White America: I Dare You to Put Your Money where Your Mouth Is
As a white man to my colleagues, brothers, and sisters who are white. To all of you who have come out, in recent days, so loudly, to protest against the mistreatment of our Black brothers and sisters, to protest so loudly against racism. To all the corporations who have filled my inbox virtue signaling that ‘black lives matter’, telling me that they ‘stand with black lives’. That want to tell me, so loudly, about the $200,000 they have donated to black causes when their annual profit is $212,500,000 (see page 46 of linked document). (This amount ($200,000) is one tenth of one percent of their gross revenue for 2019.) That want to tell me they stand with black lives, when in truth, they stand with white venture capitalists, because that is who owns the business. In business, we have a flare for the dramatic gesture.
But with love, I dare you to put your actual money where your actual mouth is. I dare you to look structural racism in this country dead in the eye and destroy it. I dare you to grasp, in your deepest heart, what it means that this country was founded on the stolen lives and lifeblood of African peoples who were enslaved, whose forced labor and torture swelled the coffers of this young country. Whose necks we are still standing on. I dare you to acknowledge that the very land this country was founded upon is stolen from the aboriginal peoples who live here.
In 1953, my grandparents bought a house in a suburb (on stolen land) in St. Louis. Black families were not permitted to buy there. That house cost $10,000 and when it was sold after their passing in 2017, it sold for more than $330,000. That is a thirtythree-fold increase on their investment. That wealth passes through our family. When I became seriously ill in 2012, and was unable to work for many months, when all was said and done my grandparents had gifted us $80,000. Eighty thousand dollars. Had they not, we would have been unable to pay our mortgage, we would have lost our home, my wife who was working full time would have been overwhelmed, my three-year-old daughter would have been pulled out of school, we might have been unsheltered (homeless), and I would likely not have recovered my health, because I would have been sick with worry on top of everything else. The fact that I am able to sit here today and write these words is a result of the unearned privilege that I have. It is inextricable from my whiteness. I want you understand that I did not particularly deserve the assistance that my grandparents were able to provide. They helped me, as families help one another, because we do. But the fact that they had resources of that magnitude is attributable not only to their hard work, but to multi-generational systematic elevation of some, and oppression of others. The opportunities I’ve had come at the expense of others. I was born into a system I didn’t create, but I benefit from it, as it harms my brothers and sisters of color. And though I didn’t create it, if I see that I am benefiting from something unjust, do I not have an obligation to dismantle it?
I will suggest to you that this obligation is not only, or even primarily, a moral one. Certainly it is moral, but I will propose to you that in a world where a criminal is the President of the United States, and morality has been jettisoned by politicians who fail to perform their Constitutional duties, the argument is more immediate. The failure to fulfill this obligation is making us sick. Not in some abstract, or metaphorical way. Our lack of connection and reciprocity with ourselves, one another, and the living world is literally killing us. Our systemic failures of empathy for viewpoints other than our own threaten life itself on planet Earth.
Our lack of connection and reciprocity with ourselves, one another, and the living world is literally killing us.
The average white family has ten times the assets of the average black family. This structural inequity is a direct consequence of structural racism. For hundreds of years the fruits of Black labor (and labor is only the tip of this iceberg) were stolen. If someone is making a very modest hourly wage ($10/hour), and works twelve-hour days, six days a week (enslaved people didn’t generally receive time off, or accrue vacation), that comes to $37,440 a year. Accounting for the 246 years of slavery in America, the accrual of that single income would be in excess of $9.2 million dollars. Is it possible that our moral debt for slavery is $9.2 million dollars per family? No, it’s not, because in any court of competent jurisdiction, we would be forced to pay not only lost wages, but compensatory damages: for trauma, pain and suffering. Would that be $25 million per family? I don’t know how to put a number on this, but here’s what I want you to hear: this is not an academic question, and while I sincerely doubt that the United States government will ever make this right, I would suggest that if you are a white person benefiting from unearned privilege (we all are), there is a moral imperative to consider how you might personally be accountable for this debt. And so once again I dare you. I dare you to put your money where your mouth is. Not your spare change. Real adjectival money.
I am the Founder and CEO of a privately-held ancestral neuro-technology company, that, thank goodness, is growing exceptionally rapidly. Half of my personal equity in the company (I am the major stockholder) is allocated to 3 things: Black wellness and reparations (20%), Indigenous wellness and reparations (20%), and peace-building and moral and ethical development (10%). You could say that these are philanthropic objectives, and you would not be incorrect, but they are business objectives. It makes us a better business, and it makes me a better person, to be committed to redressing past injustices: to be actively working on reparations. It is very important that we, as white folk, apologize. The government of the United States has not, as of this writing, issued an appropriate national acknowledgement and apology for the moral outrage of chattel slavery, nor for the genocide of aboriginal peoples here, nor for the theft of their ancestral lands. But as a Black female colleague of ours recently said, “I don’t want an apology. I want a check.” Words are necessary, and they are not enough.
William Faulkner says that the “Past isn’t dead. It isn’t even the past.” We would like to conveniently assign the institution of slavery to the past, to put all of this behind us. Yet we have a Unangan (Aleut) Alaskan advisor whose people were enslaved by the United States government when he was a boy in 1943. (See except at end of article.) He was born enslaved.
Racism in the United States is a WHITE PROBLEM. White Supremacy is a WHITE PROBLEM. Its symptoms are in people of color, but the disease is in white people. The disease operates by projecting white evil onto black bodies. It is enacted through white failure to own truth in history, to be accountable for impacts and perpetration, and to make reparations. While those of us who are white may be dismayed by the actions of white perpetrators, and invested in declaring “I’m not like that!” what is most important is for us to look in the mirror and deeply understand how we benefit from White Supremacy and structural racism every single day. If we look at our lives, and, like 91% of white folk in the United States, find that we don’t have close friends who are people of color, we have some work to do. We must engage in the inner work of identifying and dismantling white supremacy inside ourselves, which is where it must happen first. This a necessary work for all of us who wish to become allies in the liberation struggles of people of color, so that our intent and impact come into alignment. As we dismantle white supremacy inside ourselves, we, as white people, begin to heal, because what we have projected onto others are in fact parts of ourselves that we refuse to own or acknowledge. As we reclaim these parts, we reclaim pieces of our humanity.
And so, I dare you, my white brothers, sisters, and colleagues, I call you in. Instead of decrying white perpetration, look deeply in the mirror and own the perpetration in yourself. Understand how whiteness operates. All of us are perpetrators: all of us are complicit until we put an end to this nightmare of White Supremacy: of Supremacy of any kind. By race, by gender, sexual orientation, religion. We are all equals in the eyes of Nature: no more and no less than one another. So put your money where your mouth is. Otherwise, in truth, I’m not interested in what you have to say, because you haven’t earned the right to speak about this. And corporate America, stop lying. Until, from the frontlines to the boardroom, your companies are filled with woman and people of color, I don’t trust a thing you have to say. If we’re honest about it, you shouldn’t trust a thing you have to say either. You are structurally invested in the status quo.
Gabriel Kram
Founder and CEO, Applied Mindfulness, Inc.
Co-Founder, Academy of Applied Social Medicine
Convener, Restorative Practices Alliance, A Co-operative
#idareyou
#iwanthalf
#reparations
#blacklivesmatter
#putyourmoneywhereyourmouthis
In May 1943, the United States government even enslaved many of the men from the Pribilof Islands. The government threatened that none of the Aleuts would ever be allowed to go home (even after the war) if the men didn’t “volunteer” to harvest fur seals for the war effort. By international treaty, only Native Pribilovians could harvest fur seals. They were told the furs would be made into liners for aviation jackets and helmets for American pilots and bomber crews, which was a lie. The men spent the summer sealing season on the tiny Pribilof Islands clubbing over 125,000 seals. The government sold the furs to the Fouke Fur Company of St. Louis, Mo., for $1.5 million in profits, all of which went straight into the government’s coffers.
