{"id":16457,"date":"2025-06-26T15:57:47","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T15:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=16457"},"modified":"2025-06-26T16:21:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T16:21:52","slug":"black-people-ending-racism-isnt-our-role-reclaiming-our-power-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/26\/black-people-ending-racism-isnt-our-role-reclaiming-our-power-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Black People: Ending Racism Isn\u2019t Our Role \u2014 Reclaiming Our Power Is"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Carla Thomas<\/em>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/em><\/p>\n

Racism. I\u2019m so tired of it. Tired of the hate. Tired of the gaslighting. Tired of being expected to act like this country doesn\u2019t run on a system that was never meant to include us.<\/p>\n

Black people: we didn\u2019t start racism, and we cannot be expected to end it. That burden belongs to those who created it and still benefit from it. Now breathe.<\/p>\n

Our work is different.<\/strong> It\u2019s reclaiming our power by protecting our communities. Building power. Creating unity. Strengthening what\u2019s ours so we can address racism from a place of strategy, not survival.<\/p>\n

For too long, we\u2019ve been made to believe that if we just do a little more, speak more softly, protest more peacefully, dress more \u201crespectably,\u201d or discipline our communities harder, then maybe, just maybe, racism will loosen its grip. HA!<\/p>\n

Racism is not a Black people problem.<\/strong> It never was. It\u2019s a system created by white people to preserve power, wealth, and dominance. The responsibility for dismantling it rests with those who built it and continue to benefit from it.<\/p>\n

Yes, we can and should call it out when it shows up in our lives. We have every right to speak truth to power and defend our communities. But ending racism? Nope. That\u2019s not our role. It\u2019s not our responsibility to fix what we didn\u2019t break.<\/p>\n

We need to stop exhausting ourselves trying to ease white guilt or prove we\u2019re worthy of their understanding. That\u2019s not our burden to carry.<\/p>\n

Whiteness Was Invented to Divide and Conquer<\/strong><\/p>\n

To understand our current reality, we have to understand where whiteness, and this system came from. \u201cWhiteness\u201d itself is a fabricated identity born not out of shared culture or heritage, but from colonization and control. In the 17th century, in places like colonial Virginia, European elites began unifying various ethnic groups (English, Irish, German, etc.) under a new umbrella term: \u201cwhite.\u201d This wasn\u2019t about solidarity, it was about hierarchy. \u201cWhiteness\u201d became a tool to divide the working class and to justify the enslavement of Africans. As journalist Robert P. Baird explains in The New Yorker<\/em>, t<\/strong>his racial category was deliberately constructed in response to events like Bacon\u2019s Rebellion, to prevent unity between poor Black and white laborers. It\u2019s not a race. It\u2019s a strategy.<\/p>\n

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Dog Whistles and False Equivalencies: Respectability Won\u2019t Save Us<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet despite knowing this, Black people are still saying things like: \u201cHow can we expect them to stop killing us if we don\u2019t stop killing us?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

This dangerous logic reinforces a false equivalency: when two vastly different things are treated as if they\u2019re the same. In this case, it falsely equates community-based violence among Black people (which is rooted in systemic oppression) with the targeted violence of white supremacy. But white supremacy isn\u2019t reacting to our behavior, it\u2019s the very force that created the conditions for that behavior<\/strong>: through redlining, underfunded schools, job discrimination, mass incarceration, and decades of systemic neglect.<\/p>\n

When people use the phrase \u201cBlack-on-Black crime\u201d<\/strong> as a way to derail conversations about racism, they\u2019re not offering solutions, they\u2019re using a dog whistle<\/strong>:<\/strong> a coded term that sounds neutral but is meant to reinforce racist ideas. Violence happens most within communities because of proximity<\/strong>, not because of race. White people harm other white people too, but we never call it \u201cwhite-on-white crime.\u201d See how that works?<\/p>\n

This whole mindset that we can \u201cearn\u201d safety or acceptance if we just \u201cact right,\u201d is a lie.
\nLiberation isn\u2019t something we get by behavior. It comes from standing in our dignity, letting go of respectability politics, and reminding ourselves: we don\u2019t need to prove our humanity. We were never the problem.<\/p>\n

As civil rights leader John Lewis said in Walking with the Wind<\/em>, and as bell hooks quotes:<\/p>\n

“As far as I’m concerned, this was the turning point of the civil rights movement. … We had played by the rules, done everything we were supposed to do, had played the game exactly as required, had arrived at the doorstep and found the door slammed in our face.”<\/em><\/p>\n

This realization that we can do everything “right” and still be denied basic humanity, must shape how we understand our role in this struggle.<\/p>\n

Why Is Everything Always About Race? Because It Always Has Been<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why is everything about race? Because racists made it so. This question is rarely sincere. It usually shows up as a deflection, thrown out when a Black person names racism for what it is. It\u2019s a way to dismiss the truth, protect comfort, and avoid accountability in a system built on racial inequality.<\/p>\n

Ahmaud Arbery was murdered for jogging while Black. Elijah McClain, a gentle, autistic young man in Colorado, was stopped, brutalized, and later killed by police while walking home from the store. Christian Cooper, an avid birdwatcher, had the police called on him in Central Park because a white woman weaponized his Blackness against him when asked to leash her dog. Even something as simple as opening a bookstore like Blacklit<\/em>, owned by LaTasha Lewis in Dallas, Texas invites harassment, protests and surveillance, simply because the owner is Black. After just two years in business, she was forced to close her doors due to relentless backlash and targeted opposition.<\/p>\n

None of these events were about what the people were \u201cdoing.\u201d These people were attacked for who they were. So when people ask, \u201cwhy is everything always about race?\u201d the answer is clear: because in this country, Blackness is always being policed, surveilled, questioned, and threatened. Period.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The real question isn\u2019t why everything is about race, it\u2019s why people are treated differently because of their race, forcing these conversations to exist in the first place.<\/p>\n

Living in a World Built Against Us: What Real Allyship Requires<\/strong><\/p>\n

To the white people who pride themselves on having Black friends, attending a Juneteenth festival, sitting on the boards or being a part of Black organizations: what are you doing when no one\u2019s watching? It\u2019s not enough to be near Blackness, you have to confront whiteness. That is, if you call yourself an ally.<\/p>\n

This is where proximity politics falls apart: the idea that simply being close to a marginalized group through relationships, friendships, work environments, or cultural involvement, is enough to claim allyship. Some white people pride themselves on being in close proximity to Blackness. They will date Black people but won\u2019t challenge racism in their own families; raise Black children but never confront the anti-Blackness embedded in their parenting, families or schools; work in Black spaces but refuse to examine their own privilege and biases.<\/p>\n

They show up in selfies and photo ops, but never in fights. Comfortable around Blackness, but uncomfortable confronting whiteness. They believe proximity equals solidarity all the while quietly basking in the privileges that white supremacy affords them. They love the culture, the connection, the community, but they don\u2019t examine how their whiteness still shields them, still centers them, still grants them access and power we\u2019re denied.<\/p>\n

This is passive supremacy, the quiet comfort of being near Blackness without ever challenging the systems that keep whiteness in control. It\u2019s not overt hatred, but it\u2019s not harmless either. It\u2019s a refusal to risk the safety, status, or silence that comes with whiteness, even while claiming solidarity. Proximity is not proof of progress if you\u2019re still invested in a system that dehumanizes the very people you claim to love.<\/p>\n

That means challenging your family at the dinner table. It means calling out your coworkers when they make a \u201cjoke.\u201d It means doing the unglamorous, uncomfortable work of unlearning your own internalized supremacy and actively working to dismantle it in your communities.<\/p>\n

Anti-Blackness isn\u2019t just about racial slurs and hate crimes, it shows up in the everyday, in ways people have learned to ignore. It lives in hiring practices. In school curricula. In newsrooms. In medical care. In jury selection. In neighborhoods. And yes, even in your homes. So if you’re not actively tearing it down, ask yourself: what are you actually doing? Because comfort is not commitment. And proximity is not solidarity.<\/p>\n

This Is Not the End But a Redirect<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s time we stop trying to conform, accommodate every demand, dispel every stereotype, or meet every unreasonable expectation placed on us. If we\u2019re supposed to be created equal, why are we still chasing goalposts that never stop moving? The truth is: we will never be \u201cright\u201d enough for a system that\u2019s functioning exactly as it was designed to.<\/p>\n

History has proven it, no matter how well we speak, how much we achieve, or how many barriers we break. We can earn rights and privileges. We can succeed. We can even become President of the United States. And still, racism persists.<\/p>\n

Instead of trying to dismantle racism, we focus on building what\u2019s ours:<\/p>\n