Racism by omission: The repercussions and responsibility of Utah’s whiteness
I attended Lone Peak High School, which is located in north-central Utah. The school’s boundaries pulled in students from three cities — Alpine, Cedar Hills, and Highland — and two middle schools. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors made up the student body and during my final year at the school, Lone Peak had an enrollment of 2,343. Only seven were Black. Out of the 140 members of full-time faculty, none were Black.
This is the reality for me, my former classmates and the hundreds of thousands within my community. Our everyday experience is relatively Black-less.
The three cities I mentioned are a combined 96 percent white and only a half percent Black, according to the last US Census.
The same report recorded that Utah County is 93 percent white and just zero-point-eight percent Black. That’s approximately 591,699 white people to 5,060 Black people, or one Black person to every 117 white people.
The 5,060 Black voices of Utah County are easily drowned out by the shared experiences of over half a million white residents. The suffocating of Black voices isn’t done with ill intent, but it’s an unfortunate and natural consequence that comes from having an unbalanced community. It’s the default.
Without an extensive Black community in front of their eyes, complacency can easily nestle into the mind’s of white Utahns. For too many of us, the Black experience becomes more like folklore and the tale of another place rather than something that actually exists around us. It’s a mental admission made by white Utahns that, when we hear about the experiences of Black Americans, we typically don’t think of friends, neighbors, teammates, or coworkers, but a type of human who exists elsewhere.
This way of thinking leads to racism, because Black people aren’t seen as familiar, but foreign.
Remember: racism isn’t unique to the person cursing out immigrants, demanding strangers to “go back to their country;” nor is racism unique to the group who believes white people are inherently better than any other. No, letting yourself feel unsafe around a person of color just because they are a person of color is racism. Automatically trusting a white person more than a non-white person just because of their skin color is racism. The majority of racism isn’t done while yelling or spitting, but during the simple activities of life — driving, shopping, walking, talking, eating, reading, entertaining, watching, viewing and so on.
Racism is learned, not biological. Children don’t see skin color and think negatively, or think much about it at all. They just see another person; a fellow — a friend. When kids grow up in a place where their classmates, neighbors, and church friends are diverse, the lies of racism they’ll undoubtedly hear from media and ignorant adults are much easier to recognize as false, because they love their friends. The idea that every life is equal is basic; that’s why elementary school-aged children are best at understanding that intolerance is unnatural, and that it’s opposite — acceptance — is what the soul instinctively suggests to practice.
The issue is Utah County kids are growing up in a very white place.
Now, growing up in a place where most people are white isn’t inherently bad, because a child, of course, can’t decide where they grow up.
However, living in a higher-than-average white area does becomes a problem when, either on purpose or not, a white Utahn refuses to recognize that their experience isn’t the only one that exists or matters.
How can I make the claims I have and say the things I’ve written with so much confidence? I’m from here. It’s my home.
Besides a six year stint in Illinois and two years as a missionary in Canada, I’ve spent my entire life in Utah County, and, somewhere along the way, I allowed myself to become content with accepting my known world as the only world that effectively existed. I became lax towards races that weren’t my own. In the past, I’ve said racist things that I completely regret. I’ve made unfounded assumptions about people based solely on their skin color. I’ve made excuses for myself and those around me for racist feelings. tendencies, and behavior.
Frankly, I’m embarrassed I didn’t have the courage, mindfulness, or humility to choose to be more kind, careful, and aware as a kid, teen, and young adult. I’m nowhere near perfect now, but I’m constantly trying to become more knowledgeable and cognizant of life experiences that are not my own nor look like my own. It’s what we, as white people — and especially as white people in Utah — must do.
We must admit we live in an odd place that isn’t normal and admit that, without additional education, we won’t ever know what the world is really like and what living in America is like for people who don’t look like us.
We have to be intentional and seek out Black voices. We need to seek out Black opinion and thought. In the age of social media and the internet, you and I can quickly find Black voices speaking about experiences we will never have and speaking out against systems that will never discriminate against us.
It’s necessary for us to put in the work to chisel away at any nasty biases and racist beliefs. It’s also important to make sure our efforts are more than performative. Allow real change and growth to take place, in your mind and in your heart.
White people will never know what it’s like to be Black, so unless we listen to Black people, we will forever stay socially and intellectually stunted, which is not only unfair, but dangerous (and sometimes deadly) to those who too many are simply unwilling to get to know.
Start learning now. Below are a number of resources you can immediately access to begin your education.
Books: The New Jim Crow, So You Want to Talk About Race, White Fragility, The Souls of Black Folk
Podcasts: 1619, Code Switch, Hear to Slay, The Intersection
Documentaries and Films: 13th, I Am Not Your Negro, Get In The Way, When They See Us, Just Mercy, Homecoming
