Recent racially-charged killings of black men and white police officers have highlighted old racial frustrations and recriminations. Ominous comparisons are being made to 1968 -- when widespread riots boiled up after the assassination of Martin Luther King -- and people are nervously wondering how far race relations might unravel this summer.
JPR reporter Liam Moriarty offers some personal reflections on how racial identity runs much more than skin-deep ...
So, I just looked at the profile pictures on my list of 157 Facebook friends ...
There are men and women, young and old, gay and straight ...
Americans, French, Germans, Brits, Dutch, even a Cuban...
Three Asian-Americans, two Latino-Americans ...
And one black face.
One ... out of 157.
So, I wonder: Am I "racist?"
I like to think not ... I was raised in the 1960s, by parents who taught me to respect everyone, regardless of race. I remember when they took me on a civil rights march in 1964, when I was 8 years old, joining hands with congregants from the black Baptist church across town, singing "We Shall Overcome." Those lessons have stayed with me through my life.
Still, I recognize that humans are tribal animals, that we’re hard-wired by evolution to seek identity in an "us", usually by creating a "them" with whom to contrast ourselves ...
And race is a viscerally-felt distinction, an instant delineation between "us" and "them."
I have to admit there have been times, walking around at night, that I’ve crossed the street to avoid a group of young black men hanging out on the corner. I've asked myself if I would have been as wary of a similar group of young white men. And I've had to admit, maybe not.
These days I live in an affluent, leafy college town, a town where -- off-campus, at least -- a black face is so uncommon that I notice when I see one.
But the growing trauma of racial violence in this country has got me wondering if I’ve been sleepwalking through something I ought to be paying attention to.
So, as they say these days, I’m "checking my privilege." And here's where I've arrived so far ...
First off, I’ve worked hard all my life, but money has never come easily to me. It's only in recent years that I've been able to reliably pay my bills each month and it hasn’t been that long since I had to choose between paying the rent and keeping the lights on.
So for me -- like for many white folks who've had to struggle to get by -- being told to "check your privilege" has been a harsh and unwelcome message that triggers a defensive response.
"What 'privilege?'" we say. "I've had to bust my ass to get anything and nobody handed it to me!"
And that's true, as far as it goes ...
But here's where I've found the privilege, the unacknowledged advantage I have by being white: I really don't have to think about race.
I wake up each morning and I'm a person. I go to work, and the other white people I work with see me as a person. The white folks I pass in town see me as a person.
Not as a white person. Just as a person.
In a culture where white is the default race, my whiteness is like water to a fish, a sea in which I swim, unaware of its existence.
But what I'm starting to understand is that that's a luxury black people in this country don't have.
They are aware, every day, that they are a "minority," that they are "other." Their blackness is a daily part of their awareness. And that blackness colors every encounter they have with white people, white institutions, white authorities, especially police.
Many black parents say they have to teach their children how to handle an encounter with the police, that they must train their youngsters to be cooperative, deferential, to move slowly and to offer no resistance, however rudely or physically they’re confronted. Because while a tough encounter with the police may be infuriating to white folks, it's much less likely to end with blood on the street than a similar encounter by black folks. That's a statistical fact.
And this is the reality black Americans live every day. I can't imagine how corrosive to the spirit that must be, what kind of emotional work must go into meeting that challenge in a healthy way. Because that's work I've never had to do.
Sure, over the years, I've done plenty of emotional "bucket work," to use Robert Bly's phrase, to become the person I am, a person I'm fairly comfortable being. But the color of my skin has never been a part of that work.
And that's "white privilege."
So what does this all mean? I'm not sure, yet. I’m still trying to figure this out.
But the racial segregation in my life, reflected in the nearly unrelenting whiteness of my social network, is a clue that I need to open my eyes and my ears and my mind, and allow myself to see and hear and understand the experiences of others. I need to be willing to hear their story, to listen to their truth and to accord it the respect it deserves, and not to minimize it or push it away because it makes me uncomfortable.
And, then, I need to do what is in my power to contribute to detoxifying the poisoned legacy of race in my country.
