If you are an American who keeps up with current events to any sort of capacity, you will have heard all about the protests for Black Lives Matter, George Floyd’s murder by a white cop, and probably even the viral video of Amy Cooper using her white supremacy to terrorize a man who just wanted her to put a leash on her dog because it was the law. If it had not been for George Floyd’s murder happening within a 48 hour time slot of when this video was taken (Mr. Floyd was killed on May 25th, but I’m unsure exactly when the Cooper video was originally uploaded), the video would have probably died away with all the other “Karen” videos out there of white women calling the cops on black people.

As a white woman, I do not want to talk about all the horrible things black people are having to endure in this country on a daily basis. A vast number of people who live that life everyday are speaking out, and you should be listening to them, not a white person.

As a white woman, what I want to talk about is white women, and not just women like Amy Cooper, but the women who saw the video of her and were more outraged about her choking her dog than the terror she was inflicting on Christian Cooper, the man filming her. I also want to talk about the women who are using #blacklivesmatter or #BLM on social media, showing everyone how “woke” they are and getting likes for these posts but not actually doing anything to help. And lastly, I also want to talk about the white women who are fueled by outrage and participating in this movement to the absolute best of their abilities but will go back to acting like everything is fine when this all dies down.

Why do I want to talk about these white women? Because white women are such a huge factor in systemic racism and because I have been guilty of all of the things I mentioned above, the latter two occurring back in 2014 and 2015 when Black Lives Matter was all over Facebook and Instagram to the level that it is right now. However, this Tuesday I did not participate in #blackouttuesday because I felt like I had not earned the right to associate with this cause, unlike so many of the white women I follow on Instagram.

The issue with participating in things like this is that it make people feel as though they are contributing to a cause, when in fact they are just making themselves feel better about it. White people again and again participate in these movements when they are popular but do nothing to educate themselves or make a difference in the cause. Posting a black square on your Instagram does nothing and contributes to an inflation that makes it appear as though more people are doing something about this issue than actually are. If you are white, and using a hashtag related to Black Lives Matter but not doing anything else, you are part of the problem. And I know that sucks to hear, but that is the reality we as white people need to accept.

Over the course of this week, I have been digging into the idea of white women and racism, and the more I discover, the more troubling it becomes. There is so much to talk about on this subject that I couldn’t possibly address it all in a single post, which is why I have decided to write a book about it and fully dissect both the past and present when it comes to white women and racism and just how much they contribute to systemic racism in such a sneaky, underlying way. However, in this post, I do want to discuss what I have found so far.

The first thing we need to acknowledge is the power that white women wield over black people, particularly black men, which is why I used the terms “white supremacy” and “terrorize” at the beginning of this post. While we have been pointing the finger at white men when it comes to who is responsible for racism because they contribute to the majority of racial violence against black people, the racism of white women is often more sinister. Often times, white women who are racist do not even believe they are because of how racism is shown through the violence of white men. For instance, a phrase I have heard white women say many times in my life is “I’m not racist, but…” with a racist statement following directly after. The term “racist” has become almost a racial slur among white people that the idea of possibly being racist is completely rejected by white people, leading to a lack acceptance which is in turn a lack of acknowledging this as a problem.

This power I mentioned that white women wield is the most sinister part of their racism. Amy Cooper knew exactly what she was doing when she told the operator, “there is an African-American man threatening my life,” and other white women who call the cops know what they are doing as well. Just two days ago, a white woman named Svitlana Flom called the cops on Jana’e Brown, a black woman who was just hanging out on a park bench and minding her own business, and told the operator that a black woman was attacking her and her children, while her children played on their scooters nearby hardly even noticing Ms. Brown. The real issue in these situations is that the white women who called the police on a black person were triggered by something that would not have phased them if it had been a white person.

Did these women think that they were being racist? No, because they have taken their whiteness and its benefits, this power they wield, for granted. If you were to ask them if they were racist, they would not admit racism to even their closest friends.

If Christian Cooper was a white man, Amy Cooper would have probably responded with an apology or at least would have put the leash back on her dog and went on her way. If Jana’e Brown had been a white woman, Svitlana would have just kept on walking and probably not even notice her. But the blackness of these two harassment victims triggered something in these white women that caused them to terrorize them by calling the cops. And if you think that “terrorize” is too strong of a word for calling the cops on a black person, you have not been paying attention.

In his Opinion article for the New York Times titled “How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror,” Charles M. Blow said, “black people view calling the police on them as an act of terror, one that could threaten their lives, and this fear is not without merit.” George Floyd is just one of hundreds who have been killed by cops and one of thousands who have been assaulted by them.

The last idea I want to discuss in this post is in regards to the white women who are or have been out protesting over the past week. It can feel infuriating to be doing so much and risking your safety while someone is talking about how white women are a big part of systemic racism in the country. The thing is, as a whole, white women are a big part of systemic racism in the country. The unfortunate part of all this is that until we all become anti-racist (not just non-racist) and are actually making a change as a race to establish racial equality in this country, nothing is going to come of this. We need to listen to our black and brown neighbors and understand, to the best of our ability, what they are going through every single day and what they need from us.

Back in the early 1900s, women fought for and earned the right to vote in this country a hundred years ago this August. How did they do it? How did the law change to allow them to vote? It was men. Men had been their greatest enemy in this fight, and the cause for the fight in the first place, but it was also men who listened to and sought understanding from women that led them to adding the 19th amendment to our constitution. For black people, white people are the cause of racial inequality, white people are the reason there are protest in the streets, and white people are the only ones who can end systemic racism and racial inequality because we are the ones who established in the first place. And as a white person, I know how hard it is to hear that you are part of the problem, but until we accept it and then seek to understand a better way, we will have many more weeks like this week in our future.

How many more people have to die because white people are unwilling to accept that they are part of the problem even if they have never taken racist action against a black person? As they say, acceptance is first step to recovery, and the United States is in dire need of rehabilitation. It will be painful, you will have to admit to a flaw that you don’t believe you have, but this experience pales in comparison to what innocent black people have to endure every single day in this country.