I’m from the South; this is a very real word in our vocabulary. Not because we’re more or less racist than anywhere else in the world, but because of our history…our distant and not so distant past. It’s still a raw wound down here because of the ignorance that rides around with the rebel flag, telling the off color jokes that people think are ok to tell, and hanging onto stereotypes that were cemented into our culture so long ago. Of course, I know these things are everywhere, but here, down here in our neck of the woods…we live in a world that not even forty years ago including bombing churches and beatings and lynching, signs, and every other inhumanity under the sun. I think you can call us sensitive at the broadest end of the spectrum and acutely aware of it at the smallest end. But it’s different down here. Most of us really try differently…we’re closer to the agony here. We try harder, I think in most instances, to rid ourselves of this ugliness as best as we can. Not everyone, of course, but most.
So, when a friend of mine was telling me about a psychology class she’s taking and that current content is dealing with being white and that we’re supposedly inherently racist as a result of being white, I bristled. Believing myself to be far more progressive than this ugly word, I bristled deep down. During the entire conversation, I found myself uncomfortable – for one, because there was a black man behind us and I was afraid about the conversation’s content and how it might be interpreted by him – but also because I truly don’t believe I’m even a smidgen racist. I don’t laugh at off color jokes. I scold people, even my family, for even the smallest offense. I take pride in my desire to break out of that mold. I believe I will be able to raise my daughter differently, to see beyond all descriptive differences, to truly be free of this nonsense. It was while I was parading my virtues through my mind that my friend said something that interrupted my thoughts. She was telling me how she had these same problems with the content so she went to talk to her professor. He listened to her, and guided her to do more with her feelings and this belief and understanding. He recommended movies and books to better explain the African American side of the argument and guided her through the process. But, then she said it. He told her that even she – as free from this sin as she was – was deep down a racist as well. I asked how. He reached into her brain and said to her, when you signed up for my class you were shocked on the first day when you came in here. She asked why he would think that. He demonstrated that when she signed up for a class taught by John Smith, that in her mind, John Smith was not a black professor. (I changed this name, but the point is that the name was very common). I literally heard these words through my head at lightening speed. As soon as she had said it, the thought went through my mind so fast that I couldn’t consciously stop it. There it was. It had been spoken and pretty veil of all of the right words and thoughts and ideals were lifted. In my swiftest of thoughts, I had betrayed myself and what I believed I stood for. I won’t minimize the truth or say to myself, “Well this doesn’t demonstrate anything other than my human desire to group based on known information.” I will admit, that the first thing I thought was, “That’s a pretty white sounding name, he’s right, I wouldn’t have thought he was African American.” After thinking it, I was like “WTF, your name is Lael??? Really you’re grouping based on name?”
So, I am at the “What now phase”. How do you turn on the lights of the world when you’ve got burnt out bulbs of your own? How do we collectively change? How do we really progress beyond our stereotypes and into a world of equality where the universal conversation changes? Is it possible? No answers yet, just recognition of the problem on a whole different scale. But....”Knowing is half the battle”
