From “Silencing White Noise: Six Practices to Overcome Our Inaction on Race” by Willie Dwayne Francois III
This hazardous slumber facilitates silence on both sides of Whiteness as we live in its shadow of death. The inability to converse about race lulls both non-White and White people into an escapist sleep. White noise cancels out Black pain and the truth of America’s history of racial terror, alowing us, like my infant son, to sleep through this moment in history, which is so ripe for a sincere racial reckoning.
The word noise derives from a Latin word for nausea – a feeling of uneasiness accompanied by the urge to vomit. In a sense, we move from offices to theaters to sanctuaries to bedroom motion sick, vomiting up tragic – and potentially fatal – untruths about Black and Latinx communities. Unaware of their origins, we spew the ideas and sounds we hear. White noise sounds all around us and sometimes falls from our lips in statements such as these:
- “Black people are as equally racist as White people.”
- “White people experience reverse discrimination.”
- “America is a post-racial society.”
- “If the Jews can make it, how come the Blacks can’t?”
- “But my family never owned slaves.”
- “I am not a racist; I voted for Obama.”
- “I just want the most qualified person to get the job.”
- “This is why we [Black people] can’t have nice things.”
- “She’s so ghetto.”
- “That’s so hood dude.”
- “How are you going to get a job with a name like that?”
- “He acts White.”
- “You’re not like other Black people.”
- “It’s not safe there.”
- “Where are you really from?”
They all sound so innocent in the moment. The racialized habits – namely, in speech and silence – are the vomit of a subconscious governed by White fear and superiority. On a daily basis, we spew what we consume and experience without asking how we formed such opinions and feelings for ourselves and others.