DANIEL FINNEY

Shocked by swastikas, white hoods and cross burning in Iowa? You're probably white.

Daniel P. Finney
The Des Moines Register

I read with sadness and disappointment that the national wave of stupidity and hatred passed through Drake University, my alma mater, with racist graffiti appearing on campus over the weekend.

A swastika was carved into the wall of an elevator at the Drake student center, and someone wrote racial epithets on the dry-erase board of a first-year student's door, reported the Register's Jeff Charis-Carlson and Charly Haley.

Creston Community High School officials say they learned Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017, that Creston students were involved in this photo, which shows five people wearing white hoods, one waving what looks like a Confederate flag, and a burning cross nearby.

Drake President Earl "Marty" Martin rightly called the acts "cowardly."

And the students who were interviewed expressed surprise. One student said: "I didn't necessarily think that Drake was that kind of place."

The fact that we're shocked is part of the problem.

We're shocked at racist graffiti at Drake.

We're shocked when a photo of a handful of Creston high school football players waving a Confederate flag, burning a cross and wearing KKK-style hoods was made public earlier this month.

We're shocked when a racist drives a car into a crowd of anti-white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one demonstrator.

But who is it that is actually surprised?

It's usually white people. They're the ones who are shocked when racist things happen in the places they live and at the institutions they love.

Because the people with brown or black skin already know racism exists here. They've lived with it their whole lives.

"This has always been a part of our country," said Kitty Weston Knauer, a retired Des Moines schools administrator who grew up in segregated schools in North Carolina.

Kittie Weston-Knauer tells her story of becoming a "BMX Mama" during the Des Moines Register's Storytellers Project event "Climb that Hill," Des Moines, Monday, July 11, 2016.

Knauer, a Drake alumna, came to Des Moines in 1966. She learned that the overt racism of the South was replaced with a more subversive — but no less hateful — ideology in the Midwest.

"I quickly learned that white people were not as welcoming in Iowa as I thought," Knauer said. "It wasn't right in your face, but you quickly learned nuances and subtleties in the language of people that let you know: As a black person, you're not welcome."

But that was 1966 — the height of the civil rights movement. Many white people like to delude themselves into believing everything is better now.

An oft-repeated popular convention is that affirmative action and other measures have gone too far, and it is white people who feel like they are under attack.

Wanda Everage, a Drake alumna who retired as an assistant provost at Drake, is teaching a course called "The Role of White Americans in Understanding and Dismantling Racism" for the Ray Society, a Drake lifelong learning program named in honor of former Iowa Gov. Robert D. Ray, also a Drake alumnus.

"We put the focus on what white people need to do, rather than what is wrong with people of color," Everage said. "Maybe you didn't have anything to do with a specific incident, but just by being silent and pretending it's someone else's problem, you're contributing to the problem."

Wander Everage moderates Sept. 18 panel on Latino representation in theater. Actor Zander Morales wears a "White Side Story" t-shirt.

That is the definition of white privilege.

The outrage machine — the internet, social media, conservative talk radio and biased cable TV networks — mock the concept of white privilege as a politically correct invention of liberal "snowflakes."

I understand that impulse. I used to get defensive when someone invoked the phrase "white privilege."

"I'm not racist," I would say to myself. "I believe in equality, civil rights and human decency."

No, I don't draw swastikas or write racial slurs. Yet I am a white man in a nation where all institutions are set by default to cater to me.

When I was admitted to Drake, a good school, nobody said I got a break because of affirmative action.

If I get pulled over by the police, I never wonder if it was because of the color of my skin.

People might justifiably mock my lack of fashion sense, but most will never wonder if I'm a gang member because of how I wear my pants.

When I was a freshman at Drake, my roommate was an African-American from Milwaukee. He wore a Georgetown hooded jacket and baggy pants.

When he would go to the mall, he noticed that women — including black women — would switch the  straps of their purses to the side opposite of him as he'd walk by.

He told me a fellow student once asked him if black people ate breakfast cereal. I learned more from my roommate that year than I did in all my classes combined.

I certainly don't exempt myself from the burden of white privilege or inherent bias.

About 15 years ago, I had dinner with a friend at a restaurant in West Des Moines. It was late at night, and a young African-American man walked in alone.

He didn't seem to be interested in getting a seat or talking to the staff. I remember thinking to myself, "I wonder if we're going to get robbed."

It turned out the guy was there to meet his girlfriend, who worked in the kitchen.

I am terribly ashamed of my assumption, but when we left the restaurant, my friend confessed he had thought the same.

We had a long discussion about why it is we both jumped to the same conclusion and what we had been exposed to throughout our lives that made us think a single black man was a threat — and not just a guy waiting for his girlfriend.

If the guy had been white, I probably wouldn't have thought about it at all. I remain haunted by that ugly thought and remember it often.

"What people don't realize is that minorities live with that extra layer of judgment on them all the time," Everage said. "There's the stereotype of the 'angry black woman.' When people get to know me, they realize I'm not that and they say, 'Oh, you're different. You're an exception.'

"It gets so tiring. Why do we have to go through an extra layer of tests just to be accepted?"

We don't know who carved the Nazi symbol or wrote the racist words at Drake. I don't know what is in their hearts.

Maybe they are overtly racist, or maybe they were just kids screwing around.

I find the latter more frightening.

Because if they were just messing around, whether at Drake or Creston, then that means they're so ignorant of history and so callous to the pain and suffering such actions cause that they're willing to dabble in the language and symbolism of hatred as a gag.

White people often like to pretend that slavery has no impact on today and that the Civil Rights Act resolved racism.

It's not who we are anymore, the thinking goes, even when incidents like Creston and Drake and Charlottesville still continue to happen.

Everage noted the theme of "this is not us" that came after the Creston incident and hoped that it was not repeated at Drake.

"This is us," she said. "This is the United States of America. It's embedded into who we are."

Only when we recognize that do we begin to fix the problem together.

Daniel P. Finney, Des Moines Register Storyteller.

Daniel P. Finney, The Register's Metro Voice columnist, is a Drake University alumnus grew up in Winterset and east Des Moines. Reach him at dafinney@dmreg.com or 515-371-9453. Twitter: @newsmanone.