Crowning Achievement

Such is the power of institutional racism that it can take an accomplished, beautiful, loved woman of color to the razor’s edge of not wanting to be alive. If anything has stuck with me from the Meghan and Harry interview, it was this realization: those of us who are White have no idea. But even though I am incapable of fathoming what Meghan and Harry endured, I am guessing that it was an insidious, vaporous, molecular message of “you don’t belong here.” And it had to have been crazy-making.

The Queen, whom I have often liked, mostly when I see her wearing a head scarf and driving a Jeep over the moors, is now, at 94, responsible for resolving the problems Harry and Meghan described. This will be done “within the family,” she says, thus keeping the matter personal rather than institutional and taking it off the table for public discussion. This approach might protect her family but it further marginalizes its only member of color. Meghan becomes the problem to be resolved, not the institutional racism of the British monarchy.

This morning’s paper featured a story about the local technical college. A Black vice president had resigned after just a year because of racist and marginalizing actions of his White colleagues. So again, the discussion develops around what happened with this one person, how do we keep what happened with this one person to happening to another person? This is the Queen’s way. Let’s talk about this “case” so we don’t have to talk about or even perceive the bricks and mortar of institutional racism.

I don’t know the answer here. I just don’t think you can stitch together justice on a case by case basis. If the Queen somehow fixes Meghan’s problem, that will be all she fixes. The monarchy will remain a profoundly racist institution. If we fix the college V.P.’s complaint, there will be another case in line.

Nothing changes if nothing changes. That was a common saying from when I worked in an anti-poverty agency in the 70’s and I could never get it. What does that even mean, I would think, although I wouldn’t ask because the people saying it were Black and I didn’t want to, you know, sound like a dumb White girl. But I finally figured it out and came to believe it. Institutional racism requires an institutional reformation. That used to be interpreted as tearing an institution down to the ground and starting over. Revolution. Now, it means awkward, painful, persistent, years’ long work to learn how an institution has become, through the intention of some and the apathy of others, a thoroughly, molecular-level purveyor of racist attitudes, behavior, and policy. And then years of work to replace the unconsciousness of racism with the consciousness of equity.

A daunting task, for sure, unless you’re a Queen.

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Photo by Mitya Ivanov on Unsplash