What are your qualifications?
If you were asked to list them right now, what would you say?
Many of us would think of our education or career training credentials. If we have pursuits outside of work that run deeper than a casual hobby we might list them as well.
But I’ve been discovering recently that there are certain areas where people assume competence without having the qualifications to do so. For example, there are the folks who believe they know how to teach or manage a classroom or run a school system because they went to school as a student.
Yes, those are the folks who glibly claim that they could easily do it with one hand tied behind their back and yet I’ve never seen anyone try.
Since the recent controversy over the Howard County Auditor’s “investigation” of an event at the Howard County Library, I’ve been seeing a resurgence of white people who claim to have qualifications in the area of racism. In other words:
I know what racism is but that isn’t it.
I had an online conversation with someone who held this view the other day. I asked what his qualifications were to be able to definitely discern the presence of racism.
I won’t copy and paste the conversation here because I don’t have his consent but the essence of what he said was that he was qualified to pass judgement because he was a good person.
Being a good person is not to be sneezed at but it does not qualify you for much. Almost anything you would want to do requires knowledge, skills, and experience.
Let’s be honest here. Most of us who are white do not possess much knowledge, skills, and experience in the area of racism. Suggesting that it isn’t necessary? Not sure what to call that. Ignorance? Arrogance?
The history of Black human beings in the United States is not even important enough to care about and learn about. I can just stand on the streetcorner and pass judgement. I’m qualified.
There are hundreds of years of Black history in this country that our schools have traditionally skipped over or even remolded into self-serving falsehoods. The more that the truth comes to light the more we see loud objections to examining that history truthfully and making it a part of school curricula.
Could that be because doing so would run counter to the idea that you don’t need knowledge, skills, or experience to be the arbiter of what is racist?
What do you mean I have to be qualified?
There are very few places in life where one could espouse this attitude and not be laughed out of the room. This shouldn’t be an exception to what is basic common sense: if you want to speak with authority on something, you need to put in the work to know what you are doing.
The very existence of white people who believe themselves to by qualified to identify racism that they themselves have never - - and could never - - experience is evidence unto itself that systemic racism is alive and well.
For those who need a refresher: Racism is bias + power.
That's why "reverse racism" is a lie. It's the structural power of whiteness that gives racism its fangs.
For folks who need further clarity: Anyone can be biased. And all people should examine and unravel the biases we carry!
But we *also* have to talk about how bias interacts with structural power. Flattening all bias as equal and naming that "racism" obscures how some people's biases become rules, become laws, become policy.
We must ask: Who has the ability to make their biases shape the world?
- - The Rev’d Dr. Jacqui Lewis
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