White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (42 page)
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Authors: Tim Wise
Tags: #History, #Politics, #Sociology, #Memoir, #Race
BOOK: White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son
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Of course, such reasoning was sloppy. For a white politician to demand that his or her city was going to remain white would be quite different, and far worse than what Nagin said. When cities, suburbs, or towns are overwhelmingly white, there are reasons (both historic and contemporary) having to do with discrimination and unequal access for people of color. Restrictive covenants, redlining by banks, racially-restrictive homesteading rights, and even policies prohibiting people of color from living in an area altogether—four things that whites have never experienced anywhere in this nation (as whites)—were commonly deployed against black and brown folks throughout our history. On the other hand, chocolate cities have not developed because whites have been barred or even discouraged from entry, but rather, because whites long ago fled in order to get away from black people, aided in this process by government subsidized loans. So, to call for a vanilla majority is to call for the perpetuation of obstacles to persons of color, while to call for a chocolate majority in a place such as New Orleans is to call merely for the continuation of access and the opportunity for black folks to live there.
It was especially interesting to note how Nagin’s comments calling for the retention of a chocolate New Orleans brought down calls of racism, while the real and active planning of the city’s white elite at the time—people like Joe Cannizaro and Jimmy Reiss—to change it to a majority white town, by razing black neighborhoods in the flood zone, elicited no attention or condemnation whatsoever from white folks.
That Nagin had actually been the candidate of white New Orleanians—receiving nearly 90 percent of their vote, but less than half the black vote—did nothing to assuage the anger over the Mayor’s presumptive “reverse racism.” He had promised to cater to white needs during the campaign, and had been amply rewarded for doing so. Now that he was stating a simple truth about the cultural and historic core of the city—and demanding that it be retained—his former supporters turned on him. As Nagin discovered his blackness, white New Orleanians did too, and it scared them. To hear many tell it, they were now the victims.
OVER THE COURSE
of the next year, I would regularly run into youth groups—sometimes with churches and other times with schools—on their way to New Orleans to help with rebuilding efforts, or on their way home from the same. Whenever possible, I would try to strike up conversations with a few of the students or their chaperones, to find out what they’d be doing (or had already done) while there. If they were headed down, where would they be working and staying? With whom would they be meeting? What did they hope or expect to learn from the experience? If they had already completed their trek, I would wonder the same things, only in the past tense.
of the next year, I would regularly run into youth groups—sometimes with churches and other times with schools—on their way to New Orleans to help with rebuilding efforts, or on their way home from the same. Whenever possible, I would try to strike up conversations with a few of the students or their chaperones, to find out what they’d be doing (or had already done) while there. If they were headed down, where would they be working and staying? With whom would they be meeting? What did they hope or expect to learn from the experience? If they had already completed their trek, I would wonder the same things, only in the past tense.
Occasionally, the answers I would receive suggested a very high level of critical engagement, which was heartening. By this I mean, the persons who had organized the trip had recognized the importance of preparing the students for the experience by having pre-arrival conversations regarding racism, classism, the history of the city, and the political and cultural context within which the tragedy had occurred. In those cases, the volunteers were not simply going to New Orleans to “get their help on,” or perform some version of perceived Christian duty; rather, they were going to bear witness to inequality, learn from local leaders about their experiences, and work in real solidarity with the people struggling to rebuild the city—working
with
, not for.
with
, not for.
I was especially impressed by the students from Northfield Mt. Hermon—a prep school in Massachusetts—whose preparation for their New Orleans service trip included an intensive class on the city, the storm, and the role of race and economics in understanding the tragedy, taught by veteran English teacher Bob Cooley. In the case of Northfield, the school had enrolled a few students from New Orleans who had been displaced, and not just the kids from the private schools, but public schools as well. One who I met while there was serving as something of a mentor and co-teacher to his classmates, and had clearly gained the respect of everyone on the campus for his wisdom and insights, despite the fact that he was basically their same age.
But sadly, this kind of preparation was rare for the people I met either going to, or coming from, service trips to the city. In most cases, when I would ask about their plans or experiences, the answers I got from the volunteers and their adult mentors indicated very little critical thinking or understanding of race, class, and the role of both in the disaster.
Most of the groups I met said they were going to be working, or had worked, not in New Orleans itself, but rather, in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, and specifically the community of Chalmette. Of those headed to New Orleans, most said they’d be working in Lakeview: the only wealthy and almost entirely white community hit hard by the flooding. I found this interesting and would always inquire as to how they got matched up with those communities, as opposed to the Lower Ninth Ward, or Mid-City, or New Orleans East, all of which were hardhit, mostly African American communities.
Mostly, they would say, it was because the people who had organized the trips didn’t know anyone from those black spaces, but had connections—be they with church pastors or civic leaders, or even family members—in the whiter locales. Others said that they were honestly afraid to go into the Lower Ninth Ward because of all they had heard about the community in the media (most of it false, of course). Still others didn’t really know why they were headed to places like Chalmette: apparently the people through whom they were working had simply matched them up with those communities.
I found the placements in St. Bernard Parish especially interesting. On the one hand, there was no doubt that “da Parish,” as it’s known by locals, had been devastated by the flooding. Next to the Ninth Ward (literally), Chalmette was probably the hardest hit area in the metropolitan vicinity. But on the other hand, the fact that so many volunteers were being sent there to help rebuild struck me as telling, given the racial dynamics of the area. Whereas the Ninth Ward was 93 percent black before the storm, Chalmette was the exact opposite: 93 percent white. More to the point, it was a community where more than seven in ten whites had voted for neo-Nazi David Duke in the 1991 Governor’s race. And it was a place where, in the immediate wake of the flooding, Parish officials had sought to prevent people of color from moving into the community by passing a “blood relative renter law,” restricting rental access to persons who were blood relatives of the landlords from whom they’d be renting. The purpose of the law, quite obviously, was to block blacks from returning to the area and settling in St. Bernard, since almost all the property owners in the parish were white.
Did the volunteers know these things? Did they know that they’d be helping people who were actively advocating institutional racism, and who, in many cases, had supported a Nazi for Governor? Especially if the clean-up groups were integrated, did they realize that the volunteers of color would be helping a community where, had it been up to local officials, they couldn’t have lived? In almost no instance had they heard anything about this. They were shocked. Local organizers of volunteer efforts had neglected to mention these details to the clean-up teams, mostly because they believed the racial tensions or inequities to be irrelevant: people were in need, they would say, and shouldn’t be neglected because of their racial views. But shouldn’t that have been left up to the volunteers? Didn’t they deserve to know? Apparently not, according to some.
The way in which the racism of St. Bernard whites was glossed over was amazing. At one point, the generally liberal Sierra Club gave a leadership award to Henry “Junior” Rodriguez, the Parish Council president, because of his environmental record; this, despite his history of using racial epithets publicly, and supporting the blood relative renter law right up until it was ultimately blocked by the courts. Even to white liberals, racism was a secondary issue, hardly worth discussing when compared to a politician’s record on, in this case, wetlands restoration.
What was most disturbing about the whitewashing of St. Bernard’s racial dynamic was how implicated it had been in the tragedy that had transpired in the first place. After all, it was nothing if not ironic that those who had had the luxury of believing themselves superior to black people ended up in the same boat as those they so feared and despised. What did it say that the same elites who hadn’t cared much for the lives of blacks in the Lower Ninth also hadn’t cared enough of white lives in Chalmette to prioritize proper levee construction that would have protected both? Perhaps if whites there hadn’t been so busy scapegoating black and brown folks for their misfortunes, they might have extended their hand to blacks in the Lower Ninth Ward, and together they could have marched on the Corps of Engineers, on Baton Rouge, or on Washington to demand a more people-centered set of budget priorities. But they hadn’t, and now they had all ended up with their stuff jacked, so to speak. Skin color had trumped solidarity. And for what?
WHETHER IN ST.
Bernard Parish or New Orleans itself, the rhetoric of white victimhood was ubiquitous within months of Katrina. For a bunch who always seemed exasperated by the very real claims of victimization coming from people of color, white folks sure had learned quickly how to play victim ourselves; this despite the relative lack of power held by the black or brown, with which they could truly oppress whites as whites had oppressed them over the years. In a place like New Orleans, despite thirty years of black political leadership by the time of Katrina, whites still controlled the reins of economic power. Even political power was often in the hands of whites, who had been able to elect Ray Nagin as mayor, despite the majority of African Americans voting for his opponent.
Bernard Parish or New Orleans itself, the rhetoric of white victimhood was ubiquitous within months of Katrina. For a bunch who always seemed exasperated by the very real claims of victimization coming from people of color, white folks sure had learned quickly how to play victim ourselves; this despite the relative lack of power held by the black or brown, with which they could truly oppress whites as whites had oppressed them over the years. In a place like New Orleans, despite thirty years of black political leadership by the time of Katrina, whites still controlled the reins of economic power. Even political power was often in the hands of whites, who had been able to elect Ray Nagin as mayor, despite the majority of African Americans voting for his opponent.
Even when people of color hold positions of power, their ability to oppress or in any way impinge upon the lives of whites is typically negligible. Though I had come to recognize this in New Orleans, it would become even clearer to me the first time I traveled to Bermuda. I visited this crown jewel of the dying but never fully deceased British Empire in the fall of 2005, invited in to discuss race and racism—issues that permeate much of what goes on there.
Of course, to hear many whites there tell it—be they native-born Bermudians or expatriates from the U.K., the U.S., or Canada—race is not an issue in Bermuda. In this island paradise, one is assured, they have conquered the demons that still bedevil we lesser intellects in the states, or in other lands around the globe. Bermuda, they say, is different. Indeed, in some ways it is, but in other ways, Bermuda is all-too similar to the United States, and its history is intertwined with that of the United States, especially as regards the history of white racial supremacy in the hemisphere.
It was, after all, Captain Christopher Newport who sailed the largest of the ships carrying whites (though they weren’t called that yet) to what became Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and who then shipwrecked on Bermuda with Admiral George Somers in 1609, while returning to the colony with supplies from England. Newport (who I recently discovered is my seventeenth great-grandfather), by virtue of his seamanship, ultimately contributed directly to the initiation of North American genocide and white conquest, beginning at Jamestown. And his hurricane-forced landing on Bermuda began the process by which Great Britain would come to hold the tiny Atlantic island as property of the empire. Newport—who had made his name as a pirate, raiding ships of other nations and delivering their riches to wealthy investors back home—carried with him on the shipwrecked vessel John Rolfe, who would later introduce export tobacco to the Americas, which development would then lead to the enslavement of Africans for the purpose of cultivating the cash crop.
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