There is a cost to pay for your silence, Mayor McMillin. A cost that grows in direct proportion to the degree of your complicity. It has always been so. Had whites stood up and demanded better of our own, of ourselves, beginning centuries ago, so much about this nation's history could have been different. Had more whites chosen to be allies to black and brown folks, joining them in resistance to oppression and domination, all the anxiety we feel now - the fear of being called racist, or thought of as such by folks of color - could have been mitigated.
That tradition, the tradition of resistance, is there Mr. Mayor, for the joining. It has always been there. And the fact that you know nothing of it - that none of the whites in Jena likely do - merely suggests the glaring failures of the American educational system, which has spent years teaching us even the smallest, most insignificant detail of our history (so long as it serves to boost the patriotic mood) but which has told us next to nothing about white antiracism through history. No wonder whites in Jena feel under siege. You don't even realize that the fight of those 20,000 people who visited your town is your fight too. It is a fight for human liberty and justice, and one in which whites have joined with folks of color for generations. Not enough of us, to be sure, but some just the same. What's more, it is a fight to break out of the boxes in which we as whites have been placed by our own collaboration - it's a chance to say that we will not be defined and have our humanity limited by the weight of history and the fear of forging a new path.
"If you choose instead to remain on the side of white denial and silence and obduracy, you will pay a price."
You could choose to be a part of that fight. Your entire town could. If it does, you will be welcomed to the struggle, I assure you. But if you don't, if you choose instead to remain on the side of white denial and silence and obduracy, then please know, you will pay a price. You will not escape judgment, And you will have to get used to many an article, many a speech, and many an unflattering reference in the songs of artists, all condemning your community to a special place in hell, whether viewed in literal or metaphorical terms.
And your protestations of innocence will fall like raindrops in the Seattle autumn: so common as to not even be noticed or justify so much as a moment's consideration.
Here's hoping that you make the right choice.
- Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and educator. He is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and can be reached through his website at www.timwise.org, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
- Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report
