Race-Talk is a Language White Folks Need to Learn
The cost of racial illiteracy is high — can we get a Duolingo course, please?
I’ve been white long enough to know there are different reasons why so many of my group have a hard time discussing race and racism in America.
For some, it’s about their own biases, which they seek to deny or at least keep from view, lest people conclude they’re not as open-minded as they profess.
For others, it’s defensiveness at the mention of ongoing inequality and unfairness still faced by persons of color. After all, acknowledging those might call into question the legitimacy of their own social status.
A third group would rather talk about class, gender, or sexuality — areas where, because of their relationship to those identities, they can focus on where they got hurt, rather than where they were advantaged (even as both things can be true, and often are).
For still others, it’s about a fear they might say the wrong thing despite good intentions, prompting a person of color — especially someone Black — to think of them as racist. So rather than risk it, they remain quiet, afraid to be the target of one of the woke mobs they’ve been told to fear by Bill Maher.
As an ironic side note, research suggests it is precisely when whites remain quiet in racial discussions that Black folks are most likely to think we have something to hide — specifically, racism. So by holding back for fear of signaling bias, we end up confirming the very suspicion we hoped to avoid.
But for my purposes, I want to focus on a fifth group of white folks who struggle with race talk. This group may overlap with the others but also comprises a not-insignificant portion on its own.
It’s a group whose skittishness is mainly due to a kind of functional illiteracy in the language of race, meaning the linguistics of racialized experience. This language is one that shapes how we speak of racial matters, and especially how directly or indirectly we do so.
Part of the tension between whites and Blacks comes from the lack of experience most white people have in Black spaces. This unfamiliarity makes it harder for us to discern the meaning behind certain things Black folks say or even the body language they evince while saying it.
Consider the classic Paul Mooney joke, which he often used as an example of the difference between a racist joke and a joke about race — a distinction many white folks seem to miss.
Little Timmy’s mom made him a chocolate cake for his birthday, and when she wasn’t looking, he smeared the frosting all over his face and said, “Look, mom, I’m black!”
So his mom slapped him and said, “Go tell your father what you just told me.”
So he did, and his father slapped him and said, “Go tell your grandfather what you just told me.”
So he did, and his grandfather slapped him and said, “Now go back to your mother.”
So he did, and when he got back to his mother, she asked him, “Now Timmy, what did you learn today?”
And Timmy said, “I learned that I’ve only been black for ten minutes, and I already hate you white people.”
That is race talk in one of its purest forms. It works because it calls upon a racialized history that informs the punch line. Furthermore, it’s a joke about race, which pokes fun at whiteness as a historical force but doesn’t indict or call into question white humanity.
Yet, I know white people who find it difficult to laugh at the joke — even though it is objectively hilarious — because they’re too busy wondering if Mooney literally hated white people and was just using Timmy in the joke to express his own bigotry.
White and Black folks have long used language differently
White and Black Americans have different experiences with language, which reflect differences in historical power relations between us.
For whites, having been in positions of greater power and influence, language has tended to be more literal. What we said carried weight, so we said what we meant and meant what we said — especially if we were middle class or affluent.
For Black folks, language has often been a weapon deployed to subvert the existing order.
From songs sung by enslaved persons — which gave the impression of passivity, but only because overseers didn’t understand the hidden meaning — to the use of words and phrases with secret meanings as part of the Underground Railroad, Black people have used language metaphorically. Other times they have leaned heavily on irony, saying one thing to mean another.
For those still confused, this is among the reasons it’s different when Black folks use a derivation of the n-word, and no, we still can’t, so shut up about it.
Blues and Hip-Hop continued this tradition, using words and phrases to process pain or challenge others in ways that are as symbolic and metaphorical as literal.
In the case of Hip-Hop, MC-ing, especially in its early days, often appeared as a more stylized version of the dozens — a Black verbal tradition largely foreign to white folks. The verbal taunts and put-downs that characterize the dozens are not to be taken literally. That first guy is not actually trying to insult the second guy’s momma. After all, both guys’ moms are probably friends, as are they.
None of it is personal. But if white folks found ourselves in the middle of a dozens round, I swear, most would probably waste time trying to explain how our mothers were not particularly full-figured at all, just big-boned.
White and Black Americans have different experiences with language, which reflect differences in historical power relations between us.
For whites, having been in positions of greater power and influence, language has tended to be more literal. What we said carried weight, so we said what we meant and meant what we said — especially if we were middle class or affluent.
For Black folks, language has often been a weapon deployed to subvert the existing order.
From songs sung by enslaved persons — which gave the impression of passivity, but only because overseers didn’t understand the hidden meaning — to the use of words and phrases with secret meanings as part of the Underground Railroad, Black people have used language metaphorically. Other times they have leaned heavily on irony, saying one thing to mean another.
For those still confused, this is among the reasons it’s different when Black folks use a derivation of the n-word, and no, we still can’t, so shut up about it.
Blues and Hip-Hop continued this tradition, using words and phrases to process pain or challenge others in ways that are as symbolic and metaphorical as literal.
In the case of Hip-Hop, MC-ing, especially in its early days, often appeared as a more stylized version of the dozens — a Black verbal tradition largely foreign to white folks. The verbal taunts and put-downs that characterize the dozens are not to be taken literally. That first guy is not actually trying to insult the second guy’s momma. After all, both guys’ moms are probably friends, as are they.
None of it is personal. But if white folks found ourselves in the middle of a dozens round, I swear, most would probably waste time trying to explain how our mothers were not particularly full-figured at all, just big-boned.
What white people hear when Black folks say “white people”
I think understanding this is a lot easier for white folks who are from the South.
However fucked up we are when it comes to race, white southerners have more experience, typically, around Black folks, for reasons that are historically horrifying but also impactful. We experience a proximity, spatially and linguistically, that staid white New Englanders (or whites from large sections of the Midwest, mountain states, and Northwest) usually lack.
If you’re not from the South or didn’t grow up in a large city with a significant number of Black folks, you likely don’t speak the language of race.
As a result, when Black people start talking about race and racism, you think they’re talking about you.
When they talk about white people, you think they mean all 200 million white Americans, all the time, including those that were just delivered and haven’t even gotten their Apgar scores yet.
You believe their indictment of whiteness is personal because you don’t understand the broad and symbolic way Black Americans use language.
When Black people say “white people” or “white folks,” 9 times out of 10, they are not referring to 200 million individuals called white. For lack of a better way to put it, they are speaking of “Whiteness, Inc.” As in, the corporate entity registered in Delaware for tax purposes but with branch offices all over the country.
(That too is a metaphor — seriously, white folks, stop Googling “Branch of Whiteness, Inc. near me.” They’re not hiring right now, and anyway, you’re already on the payroll).
When Black people talk shit about white folks or whiteness, they are typically talking about whiteness as a state of mind. In fact, that’s what the late, great comedian, Dick Gregory, said whiteness was — and all it was.
When you speak race, because you’ve been immersed in it and learned its intricacies, you don’t get knocked off stride by Black people saying “white people this” or “white folks that.” Growing up in schools that were 35–45 percent Black, playing ball on nearly all Black teams, then living and working in Black communities, I heard stuff like that all the time. And I didn’t need folks to say, “Not you, Tim; we didn’t mean you when we said that.”
First, because I figured they probably didn’t — they saw me standing there after all — and second, because on the occasions when they did mean me, they would tell me so because we were friends or colleagues. We had a connection that would allow for that kind of honesty.
It’s when you don’t have that connection that you trip the first time a Black person says “white” and isn’t talking about Christmas or the shoes you’re not supposed to wear after Labor Day.
Although there is no easy solution to race-talk illiteracy — it takes time, connection, and a certain maturity that allows one not to take systemic critiques personally — it’s essential to bridge this divide sooner rather than later.
Perhaps just understanding the chasm between us, as I’ve tried to explain here, will be of some assistance.
If not, we’re gonna need someone at Rosetta Stone to get crackin’ on this right away.
I think understanding this is a lot easier for white folks who are from the South.
However fucked up we are when it comes to race, white southerners have more experience, typically, around Black folks, for reasons that are historically horrifying but also impactful. We experience a proximity, spatially and linguistically, that staid white New Englanders (or whites from large sections of the Midwest, mountain states, and Northwest) usually lack.
If you’re not from the South or didn’t grow up in a large city with a significant number of Black folks, you likely don’t speak the language of race.
As a result, when Black people start talking about race and racism, you think they’re talking about you.
When they talk about white people, you think they mean all 200 million white Americans, all the time, including those that were just delivered and haven’t even gotten their Apgar scores yet.
You believe their indictment of whiteness is personal because you don’t understand the broad and symbolic way Black Americans use language.
When Black people say “white people” or “white folks,” 9 times out of 10, they are not referring to 200 million individuals called white. For lack of a better way to put it, they are speaking of “Whiteness, Inc.” As in, the corporate entity registered in Delaware for tax purposes but with branch offices all over the country.
(That too is a metaphor — seriously, white folks, stop Googling “Branch of Whiteness, Inc. near me.” They’re not hiring right now, and anyway, you’re already on the payroll).
When Black people talk shit about white folks or whiteness, they are typically talking about whiteness as a state of mind. In fact, that’s what the late, great comedian, Dick Gregory, said whiteness was — and all it was.
When you speak race, because you’ve been immersed in it and learned its intricacies, you don’t get knocked off stride by Black people saying “white people this” or “white folks that.” Growing up in schools that were 35–45 percent Black, playing ball on nearly all Black teams, then living and working in Black communities, I heard stuff like that all the time. And I didn’t need folks to say, “Not you, Tim; we didn’t mean you when we said that.”
First, because I figured they probably didn’t — they saw me standing there after all — and second, because on the occasions when they did mean me, they would tell me so because we were friends or colleagues. We had a connection that would allow for that kind of honesty.
It’s when you don’t have that connection that you trip the first time a Black person says “white” and isn’t talking about Christmas or the shoes you’re not supposed to wear after Labor Day.
Although there is no easy solution to race-talk illiteracy — it takes time, connection, and a certain maturity that allows one not to take systemic critiques personally — it’s essential to bridge this divide sooner rather than later.
Perhaps just understanding the chasm between us, as I’ve tried to explain here, will be of some assistance.
If not, we’re gonna need someone at Rosetta Stone to get crackin’ on this right away.
Classic Time Wise, on the trap of white privilege:
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