Why Do You Always Have to Make Everything About Race, Anyway? A Question I Am Often Asked

by Irene Daniel

"Why do you have to make everything about race?" I am often asked. The question itself assumes something completely inapplicable, given the power relationships between the races in our American history. I don't make everything about race. I just notice when racial injustice affects my life, and the lives of others. Accordingly, the more appropriate and relevant question is: whose idea was it to make everything about race in the first place?

Let's see, this whole race thing started with European settlers stealing land and a way of life from the Indigenous people already here; and enslaving those imported from Africa. It wasn't the Indigenous, or the slave, or the immigrant who decided to make their lives more difficult by "making everything about race." Nor were women, of any color, empowered to make anything about anything until less than 100 years ago, when they were finally afforded their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.

So, who does that leave? What class of persons decided for all others, that freedom should mean different things to different people? Whose brilliant idea was it to treat slaves worse than livestock? Whose idea was it to come out west and kick the Native Americans off of their tribal homes? And the Mexicans off of their gold mines during the California Gold Rush? Whose idea was it to torture Chinese immigrants by cutting off their queues? And whose idea was it to intern millions of Japanese-Americans during WWII? Who made all of those decisions?

When that nationalist veil is lifted and we learn the truth, we see Andrew Jackson as our American Hitler and Manifest Destiny as our American Holocaust. This is ancient history, you say? If only that were true. The truth is, however, that the long-term effects of a societal cancer like white supremacy leaves deep scaring, as well as recurring side-effects and occasional flare-ups. And who can say that we have not been experiencing something of a flare-up since Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States? Liberals don't make everything about race, we just notice that it is. And it is this noticing, and calling attention to the racism that is already there, that induces defensiveness and accusations of being a racist from some, often well-meaning, Caucasians.

Centuries of social injustice, especially when it comes to race issues in America, cannot be righted overnight, or even in the past 50 years of trying. Racial barriers laid the foundation for our criminal justice system. Racial stereotyping and white supremacy are also responsible for criminalizing marijuana. 100 years ago, as Mexicans were pouring across the border fleeing a bloody revolution, and jazz was being born in America. Marijuana was associated with Mexicans and African-Americans and their music, jazz and blues. So, it had to be illegal if it was something "they" liked. I can't believe it's taken the American people a century to realize what a lucrative market originates with this one plant; and how our racial bias has prevented us from dealing with this, and myriad other issues that affect all Americans, in an objective and logical manner. Even the green of the almighty dollar can't get past the color barrier sometimes.

These are only a few examples of how whiteness and white ways and white thinking have been superimposed in our American culture for generations. Why do I point these things out? Because I cried my eyes out again after another white man got away with murdering another African-American young man. I cried not only out of frustration, or sadness for the families of those boys. I cried out of guilt because I am glad that neither my son, nor his son, is dark-skinned. Jordan Davis' mother, Lucia MacBath, will never be a grandmother. She will never know what it's like to see herself passed on to new generations. She was robbed of that joy by racism.

When the Dunn trial jurors revealed that race was never an issue for the jury, I wondered why not.  Pretending to be color-blind because white people feel more comfortable that way will not solve our racial issues. I'll bet Jordan Davis would have loved to grow up in a color-blind society, where he is not presumed guilty of "something" because he's black, where he could get a cab in New York City, where he wouldn't be stopped-and-frisked, or shot to death. I'll bet Jordan Davis' mother would love nothing more than to have been able to see her son grow up in a color-blind world that sees him as a worthy individual. But we don't live in that world and pretending that we do solves nothing. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It is a detriment to moving forward.

So I will continue to call out racism for the social disease that has eaten away at our American culture for too, too long. I notice these things because they happen to people like me. They don't happen to white people, so how can they know what we're talking about if we don't tell our stories? That's why I talk about race. By the time they are 23 years old, 49% of African-American men will have been incarcerated because racism is so deeply rooted in our American DNA. Because this still happens today, and will continue to happen until our leadership better reflects our society, I will continue to notice.

I think Lupita Nyong'o, Oscar winning actress just this week, put it best when she described what it was like to be a little girl and be as dark as she was, and to see beauty only in pale faces in her world. Let's face it: even in ethnic neighborhoods, it is usually those with darker complexions who have a harder time; and the most successful nonwhites are usually lighter-skinned. It's sad, but true.

We didn't make everything about race. White men did that a long time ago, and in ways that still are very present in our still imperfect union. So my question is: Why did white men have to make everything about race? And why are they still doing so, hiding behind religion and a Constitution that they obviously don't understand? Why did white men start this thing in the first place? And when have we had enough?