Today 8-13, I spent half a day writing a heartfelt diary, and didn’t know about saving draft and lost it all. Devastated. I didn’t think I had the heart to write it again. But here I am. 8-17-2019. I’m writing this for the people who saw me say I lost my draft and asked me to re-write it.
Although I’m not a writer, I’ve learned about writing, that you should write when it’s fresh in your mind and the words come pouring out.
I’m a 68 year old white female and I grew up in a racist South Carolina town, where I lived the first 25 years of my life. Since then I’ve lived all over the southeast with my husband who I met in the mid 70s in my hometown. He was fresh out of college and from Mississippi. He was raised Catholic and told me his parents didn’t allow racism in his family of 7 children. But living in MS you know he saw plenty and not saying he isn’t racist either. I saw lots, and mostly from my dad and my immediate family (as time went on).
I didn’t know any black people and went to high-school with only one black guy. I didn’t know him, but I remember he was well liked and I don’t think he had any trouble at my school. (knowing what I know now, he was probably one of the smartest people at my school!) I never felt ashamed as a young person about racism. I didn’t even know I was racist and never gave it much thought.
It wasn’t until I started working and had to interact with black people on a regular basis that I had to re-learn what to call them. When I was growing up, the N word was all we knew. Black people weren’t in my life growing up. I saw my dad one time be ugly to a black man walking down our street when he stepped into our yard. Funny, how an indecent like that sticks with you for so long. Even though I didn’t know then that that behavior was wrong, even as a young child, I knew something about it didn’t feel right. It appeared as if my dad was protecting his family but I don’t think that’s why he was ugly to him. That was during the time that we didn’t lock our doors and slept with just the screen doors not locked. Seems like 10 lifetimes ago!
I think for so many white people our racism is something we will be working on all of our lives. We learned it, and it will take as long to unlearn it as it did to learn it.
Since I’ve never been black and never will be, I know I’ll never fully understand what black people go through on a daily basis. And truly understanding what they’ve been trying to get through to us white people has been very hard (for me) to see. But I finally had a major breakthrough last week.
At first I didn’t understand what it meant when a white person says they’re not racist because we ‘know’ black people, or we have black friends and family. So I worked on understanding that and now I do. It’s a white person’s cop-out. Since I’ve been working on not being racist most of my (adult) life, I thought I had succeeded in my effort. Turns out I hadn’t.
Then when I began learning about the daily dangers (driving while black for one) black people face simply because of the color of their skin, I began to get it a little more.
I took offense to being called white privilege because I had never known anything but being white and didn’t know that was a privilege. I thought that was simply the way I was born, which it is. I’ve never felt privileged and haven’t acted privileged in front of anyone who has less than me. I grew up poor relatively speaking so that’s not what I consider privilege. I’m middle class privilege now, but my husband and I worked for our privilege. No one gave it to us. I’m aware that white people have advantages over other races simply because of our skin color.
August 5th, (I think) the Monday after the shooting in El Paso, I was on my iPad in front of the TV barely paying attention to TV. The MSNBC scheduling was messed up that day and all the regular TV pundits who host their shows were on at the same time talking about the shooting.
I remember hearing Eddie Claude pouring his heart out on something that caught my attention. I’ve tried to find it to make sure I’m not making this up and that I did hear it this way, but because of programming that day I can’t find it anywhere on the internet.
In response to racism, Claude was passionately trying to express his brilliant assessment of the problems black people (and all minorities) face and he said something like “ racism has never been about us (us meaning blacks, Mexicans, etc..), it’s always been about the idea that white people have that they’re superior to us”. That’s simply it. He was so passionately saying that, the camera panned around the table, it looked as if Nichole Wallace might start to cry, and no one was moving a muscle while he was talking.
It was such a profound awakening I couldn’t stop thinking about his words. He was absolutely correct. It’s never been about minorities, it’s always only been about white people. Or the race that feels superior which is mostly white. I was going to say I can’t believe no one is talking about that exchange, but then again, if they did, they’d be talking about their own racism.
I can’t say that I’m not a racist, or that I never will be again, or that I will die being racist free. I don’t like to think of myself as racist, but it was almost (not almost, it was) bred into us southerners. A trait that may only go away with future generations. But I think I can say I would never let the racism that exists in me (consciously or unconsciously) hurt in any way a minority.
One thing I can say though, and something I’m most proud of, is that my husband and I decided when our only child was a baby that we would make every effort to not let her see our racism and we succeeded. We raised a non racist child.
There are so many brilliant black people and I often think what a shame that so many of their voices were never heard. (ONLY because of racism) One of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard was from Maya Angelou, she said “when you know better, you do better”. Acknowledging damage from past behavior, because some didn’t know better.
And from this white lady, that’s the most I can give. I’ve been doing better since I learned better (decades ago after leaving my hometown) and will continue on my journey forever. Eddie Claude just pushed me a little further faster.
The point is, I finally get it. And I never had to look any further than my own back yard/inside my mind. Look at myself in the mirror. Etc..
One more thing….being a psychology minded person, I have learned and know for sure that looking at ourselves (faults and all) and really seeing who and what we are (and how personally responsible we are for our thoughts, words and actions) is one of the hardest things for humans to do. And how most of “what we see and react to strongly in others, is also in us, and sometimes ONLY in us”! (from A New Earth by Echart Tolle) And that is why this is so profound to me. I have progressed mentally (been enlightened) far enough that I was able to see the truth of what Claude said because I could see myself (along with all white people) in that mirror he held up.
PS, the first draft that I lost was better. The sentences were structured better and paragraphs in better order and I gave more of my history. I won’t ever lose another draft! Also, I thought the TV programming I referred to was 8-4 but I was wrong, maybe that’s why I couldn’t find it on the internet.