The "White Denial" Firestorm

By Tim Wise, AlterNet. Posted May 24, 2001.

I had no idea what I was stepping into as I hit the 'send' button on my e-mail browser. On the road for a speech, I had just completed a rather hastily-produced essay on the school shooting in Santee, California: the umpteenth example of yet another middle class white male, deciding to take his frustrations out on anyone and anything with a heartbeat.

I had written pieces like this before: after Kip Kinkel, after Columbine, even after the Woodstock '99 riot: articles in which I pointed out the ways that violence, pathology and dysfunction are de-racialized when the perpetrators are white, but intensely racialized when they are black or Latino. For example, compare the way gang violence in the early 1990's was viewed through a racial lens (as in, "what's wrong with the black family, or black culture"), as opposed to the way white boy school-shootings have been covered -- as the inexplicable result of any number of generic social forces, and never as evidence of something potentially wrong with white, middle class cultural norms.

As I said, I had written these before, and even joked with friends about having created a new category of racial analysis: the "crazy white people whose race no one seems to notice" genre. But never had the response amounted to much. The pieces would be seen by a few thousand people. I'd receive a hundred or so responses, mostly favorable, and that would be it.

Not so this time. When I sent "School Shootings and White Denial" to the folks at AlterNet, I was unwittingly setting off a firestorm of national reaction, controversy, and dialogue.

By the time I got to the airport the next day, I checked my e-mail to discover that I already had received over 100 messages about the column. By the time I arrived home, that number had climbed to 300. By the next day, the tally was over 1000. Something was happening.

As someone who has relied heavily on internet distribution of my material, and yet remained skeptical of the overuse of technology for spreading progressive and radical political messages, my own sense of the importance of such technology was being challenged. What began as a simple 1100 word article, posted on an alternative website, had metamorphosed into the talk of the electronic nation. Within two days it was being sent around on hundreds of listservs, and the e-mails (thanks to my habit of placing my contact address at the bottom of each commentary I write) just kept on coming.

What was it about this piece that touched such a nerve? I wish I knew for sure. My guess is that it was a combination of timing, pertinence to what was on people's minds and also the fact that AlterNet, unlike lots of media sources, let me say what I wanted to say, the way I wanted to say it -- raw, unfiltered and honest. After all, it's doubtful that more "mainstream" media would be inclined to let an author say that white folks were "deluded" about the dysfunction in their own communities, and needed to "pull our heads out of our ass." In fact, a number of such "mainstream sources" rejected the piece, even as it continued to spread like a political computer virus. Apparently, lots of people appreciate raw honesty, even if the folks at most major newspapers do not.

Within days I was fielding calls from the Los Angeles Times, and a columnist at the Washington Post; then a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, and another at the Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch. None of these papers ran the article, but all ended up running stories about the piece, and the massive national reaction to it. I also spent an hour on the phone with Nightline, and did about 50 radio programs.

7500 emails later that reaction has remained intense, even after nearly two months.

But what I find most interesting about the reaction (2 to 1 positive by the way) is that I wasn't saying anything people of color hadn't been saying for years. Apparently it is news to my fellow white folks that our kids are potentially just as dangerous and dysfunctional as anyone else's. Apparently it is news to whites that we have plenty of pathologies in our communities, and that crime and deviance are not merely black and brown problems. But to those same black and brown folks who are usually on the receiving end of racial stereotyping and profiling, this is not news at all.

The fact is, my words -- those of a white male saying these things -- had been taken seriously in a way they would not have been if spoken by a person of color. The attention garnered by this one article was yet another example of how those of us who are dominant group members will never be able to escape racial privilege until the society itself changes dramatically. So while I was glad to get the message out, it was disturbing to realize just how deep that privilege system runs and how implicated in it we all are.

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