ON (my) WHITE PRIVILEGE – 021717

The other week, I had the opportunity to have two very different *conversations* (usually me doing most of the talking) with two very different (looking) people about RACE and RACISM.  And later, as i was thinking about these two very different conversations, I began to wonder how it was that these two, very different-looking people, having experienced RACE and RACISM in America in vastly different ways, have both managed to end up with the same end goal in mind – equality. 

And as I was mulling over the SECOND conversation I had, this one an online conversation with a black male friend of mine, i was completely SHOCKED when he abruptly ended this conversation (that I was having with myself), by suggesting that perhaps he and I had very different understandings of how racism functions in America, it hit me – like a bat outta hell, like a load of bricks to the face – MY understanding of how racism functions in America is from a (ad)vantage point of WHITE PRIVILEGE.  Duh.  And, Yuck.

I mean...white privilege?  Seriously?  But then, what happens to  my life-long story as the orphan?  The BI-RACIAL orphan with the huge identity crisis?  Is that story now completely invalidated by this new awareness? Do i have to hang up my bi-racial-identity-crisis-having-orphan shoes now?!?  Shit, it don´t even know if I can learn this new role at my age.

So – rewinding just a bit to my every day lived experience of race, basically a long, drawn-out conversation I have been having - all my life - mostly with myself, sometimes with others.   But it would indeed be fair to say that this conversation began with a great deal of prompting from the outside world, constantly wanting to know *What I am*.

“What ARE you?!?” was a perfectly normal and perfectly acceptable question from perfectly bewildered strangers (this is back in the "free-love 70´s, just when inter-racial relationships were beginning to gain acceptability - or at least novelty status - in American culture), referring to the question of my questionable *race*, since the color of my skin didn’t outwardly present as one thing or another (for example, the basic black and white mix that makes up my *heritage* if you could call it that). 

And then, thrown into this ambiguity soup for good measure was my adoption into a white family, which was also a rather abrupt  and complete separation - physically, mentally and emotionally, from black people.  Off i went, a product of the newly budding (but as yet not socially acceptable) concept of inter-racial relationships, to be raised by white liberals in (mostly) middle class, predominately white neighborhoods; so in many ways, I have had the classic “white girl” experience.

Except that I’m not white.  Which has always been obvious to the others in my various communities - black, white and mixed (see photo below).   What I got out of all of this ambiguity was a fine sense of “separate, but equal”, which is not so bad, right?  In other words, I have always been the different-colored child, but rarely have I been dehumanized in my brown skin.  I’ve just been – separated, or different from the rest.  

Me and My Family - Separate, but equal

And lately, life has been compelling me to start having conversations with various groups of people about these words RACIST and RACISM, perhaps in order to finally, once and for all, ‘weed out’ whatever it is in 2017 that would have black and white people seeing things so very differently; many of the white ppl. in my life are like "WTF is going on with all of this RACISM?  How did all of this RACISM happen on my watch?!?"  Meanwhile, the black ppl. in my life are like "Silly white ppl...racism has always been part of America´s cultural fabric.  You had the privilege of ignoring this because it didn´t impact you directly.  Well, Donald Trump has ruined all of that for you.  President Trump has ripped the band-aid right off America´s festering primal wound called RACISM, exposing the seedy underbelly of our train-wreck reality T.V. show culture. Enjoy."

In preparation for having these conversations, I began composing a piece that I titled “On Racism”.  The piece began like this:

Since the election of Donald Trump, i have noticed, with increasing frequency and carelessness, the use of the word racism set right along with the words prejudice, bias, and even, preference, as if these words all mean the same thing.  they don’t.  they are markedly different, and to use them as synonyms is dangerous, divisive, and dare i say, even lazy, since the use of the word marks a clear qualitative DISTINCTION between self and other in a way that allows self to ignore one’s own damaging prejudices. 

So there, racism.   I went on, like any good student essay, to proving my point:

The word *racism* has a very specific meaning and is NOT synonymous with these other words, and as I have personally had the opportunity to learn, over and over again, is this: words MATTER!  Words can be used to UNITE, spark discussion and elicit forward-moving action, or they can be used to DIVIDE.  inherent in the word/concept of racism is a very definitive superiority/subhuman dichotomy; in other words, when I call you a racist, what I am suggesting is that you consider me to be less of a human being than you; that you consider yourself to be a SUPERIOR human being.  And, unless this is really true, I would consider the use of this word divisive.  

Now - in my own defense :  All of this is still true for me.  And, it’s also true that my own personal brand of ‘truth’ speaks from the perspective of white privilege – which in it’s first, perhaps simplest interpretation means that my life has never been or felt physically threatened because my skin is brown.   

And i could go on and on to list the numerous and varied ways, both large and small, that (my) white privilege has worked, in my favor, to provide me with a very sheltered and shielded view from the de-humanizing effects of racism, but i won´t.  Instead,I would like to offer you a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking example of how the absence of white privilege manifested itself in my life recently.

Yesterday, I attended a funeral for the 19-year-old child of a dear, dear friend of mine, a woman I have known for nearly 25 years.  This friend is a black woman, she has 3 other beautiful children; the child who was killed happened to be her youngest son.  This child was a nice kid, very funny, life of the party kind of child, who lived by the seat of his pants, who made some bad choices – didn’t we all as kids, but thankfully, none of those bad choices got us killed.   His last bad decision landed him with the wrong group of people, at the wrong place, at the wrong time.  And when you are young, male and black, you better believe it´s “shoot to kill.”

I don’t worry about this happening to my (now) 13 year old black son.  Because, quite frankly, (my) white privilege has sheltered me from even thinking the thought that a family member of mine is not safe in the color of his skin.  To be fair, my dear, dear, friend never saw this coming to her child, either.  She was knocked off-guard how quickly her black child became just another statistic.  

And even though i don´t worry about the physical safety of my young, black son, this doesn´t  mean that a threat doesn´t "actually" exist.  I would say it’s more than likely that my son’s black father sees the safety of his black son in a very differently light.  I suspect that he is keenly aware of the very real threat my 13 year-old black son faces, on a day-to-day basis.  But, can you see how both perspectives are true, albeit subjective?  Same – same, but different.  And now more than ever, I am both thankful for my present perspective, and also very aware how easily my own personal sense of safety could be completely annihilated.   

So after all of that reflecting,  I THEN understood what my black male friend was trying to get across in his post (which I only paid the briefest of attention to, so that I could get my OWN, ‘more important’ point across), which was this:

“Black people really don’t want to have this conversation anymore with white people.  They just don’t.  It’s not their problem.  It’s a white people problem.”

And so I (thought) I was having this (one-sided) conversation with my black friend about how I didn’t agree with Toni Morrison’s assertion (lol i know, wtf with MY ego, huh?) that racism was a ‘white people’s problem’ – because blah-blah blah….  And my friend was gently insisting, well that’s not really Toni’s point; her point is that perhaps it’s time that white people have these conversations on their own, without black people.   And as I continued to blah-blah-blah about the VIP difference (in my world) between racism and prejudice, he respectfully ended the exchange.   Wait, what?  But I was just getting warmed up! 

So basically I missed his entire point.  His and Toni Morrison’s, of course.  You can see the full video here. 

And once I was able to go back and re-trace my missteps and locate what I now understand to be the point of his post, I wanted to share this insight with my OTHER friend, the one I had the FIRST conversation about race with: this one with a white woman-friend of mine, in which I was blah-blah-blah-ing with her all about race (because she brought it up) and I have had this, and similar conversations with white people on so many other occasions in my mixed-girl lifetime, I thought THIS was going to be the time I was not going to let that word slip on by without some more carefully thought out examination about how this word is being used– or mis-used, as I happen to think the case may be. 

And I was telling all of this to my white female friend, because as we were discussing the issue of race and racism, she brought up some of her recent experiences in a discussion group of activists (predominately white, but some black) where often in this group she, as a white person, feels at a LOSS as to what the expectation is from black ppl about how she is to be handling the problem of racism (locally and globally), and specifically, what that looks like, as actionable items.  “Step up, and step BACK” is often the message, which is then followed by what feels to her like a confrontational “So now what are you going to do to fix it?”  And what, exactly, does “Step up, Step back” look like within groups that gathered for the woman’s march, where there must be, what my white female friend calls *intersectionality*, because otherwise, she says “ it’s just a white woman’s march.”

I now understand that these conversations need to take place between white people (and those of us who reap the bennies of white privilege) and NOT in and amongst a group of people who grew up “Black in America.”  I am Not Your Negro is a movie out right now about that very topic, what it means to be "Black in America.”  Says author James Balwin: “The story of the American negro is the story of America and it’s not a pretty story.”

And as I begin to take a deeper, more intimate look at exactly how (my) white privilege might be used to engage and facilitate conversations on “race” and “racism in America” I bring you this first, very important message, from black people to white people, which is to say:

“Stop talking to me about racism.  Talk amongst yourselves.  Racism is a white ppls. problem, so go figure out your shit.  And then get back to us.”

So there it is.  My white privilege.  And if there is one very important lesson I have learned from this long and winding exploration of (my) white privilege, and what all of this means to me on a practical, day to day basis:  it means that whatever it is I still want to do with this life, well I better go on and start doing it, like today, like NOW.   Because truly, there is nothing standing in my way.

Except me.