As a white woman, how can I express the pain that I feel at
these senseless murders without drowning out the voices of those who are in so
much more pain, and need the space to talk about these things openly? This is
the struggle I face before writing anything on the subject of racism. But I
feel like the only way to reach some people is to force them to hear it from
the perspective of someone with the same skin color as them.
After all, you will never be able to reason with someone who
thinks himself better than you.
It is today, after growing up in poor, white, and
ultra-racist rural America that I have finally decided to talk about my
feelings. And I am aware that by doing so, I detract some attention from the
people who deserve it. But hopefully, I can do more good than harm by
expounding on my own experiences in a relatively isolated part of the country.
First of all, I was taught from a very young age that racism
is wrong. My mother had long conversations with me about how I perceived people
of other races, how certain words that I might hear were infinitely worse than
others. She made sure that I interacted with other children of other colors,
since my high school was almost exclusively white.
My first real encounter with blatant racism came when I was
in 4th grade. This is well after other children my age had learned
about how police officers are not always their friends, or how they need to
avoid certain clothing, and I was moving through life blissfully unaware of the
scary things in these children’s closest. The difference, though, was that
their fears were much bigger and much more palpable than mine.
We had created “All About Me” posters. There were sections
for family, friends, sports – whatever else is relevant to 4th
graders. And with my stick of Elmer’s glue, I pasted one of my favorite
pictures in my “friends” section; a picture of a slightly older black boy,
kneeling down with me sitting on his bent knee. Although we drifted apart in
the years after, I never lost my fondness for him or his sister, and I remember
their kindness every time I see another act of racially-charged violence on the
news. That same photograph, which I displayed proudly on my posterboard, was
met with disgust by a fellow classmate.
“Who is HE?” She asked, her nose scrunching as if he were a
cockroach.
“That’s my friend from Seabrook.” I replied, trying to stay
bright but also acutely aware that her reaction was much different than I would
have anticipated.
“Why are you sitting on his lap?” She asked, in almost a
whisper. I started to feel nervous, now. Like I had done something wrong by
being around this kid, and I had no idea why.
“I don’t know? We’re friends? Why is that weird?” I said, a
hint of anger in my voice. She looked almost amused now, and with an air of
superiority, said “But he’s BLACK.” And then she walked away.
I was dumbfounded. It had never occurred to me that such a
sweet, innocent photo would be the subject of such hurtful, petty comments. I
remember being embarrassed by the photo after that. I wondered what other “friends”
would look at me the way she did simply because I had been in contact with someone
of a different race.
It starts early, racism. It starts when you’re a child, and
grows more aggressive as the child remains uninformed. And the longer you let
these seeds of hate grow in children, the harder it is to rid them of the weeds
that sprout from them.
My experience in school only got worse from there. In the
following years, I would become accustomed to hearing n****r in casual
conversation. Kids barely old enough to understand their own place in the
world, trying to justify their denial of others’ places.
“I don’t hate black people,” they would claim with
indignation, “I just hate n****rs!”
And I would stare at them, horrified, and unable to form
proper words to articulate why their logic was so twisted and hurtful. As the
years would go on, and especially once I reached high school, I became more
vocal. But unfortunately, the louder you talk to a group that won’t listen, the
quieter they make you. It often felt that the more I spoke up, the more adversity I
faced from my peers, my teachers, and my administrators.
These are the injustices that I faced as a white child
growing up in a white world. I shudder to think at what that same life would
have cost me if I grew up as a black child. How much more violence, whether it
be physical or emotional, would I have had to face? These experiences did
enough to shape me going forward; despite my family’s efforts, the pressures of
my white education caused me to develop inherent racism that I would later
spend years trying to rid myself of. And on a more surface level, I was angry
at the insensitivity shown by my peers towards things that were so inherently
wrong, such as when three senior boys dressed up as KKK members for the school’s
dress up day.
I can’t imagine where they would have found those outfits,
unless they were already hanging in some family closet, donned maybe only in
the past, but more likely on a regular basis, just down the road where a
chapter of the KKK was still very alive.
I can’t imagine how that would have made a black student
feel. On a day which is reserved for fun, and in a place where education is
supposed to be the priority, these three white boys decided that their fun
little “joke” was more important than the safety of all people of color who
could have been affected by them.
Meanwhile, my experience at home was very different.
My family is full of musicians of all kinds, and so I was
blessed to be able to experience many different decades and genres of music. My
grandfather is a jazz pianist, so a lot of my childhood was spent exploring the
jazz music channels on television. It wasn’t until later that I would discover
the history of jazz, and how it was born out of the culture-laden streets of
New Orleans, where black musicians had a space to create freely and genius was
born. It was only then that I began to realize the massive influence that great
black artists have had on all music, throughout time.
My uncle was the one who introduced me to Michael Jackson,
who quickly became one of my most beloved artists. He introduced me to Herbie
Hancock, a true musical genius. And he introduced me to the leaders of the funk movement: George Clinton, Bootsie Collins, and the like. My grandmother and I
would sing along to Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole on the way to school
every morning. And through a deep and curious love of music, I would go on to
love and respect other black artists, from BB King to Kanye West. From Nina
Simone to Nicki Minaj.
That was when I really started to hurt. Because I was
watching this progression of the arts – I could see the movement from country
and blues to rock n’ roll. I watched as I started to understand how artists
like Elvis Presley came in to popularize the exact same music that black
artists had created, all but totally erasing their existence from the public
sphere.
When you hear “Hound Dog”, it’s only natural to associate it
with Elvis Presley, despite the fact that it was actually performed first by Big Mama Thorton. Unfortunately, I doubt that many people reading this will
even know who she is. And Led Zeppelin, one of the most idolized rock groups in
music history (and one of my personal favorites, at that) was one of the
biggest perpetrators in stealing this music from the artists it really belonged
to.
So the trend became clear to me at last: the one where white
people take the pain of disenfranchised groups and masquerade in it. Poor white
America listens to “gangster rap” and relates to the poverty, and after so long
begins to believe that their struggles are the same as black peoples’
struggles. And even if they don’t realize it, they water the seeds of racism
that the institutions (and possibly their families) made sure to place in them
at birth.
And I am left wondering; we love this art so much that we
bastardize it to suit our needs and purposes. But why don’t we at least give
respect to the population that birthed these great minds? Why don’t we respect
the struggles that created this art?
Why is it that we can root for Atticus Finch but not Tom
Robinson? The answer, as some smarter people than myself have posited, is
because Tom Robinson himself was absent from the equation. When you aren’t
listening, and you aren’t engaging, you are disregarding, and you are erasing.
How can anyone possibly expect anti-racism movements to make
real change when we are constantly pushing black people out of the public realm?
We can’t let them have the music they created, we can’t let them take pride in
their own cultural fashion without demonizing them for it. And then, once we
can’t demonize, we make it white.
 |
| Demonizing cultural fashion choices |
And just like how it’s hard to root from Tom Robinson without
us getting to know him personally, it’s hard to root for Black Lives Matter
without honestly listening to them and encouraging them to speak up. It’s hard
for scared white people to root for the victims of these police shootings
because who are the survivors? Who gets to speak directly to the public? White people.
And, of course, that isn’t to say that there aren’t many
more caveats to racism than just giving black people the platform that they
deserve; that they have earned while we earned nothing. This is about much more
than that.
It’s very hard for me to concisely and concretely respond to
the murders that have occurred in Minnesota and Louisiana. It is hard because
these are just two links of a long chain that goes back centuries. These are
just two innocent lives out of the thousands that have been slain at the hands
of racist white people, many of which by the people sworn to protect.
And I can’t help but think that my experience, and any
comments I would make, are so insignificant. It feels as though I am one small
grain of sand when I need to be a mountain.
But that is why I have decided to write this blog post. We,
as brothers and sisters of the human race, must come together to become the
mountain of change. We must raise up those voices which do not have the power
and authority to raise themselves up. We must offer our voices only when they
are called for, and our ears constantly. We must stop these divisive politics,
and this media scheme to separate and argue about whose woes are worse. We must
join together to create real change. And for me, that starts now.
I welcome any and all voices to participate respectfully,
and to allow first and foremost the expression of the Black Voice in this
conversation, so that we – perpetrators of violence and the benefactors of
injustice – can learn, and then respond appropriately.
May all find the light in these dark times.
