I'm 56, white, female, disabled, getting by on SSD. I read a lot. I try to keep up with the news and I particularly follow news and views about white privilege and abuse of blacks. I've thought about it a lot and I've made a few comments here and there. This diary is about the intersection of some of those comments with a little thrown in from elsewhere. It will seem rather disjointed as I stack the blocks but I promise they will all come together in the end.
In one exchange that I had, the observation was made that most whites can go through their lives without ever really knowing anything truly pertinent about the real black experience and culture while blacks have no choice - they have to understand white culture to function and to survive. Clearly, obviously true.
In my reading online, I remember reading an article (forgive me as my memory isn't as accurate as it once was) which said that about 85% of whites did not have a black person in their "social network" (I believe this was defined as being in a list of 7? people that "you had had a serious discussion with in the past 6 months"). In addition about 75% of blacks did not have a white person in their social network.
Please continue with me below the fold.
I've thought about my own life experience. The area where I have spent most of my life, Southern OH and Northern WV, is about 94% white and about 3.5% black. I was raised in a family where I never heard my parents talk badly about anyone and was taught that you respect all people regardless of race, religion or any other factor. I met my first black kids in junior high with just a few blacks in the 2 grades and I was friends with several. It wasn't until I was in high school that I first heard a racist comment and it came out of my new step-monster's mouth. She talked about a black man (whose son I had a serious crush on at the time) and said "He's a good man, knows his place". My father was appalled and said so. I was shocked.
I have mostly lived the insulated white life as have most of the people I know and have known. All of my rather large family went to the same huge and gentle black male GP for over 20 years. The main nurse of my current GP is black and there are others here and there, black students and professors in college etc but very few. I thought that most of the people I knew weren't racist because I never heard anyone say anything. I went through my life working, raising my kids, etc. and mostly didn't think about it.
Then I helped elect BO president and was proud of our country when he won. I should have known, in retrospect, but I truly was not prepared for it when some of the people I knew (thankfully none of my family or close friends) started saying vicious, racist things about the president. I ended the relationships but my shell was shattered once and for all. That was when I started following racial news and views.
I thought I had educated myself and knew a lot about the terrible things black people had to deal with after years of reading. When the case against Michael Dunn in the murder of Jordan Davis was with the jury, I spent my time here since I couldn't concentrate on anything else and felt like part of a community. But then I recently read the Washington Post piece about Ferguson County, MO and the ways that the authorities prey upon blacks in all those little communities and looked into a different world. Once again illusions were shattered.
UPDATE: Here is the link to the WP article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I'm going to digress at this juncture to make another point. For a long time I didn't think much about the LGBTQ community either. I heard about the efforts for gay marriage and thought there wasn't any reason not to allow it but I just thought of it is as people wanting to have the ceremony and celebration. Then I watched a video about 2 guys who were together for a lot of years when one was in an accident, hospitalized and died. His family blamed the survivor of the pair for "making" their son gay and he was not permitted in the hospital and the funeral or anything. In addition, he lost his investment in his home and other assets that the couple had built together. I "got it" and was forever changed. It is this sort of "I see you, I know you, I feel you" that changes people. Arguments and statistics are helpful but it is this level of personal connection that changes hearts and minds.
Another key point from my gay story is that all of us see life through our particular set of lenses, our own experience. Until we learn otherwise, we naturally assume that our experience is "normal". I can remember driving while my mind wondered back when I was a new mother, seeing a woman pushing a stroller and thinking "where is her other baby?". I had twins and for a moment there when I was zoned out, I assumed everyone did. It is how our minds work and we have to learn to understand the experiences of others.
I've tried to learn and to relate. I think about how small things that hold me up in my day like long lines or road construction irritate me and compare that to how frequently blacks get stopped by cops and have their day and possibly week/month/year/life hi-jacked through no fault of their own. I think about my 28 year old sons and how I worried about them growing up but never thought once about them winding up in jail or killed by a cop. And I think about the mothers of all of these black boys and their pain and it is unfathomable.
And then I think of all of the comments I have read that people have said about whites here on the forum. How they willfully refuse to acknowledge privilege, are immoral and down-right evil. Now before I go further let me state that no one I know spends anything like the time I do educating myself on politics, the economy, the environment and social issues. Most are young adults and they don't have time to do more than catch the headlines. They have jobs and kids and obligations and are just living their lives from day to day. The whites that I know well all support BO. They easily acknowledge that blacks are disadvantaged if I speak to them about it but it has taken me multiple conversations to give some of them a picture of privilege that they could finally see. It wasn't willful ignorance, just plain ignorance and it wasn't immorality or downright evil, it was again just plain ignorance. They are not trying to avoid the truth but it takes real time and effort to find out the truth because they live in a world full of insidious lies and obfuscation. I am proof of that myself in the story of my own "evolution". I am NOT claiming that this is true of all whites, not by a long shot, I see plenty of the unbelievable nastiness and lethal viciousness online every day but this is what I experience with those I call family and friends. (I see similar ignorance when I talk to men about women's issues.)
You've made it to THE POINT! Congratulations! Thank you for your patience.
It seems to me that not only are most whites not required to know anything about the real black experience in the USA, it is the default state for most of them at least in my area of the US. In addition, the blacks that they do encounter are usually very accomplished like doctors, nurses, students, professors, etc. Conversely blacks not only have to know about white culture and constantly struggle to survive the onslaught of it but the whites that they routinely encounter are usually exceptionally awful, racist and empowered to make them miserable. The fact that 85% of whites don't have black friends means that they can look at the few blacks they do encounter and say it is all about the individual not institutionalized racism and swallow the stereotypes and spin that they don't even realize is calculated racism rooted in the Southern Strategy. The fact that 75% of blacks don't have white friends means that their "typical" white person is Darren Wilson and his ilk. What in hell can we do about it?
So I think some more and I think about the story of the girl on a beach where a bunch of starfish are stranded and she is picking up one at a time and throwing them into the ocean. A man comes along and says "You're wasting your time. There are so many that you can't really make a difference." And the girl picks up another starfish, throws it into the sea and says "I made a difference to that one, didn't I?"
So I've been going out of my way for some time now to be friendly to black people that I see when I am out and about. I make eye contact and smile and say hello and, if it seems right, strike up conversations. 99% of the time, they avoid eye contact at first but as soon as they realize that I am genuine, the smiles appear and I've never had anyone refuse to interact with me and every encounter has been very positive. What good does this do? It shows a very few black people that there is one crazy old white lady that is friendly to them. I am hoping that I will be able to do volunteer work before long and am hoping that I can serve where I can meet some black people that I can call friends. In the meantime, I do this. I throw a few starfish into the ocean.
It isn't much and I am not saying that this trumps social movements and efforts to change laws and have investigations and more articles like the Washington Post one. We need all of that and as much of it as we can possibly get. But if we ALL did the starfish thing and most whites had black friends and most blacks had white friends, wouldn't it change hearts and minds and wouldn't it finally, truly get better?