I grew up in a ethnically homogenous town in Western New York, where we operated on the assumption that racism simply didn't exist anymore. We didn't talk about it. We didn't think about it. We would never dream of being mean to someone who had a different skin color than us, but we also didn't live mixed in with many people who were not white. Not intentionally. It was defacto segregation. Of course, we knew intellectually about the concept of racism, and we knew that somewhere else people were violent and vicious and hateful. But, not us.
My town was (and still is) full of good people. But, these people are not exposed to other cultures as much as inner city folk. Honestly, if people in my hometown thought about what their culture was, most would likely say that they weren't really sure. This is the norm in many white American homes, that they don't even think of themselves as having a culture. But, they do. Of course they do. Everyone has culture. And everyone has notions of what other cultures are like. There's nothing malicious in this perception of culture and the other. If anything, it is lack of experience with the other.
Racism exists. Prejudice exists. It is more subtle than it used to be, but it is every bit a part of society today as it was before the Civil Rights Movement. I don't know what can be done to fix the problem, but a step in the right direction is to recognize that it is there and stop pretending to be color-blind. I'm not color-blind. I see the difference in skin tone. Sometimes I celebrate it. Sometimes I fear it. But I won't pretend that I don't notice it.
I suppose my idea of what a black person is would have never changed much if I hadn't met the wide variety of people that my life journey exposed me to. SUNY Geneseo introduced me to some extraordinarily intelligent black people. One was a witty and interesting girl who was half Puerto Rican and half black. She was fun to talk to because she had an entirely different set of experiences from me. I loved hanging out with her. The next person of color I met (within the first week of school), was an ebony colored young man who was truly the most dedicated person I knew of in all three years of my undergraduate. He was destined to fulfill his dream of being an attorney. Both of them were so interesting, I decided to enroll in a Black Literature course. During this class, I learned that I was racist. Everything that came out of my mouth seemed to offend the black girls in the class. I didn't understand. I wasn't trying to be racist. So, I took more classes about black culture. Even after four classes, I still didn't see where they were coming from. I didn't hate, so how was I racist? Just because I didn't believe that everything was about race? Surely, that couldn't make me 'racist'. My final semester of classes at the college were during a summer session. Because there are few people that stay on campus during the summer, I was randomly placed with a group of roommates. That was quite the experience. I'll write about it in more detail in another post, but for now I'll just describe the two black girls. One girl was literally a princess from Ghana. She taught us all how to do a tribal dance. It was so cool. But, she didn't act like a heathen (which is what I thought of Africans before getting to know her). Far from it. Even though she was from Africa, she was.... normal. She read fashion magazines and listened to pop music. She loved game shows on television. Across the hall, there was another girl who was from New York City. She was what I affectionately call a big black Momma. She wanted to take care of everyone, bringing us cookies and making us mac-n-cheese. She had the loudest laugh, and loved to tell stories. Both of these girls were so unlike anyone I had ever met, and I'm blessed to have met them.
When I left Geneseo and moved to Florida, I had a culture shock experience. I felt pretty good about myself, for pushing beyond my comfort level and getting to know people who were unlike me. But then, I moved South. I was shocked to hear that people were still in the KKK. I cringed to learn that people still said the n-word (I still don't feel comfortable even typing it here). I was appalled to think that anyone was still as racist as I had read in books. But then, I saw some violent behavior. I kept hearing about blacks perpetrating crime on the news. It was the opposite end of the spectrum. I started to be nervous around black people. I'd notice that I felt uneasy around them. I'd hold my purse a little tighter in the elevator with them. I didn't try to defend them as much. What was happening to me?
Then I went to work for a Texas call center where I was the minority. Most people I worked with were black. I didn't like it. Not at all. I didn't understand their clothes, their speech patterns, nothing. But then I started to talk to them. These weren't the highly educated black people from Geneseo. Nor were they the people I saw in the streets in Tampa. No, these Dallas call center blacks were normal people just trying to make a living. They had the same dreams as me. They had the same love for their families. But, they didn't have as much hope as I did. I knew that I was in a temporary situation. I knew I was better than taking sales calls. They didn't.
As a PhD student, I'm learning more about race. I'm learning about Critical Race Theory and Black Feminist theory. I'm learning that sharing these experiences is a good thing. I shouldn't shy away from my memories or pretend my feelings don't exist. I should recognize that just as there is a wide range of white people, there is also a range of black people. There isn't just one black identity any more than there is just one white identity. I've met some observant black people who pointed out the media portrayal of black people is unfair. I've heard their commentary that takes me to places I hadn't considered before. I love that we can talk about these things openly. I'm growing in my knowledge of the fact that oppression still exists through the work of people like bell hooks, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Patricia Collins, Shirley Brice Heath, and Jonathon Kozol. I am not an expert in what it means to be black and I never will be. That isn't my lived experience. But what I have lived has been a journey that I think is worth sharing.
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