Wake Up, White America

By John Parker

Wake Up, White America comes from the mind of controversial author John Parker. Filled with experiences, anecdotes, statistics, and social commentary, Parker shines a light on racism and the attitudes he and much of the black population of this country feel white America displays toward this often sensitive and polarizing topic.

Parker understands that much of white America chooses to reject race as a reason for inequality because it frees them from the reality of guilt, even though these same people continue to benefit from said inequality. He also draws some very clear patterns of these attitudes and shows why the United States of America, if it is to ever evolve into what it can be, must first hold itself accountable for the treatment of its own citizens, which up to this point, it never has.

This book is a much-needed read for everyone, regardless of race. Parker makes it clear, on many levels, that it is time for white America to wake up!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796019513

John Parker

After leaving a career as a broadcast engineer, John went on to write screenplays. A production company optioned one. Later he decided to write novels. His interests vary from the arts to gardening.

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Copyright © 2019 by John Stephen Parker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/28/2019

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1 A Polarizing Awakening

Chapter 2 Wake Up to the Truth About Slavery

Chapter 3 Wake Up To the Drug of White Supremacy, White Nationalist Organizations, and Number 45

Chapter 4 Wake Up and Recognize Who the True Enemy Is

Chapter 5 Wake Up and Stop Calling Black People Racist

Chapter 6 Wake Up and Realize Why Protesting Makes White People Angry

Chapter 7 Wake Up from the Mass Delusion

Chapter 8 Wake Up and Realize that Police Brutality is Real Thanks to Social Media

Chapter 9 Wake Up and Understand that Justice Means Just Us

Chapter 10 Wake Up. President Obama Changed Nothing. Racism Lives

Chapter 11 Wake Up to the Differences and Be Okay With It

Chapter 12 Wake Up, Start Understanding Black Culture, and Stop Shooting Black People

Chapter 13 Wake Up and Tell the Truth about the History of America

Chapter 14 Wake Up and Start Talking about Racism Openly

Chapter 15 Wake Up! We Aren’t Forgiving and Stop Asking Us for Solutions

Chapter 16 Wake up to the Myth of Black-On-Black Crime

Chapter 17 Wake Up and Know that Black Lives Do Matter

Chapter 18 Wake Up and Understand that Thug is the New Nigger

Chapter 19 Wake Up. Don’t Hate the Player. Hate the Game that You Created

Chapter 20 Wake Up and Realize that you are Privileged because of Racism

Chapter 21 Wake Up, Period!

References

ABOUT THE BOOK

Wake Up White America comes from the mind of controversial author, John Parker. Filled with experiences, anecdotes, statistics, and social commentary, Parker shines a light on racism and the attitudes he and much of the black population of this country feels white America displays toward this often sensitive and polarizing topic.

Parker understands that much of white America chooses to reject race as a reason for inequality because it frees them from the reality of guilt, even though these same people continue to benefit from said inequality. He also draws some very clear patterns of these attitudes and shows why, if the United States of America is to ever evolve into what it can be, it must first hold itself accountable for the treatment of its own citizens, which up to this point, it never has.

This book is a much needed read for everyone, regardless of race. Parker makes it clear, on many levels, that it is time for white America to WAKE UP.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Parker is a father, author, successful entrepreneur, professional motivational speaker and social activist. He is a former college and professional football coach of twenty-five years and an award-winning television and radio talk show host. He is currently the Director of Corporate Communications and Media for St. Louis Development Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri and the publisher of Evolution Magazine.

He has authored two previous books on the subject of racism and social justice (From Sheets to Suits: Embedded Racism in American Society and A Cold in August: The Controversial Killing of Michael Brown Jr).

Often labeled as a controversial figure, Parker has delivered speeches to national organizations such as the International Association of Police Chiefs and Law Enforcement Officers, and has been on the forefront of social and racial change. He is a long time cultural activist, often being the voice of, and fighting for the rights of black people and the socially under served.

DEDICATION

Every time I write a book, I always look for something or someone to dedicate my work to. Often it is a person who has touched of influenced me or my writing. Sometimes it is a passion that hits me out of the blue and just never leaves. In this case, it is a bit of both.

This book is dedicated to young people, both black and white, who have taken up the torch of making this world a better place. Never believe that a small group of like-minded individuals or even one person screaming in the middle of nowhere can’t change the world, because, truthfully, it is the only thing that ever has.

To my children, Andrea and Jordan, who are by far the greatest achievements of your mother and me, I don’t have much to leave you in this world. You are both smarter than your father. But, I will leave you with this.

No matter what decisions you make in your life, always remember, they are never based on right or wrong. They are truly based on if they were yours or someone else’s. The world is a cruel place and it will beat you to the ground some days, but the sooner you stop being concerned about what people think, the faster you figure out who you really are. Remember, opinions are like assholes; Everyone has one and they all stink. Live your life and nobody else’s. Always keep your head to the sky, find your own passion and know that love is the key to life.

Don’t ever give up on the hope that the good people of the United States of America will wake up and come together. And, by all means, Remember, your dad loves you!

STAY WOKE, PLEASE!

PREFACE

W ITHOUT MAKING A huge deal out of this, I want to make this crystal clear. This is not an I hate white America book. Quite the contrary. I have been able to achieve many things in my life and none of those would have been accomplished without the love, guidance, and support of many people in my life, both black and white. I was married to a beautiful white, polish-catholic woman for fifteen years. She gave me two wonderful children that I am incredibly proud of. If I hated white America, none of that would have ever been possible. Thank you, Laura.

Not so long ago a member of white America called me a racist. In fact, it happens nearly every day and all I can do is laugh. It is at these moments that I realize that many in white America have really become delusional if they believe that any black person could actually be racist. At the core of my being, I’m a good person! I have insisted on this, but I just don’t have time for bullshit anymore. I have finally reached an age where I can say what I want to say. I do see color in my life every day, and I don’t have a racist bone in my body. I have felt insulted and misunderstood and have stomped off to lick my wounds many times in my life. That’s because I thought being me meant not being liked by people who didn’t look like me. That is not me anymore.

For years I have struggled silently to understand race and racism. I had no way to make sense of debates in the media about whether the white guy I was talking to was being a racist or me as the black guy, was playing the race card. I had and have always wanted close friends regardless of color but kept ending up with mostly white people as my closest friends. When I am with black people, I have often felt an inexplicable tension that I didn’t always fit in or that I would do something offensive or embarrassing. This comes from being raised in a predominately white atmosphere of the North County of St. Louis, Missouri, in the 1970s.

When I was younger, many white people made blatantly racist jokes or remarks around me. I felt upset but had no idea what to do or say. I didn’t understand why—if historical laws supporting slavery, segregation, and discrimination had been abolished—because lifestyles still looked so different across color lines. Most confusing were unwanted racist thoughts toward many white people that made me feel like a jerk. I felt too embarrassed to admit any of this, which prevented me from going in search of answers.

It turns out stumbling block number one was that I knew I was black and that I was always going to be behind the eight ball for the rest of my life, so I never thought to look within myself for answers. The way I understood it as a kid was that success and privilege were for other people—white-skinned people. Don’t get me wrong, if you put a census form in my hand, I would know to check black. It’s more than I thought all those other categories—like Asian, American Indian, and Latino—were the real races. I thought white was the raceless race, just plain, normal, the one against which all others were measured.

What I’ve learned is that thinking white people are raceless has allowed for a distorted frame of reference built on faulty beliefs.

If these beliefs sound familiar to you, you are not alone. I’ve met hundreds of people, of all cultures, across America who shares not only these beliefs but also the same feelings of race-related confusion and anxiety I have experienced as a black man. This widespread phenomenon of many white people wanting to guard themselves against appearing stupid, racist, or radical has resulted in an epidemic of silence from people who care deeply about justice and love for their fellow human beings. I believe most white people would take a stand against racism if only they knew how or even imagined they had a role.

In the state that is somewhere between fear and indifference lies an opportunity to awaken to the intuitive voice that says, Something’s not right, What is going on here? or I wish I could make a difference. In my experience, learning to listen to that voice is slowly but surely rewiring my intuition, breaking down walls that kept me from parts of myself, and expanding my capacity to seek and speak truths no matter how painful they may be. Learning about racism has settled inner conflicts and is allowing me to step out of my comfort zone with both strength and vulnerability in all parts of my life. Racism holds all of us captive in ways many white people rarely imagine.

Recently I overheard a guy at the gym say, It couldn’t have happened to a whiter person. And if he, a middle-aged white man raised in the suburbs, can wake up to his whiteness, any white person can. Waking up white in the United States is an expected journey in this country that only requires white people to simply dig back into childhood memories to recall when, how, and why they developed such distorted ideas about race, racism, and the dominant culture in which they soaked. Like the memoir by the guy who loses two hundred pounds or the woman who overcomes alcohol addiction, black America’s story of transformation is an intimate one.

To convey racism’s ability to shape beliefs, values, behaviors, and ideas, black people often share personal and often humiliating stories, as well as thoughts they spent decades not admitting, not even to themselves.

As I unpack these experiences in the pages ahead, I have no pretense that I speak for all black people, not even my three black siblings or my kids. Never before have I been so keenly aware of how individual our cultural experiences and perspectives are. That said, all Americans live within the context of one dominant culture, the one brought to this country by white Anglo settlers. Exploring black people’s relationship to that culture is where the waking-up process needs to begin for much of white America.

For white readers, I’ve included thoughts to help you explore the themes in depth and in relation to your own experience. To get the most out of them, I suggest using a journal and taking the time to write out your thoughts. I’ve found the act of writing to be a great excavator of buried thoughts and feelings.

My whole thought process has been built largely on the collective wisdom from both black and white people throughout the centuries who’ve risked lives, jobs, and reputations to convey the experience of racism. It can be infuriating, therefore, to have the voice of a black person suddenly get through to a white person. For this reason, throughout the book, I’ve included the perspectives of black people to highlight the many ways other black people and I have tried to motivate many white people to consider the effects of racism.

I can think of no bigger misstep in American history than the invention and perpetuation of the idea of white superiority. It allows many white children to believe they are exceptional and entitled while allowing children of color to believe they are inferior and less deserving. Neither is true; both distort and stunt development. Racism crushes spirits, incites divisiveness, and justifies the estrangement of entire groups of individuals who, like all humans, come into the world full of goodness with a desire to connect and with a boundless capacity to learn and grow. Unless all adults understand racism, they will unknowingly teach it to their children.

I realize that no white American alive today created this mess and I am not blaming anybody today for it, but everyone alive today has the power to work on undoing it. Four hundred years since its inception, racism in America is all twisted up in our cultural fabric. But there’s a loophole: people are not born racist. Racism is taught, and racism is learned. Understanding how and why beliefs developed along racial lines holds the promise of healing, liberation, and the unleashing of America’s truly vast human potential.

Racism is not the unsolvable, mysterious tug-of-war it once was thought to be. There is an explanation for how America got so tangled up with racism. Ironically, racism, the great divider, is one of the most vital links we share—a massive social dysfunction in which we all play a role. Perhaps the greatest irony for much of white America can be the discovery that after all these years of trying to disconnect with people they have been taught to see as different and less than, this could be the way to start to connect with parts of themselves that was lost in the privilege of being white.

I invite this faction of white America to use this book to uncover their own story so that they, too, can discover their power to make the world a more humane place to live, work, and thrive for all people, not just ones with white faces and white skin.

Thank you for reading.

John Parker

CHAPTER 1

A Polarizing Awakening

The world does not need white people to civilize black people. The real White People’s Burden should be to civilize themselves.

—John Parker

I T IS A fact that most of white America, in general, has no special qualifications regarding the understanding of racism. They don’t know what it’s like to be black, to be marginalized and/or faulted and often harmed by white America, and its many white institutions that don’t think or even consider they are being racist or by many white people and, again, white institutions that actually embrace racism. They don’t know what kind of fear inherent in every encounter with law enforcement, that it could turn violent and often deadly, no matter how you behave in the situation.

White America does not have a four-hundred-year history of victimization. The United States was constructed on the very foundation of institutionalized racism against black people and Native Americans. Much of white America needs to stop acting as if it costs them something to be understanding and compassionate to people who don’t look like they do. These are people who have legitimate grievances against a racist and segregated system that has always been rigged in favor of the already overprivileged white population.

My concerns and, dare I say it, the overall concerns of the black community are quite often seen as trivial in comparison to the deep-seated hatred and animosity that many in white America have. Many white people need to allow black people, other minorities and those who have been victims of racism to instruct them in what racism means to them and stop trying to lay down their definition for black America to learn.

Whether they realize it or not, much of white America is being given a historical opportunity to wake up to institutionalized racism in the United States by bearing witness to the many public executions of unarmed black people by law enforcement, who are nothing more than rouge elements and clearly unfit for the duties of the profession. How can there possibly be any justification for any policy that keeps law enforcement officers from being brought up on murder charges simply on the basis that they feared for their lives? There is a lot of meat on that bone that as a nation, we should re-evaluate.

It should make much of white America uncomfortable to see what is happening in our supposedly post-racial society, and quite frankly, many could care less. White America should be asking why white law enforcement officers are often so much more fearful of black people than their white counterparts? Why are they so much more in a ready state to violently ratchet up their encounters with black people, more so that than with whites? Why are the police more patient and professional with white America than with citizens of the black community? Most of this simply comes down to fear and misunderstanding. These two combined is usually the basis for these violent encounters.

A few years ago, a former white Baltimore Police Department officer caused a stir online when he began tweeting some of the horrible things he claims to have seen during his eleven years on the job. He said he joined the department in 2003. He started by walking the Western District of Baltimore on foot. This is the same area where Freddie Gray was killed by the police. He also was a patrolman in the Southern and Northern Districts for a period of time. When he was promoted to the Violent Crime Division, he moved into working the street with a narcotics division. He was a sergeant when he retired in January 2014 due to a shoulder injury.

He remembered a true eye-opening situation very well while doing narcotics work. Much of this work is done by surveillance, and he was spending a lot of time in a van or some vacant building. Having family members in law enforcement, I know that police officers have a lot of time on their hands with that kind of work. You’re watching people for hours at a time. You see them just going about their daily lives. They’re getting groceries, running errands, or going to work. Suddenly, it started to seem like an entirely different place than what he had seen when he was doing any other type of police work.

This officer happened to have grown up in a more affluent area around Baltimore. Being the higher-rent district, he didn’t have exposure to inner cities; and when you work in law enforcement, you’re bombarded early on with the us versus them mentality from the older, seasoned, and often white officers who were brought up in a different time. It’s ingrained in these white police officers’ DNA that this is a war of the streets, and if someone is black and isn’t wearing a uniform (even sometimes when they are), they’re the enemy.

Because this is learned behavior, it just becomes part of who many police officers are, of how they do their jobs. When all you’re doing is responding to calls, you’re only seeing the people in these neighborhoods when there’s conflict. So they start to assume that conflict is all there is. Just bad (black) people doing bad things.

But this officer came to realize that by sitting in the van and watching people just living their lives, he began to see that these black people were simply just regular people and that they were actually no different from him. They paid rent to live there. They would walk their kids to the bus stop or all the way to school. But he did come to realize something else. It hit him that as a white middle-class kid growing up, he was never going to get harassed, arrested, or brutalized by law enforcement for playing basketball in the street.

He was never going to get put up against the wall, legs spread-eagled, and frisked because he was standing on a street corner with his friends. There was no chance that his life could be ruined, that he would never be able to get a job or vote because he had been arrested for nothing more than simply being a black kid. He could have easily been a drug dealer in his youth because he was never going to get arrested for having drugs on his person. No one would ever have known simply because there was never a possibility that a police officer would ever randomly stop and search him.

This officer realized that when you observe for long periods of time like that, you begin to see the bigger picture. You start to see a horrible cycle of systemizing black kids at a young age, often for absolutely no wrongdoing. You then realize that this systemizing ultimately limits their future opportunities and corrals them into a lifestyle of drugs and other crimes. It brought him to a realization that because of this systemizing, many of these kids, young black kids, never ever had a chance from the very beginning.

It took me a bit to come to the realization that the moment I was born, I already had a strike against me. I was a black person in the United States of America—a country that, because of deep-seated racism, continues to this very day to systemically oppress my identity. This society expects black people and other minorities to function as a productive citizen in the face of experiencing a daily onslaught of racial segregation, mental and physical violence, discrimination, and microaggression. This is only a part of it because we are also strapped with the task of always having to defend the black community because many in white America imagine and often believe that if one black person goes sideways and commits a crime, we all should be held accountable in the black community.

I was not surprised by the antics of racists in Virginia. This is the true United States of America with white supremacy shining from sea to sea brightly as any Fourth of July fireworks show. Unlike liberal white America, black people see this shit coming a mile away, so we didn’t get all shocked and shaken when Number 45 didn’t immediately say about the events of the day. This was the man’s base, loud and proud. They were not wearing their typical sheets, as would have been customary; nevertheless, they were his people.

What is also not surprising is that many white Americans, many of whom have no affiliation with politics or the Oval Office, as a whole remain silent in the face of the resurgence of white supremacy and hatred in America. When a guy who was once the chief pointed head gave his public support for Number 45 for the highest office of the land, his base was only interested in him not having to justify accepting the endorsement without explanation. But black people were already aware of what was on the horizon—the presidency of a horrible, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, adultery-laden individual who has never served in a public office, with no experience in governmental affairs, and most importantly, is a man who has never done anything for anybody except himself in his entire life.

Black people, as individuals, are always forced to carry the torch for an entire race. White America has historically chosen the most controversial example of a black person to find the fear level of its own faction. The list is endless, including Nat Turner, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Willie Horton, and O. J. Simpson. As of late, it’s Colin Kaepernick. Number 45’s base has a gas tank that is fueled by this fear and hatred. Follow up that fear with white America’s four favorite words black-on-black crime, and the narrative is in place and running on all eight cylinders.

Black people are always forced to be accountable for the entire race. Too much of white America, accountability is an illusion, because they want to see a world where everybody is on equal ground, and it’s just not accurate. Liberal white America wants to put space between themselves and the behavior of the people in Charlottesville, but they don’t want to be too vocal as they don’t want to alienate people who might call them nigger lovers behind their backs. By choosing to separate themselves, they only send a message to black people that says, We empathize with you, but it’s not really our fight.

If you don’t want to get in the fight, then get away. Black people have been surviving white supremacy years, and we will continue to fight. The only people who have never really committed to fighting as a whole is white America. Getting together, holding hands, and singing We Shall Overcome is the way of the past; and I am not my grandfather.

There is a faction of white America that claims to be down for the cause but don’t truly want to get into the battle. Because they won’t fight, black people are losing the fight and, in turn, are losing their lives to white supremacy. To this faction, I simply say this. IT IS RIDE-OR-DIE TIME. RACISM IS KILLING PEOPLE. WAKE. THE. FUCK. UP.

This is no longer about your personal feelings, beliefs in people who should protest, or anything that white privilege has generally protected you from. It is now about finally admitting that white Americans should and need to be held accountable, and all have a debt to be paid to the current society we live in. This debt needs to be paid immediately.

White America needs to stop pretending like it’s unknown how we got to this point as if somebody rubbed a lamp