A White man said that his earliest memory of White racism was about a Black man who was working as a servant in his grandfather’s house, who, he said, “Was my friend as a child, but was also putting himself in a position that was lower than me, and first of all it didn’t make sense. Second of all it didn’t feel right, which I never would have been able to identify before. It didn’t feel right, and it was painful to me.” He reported that he “didn’t do much” except maintain the friendship (he was about five years old) “and sort of feel, and wonder about this, not even consciously. And later on, other stuff began to come in, the stuff I got from school, about Blacks this, n—— this and n—— that, that kind of stuff, and then, I really didn’t know what to do. I lost my ability to relate to anyone of color because I didn’t know how to speak to them, I didn’t know how to be with them. This was, I think, my feeling through growing up with this.” Charlie pointed out that one of the first layers was deep confusion and feeling that “this is wrong,” but not being able to do anything about it and having to submit to it.
Another White man’s earliest memory of White racism was watching a little Black boy being harassed by a group of other White boys, “and knowing that it was wrong, what was going on, but knowing that if I stood up for this little boy, they would do it to me.” When Charlie asked him what he did, he said, “I swallowed my rage and just sat with the powerlessness and helplessness, there was nothing I could do.” To which Charlie replied, “It wasn’t that there was nothing you could do, it felt that way. What actually was the fear of having it be done to you, which let you submit to that it was okay that it be done to him—not okay, but better him than you,” and that what had happened divided this man from both the other White boys and the Black boy: “division, isolation, and submission.” He also said that violence would certainly have been directed at the White boy if he had done anything about it: “In fact, color is an excuse,” not a cause or reason. He added, as noted earlier, “Every White adult knows this: that if you attempt to stand up against and/or stop racism, they will target you, just as though you were a person of color. That the color is only an excuse by which to divide people from each other and from our own humanity, from ourselves.” The fear this man was experiencing was also “within the guilt that’s always going to come up when you don’t do what’s right, when you don’t act on your courage, when you are forced to submit to your fear, which itself is installed from the outside.” In addition to the fear that the White boys would beat him up, there was also fear that he would be ostracized or shunned.
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