How to Listen Better As a White Person
Ignore your outrage and ask a black person: What is it like to be you?
Ignore your outrage and ask a black person: What is it like to be you?
Fellow white-skinned folks, we like to brag about the many virtues of “our” Western civilization, but I think if you ask most of the people with darker pigment who we’ve crossed paths with over the years and around the globe, one thing they’d say we’ve been pretty crappy at is listening.
And by listening, I mean opening our hearts to the experiences of other people.
So this post is just one small attempt to show a) how many of us still aren’t listening and b) a method of how we can change that.
If you’ll indulge me, then, I’ve taken the following from a Facebook post from a friend of mine who I care deeply about, but who I find is struggling to understand why so many of us are beyond fed up by the lack of progress in terms of ending systemic racism. My friend wrote:
“There is no right way”
Those words sum it up. No matter what has been tried, nothing has changed the System.
So the extreme forms some of the protests have taken – burning down buildings, looting and occasional violence – aren’t intended to make people listen. Trying to understand them logically misses their point; they are an emotional expression of frustration.
Now I’m not sure the conversation I am having with my friend and her friends will do any good, but for whatever reason, I, a middle-aged white guy keep trying to get through to those who don’t see the systemic abuse of black and brown people by the police as a problem (note: 20 years ago, I wrote a cover story for an alt-weekly about police abuse of a white person, so I see this issue as being even broader than racism, but I want to keep things focused because this conversation on this page was about the current events which are about police violence against people of color).
I’ve been appalled about police brutality ever since I was a college student in Los Angeles during the Rodney King beating (and acquittal for the four police). That was 29 years ago. Watching the George Floyd murder sickened me and brought me to tears: Has anything changed? If anything, it seems the System became even harsher.
With these thoughts in mind, I earnestly tried to provide some insight for my friend. Here is most of what I wrote:
I think the answer the person gives is, if you give it a second thought, leading in the right direction. There are no logical, reasonable responses because those have been tried and have not been heard.
So the rioting and such are just a symptom of people being fed up and saying, “fuck it, there’s no point of trying to talk sensibly or even trying to appeal through the heart. None of it matters because none of it leads to the very simple, reasonable changes we are asking for: respect us as humans.”
You don’t have to like it. But it is what it is.
The solution, then, is to start pondering where you are not listening.
The lack-of-listening epidemic is widespread. But if we are going to solve it, we have to ask ourselves: How am I not listening? What do I need to hear that I’ve not heard so far?
A Friend of My Friend’s Response
Bryan Winchell, you are asking that we respect you as human and our method of accomplishing that is to totally disrespect you personally, burn and destroy property that does not belong to us (also showing total disrespect for those who do own it) and physically assaulting you and anyone seen as being in authority of any kind? If the ‘changes’ they request are indeed so simple, what exactly are the actions they feel must be taken to accomplish them and how exactly can these terrible behaviors lead to such actions actually being taken?
Clearly, those not listening are the ones exercising all this destructive behavior. Any attempts to communicate with them are rebuffed and met with more destructive behavior and completely impossible demands, not civil discussion and sensible requests. This is certainly not leading in the right direction and they know it perfectly well – – as do we.
How much of an “attempt to communicate” has been made?
In my opinion, besides the confusing change of perspective of the pronouns in this person’s response, there are a few problems with her comment. But I’ll just focus on one: she says “any attempt to communicate with (the ones exercising all this destructive behavior)” are rebuffed.
Now, were there real efforts to communicate made in the past? For example, when Colin Kaepernick took a knee in silence during the national anthem (about the most respectful, non-violent method of protest ever), was there any attempt to communicate made? Communication implies when someone raises a concern as Kaepernick did in various interviews when he spoke about police brutality, we address that topic, correct?
Is that what happened? Was there a good faith effort by those who disagreed with Kaepernick to talk about that topic? I don’t think there was. No, the major feedback he received ignored the topic he raised, quite often by changing it into a discussion of how his tactics were awful because he was disrespecting the American flag (Side note: I’ve interviewed several flags from a variety of countries and all have stated, unequivocally, that they are incapable of feelings, so no offense was ever taken).
Still, some part of me is a sadist, so I decided to take another crack at it this morning, answering “what exactly are the actions that must be taken” question by, again, returning to the topic of listening.
Here is what I wrote:
Next time a man takes a knee in silence and says “there’s a problem here,” listen.
That’s a start.
Point is, people are fucking shit up because they have not been seen or heard. At this point, they are not trying to reach you. They see it as pointless. (Methinks I used point too often there!)
So sure, I agree that rioting and looting are not strategies to get people to listen. Y’all didn’t listen even after watching a man casually snuff the life out of someone on camera as people were pleading with him to stop. Even after experiencing that, there were people making arguments about how police murdering people isn’t a problem, how it wasn’t murder, how the statistics say blah, blah, blah.
That ain’t listening.
To Listen Means To Imagine
If you want to listen, imagine: that you or someone you love is that person being killed. Experience all 8 minutes and 46 seconds of the George Floyd murder while doing that.
And then realize this shit has been going on for all of American history. And imagine living a life where your appearance – your skin color, which, in spite of Michael Jackson’s efforts, can’t be changed – makes you susceptible to having a run-in with an official of the government who may end up murdering you.
Imagine that. Feel it for a while. Be that person for a while.
And then imagine that you and many others have tried to change this reality and yet it doesn’t change. Even when a person with the same skin color becomes president it keeps happening, no matter how respectful your strategy is.
If you do that and try to expand your consciousness to imagine how hopeless that would make you feel, then maybe you can start to understand why people are raging. Doesn’t mean you’ll like it necessarily and you most likely won’t think it’s going to lead to the changes you seek (because nothing else has), but at least you’ll be on the road to understanding it.
This exercise is not easy and can’t be completed overnight. But if you truly are being earnest about wanting to listen, this is a good start.
Meanwhile, take your attention away from your outrage over the protests, because that outrage is fueled, in part, by that part of you that hasn’t been listening. Let that part take a rest. It’ll likely still be there when you are finished, but it will be softened.
That’s it. In the end, the lack of hearing each other is merely a matter of not expanding our awareness into the question, “What is it like to be you?”
That’s it, my plea to my fellow white folks who still are struggling to understand the protests.
To me, this sort of appeal is the first step that will lead to the many reforms our system is begging of us to make. Without approaching this issue from the heart, the reforms will likely be, as they have been for too long now, window dressing. And then there will be politicians who congratulate themselves for it. Fuck that.
No, we want the sort of real reforms that will lead to the society that the founders of America envisioned, a country where “liberty and justice for all” is a reality and not just pretty words on an old parchment.
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