Opinion | Why don’t our peers understand racism?

Guest column by Kennedi Whittingham, junior television writing and production major

Kennedi Whittingham, junior television writing and production major

I’ve been at Chapman for three years. It’s been a great three years. In a school with low diversity that I was previously afraid of standing out in, I’m proud to be able to say I now have friends of all types, I feel more than accepted, and I was lucky enough to see the Black Lives Matter flag finally raised above the Leatherby Libraries.

I say finally because, with the raising of the flag, I realized that this had been a long time coming. Where was this flag my freshman year when students marched through the rain after Michael Brown’s murderer wasn’t convicted? Where was it when Philando Castile’s last minutes were broadcasted on Facebook Live after he was shot by an officer after a traffic stop? Why are so many people speaking out against Black Lives Matter?

Regardless, these questions led me to the steps of the library after an “All Lives Matter” flag was raised in the early hours of the morning.
Arianna Ngnomire said it best when she held a sign that read “But will you say it to my face?” at the top of the stairs, waiting for the person responsible for the “All Lives Matter” flag to show his face.

This prompted Imani Woodley to start an Instagram Live video that brought more attention and more people to the confrontation. I was one of them. As a member of the Black community at Chapman, I wanted to take the opportunity to have a conversation with people who were raised to think opposite of the way I do. Echo chambers are only self-serving for so long. I often forget, though, that at meet-ups like this, it’s difficult to find your friends may not have the views you thought they did.

With racial tensions pulling our generation thinner and thinner, I believe, and have learned from experience, that many of the people speaking out against the Black Lives Matter movement don’t actually know what racism is. My first look at this was in high school on Facebook. Michael Blackmon wrote a Buzzfeed articleabout the daily obstacles that non-people of color don’t realize exist for Black people. I saw this reposted by a peer with the caption, “This is racist.” After a lengthy discussion about why he believed this, including his belief that everyone had inherent equal opportunity in America, I ended with, “I can’t explain racism to you.”

Step one to upsetting an uneducated non-person of color? Claim racism or privilege. In past conversations, I’ve realized that a lot more people than I thought feel that the phrase “white privilege” is racist terminology. They feel attacked, refusing to acknowledge that white privilege is not about them, but rather, things that they don’t have to worry about because they’re white.
While we are an extremely “woke” generation, we tend to forget that a lot of our peers don’t believe in nor understand the same things we do. On the steps of the Leatherby Libraries, I was told that saying that people benefiting from white privilege was racist, then was subsequently asked what the term meant.

There is a huge percentage of non-people of color across these states that will sing “All Lives Matter” from the rooftops, with no understanding that the Black Lives Matter movement is aimed to lift Black people up into equality. Just like the burning house metaphor, I, and many others, tried to explain to questioning Chapman students that the point of Black Lives Matter is to not put Black people ahead of anyone else, but to give a fighting chance to those that, for deep-rooted reasons, can’t catch up in the race.

I cannot stress enough how white privilege is not attacking white people, Black Lives Matter is not putting white people down, and how “white people do this” jokes are not racism. I feel like it’s extremely important for people have an “All Lives Matter” personality to first do further research into the definition of racism and to understand that Black people pushing themselves toward greatness is not pushing anyone else back.