If You are More Outraged by the Destruction of Property than the Destruction of Black Lives, Your Outrage is Misplaced: A Guide for White People Who Need Help Processing the Protests

To be clear, I do not condone violence.

To be clearer, I do not condone White racial violence and police brutality.

I am clear about what caused these protests in the wake of Amy Cooper calling the police on a Black birdwatcher and fellow Harvard classmate. I am clear about two White men killing Ahmaud Arbery, chargelessly and without consequence, and remaining in the luxuries of their own homes for over two months. And I am clear that whatever crime George Floyd was originally stopped for DID NOT warrant a knee on his neck to the point of asphyxiation and death.

To be absolutely clear, I condone NONE of this.

As a diversity consultant, and someone who is regularly regarded as an “expert” on race and racism, I am totally torn apart right now. I haven’t spoken to anyone in a week. I broke down crying in the middle of eating one of the most delectable Quarantine meals I’ve made in three months of total sequestration. My inboxes, voicemailboxes, and text messages are FULL of people asking for articles, books, resource lists, videos, or anything I can provide to help them process their emotions, calm themselves, and act productively. This is “go time” for someone like me. This is the moment I was made for.

But to be honest, I can’t even muster the courage to watch the news right now. As soon as I engaged, the protest coverage almost immediately shifted. The way these demonstrations of legitimate outrage, pain, and calls for change are being reported makes me weep.

Not for the destroyed property. But for the destroyed lives of Black people.

At first I could tune in to my favorite evening newscast as I scarfed down my dinner. Stories of sheriffs, police chiefs, and officers taking Colin Kaepernick-style knees, marching alongside protestors, and standing in solidarity with us were bringing me to tears in the BEST way possible. We are rightfully and appropriately outraged by the everyday institutional racism against people of color in this country — especially Black people — and it was heartwarming to know that policewomen, men, and gender non-conforming police were standing on the right side of justice. Right alongside us.

That kind of coverage was my new favorite thing. It closely edged out stories of patients who were successfully recovering from COVID-19 and exiting hospitals to applause. And let me tell you, those stories are tough to beat!

After all, we are in the middle of a global health pandemic, and the same high-risk, disadvantaged, global-majority populations that need to be home right now are overwhelmingly in the streets. In a fit of cruel irony, they are protesting the very racism that threatens their lives on a daily basis in addition to Coronavirus. But that’s a different article…

The news coverage shifted. It took a turn I simply could not stomach.

Too many news outlets completely forewent their reporting on the mostly White protestors who brandished LITERAL assault rifles and high-powered weapons in their “peaceful protests.” Some of them went so far as to threaten the lives of various government officials who were “violating their rights” and “taking away their freedoms” by enforcing stay-at-home orders to mitigate the Coronavirus. Why did that coverage end? Because those protestors — not DANGEROUS RIOTERS — went largely unpunished, and even the president himself urged leaders to “talk to them…make a deal.” If there was no outrage or consequence for that type of brazen behavior, then I can see why those stories fizzled out and gave way to the “lawlessness” of the now multi-racial coalition of protesters railing against real and actual and appalling racism.

Is that how the institution of news media works in this country?

Then the news coverage shifted from my favorite new stories about police solidarity — which, by the way, is CRUCIAL in stamping out structural racism in law enforcement — and, I kid you not, I started seeing the proliferation of stories about Gucci stores with damaged glass.

I’m sorry, what?

Are you actually standing outside a high-end luxury store reporting on how “they are currently counting the inventory” when an unarmed Black man was murdered AGAIN in the street? Are you seriously trying to engage my attention by somehow appealing to my sympathies for stores, business owners, and inanimate edifices when peaceful protesters are being tear-gassed, washing their eyes with milk, and being detained for breaking a curfew that was NOWHERE TO BE ENFORCED when heavily-armed White protestors were storming state capitols?

Do my slightly myopic eyes deceive me?

I stopped watching the news altogether. I briefly turned to social media, but what I found there was equally unsettling. Suddenly the foci had shifted AWAY from everyday police brutality, the senseless murders of unarmed people of color, and the well-placed outraged of Americans who know full well that freedom, liberty, and justice are not currently enjoyed by all, and TO a vandalized Target. I began seeing posts, primarily from White people, about how protestors who are literally risking their lives, livelihoods, and futures by “looting” and “rioting” are somehow doing it incorrectly and “making things worse.”

Again, what could possibly be worse than losing your life to racism? What is worse than having your basic human dignity stripped by unnecessarily lethal encounters with White people?

You can rebuild a store, but were you saying something about our new ability to resurrect wrongly murdered people? To rebuild human lives with the recently discovered “breath of life?”

No? I hadn’t heard of that either. And I’m about to start a job in biomedical research.

At any rate, suddenly the news conversation shifted further from a path forward, policy changes to address the myriad levels of racism in this country, and shows of police solidarity to “looting,” “dishonoring the legacy” of George Floyd, and “disrespecting his memory.”

Again. I’m sorry, what? Did every news station just get highjacked by a gaslighting hacker? Because gaslighting is what we do when we want to distract ourselves from the real conversation at hand. Why? Because it is easier to criminalize and perseverate on the lesser newsworthy events like broken glass shards at Gucci than to address the deep-seated, endemic, emergency-level racism that led to them. Those we are unmotivated to address anyway. Otherwise, we would have done something about them BEFORE people of all ilk had to take to the streets in the first place.

That’s why.

White people who are ready to receive this, I need you to lean in.

White people who aren’t, I will see you down the line when your own lives, or those of your loved ones, relatives, and children are threatened by racism on a daily basis and you have ears to hear. As one post I read captured it:

“If someone murdered my son in cold blood while he begged for his life and I knew there was little chance that justice would ever be served? I’d want to burn the world down too. I’d want everyone to burn it down with me. I’d want every single person across this country to feel and see my rage and my pain. I would set fire to everything until I was heard…. until EVERYONE in this country cared enough to stop turning a blind eye to these injustices or making excuses for them. I’d burn it all the way down. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying I understand” (Melissa M. Curtis, Facebook, 28 May 2020).

In other words, much like this mother, White people frequently ask to speak to the manager of even a perceived injustice all the time and will do any number of things to get that justice.

We are no different.

White people who are still with me, I need you to understand several things about these protests. If you are confused, hurting, deeply uncomfortable, or if any of the racist events of late have rattled your conscience and shaken your core, I am asking you to view the news and current events with the following lenses so you can see what I see. And possibly feel what I feel. What we all feel when vicarious racism and collective trauma are foisted upon us as Black people time and time again. Day after day. Without ceasing. And with no discernable end in sight.

1. We are not protesting “a mere collection of individual acts of meanness.” Racism is a multi-headed hydra and we are protesting the injustice what it’s like be Black in the United States each and every day since we were brought here.

If your definition of racism consists of personal interactions and what Peggy McIntosh would call “a mere collection of individual acts of meanness,” then I can see how you might think the protests most recently sparked by the murder of George Floyd in police custody might seem…disproportionate? Let me help you reframe racism altogether, because that will clear things up.

I learned from sociologist Joe Feagin that racism is misframed. We like to position racism in this country as aberrant, or a “stain” on the nation.” This is limiting because racism, or a system of domination and dehumanization based on the categorization of human bodies by skin color, is fundamental to this country. Rather than a simple, almost accidental stain, it was intentionally woven into the fabric of this nation since its inception.

Historically, let us remember that the Jamestown colony in Williamsburg, VA was the first permanent, successful settlement in what is now known as the United States of America. Ominously, it was officially established on May 14, 1607. We had 12 good years before the first slave ship landed on August 20, 1619 in Point Comfort, Colony of Virginia. A brutal system of enslavement ensued, but the legacy of that enslavement wasn’t just the centuries of torture, mutilation, rape, abuse, and abject savagery, but the system of White racial superiority and dominance it established.

It’s 2020. We are literally almost 401 years removed from the arrival of the Saõ Joaõ Bautista slave ship, but we are FIRMLY entrenched in the notion that White people are and should be in charge, in leadership, and in control. Even though enslavement technically ended in 1865, the system of systems that continues to keep African-Americans subordinated racially, economically, educationally, and socially is alive and well.

We are attempting to kill that system in the streets with these protests, but apparently it’s more acceptable to kill Michael Brown, George Floyd, and countless other unarmed Black people in the street.

We hear that message loudly and clearly.

In order to excuse the wildly inhumane practice of stealing people from an faraway continent, reducing their legal designation to that of cattle (please see the etymology of the term chattel slavery), we would have to so deeply dehumanize that group of people such that one would see them as literal animals.

We would have to strip them naked, deny them the right to their own personhood and freedom — hence owners and masters — deny their basic human needs, and dominate them physically, mentally, and educationally.

We would have to cut of their digits if they attempted to become literate, limit their freedom to congregate except perhaps briefly on Sundays, and we would have to use what Joyce King would call “hoodoo” science to prove the they are evolutionarily closer to primates like gorillas and monkeys, than White people and the other so-called “races.”

Post-enslavement we would have to deny them loans to purchase property and livestock, prevent them from voting and participating in civic freedoms, and use education — which Joel Spring has called the largest form of socialization in any society — to erase their presence, diminish their intellect (Please see Ten Little Nigger Boys by Aunt Luisa’s Nursery Books), and deny them entry into higher educational institutions, which are the primary vehicles for socioeconomic mobility.

White people, I need you to understand that since 1619, we have only enjoyed basic, legal civil rights since 1964. That means that for 345 of the nearly 401 years we’ve been here, systems of racism have kept us from the basic freedoms that White Americans have enjoyed for centuries.

Racism in this country is longstanding, functions on multiple levels, and continues to remind us of its fundamental interweaving by way of daily racial incidents.

You are only seeing the ones that are recorded.

Amy Cooper used White racial violence to summon the police on a Harvard-educated Black birdwatcher because he didn’t know his place. He had somehow forgotten that a Black man who is 100% right about everyone’s adherence to Central Park leash laws was still somehow wrong in conjuring the audacity to educate Amy and insist that she comply. Moreover, she knew the police would readily assume she was “in the right” if she simply told them, “There is an African-American threatening my life.”

To be clear, she was hedging a bet on a centuries-old racist stereotype that Black men are inherently violent, criminal, lawless, dangerous, and altogether bellicose. And she deployed her whiteness to enlist “help” not because her life was threatened, but because her White racial superiority in that moment was.

I need you to understand that Black people in this country are accused, mistreated, and ill-positioned every day, not just by individuals, but by entire systems. Throughout history, we have been physically segregated from access to what Whites could freely enjoy. We have been portrayed in the media as prisoners, attitudinal Black women, “ghetto” and without decorum, and altogether undesirable. And in the case of George Floyd, we have been wronged, abused, and even killed without consequence because people do not value our lives. They do not see us as equals, and historically-accurately, they do not see us as distinct humans worthy of dignity and respect.

I am from the South. If ever a Black man was accused of a crime and “rounded up,” it was not uncommon to hear, “You catch one nigger, you catch em’ all.”

In other words, you didn’t even need to arrest and convict the RIGHT Black man. Any Black man would do. Because in the eyes of far too many White people, we are all just a crime waiting to happen.

This is why we are shot down in the street and die in police custody with little or no consequence.

This is why we are protesting.

2. Our goal is NEVER to destroy anything the way racism has destroyed our stolen labor, lives, and livelihoods. But “Black people have every right to burn down a country they built for FREE.”

I’ll say it again. To be clear, I don’t condone violence against African-Americans. I don’t condone racial violence, which is what was deployed against Christian Cooper. I don’t condone any sort of violence, but I need you to understand the role of violence throughout history and right now.

Black people in this country experience EVERYDAY violence. In individual interactions we are subject to low expectations, mistrust, and any number of indignities simply because White people and others have been socialized to believe that they are better than us.

Human beings aren’t better than other human beings.

I need you to know that we try constantly to “protest” our rejection of humanity via the “proper” channels. Students speak up in schools when disproportionate numbers of Black students are more harshly disciplined, expelled, or even arrested and jailed when the most egregious acts of school violence are actually carried out by White males.

We tried to appeal to the government about how, if you allow the systems to function as they always have, it will ALWAYS be more difficult to secure jobs we are fully qualified for, gain admission to institutions of higher learning that we are equally deserving of, and qualify for loans for everything from automobiles to businesses at the same lower interest rates as White Americans.

We have protested mandatory sentencing laws that somehow STILL have Black Americans fined, punished, incarcerated, and even executed at rates that are far higher than those of White Americans (Please see the Equal Justice Initiative for additional data).

In the case of George Floyd, we have asked for a review of racism in the law, from everything to the disproportional stopping, frisking, and policing of Black bodies. To how police officers are punished or NOT when unarmed Black men die at the hands of law enforcement. We have tried to initiate legal reforms for the “Citizens Arrest” law that killed Ahmaud Arbery, and the “Stand Your Ground” laws that murdered Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis in the confines of their own neighborhoods and vehicles. And we have tried to make everyone equal under the law — even those who ENFORCE the law — so that police officers like Amber Guyger can at least be ARRESTED and held accountable for murdering an innocent Black man whilst eating ice cream in the comfort of his own home.

We have tried those things, and you don’t see those protests on the news, do you?

Because this country commodified our human lives, and is so desperately concerned with the almighty dollar, some people did not begin paying full attention to the news until a Target was set ablaze. Or a Gucci store suffered a hole in its double-walled glass.

Do you know what Ghandi Mahal, a Minneapolis restaurant owner, said when he fell victim to fire? “Let it burn.” In other words, he was essentially positing that, ‘If this is what it takes to make real racial progress in this country, then I can sacrifice a building. We can’t sacrifice more lives’ (“My Family Restaurant Caught Fire in the Minneapolis Protests. Let it Burn, The Washington Post, 31 May 2020).

I saw a tweet recently by Solomon Georgio that read, “Black people have every right to burn down a country they built for free” (Twitter, @solomongeorgio, 28 May 2020).

Do Black people WANT to destroy property? Do we want to destroy anything? No.

Even if we did, Black people could never destroy the equivalent of 401 years of stolen labor, dehumanization, denied personhood and freedom — the mere ability to “own” yourself — and our livelihoods that are intergenerationally affected by the persistent lack of access to education, opportunity, and everyday freedom.

So if a restaurant or a Target burns, I need you to consider that Target can be repaired and rebuilt. And it should NOT have taken the burning of a Target to get your attention. And no matter how many Targets, or restaurants, or Gucci stores are damaged, African Americans in this country will NEVER match the destruction, devastation, and dehumanization that this country has inflicted on us. Period.

3. We are not looking to take anything from you. If anything, all we want is what you have: freedom, liberty, and everyday justice.

When we begin to have serious conversations about reparations in this country, it repulses many people immediately. What do we owe you? Why are you looking to TAKE from this country? Why should we pay?

Please note that as a result of COVID-19 origins in Wuhan, China, lawmakers in the United States began an immediate discussion on REPARATIONS FROM CHINA. Why? Because when someone causes you great economic injury, steals your ability to prosper, and costs you billions of dollars that you weren’t prepared to lose, you might think they should be held accountable, pay for their reckless wrongdoing, repair you, and make you whole.

Exactly.

What’s interesting about the language of “looting” is that for many Americans, Black people are positioned as “takers” and burdens on society writ large. And to be quite honest, many an African American in this country holds that America does, indeed, owe us.

But you know what we want?

You can keep the promised but never delivered 40 acres and a mule, and you can even keep hollow, go-nowhere conversations, and even serious congressional testimony about monetary reparations.

Access to fairness, equity, equal treatment under the law, justice when we are wronged, due but not disproportionate punishment when we ARE wrong, and access to education and opportunity are really all we want.

Fiscal reparations would be great, and would begin to address centuries of economic exploitation, but could we just start with justice?

We are looking to experience freedom in jogging (Ahmaud Arbery), birdwatching (Christian Cooper), and the freedom of due process if you suspect that we have committed a crime as opposed to relegating us to “street trial justice” where you kill us on the pavement with no consequence.

What makes America exceptional is not our current reality, but our IDEALS. If everyday freedom, liberty, and justice were available to us as freely as it is to White Americans and others, that would mean more to us than money.

In the words of Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, “The opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice.”

Even though people of color, and especially African Americans, are overrepresented in poverty in this country, ultimately we don’t want money.

We don’t even want the contents of your beloved Target or Gucci stores.

What we want and deserve is everyday justice. We want to be served and protected by law enforcement, and not surveilled, disproportionately harassed, and murdered. Justice is a fair first payment for four centuries of suppression to start. All other demands, we can work on.

4. You, White people, are in one of the BEST positions to eradicate racism because you have the MOST racial power. Show me your calendar and your checkbook, and I’ll show you your priorities.

What I both love and loathe about this moment is that my inboxes are FULL of sincere requests from White people who are outraged by racism and eager to serve in the war on racial injustice. If you are one of those people, what I need you to understand is that we need you to START.

Many White people are trepidatious about joining racial justice causes because they don’t see where they safely, comfortably, or appropriately fit into the racial dialogue. White people, you are INTEGRAL to the racial dialogue. Now there is no safety in challenging a system of systems, so I need you to abandon your need to be safe. And if my dark-skinned brother and I cannot be safe as we move about this country each day, then I need YOU to be just a bit unsafe as you choose to participate in antiracism.

Comfort will not help you. Where there is no discomfort, there is no growth (See the Brave Spaces model by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators).

If we have to be uncomfortable each time we exit a store without a receipt, apply for a job and have our credentials double-checked, and attempt to barbecue on Lake Merritt in Oakland, California while simultaneously dealing with Jennifer Schulte calling the police on us, then I am asking YOU to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I am asking you to take an inventory of your gifts, talents, skills, and time. Many antiracist activists become burned out because they feel overwhelmed and have not yet learned to optimize their time (for more on antiracist activist burnout, see the work of Paul Gorski, Equity Literacy Institute). Please decide for yourself what your greatest contribution is, and lend it to the fight for racial justice. If you have family members who regularly express racist views, start at home. If you work for an organization, initiate programming, racial action groups, policy reviews, and solidarity plans to hold your workplace accountable for the racism within and without. If you are a part of a faith community, what is your house of worship doing to support protestors at this time? Are you distributing water? Are you providing masks, gloves, and even milk to cleanse tear gas from their eyes?

If you own a business, rather than boarding up, are you opening your doors and serving as a “Protestor Rest and Rejuvenation Station?” Is your business a safe place for protestors who are literally fighting for justice in the streets that lead customers to your cash registers?

Are you a writer? Where and how can you use your words and your voice to reach fellow WHITE people and your intimate social circles, many of whom Black people and other people of color don’t have access to?

Show me your checkbook and I’ll show you your priorities.

If your best asset is not time, but MONEY, how can you support racial justice? I identify as a Christian, so I dedicate 10% of my income to faith-based activities. Where in your budget could you direct your resources to assist protestors? Could you contribute to the bailout fund? A local organization in your community whose primary function is racial justice? An education program for African American students? A scholarship program for students like me, who as descendants of American slaves, incur massive student loan debt because we have NO access to intergenerational wealth? Can you grant supplier contracts to Black-owned businesses? If you own a business, are you hiring, promoting, and equitably compensating Black employees?

If you cannot physically protest, which my own health won’t even allow, determine your best sharable resource — be it time, skill, money, or all three — and deploy those to the cause of racial justice.

White people you are not just RELEVANT in the fight for social justice.

You are our secret weapon.

5. We protest because we are hopeful and here to stay. We have no interest in replacing you, but we will challenge racism on all levels until you acknowledge it, actively work against it, and do what the Constitution mandates. This is your moment to be fully American AND fully human.

Anything that costs you your peace is too expensive.

When I was interviewing the famed “Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes” antiracist activist Jane Elliott, she shared her favorite quote from Nathan Rutstein, which is “Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance.” She explained how White people’s commitment to racism is a form of willful ignorance. A type of a denial of not just the humanity of Black people, but of your own. Her most impactful statement to me was about how, if you as a White people remain steeped in racism and reject the overwhelming evidence that it is real, relevant to your life, and rampant in society, “then all it costs you is your humanity.”

I interviewed her years ago and I still think about that.

“And all it costs you is your humanity.”

When neo-Nazis and racist hate groups protest, they often chant, “Jews will not replace us! You will not replace us!” (Two Years Ago, They Marched in Charlottesville. Where are They Now? Anti-Defamation League, 8 August 2019).

White people, I want you to know that African-Americans are not interested in replacing you. Even though we are firmly headed toward the equalization of people of color and White Americans in this country, there is nothing for you to fear (“Race in America 2019,” Pew Research Center, 9 April 2019).

Power is not concentrated in number. Power is concentrated in power.

As a people, we are not looking for absolute power. We are not looking to dominate anyone, to mistreat anyone, or to inflict the same type of pain and punishment we have suffered for centuries. African Americans in this country have a simple ask: uphold the Constitution of the United States.

We are fully aware that the founding fathers of this nation had limited views on who was and should be an American. Their notion of the “landed gentry only” as U.S. citizens even excluded poor White men. And women. And most certainly the slaves held by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and several of our early presidents.

Nevertheless, if we have adopted the Constitution as the law of this land, then we as Black people wish to partake in the full use of its rights and privileges. We wish to have our votes counted without literacy tests or poll taxes, which remain an issue in the state of Florida in 2020. We wish to have access to a free and appropriate education, which has become even more elusive with worsening inequitable funding for public schools. And we wish to have our humanity recognized and respected as we go about our daily lives.

We wish to enjoy public parks, and we wish to roam about this country as freely as you do each day. If you join us in our quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — just like you enjoy every day — then now is the perfect time to become even more American by helping to extend your everyday freedoms to us. This is your chance to reshift your gaze from the wrong kind of outrage to the RIGHT kind of righteous anger.

If you choose to focus on the destruction of property, you are missing the point.

But if you choose to join us, help us, and redirect your time, energy, and resources for the cause of racial justice and equal recognition under the law, then you will represent yourself and this country at its best.

And most importantly, you will regain your full humanity, which racism steals from you too.