45 pages • 1 hour read
Michael Eric DysonTears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 5, Section 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5, Section 1: “Repenting of Whiteness”
Chapter 5, Section 1, Part 1 Summary: “Inventing Whiteness”
Dyson addresses white Americans and describes whiteness as an invention. He distinguishes white people as human beings from the racial politics of whiteness. Whiteness is a socially and politically constructed privilege that has defined American identity. He notes that despite class differences, “whiteness has privilege and power connected to it” (45). Even though it is a myth and construct, it appears universal and human. Recalling his time as a university student, Dyson says that his presence as a Black man among white people made the artificiality of whiteness visible and challenged the presumed objectivity of American history. He suggests that the only way for American society to heal is to reject whiteness and its version of history. White Americans must realize and abandon their investment in whiteness to find their own humanity.
Dyson explains that the dominant version of American history is connected to whiteness and represents the white American worldview. He characterizes mainstream American history as a record of “white achievement” that ignores the diversity of peoples and cultures. White Americans resist this understanding. Dyson explains that the discussion on race perplexes white people who consider themselves racially neutral and view Black people as disruptive.
After giving a speech at the University of North Carolina, Dyson experienced what he characterizes as “aggrieved whiteness.” In his speech toward a predominantly white southern audience, Dyson defended youth culture and the policy of uplifting underrepresented social groups. Dyson received wide backlash; this revealed the power of the whiteness myth against social reality. He refers to the O. J. Simpson case, where O. J. Simpson, a Black American football player, was tried for killing his white wife and friend. The O. J. Simpson trial followed an incident of police brutality by four white police officers against Rodney King, a Black motorist. Dyson suggests that O. J. Simpson’s unjust acquittal was a response to the unjust acquittal of the four white policemen. For Dyson, Black people felt exasperation with how the legal system is unjust and discriminatory toward African Americans. The Simpson case provoked “white rage,” while Blackness competed against whiteness for privilege.
Dyson notes that whiteness erases Black history and remains “invisible” as a racial identity. He emphasizes the need for its deconstruction and hopes for a conscious transformation of white consciousness. He ultimately suggests that the key to white allyship is the ability to listen to Black people, and the development of empathy and understanding.
Chapter 5, Section 1, Part 2 Summary: “The Five Stages of White Grief”
Dyson mentions that Blackness causes anxiety for white Americans and analyzes the idea of “white racial grief” (73). White people strive to maintain control of the historical narrative and grieve the possibility of losing dominance in the national mythology. Dyson describes five stages of white grief. The first stage is how white people dismiss African American history by claiming ignorance. White Americans develop a collective amnesia and fail to recognize the reality of American history with Black people’s centrality and contributions. Dyson addresses white people about how they “deliberately forget how whiteness caused Black suffering” and how they choose to forget the historical injustices toward African Americans (76).
The second stage is the denial of the historical past and the persistence of racial discrimination to this day. Dyson argues that white denial has shaped America’s cultural narrative, obscuring white people’s role in racism. He emphasizes that white people fail to acknowledge how the system and institutions reinforce white privilege. They make false individual attempts to deny racism.
The third stage of white grief involves cultural appropriation. White culture’s appropriation of Black culture ultimately distorts it. Dyson notes that white culture treats other cultures as fiction to accommodate it to the white imagination, thus depriving other cultures of their reality and value. Ultimately, whiteness appropriates Black identity and exercises its privilege to control and create narratives. White people resort to colorblindness, embracing a racially neutral view of society to avoid responsibility. Dyson stresses that colorblindness erases the social meaning of race and obscures racism.
The fourth stage is the revision of America’s racial history. White people attempt to revise historical facts like the Civil War and slavery in ways that justify and reinforce whiteness. This leads to the final stage of white grief, which is the dilution of race and the undermining of Black suffering. Dyson recognizes the importance of white people’s participation in Black people’s struggle but criticizes those who act as saviors.
Black people declare that “Black Lives Matter” to demand recognition of their history and humanity. Dyson encourages white people to reject the American myth of whiteness that upholds their false perceptions of race and history, and to stop projecting their troubles onto Black people.
Chapter 5, Section 1, Part 3 Summary: “The Plague of White Innocence”
Dyson claims that white Americans do not realize the complexity of race. White people resist whiteness’s damaging effects because it connects with their American identity. Dyson recalls discussions with his white students and mentions their feelings of frustration and guilt. Dyson connects such feelings to “white fragility,” the stressful reaction and discomfort with any challenge on whiteness. He emphasizes the idea of “white innocence” as a “willful innocence” and ignorance about racism and racial violence (98). For Dyson, whiteness can be countered by a “public expression of love” that equals justice (99).
America remains racially divided. White people struggle to confront their guilt and privilege, while Black people face ongoing oppression. White people fear their collective responsibility toward Black people and hold on to their privilege and innocence. Dyson stresses that discomfort is the only way to face the present time’s complexity and heal the country’s racial divide.
Dyson reiterates his argument that white Americans must grapple with their privilege. “Black Lives Matter” challenges the norm of white innocence and its desire to control Black life. Dyson emphasizes the collective over the individual responsibility of white people in undoing racial injustices. By giving up on white dominance, white and Black people can come together as Americans. Dyson addresses the difficulty of fighting institutional racism, the systems and structures that reinforce racial hierarchy. Black youth’s access to education often depends on specific socioeconomic policies. Practices of institutional racism persist like redlining, where services are denied to those in areas deemed bad for investment, such as areas populated by Black people, and racial profiling, where people are suspected of being guilty of an offense due to their race.
Dyson describes Donald Trump as representing white privilege, fragility, and innocence. His election after Barack Obama’s presidency is an expression of white people’s grievances and investment on whiteness. Dyson argues that, as the first Black president, Obama aroused the fears and resentment of white racists, which Trump managed to manipulate. White people invest in whiteness because it remains connected to American identity, democracy, and patriotism. Dyson argues that Black people’s political criticism and protests are viewed as unpatriotic. To illustrate his point, he mentions examples of protest by athletes. Ultimately, Dyson argues that white people must be willing to learn about Black life in America.
Chapter 5, Section 1 Analysis
In this section, Dyson again explores Whiteness as a Racist Social Construct: White American culture has constructed whiteness as a privileged racial identity with a specific political meaning. Throughout American history, whiteness and its myths have dominated and excluded other racial groups. Europeans have forged their American identity around whiteness, so that the two have become synonymous. Since the birth of the United States, it’s understood that to become white is to become American.
For Dyson, whiteness has been connected to “power and privilege” despite class differences among white Americans (45). Whiteness controls racial dynamics and appears as “neutral,” “invisible,” and “human” while continuing to define Americanness (46). Dyson also stresses that whiteness has been constructed against Blackness. Black Americans and their history and culture signify a challenge toward whiteness, revealing its artificiality. Thus, white American culture often seeks to erase Blackness. Dyson criticizes “the politics of whiteness” and separates it from the humanity of white people (44).
For Dyson, the objectivity of American history is an illusion. For America to overcome racism, Americans must abandon their investment in whiteness and acknowledge the reality of American history. As Dyson notes, American history has been defined by the white imagination and prioritizes “white achievement” (52). The historical narrative has been controlled by the dominant culture which maintains power and control. White Americans still resist that reality and continue to invest in the delusion of whiteness, thus remaining ignorant and indifferent to Black life.
Donald Trump’s election to the presidency in 2016 is an example of the pervasiveness of whiteness in American society. As a political figure, Trump represents white rage. His presidency signifies a white backlash after the presidency of Barack Obama, with whiteness striving to control the political narrative after a Black man was elected president for the first time in American history.
The deconstruction of whiteness is America’s only solution for a hopeful future. Dyson argues that equality can only result from empathy and a conscious effort by white Americans to reject their false idea of superiority.
Dyson examines the ways that white people resist change and equality. White Americans express resentment against African American affirmations of humanity, as their desire to control the national mythology remains. For Dyson, “white grief” emerges when Black people assert their central position in American history and expresses white people’s fear of losing power. White grief has several manifestations and is defined by the illusion of whiteness. White people often embrace a collective amnesia and express a deliberate ignorance about African American culture. Such intentional erasure of Black history only reinforces the politics of whiteness and America’s white cultural mythology, while increasing social hostility toward African Americans. The historical contributions and sacrifices of Black people are continuously marginalized by whiteness.
Dyson argues that whiteness still views Blackness as a threat. White people intentionally ignore the impact of whiteness on “Black suffering” and choose to forget the history of discriminatory politics against Black people (76). In another manifestation of white grief, white people negate the traumatic historical past to deny their responsibility for the persistence of racial inequality. White Americans fail to acknowledge their “white privilege” and reinforce Black pain.
Cultural appropriation also distorts and obscures Blackness. Even though white Americans argue that their intent is to show appreciation, Dyson criticizes them for depicting Black culture through the white imagination. He states: “White America loves Black style when its face and form are white” (82). White culture fails to acknowledge its power and privilege to manipulate narratives. Ultimately, the white imagination fictionalizes and undermines other cultural groups and their lived experiences. White people commonly cite colorblindness in instances of cultural appropriation, arguing that they don’t see race. Dyson stresses that colorblindness is not the embracing of humanity. Instead, colorblindness eliminates racial responsibility: “A world without color is a world without racial debt” (86).
Historical revision is also a form of white grief. The “racial revisionist” reinterprets historical events to justify and centralize whiteness while dehumanizing Black people and obscuring their experiences (86). Through white grief, white people can deny the effect of racism on Black people. Dyson encourages white people to stop mythologizing themselves and dismantle the harmful impact of whiteness. Only this will allow for Empathy and the Hope for Social Change and Equality.
White people insist on their “white innocence,” feeling that any assault against whiteness is an attack on their own existence. Dyson shows that American identity is connected to whiteness, and that “Black dissent” is often deemed as anti-American. He draws a distinction between nationalism and patriotism: Nationalism is a dangerous sentiment that celebrates one’s country regardless of its morality and politics. Patriotism is a belief and pursuit of a country’s “best values.” Dyson notes that Black people exemplify patriotism more than whites; African American individuals struggle for values like equality while white Americans uncritically celebrate their country.
White fragility reflects how white people feel uncomfortable with attempts to dismantle whiteness and often react with “fear,” “anger,” and “guilt” (98). Dyson argues that white innocence is the actual threat, not Black people or the attempt to change systemic injustice. Dyson notes that justice can only result through love, and love will only come when white people take accountability for racism. To acknowledge white privilege is to assume responsibility for a “unanimous, collective capacity for terror, for enjoying a way of life that comes at the direct expense of other folk” (100).
White people still reject that responsibility. Their white fragility manifests as a plea of innocence, one that obscures the history of racial violence against African American individuals. Assuming responsibility for the legacy of racism and white privilege is more of a collective gesture than an individual one, as institutional racism persists. White innocence impedes social progress and should be replaced with an understanding of Blackness. The “Black Lives Matter” movement asserts the value of Black life.
