<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Walker, Maureen.\u00a0When Getting Along is Not Enough: Reconstructing Lives in Our Lives and Relationships.\u00a02019, Teacher’s College Press, New York, NY<\/li>\n
  • Kendi, Ibram X.,\u00a0Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.\u00a02016, Nation’s Books, New York, NY<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Racism lives in our minds and bodies\u2014to end it, we must first find and feel it. Like so many in our country,\u00a0I am sick\u2014not from the\u00a0coronavirus, but by the ways systemic\u00a0racism\u00a0continues to shackle and kill people of color in our country\u00a0and\u00a0by the ways in which too many white Americans continue to deny it,\u00a0look the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[38,25,26,28,30,24,27,29],"yoast_head":"\nHow Can White Folks Join the Fight to End Systemic Racism? - Amy Banks MD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Racism lives in our minds and bodies\u2014to end it, we must first find and feel it. 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