"We just don't give a shit": When Colorblind Racism Speaks Back to Us

If a sociological concept has real explanatory power as a description of the world, and peoples' interactions in it, there will be a moment when it manifests itself through the behavior of a given individual.

Those moments are rare. When they occur, there is a moment of validation where we can say to ourselves, "yes, we are not that crazy after all!" The eureka moment is important because it brings satisfaction from knowing that theory building and empirical work do not occur in a vacuum.

I do not like to feed the online trolls who are attracted to stories about race and social justice. Moreover, the Trayvon Martin case has pulled in the worst of the White Right as the mix of guns, race, and a dead black teenager are ambrosia and honey to them as they twist themselves into knots of logic to find "self-defense" in the shooting murder of an unarmed person by an honorary white man named George Zimmerman.

I will break my rule.

Over at Alternet, the following comment was made in response to one of my posts on the George Zimmerman trial. It is colorblind racism and white racial resentment speaking to us all:

I've read any number of op-ed pieces here about the Zimmerman verdict, from "slave passes" to "White America" to "systemic racism". And all over one trial that in itself seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with race.

You imagine the "good, decent" white folks (as opposed to those other ones) don't understand your frustration because we're unable to sympathize with persons of color, that we're socially or psychologically incapable of such a feat. Well, as a white dude--although admittedly you might not classify me as one of the "good ones"--I have to say you're wrong.

We just don't give a shit. Not that we don't care about the kid who got killed, that a 17 year old's life was taken. I imagine most people--regardless of color--can see the tragedy in that, no matter who was in the right or wrong. We just don't give a shit that that kid was black.

No, seriously. We really don't give a shit. And you know something else? We're getting tired of being told by black people how if the roles were reversed and it was a white dude shot by a black guy, all us white folk would be crying bloody murder. In fact, within the last year I can guarantee that more than one white person has been killed by a black person. No protests over it. No mass chaos. Why? Because we don't really give a shit.

You want to know a secret about most white folk? Most white folk want black folk to shut the hell up about their race. Not because we're scared of it, or don't understand it, or feel guilty about it. But because we see race kind of like we see the kid from a different school district: everyone finds him exciting and fascinating at first, but after 4 weeks no one cares any more--he's just another kid. We get it. You're black and that gives you some special perspective that us white folk will never understand and that you'll never tire of reminding us about.

Was this just a performance? Provocative words taken from the backstage of White spaces and put out into the front stage via the Internet? I have no way of knowing. Either way, the above sentiments channel the collective (White) American subconscious and the passion that is white racial resentment in post civil rights America.

Privilege is the ability to get annoyed that inconvenient matters are being discussed, and the assumption that your wishes for silence will be respected as a given. Privilege is also the ability to tell those Others that they need to just shut up and move along, as we--here being white folks--just don't want to hear about this "race stuff" anymore.

As I try to navigate the clear public divides in attitudes, morals, and values in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin case, where white racism and the white racial frame have inverted empirical reality and common sense for their owners, it is helpful to have comments such as the one above in mind.

"We" are not crazy; most of "them" simply do not give a damn about "us". It ain't rocket science. Do not waste the energy trying to make sense of something so very simple.