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Its a personal act, one that everyone should do, anti-racist essayist and educator Tim Wise instructed.

Take a critical autobiographical account of your life, trace it back as far as you can. Think about how you ended up where you are now, and benefited from things you didnt earn because of your whiteness, gender, class, sexual identity or sheer luck.

I think the first order of business is to get clearer on our own stories. The myth of rugged individualism is not a national problem, its an individual problem, Wise responded to a question about how to combat racial inequality on an individual level.

We still do buy into this notion of individual merit as to Why Im here, and youre not.

Wise addressed a crowd Thursday evening in Ivy Tech Community Colleges Shreve Hall as part of the schools diversity speaker series. Wise has authored seven books, including his recent Under the Affluence: Shaming the Poor, Praising the Rich and Sacrificing the Future of America.

He discussed the concepts of race, privilege, inequality and activism in the aftermath of Donald Trumps rise to the presidency, a time in American history Wise called both dangerous in regard to race and full of potential.

How did America get here, and how do we respond? We have to really interrogate the very premises of this movement, he said, referring to Trumps Make America Great Again campaign slogan.

White people are trapped in a history they do not understand, because they dont grasp the context of exclusion and privilege. Until white people understand the predicate, understand the history that whites have mis-remembered, we are all doomed to stay trapped in inequality, Wise said, sharing quotes by writer James Baldwin and anti-apartheid activist Randall Robinson to illustrate his point.

Wise told the audience a story about driving his daughters to their dance class in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Their car was stopped at a red light in a public housing neighborhood. His youngest daughter asked why black people lived in this neighborhood.

Before he could answer, his eldest daughter responded, Redlining. Yes, but not entirely, Wise told his daughters.

Banks that practiced redlining of neighborhoods based on race or ethnicity starved those neighborhoods of capital, often leaving such areas underdeveloped or left to decay. In the 1930s, public housing was intended for working-class white families. But other government financial programs afforded to whites helped subsidize white flight from urban public housing into the suburbs.

Of course he knew how to respond to his daughters question about race in the projects. But what about the families and teachers who dont?

People will go to default thinking: to the American myth of rugged individualism, the belief that you start with nothing and wherever you end up is up to you and your hard work. And to the default assumption that there must be something wrong with others.

Wise asked the audience to consider the history between police officers and black people. It dates back to white men being hired to enforce slave codes, and to enforcing Jim Crow-era segregation. It is punctuated by violence during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

And it is documented today in the war on drugs: Studies show whites participate in drug activity at the same, or at a greater, rate than blacks. But black people are four times more likely to be imprisoned on drug charges than whites, he said.

If you dont know that history, youll come back with some All lives matter nonsense, Wise said, speaking about his two white daughters again. He doesnt need anyone to tell him the lives of his children matter.

The difference is, every cop in America, teacher, boss, banker giving out loans, knows that their lives matter. You dont have to specify that which is ignored. America has a history of saying all but not meaning it, Wise said of inequality and injustice.

The election of President Trump should not be shocking. Wise said Trump followed a 400-year-old playbook of Rich white men telling white folks, who are definitely not rich, all their problems are those folks right over there, black and brown folks.

Elite whites have appealed to the whiteness of the poor to divide and conquer, even when inequality works against the best interests of the working class.

White Americans have had the luxury to believe in the myth of rugged individualism and have faith in horizontal mobility. Black and brown folks are now being scapegoated for the pain, self-doubt and shame of struggling white people, Wise said.

If we ignore this, the problems that millions of white folks are facing wont get solved, he said. They wont get solved for anyone.

Excerpt from:
Speaker: To combat inequality, we must be clear on our own stories - The Herald-Times (subscription)