I have often wondered, and it is not a pleasant wonder, just what white Americans talk about with one another.

I wonder this because they do not, after all, seem to find very much to say to me, and I concluded long ago that they found the color of my skin inhibiting. This color seems to operate as a most disagreeable mirror, and a great deal of one's energy is expended in reassuring white Americans that they do not see what they do see.

This is utterly futile, of course, since they do see what they see. And what they see is an appallingly oppressive and bloody history known all over the world. What they see is a disastrous, continuing, present condition which menaces them, and for which they bear an inescapable responsibility. But since in the main they seem to lack the energy to change this condition they would rather not be reminded of it. Does this mean that in their conversation with one another they simply make reassuring sounds? It scarcely seems possible and yet, on the other hand, it seems all too likely. In any case, whatever they bring to one another, it is certainly not freedom from guilt. The guilt remains, more deeply rooted, more securely lodged, than the oldest of old fears.

And to have to deal with such people can be unutterably exhausting, for they, with a dazzling ingenuity . . . are defending themselves against charges which one . . . has not really, for the moment, made. One does not have to make them. The record is there for all the world to read. . . . One wishes that Americans--white Americans--would read, for their own sakes, this record and stop defending themselves against it. Only then will they be enabled to change their lives. 

The most important reasons for readers to examine blacks' images of whites are expressed in this passage: that blacks reflect to whites an image of their identity which rebukes their idealized self-image; that many whites do nothing among themselves to face their own bigotry but try to avoid recognizing their racism through evasion and repression; and that, as a result, blacks suffer from what I would call tolerance exhaustion-the feeling of being fed up and frustrated with whites' transparent refusal to assess themselves. These psychological evasions, Baldwin theorizes, have drastic effects on whites' identity which, by closing off the truth, prevent honest discussions between blacks and whites about race. Baldwin continues, the history of white people has led them to a fearful, baffling place where they have begun to lose touch with reality--to lose touch, that is, with themselves. . . . They do not know how this came about; they do not dare examine how this came about. On the one hand, they can scarcely dare to open a dialogue [with blacks] which must, if it is honest, become a personal confession--a cry for help and healing, which is really, I think, the basis of all dialogues--and, on the other hand, the black man can scarcely dare to open a dialogue [with whites] which must, if it is honest, become a personal confession which, fatally, contains an accusation. And yet, if neither of us can do this, each of us will perish in those traps in which we have been struggling for so long. 

The literature of blacks concerning whites contains many of what perhaps the majority of whites might call accusations. As Baldwin points out, however, it is essential for human progress for both races (indeed, all races) to look closely at the nature of bigotry--especially bigotry that is practiced and maintained, in great part, as a result of the denial of its existence. Baldwin points out another obstacle to whites' looking in the mirror blacks hold up to them: when confronted by blacks' perceptions of them, he implies, many whites adopt a victim mentality. This mentality is expressed by Baldwin's representation of what he feels is most whites' response in such situations: "I have nothing against you, nothing! What have you got against me? What do you want?". It is no wonder, then, that there is a general neglect in the reading and teaching of American literature concerning one of the major topics that is part of the black American tradition: white identity.

John O. Killens makes central observations about white psychology and the fear of facing what blacks think of whites. In Black Man's Burden, he makes statements relevant both to the white image in blacks' minds and why many educators (among others) are silent on the subject.

Can you imagine the slave master living with the fear that his liberated slave will preach at his, the master's, funeral? [White] western man lives with a built-in nightmare that the disinherited will soon and finally inherit the earth and rewrite the history of the last five hundred years and that "niggers" everywhere will be vindicated, from Birmingham to Johannesburg, which means that mankind, no matter what color, will at long last be vindicated. 

This passage is intriguing in at least two ways. First, one may ask if blacks' "data" (that is, writings about whites by blacks) is, in fact, a funeral oration that debunks white supremacy and claims of innocence from racism and hypocrisy. Second, the latter part of the passage is certainly relevant to current immigration debates and to white ideas that undeserving minorities have an easy road because they are given things by whites not because of merit but because these things are taken from deserving whites (e.g., Killens's remarks on minorities "inheriting the earth"). Most important, Killens's ideas that "niggers" everywhere "will be vindicated" during the blacks' funeral oration raises questions about what is the nature of this vindication. Readers may have different interpretations of this idea. For the purposes of this study, the most important form of vindication is that blacks have understood and kept literary records of the identity of white bigots-bigots who most often have as their defense mechanism the illusion that they are not being judged--and often exposed--by blacks.

Baldwin, again in White Man's Guilt," illuminates why this defense mechanism is rooted in psychological weakness which he contends is manifested in the identity of many whites (particularly of the more liberal or seemingly progressive sort) in their conscious or unconscious racial attitudes when he states that "people who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin . . . [whites] are dimly, or vividly, aware that the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie, but they do not know how to release themselves from it, and they suffer enormously from the resulting personal incoherence" (410-11). Baldwin continues, "This incoherence is heard nowhere more plainly than in those stammering, terrified dialogues which white Americans sometimes entertain with the black conscience, the black [person] in America. The nature of this stammering can be reduced to a plea. Do not blame me. I was not there. I did not do it" (411). The duality that Baldwin captures--guilt and self-absolution--is one of the main factors that keeps America stuck in the cycle of racism, which could be combatted, according to Baldwin, if whites would look self-critically in the "mirror" or "conscience" provided by many black people.

Comments made by Lerone Bennett Jr., in The White Problem in America," coupled with Baldwin's essay, make evident the importance for readers to become acquainted with and to analyze blacks' images of whites. This theme of black literature combats what I would term the myth of agentless racism, which is a particular crutch of many whites who think of themselves as progressive on racial matters. In The Rage of a Privileged Class, Ellis Cose illustrates that in contemporary America, whites often dismiss charges of racism, as if they were a figment of blacks' imagination (which has sent some blacks in search of a new word to replace racism). As is implicit in Bennett's essay, the purpose of such whites' defensiveness is clear: how many whites are honest enough to define racism in a way that implicates them? This dishonesty gives rise to the transparent ruse that racism must be defined only as conscious acts intentionally designed to demean blacks in quantifiable ways. Yet, how many whites sit down and think, "I am now going to do something racist?" Even George Wallace, while proudly proclaiming himself a segregationist during the Civil Rights era, did not proclaim himself to be a racist. Most blacks have, no doubt, suffered the unintentional racism of inexcusably ignorant whites, whether in white assumptions that blacks are hired for good positions only to fill quotas or in whites' telling racist jokes they think blacks will appreciate. On these topics, Bennett's words, written over thirty years ago, are especially relevant to contemporary society: "It is fashionable nowadays to think of racism as a vast impersonal system for which no one is responsible. But this is still another evasion. Racism did not fall from the sky. . . . No: racism in America was made [by whites]." 

This myth of agentless racism helps explain Baldwin's statement that the white person has psychologically "locked himself into a place where he is doomed to continue repeating" acts of bigotry. One again sees how America is stuck in a cycle of "eternal recurrence" concerning racism. Consequently, one needs to reflect on both writers' ideas on many whites' evasion from admitting their own racism and their self-absolution. Baldwin points out, "One can measure very neatly white American's distance from his conscience--from himself--by observing the distance between himself and black people. One has only to ask oneself who established this distance. Who is this distance designed to protect? And from what is this distance designed to protect him?" (412). Who, Baldwin is asking, is responsible for racism? How can we address the issue of a white's giving responsibility to blacks? Black literature can at least help us to understand these issues and to demythologize the identities of those who--intentionally or unintentionally--keep racism alive.

Psychologist Kenneth B. Clark has fascinating theories on the issues raised by Baldwin and Bennett, particularly concerning what is at the heart of whites' "personal incoherence," in his essay What Motivates American Whites?" Clark finds this racial schizophrenia to be at the heart of the foundation of America's and whites' professed beliefs in the concepts of equality best expressed in the Declaration of Independence. That Thomas Jefferson, in his draft of this document, denounced King George's support of slavery as "barbarous" but simultaneously was a slave owner himself and felt that American blacks should be colonized (ironic for the intellectual giant in the fight against American colonization by England) would be consistent with Clark's ideas on the basic dichotomy within white Americans.  In his central thesis, Clark asserts, The white Americans' espousal of the American creed is real and meaningful for them. It is the expression of their desire for equality, security, and status-for themselves. . . . [Racial inequality results in] a complex, paradoxical way, a basis for subjective satisfaction. [The white person's] denial of equality to those who are visibly different is a manifestation of his desire for status, and an enhancement of his subjective feelings of having obtained a superior status. It would probably be a psychological calamity [for whites] for the Negro either to disappear or for him to succeed in translating the words and promises of democracy into day to day reality. It would then be necessary for the American whites to either find other scapegoats, or to face . . . the intolerable state of their own emptiness. In this sense, therefore, the American creed and American racism are not contradictory. Both appear to reflect the pathetic desire of insecure people to be "aristocrats" rather than peasants. 

On reading this passage, one can surmise that Alfred Adler's theory that compensation for a perceived weakness is, perhaps, the main feature of an individual's psychology helps explain Clark's ideas, for Clark implies that whites' conscious or unconscious need for a belief in their supremacy is a compensatory tool for their knowledge or fear of their possible inferior status--whether inferior in comparison to others or to their fantasies of what they want to be--and thus for their feelings about their position in relation to blacks.

According to Clark, a basic part of the psychology of many whites regarding racism is to maintain bigotry while using a stated belief in principles of equality to perform self-absolution and thus promote a feeling of psychological superiority. This mind-set has been so deeply ingrained in the American character from the very founding of the country, Clark seems to imply, that for many whites at this point in history, it is inescapable and unconscious (and, perhaps, even preconscious for some). In addition, Clark believes that the drive for status exists with a need for such advancement to be denied to others; thus he explains many whites' need for blacks to stay in an inferior position in American society (52-53). If one accepts these ideas, Clark seems to be asking, how could one expect anything more from many whites than an external, self-proclaimed freedom from prejudice that exists simultaneously with a desire for supremacy--a desire which is externalized in the identity of many whites in so many acts of discrimination, lack of commitment to integrated workplaces and neighborhoods, and unfair treatment of those who are not like them?

Perhaps the most devastating consequence--certainly to nonwhites--of "personal incoherence," in Clark's interpretation, is that whites who suffer from it must, very often, employ defense mechanisms to shield themselves from facing the truth about themselves. The psychological defense mechanism of denial is, according to Clark, perhaps the chief way prejudiced whites avoid confronting the cracks in the American mind concerning the coexistence of professed beliefs in equality and inner feelings of bigotry. One aspect of this denial is that it shields whites from looking into the "disagreeable mirror," to use Baldwin's phrase, held up by blacks to whites. As a result, one wonders how the moral and psychological bankruptcy of racism can be escaped, especially if the maintenance of this condition has its privileges. Yet, this situation leads to exactly what Manning Marable discusses in Beyond Black and White:

To be white is not a sign of culture, or a statement of biology or genetics: it is essentially a power relationship, a statement of authority, a social construct which is perpetuated by systems of privilege, the consolidation of property and status. There is no genius behind the idea of whiteness, only an empty husk filled with a mountain of lies about superiority and a series of crimes against "nonwhite" people. 

The internal collapse of those who may be privileged by societal standards is powerfully illustrated by Marable. He also makes it evident that, as one's outer status may rise, if it does so on a foundation of bigotry, one's inner status crumbles. Thus, if one were to take Marable's and Clark's critiques of white prejudice, it would be interesting to do a cost-benefits analysis concerning the maintaining of white privilege and the loss of spiritual integrity that results. On these points, Baldwin, in The Fire Next Time, pinpoints a major aspect of one of the "losses" to whites:

White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want. And this assumption . . . is revealed in all kinds of striking ways . . . [including] the unfortunate tone of warm congratulation with which so many liberals address their Negro equals. It is the Negro, of course, who is presumed to have become equal--an achievement that . . . corroborates the white man's sense of his own value. Alas, this value can scarcely be corroborated in any other way; there is certainly little enough in the white man's public or private life that one should desire to imitate. White men, at the bottom of their hearts, know this. Therefore, a vast amount of energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produced by the white man's profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is. 

Baldwin's and Marable's ideas on the sterility of prejudiced whites make an important commentary on the pathetic nature of the denial of which Clark writes because the transparency of the bigotry denied by such whites is more than apparent.

Yet, breaking this narcissistic cycle is much harder than diagnosing it. Bennett, for example, asserts in The White Problem in America that racism is an essential aspect of the psychology of many whites; it not only allows for the psychological status to which Clark and Baldwin refer, but also has clear material benefits. Hence, Bennett agrees that racism serves an important psychological function by providing affected whites with a sense of self-importance; as such, it might even be called a psychological crutch (6). Bennett elaborates on key aspects of racial neurosis by stating that racism is an externalization of the insecurities of the bigot for whom the objects of bigotry are a convenient but artificial target (6). This mind-set and the drive to be at the top of the social ladder (in the way of which Clark writes) reflect issues of identity, for the writers under discussion reflect that "the white problem" is, fundamentally, a matter of identity, not a problem that can be solved by laws or even by denunciations by blacks. Perhaps the best that can be expected, therefore, is that blacks' representations and analyses of the nature of the beast can help society to understand the starting point for an attempted resolution of racism: the white mind.

Through the provocative and perceptive theories put forth by such writers as Baldwin, Bennett, Clark, and Killens, one sees that the challenge that they themselves emphasize is that whites' sense of self-protection prevents them from analysis concerning their racial attitudes and actions. Bennett helps explain the charge that whites resort to "magical thinking" to shield themselves from examining the bigotry within themselves by employing displacement and denial to deflect attention from themselves and onto blacks. As Bennett points out, much public discussion focuses on black crime, black educational disadvantages, and the lack of adequate black leadership as if these were essential racial characteristics without these same qualities of crime, education, and inadequate leadership being critiqued in a similarly essentialist way concerning whites (4). Bennett's words are still relevant today; even a superficial examination of the white media supports these charges. From the media, one might think that blacks are wretched, criminal, ineducable welfare-mongers and that, in the presentation of crime and education regarding whites, these issues are never presented as manifesting negative racial characteristics. Furthermore, while many whites decry the role of Reverend Al Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan as leaders to many blacks, how many whites can one name who have assumed leadership on racial matters in contemporary America? The mentality of many whites concerning racism, therefore, reveals that whites must be forced to look in the mirror held up to them by blacks.