Ask Dr. Gramma Karen: Jezra Kaye Shares Some Thoughts about Race for White Readers

Posted on 6-30-209-18-20 by Dr. Karen Rancourt

Note from Dr. Gramma Karen: This is not the first time I have turned to my friend and colleague, Jezra Kaye, to share her wisdom with us. (See “Our Children Were Going To Be Mixed”.) In this column, Jezra weighs in with some advice on the topic of race.

*From left to right: Laurika Harris-Kaye, Jerome Harris, Jezra Kaye*

Jezra Kaye, president of Speak Up For Success, is a public speaking coach and speechwriter.

She is the author of three books and the co-author of two books.

She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband, Jerome Harris, a jazz musician. They have one daughter, Laurika.

Some Thoughts about Race for White Readers

By Jezra Kaye

If you’re reading this post, it’s because you want to communicate (and think) more effectively about race. I hope these observations help.

For most of my life—since I started working as a white vocalist in a Black music tradition, jazz—I’ve been thinking off and on about race. And yeah, did you catch where I said “off and on”? That’s a marker of what’s called privilege.

Privilege

Privilege is “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.” As a white person, you may not feel privileged. You may not feel that you’ve been granted any special immunity or advantages. But privilege is not a feeling, it’s a status; and you have privileges that Black people can’t even dream about.

For example, as a white woman, I don’t have to think about race…

Every time I go outside (or when I’m in bed, like Breonna Taylor was)…
Every time someone looks at me strangely…
Every time I walk by a police officer…
Every time I get followed around a store or asked what I’m doing in my own neighborhood (which doesn’t happen to me, because I’m white).

I can think about race when I feel like it. That’s my privilege. And lately I’ve been reminded of how totally and profoundly privilege can blind us to the reality of other people’s lives.

Virtue Signaling

Virtue signaling is a way of making it known that you’re not one of those white folks. Individuals do it, and lots of companies have been doing it lately, in response to a major change in public opinion: Corporation X stands with Black Lives Matter. We value diversity and equality and support the fight for a more just America.

So many companies want you to know they value diversity and equality! It’s like Roger Goodell (Commissioner of the NFL, for non-sports nerds like me) wanting you to know that he’s always valued Colin Kaepernick.

The problem with virtue signaling is that:

With rare exceptions, e.g., Ben and Jerry’s, what you’re signaling isn’t true. It doesn’t accomplish anything (except self-congratulation).
It totally misses the point, which is that systemic racism can’t be dismantled by statements of good intentions. Offering good intentions to people who’re being hurt by racism is like offering “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of gun violence.

Systemic Racism

This is the big one—the concept that white people constantly get wrong, and that I still find hard to fully grasp. Having been raised (and indoctrinated) in the all-white suburbs of Boston in the 1950s, I didn’t grow up knowing what Black people know, which is that racism is not a glitch in the system. Racism is the system.

How Was This System Built?

Here is the history I didn’t learn until I got to college … Starting in 1619, kidnapped Africans were brought to these shores —more than two million of them died en route—and, for generations, subjugated through the constant use of violence and terror.

Their stolen labor produced untold wealth, none of which has been returned to them. The rape of their bodies produced children who were forcibly torn from them and enslaved. Their dehumanization was written into law: white people could literally do anything they wanted to them.

After hundreds of years, slavery ended. But new systems rose up to perpetuate its impact: Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, “separate but equal.”

In Recent Memory …

Black World War II veterans were not “entitled” to the G.I. Bill benefits that lifted millions of white families into the middle class.
Banks “redlined” Black neighborhoods so that people couldn’t get mortgages to buy homes and build wealth.
White institutions—colleges, universities, foundations, corporations, companies, police forces, fire departments, orchestras—excluded Black people, or let in just a few to “prove” they weren’t prejudiced.
And today, Black people still have worse prospects and outcomes in every area of life than whites, from income to imprisonment, from home ownership to health.

As Jelani Cobb put it, “Race…is shorthand for a specific set of life probabilities.” And white people have been complicit with that, in part because we didn’t need to see it.

Speaking to White People and Listening to Black People on Race

White folks need to talk to each other, not just about racism, but about how racism also hurt us—how it limits and contorts our own lives socially, economically, intellectually, creatively, civically, and spiritually.

If we have guilt, fear, anxiety, anger, shame, embarrassment, or other emotions about race, (see this article by William Gardiner)—and we do—let’s tell another white person.
If we have questions about race, let’s ask them of a white person.
When we see or hear white people demeaning, marginalizing, micro-aggressing or “othering” Black people, let’s speak up and put a stop to it

Let’s stop dumping our curiosity, questions, discomfort, pontificating, and desperate need to be reassured or forgiven on Black people, who already spend way too much of their lives dealing with what white folks think and feel.

We need to talk to each other in private. And when it’s time for public speaking about race, a person of color should have the floor. (And pay them for it, because they’ve explained all this thousands of times before.)

Let’s let them do the speaking in public.

And for once, let’s us sit back and listen, because we have a lot to learn.

Suggested Resources

You May Also Want to Read My Blogs …

Public Speaking Tip 95: Find Out If You Have Unconscious Bias (Including Bias Against YOURSELF). We human beings are really good at noticing how other people are different from us, and then explaining how that difference makes us better than them.
“Don’t Call Me Caucasian!” Caucasian actually means ‘person from the Caucasus’ — the 440,000 square kilometers of land separating the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Apologies: Why You Wanna Give Me That Funny Vibe? For the second time this year, a high-profile person has been fired for confessing they sometimes get nervous around folks of another religion or race.

Closing comment from Dr. Gramma Karen: I thank Jezra for sharing “Some Thoughts about Race for White Readers.” We can all learn from her experience, insights, and her comprehensive compilation of resources.

Ask Dr. Gramma Karen is published every other Tuesday.
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Dr. Rancourt’s most recent book is

It’s All About Relationships:

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