A friend of mine linked to this video , Why "I'm not racist" is only half the story, today and it got me to thinking a lot about things. I had thought about this view before, that most people don't realize they are being racist, and humans do tend to become defensive when they feel backed into a corner. And it was worth watching, because it sort of closes the gap on understanding white people in a general aspect.
I'm purposefully excluding myself for a very good reason. It's not that I'm not white, because I am. However, my experiences here have been markedly different from most white people. There are three incidents where I have fallen prey to the cycling out of white people thinking, so I'm not immune to that learned behavior of unconscious racism. But while they are rare instances, in terms of the broader number of examples from most white people's lives, the end result on my part was also different. So, we'll start with incident number one, which happened in high school. We were class friends. You know the type. Where you become all buddy buddy in that certain class that you have, but then you drift off towards your own friends during break and after school. We were working on a project about a celebrity and we decided on L.L. Cool J. And this is where things ended badly because I honestly don't know what prompted me to say it. We were both oohing and ahhing over him and he was the perfect choice for our celebrity project when she sighed, "Isn't he just so fine?!" to which I replied "He's good looking... for a black guy." Instantly she became crest-fallen, then her face was a rage of storms. I'd hurt her and I wasn't sure how, but I didn't want to hurt my friend. Then she spat it back out at me. "Good looking for a black guy, huh?!" Immediately it sounded horrible. It was horrible. It left a bad taste in the mouth so to speak. Why on earth had I said such a thing? "I'm so sorry. That sounds terrible. It's not what I meant. I don't even know what I meant. I don't know why I said it, but you're right, it is a horrible thing to say. It's just... not right." It didn't matter. We sat in silence with her ignoring me for the rest of class. There wasn't anything else I could say, because I didn't even honestly realize what had just happened, and to keep sputtering would have just made it worse. She requested a new partner after class and we were not friends again after that. I say I don't know what happened, which is true. I realize how the words sounded after she said them back to me and I realized in this new context that it was a ridiculous and wrong thing to say. I could also feel how what I said made her feel. I could feel the emotions of hurt, anger, and misplaced trust emanating off of her. However, what I didn't understand was why I'd said it in the first place. Where in the hell did those words even come from? Why was that phrase part of my vocabulary? How many times had I used it before? Why had I not realized? Now I am a weird girl in the fact that I do not find most people attractive. It is not uncommon for me to suppose a guy is good looking, even if he's not necessarily good looking to me. That part of me is true and has nothing to do with a persons race but simply that I'm extremely choosy. I know it has nothing to do with race because loads of white guys I'll think this way about (along with most men, simply because... men) and the scant few men that I actually do find attractive are all sorts of different nationalities and races. Plus, it didn't even factor in with L.L. Cool J. because as far as any guy goes, he's super good looking. It's hard for me to place myself into a dating or love scenario with any guy because that's awkward for me (I did say I was a weird girl), so I probably wouldn't date him because the thought of dating any guy kind of makes me giggle nervously like a twelve year old girl. But, if I don't delve too deeply where it becomes uncharted waters, then yeah I'd totally date him, because I find him that attractive. I couldn't wrap my head around anything that day except that I'd hurt my friend deeply and I didn't even realize that sentence was mixed in with my repertoire. So, I had no words because I was lost at sea basically. Later I realized that I had heard this term from white people. White women. Loads of times. Somehow it just became absorbed and looked over and though it was there, I couldn't see it for what it really was until the day that Shanese repeated it back to me in the true tone and meaning of the phrase instead of the overly sugared hiding the venom way that white women would say it. I couldn't mend what I'd broken that day, but I never became defensive. I never pulled out those old chestnuts that are all too common of white people; "But I have other black friends..." or "But I'm not a racist..." because there was no need for defensiveness. I'd hurt my friend. I could feel, as well as see that, and I wanted to take back the hurt. First and foremost the event was about her. Then I totally understood that it was a wrong thing to say, but I also didn't even know where it had come from. So, then it became about both of us. Me trying to right a wrong I didn't even realize that I was about to commit and trying to find the source of the wrong to pull it out and throw it away. That's not even the worst incident of blind following that happened. In my early twenties I was working at a snow cone stand. Towards the end there was just two of us. We were really friendly and amiable towards each other and would talk during lulls like we had been for several days. She mentioned that she'd be staying with her grandparents this coming weekend in Palmer's Crossing. And that's where things went badly for me. "I've been there once! My friend I went down there to just drive around and look and everybody was wondering why we were there, it was funny." Now tell me, even though you have no idea the context of my sentence, what is funny about that? Absolutely nothing. She didn't find it funny either. Her whole self stepped back away from me. In the kind of way where a persons body doesn't physically move backwards, but where you can feel that they've just moved backwards. Is it their aura, perhaps? She looked hurt, disappointed, and sad. 'Damnit, I've hurt her. How did that happen? "You just drove around to look at people?" The way that she said it make me completely understand. I was treating an entire race of people like circus freaks to be gawked at (not that even circus "freaks" should be gawked at). My eyes became large, 'What the hell is wrong with me?' "Oh God... I'm sorry. That's not right. I... I'm sorry. That was stupid of us. I'm sorry." I couldn't mend what I'd broken that day either, because I felt like things were in slow motion and there was no point of logic, no words to grab onto. The whole incident with my other, white, friend of mine was completely disgraceful and I don't blame her for aura-ly backing away from me. I would have too, had I realized prior how horribly wrong that was. That was Friday. By Monday she was no longer working there. It might have been because of me, but honestly the season was over and our employer was still staying open (and would through September, for I don't know why). But that incident haunted me for a long time. It still does. Like the women in the video, I can't feel completely guilty about unconscious learned behavior, because you're supposed to follow what you're taught by your parents and elders whether directly or indirectly, because it is how you learn to function at all as a human (you know, don't cross the busy road, don't burn your hand on the stove, don't take candy from strangers). However, I do still feel guilty and kick myself because why couldn't I see how wrong it was before. But I know why now. And like G.I. Joe said, "Knowing is half the battle." If I continue to ignore what I've done and wrap myself in a cocoon of "safety", that is when it becomes wrong. Seeing it for what it is, saying I'm sorry and moving forward in an effort to understand better and not commit the same wrongs is really all that I can do. But back to the reason this was so horrible. Palmer's Crossing is an all black community just south of town. All my life I'd heard, from white people, how horrible it was. From white police officers to my parents to other white adults. When you're a child you're taught to trust adults, your parents, the police. However, I had to learn the hard way in life that you can't necessarily trust these people; whether they are just following the motions (like the video talks about, like I did with these incidents) without ever stopping to think what these motions actually are... or if they are, indeed, that truly horrible person. I heard that it was violent; that it was crime ridden; that the cops wouldn't go there even for a call for help. You didn't go there. You just didn't. You stayed away if you knew what was good for you. All that did for my then 18 or 19 year old self was turn it into a challenge. It was like an old spooky house you were told never to go to or that dirty magazine you were told never to look at. We were defiant. We were breaking out. We were going to do the thing that everyone told us not to do. They'd already stripped the storied place of its people, so why would I see the people as people either? Oh, it still sounds horrible, but I have given this a lot of thought over the years to just exactly how I came to that moment. But yes, the stories weren't really about people, it was simply a place. Not that that's true, because it's a community of people, but you see what I'm talking about. So, I wanted to go to the place that was absolutely forbidden and see how horrible it was for myself. I didn't even know who lived there, I just imagined deformed mutants or ghosts or boogey men. Because it was about something other worldly because of how everyone else had talked about it. It doesn't excuse it, because driving around I should have realized 'Wait a minute... this isn't anything like I thought this was going to be. These are just people being people and living.' But I didn't see it that day. I can't honestly say that I actually noticed that they were black people. We were just high on the excitement of bucking the system. Well, I can actually only speak for myself here. I'm no longer friends with that person and we never discussed that day after it happened, so I have no idea what they were feeling in the moment. It was mostly funny to me, because I was doing exactly what I was told never to do. I felt like I was cheating the system somehow, because nothing bad was happening, and the people staring at me in the vehicle made it all the more amusing, because in the moment if felt like they knew I was cheating the system. This is not what really went down, I'm sure. I do believe that most people do not ever go there, so I was encroaching on their territory; their community, and I'm sure they were staring and some with their mouths open, because of my audacity. But I really didn't think of it like that. Like I said I was cheating the system, I was rebelling. It wasn't even a case of "slumming it" to see how the "poorer people live" (which while they weren't grand homes, it didn't look much different from the rest of my state - these people weren't that poor, is what I'm saying.). I'd simply conquered the haunted house and that's truthfully how I saw that day. Not that it makes it right, considering my intentions still were not noble. I wasn't visiting a friend I knew there or just benignly using it as a way to get from one place to another. White people's blind racism had ended up stripping an entire community of people of reality. There's no telling what other white kids, with other intentions and thoughts, might have done with the broken down, racist knowledge. I say this, because sometimes I think I'm not that smart. Which sometimes is a good thing, while other times it is not. There are lots of times that blind racism isn't so blind. The parents whispering things to their kids; the words handed down like prayers. Those kids know what's up. They know that the entire thing is about black people. They may not understand it exactly, but they know; "black people = bad and lesser than." I feel like I could equate this to maths, which I'm also bad at (though being good in this area would be helpful). All the kids understand the algebra equation and I just see squiggly lines. I can mimmic their cries of A + B = C, but I really don't know what I'm saying. Thinking back I can remember fellow students in high school parroting the things the adults said, however they seemed to have meaning and feeling behind their words. The girl who disdainfully spat out that he was cute "for a black guy" where the phrase seems like poison, just as our mothers had said it, where I stated the same phrase like I was discussing the weather. It's not an excuse or an exaltation. It is an observation. I am different from most other people. It's neither good nor bad, but just the way it is. One time I was driving around with some friends. Two Choctaw girls and one white girl. I'm driving down seventh street around dusk and there are people, oddly shuffling across the road. No one ever really crosses that road, never at dusk, and never like that. They weren't handicapped. They were moving like zombies. The old Romero kind, not the new, faster ones. We were advancing on them. I didn't want to be eaten. Am I just seeing things or are there really zombies in the road? "Do y'all see those people?" No one answered. "Right up ahead, shuffling across the road. Do y'all see them?" Still no answer. "I'm serious. Do y'all see them?" No one's answering, and I'm residing to the fact that I must be seeing things. I'll still be cautious just incase. Then from beside me, the Choctaw girl who was my friend (as in I've known her longer than the other girl) pipes up with. "She doesn't mean 'cause they are black, she means because they're ghosts or something." And it felt like she rolled her eyes, because her friend thought she'd hang out with someone so unsavoury and probably partly because I'm so awkward and weird. 'Black? Why's she talking about black people...? I don't underst...' "Oh, god! Yeah, the ghost thing... well zombies. Not black people." Her friend sitting in the back thought I was being racist trying to get them all to laugh because you can't see black people in the dark, and she was appalled. Luckily the two of them believe in ghosts and the like and once she realized I was talking the supernatural and not about real people, her mood changed and she rather liked me. I still never got an answer as to whether or not they could see the zombies or if they just seemed like ordinary people walking ordinarily across the road. So I still wonder if they were zombies or not. I do and I don't count that, because I wasn't parroting anything, even without understanding, my mind was squarely focused on the supernatural. But it made me realize that apparently people do this sort of thing, use a black persons skin colour as a joke. Well, I had known that, but I mean regarding the darkness of night. I didn't realize that. Now I do. The next incident was relayed to this same friend and I was parroting what I'd heard an older friend say. It is slightly different in that she didn't need to look shocked for me to know I'd said something horrible. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, that is when I knew. So, we're just driving around and this person stopped beside us has a big nose. It reminds me of what this person was saying a lot recently, so I quipped up with "Man, he's got a big Jew Nose." She did turn and look at me with her face contorted into a what the fuck? face. But she neededn't have done that because as soon as I heard myself say it, I knew it was deplorable. It didn't occur to me how awful it was until I heard it myself, from my own mouth. The person who said it was someone I looked up to and that's really all I could see. Here's a phrase that they're using. End of discussion. It was like the older friends when their phrase or word of choice was "Word" or "It's Educational" or whatever else that isn't offensive in the least. Luckily I'd never said anything against her people or we probably wouldn't be friends to this day. I would be an honest mistake if I did, like the other incidents, because I wouldn't be coming from a place of anger or hatefulness, but still. I don't like the two things that did happen with my friends and I don't want to do that to anyone else. I shouldn't have said it, nor the other two things I'd said. But I try not to feel guilty or shameful over it, because it doesn't do anybody any bit of good. It happened. It's over. I know now and I've moved forward. I don't parrot things I've heard. If it seems off, then I listen to myself and know that it is off. If it's something I don't know to be true or false then I research it and find out the truth of the matter. It's not just racism that has led me down a good path, for it is good to actually think, research, and formulate your own opinions instead of just following the same cycle over and over again. Instances mostly stem from my mother, stating such and such object is from the 1700s, when none of them are (and it's made me look a fool) or her always stating that Nixon resigned on 9.May, the day my sister was born (that made me look stupid in my high school history class). So many things from her are untrue, though I think she truly believes them, or is merely parroting them in an endless cycle of chaos. Doesn't matter the subject, and without her and this, I might not seek out the truth on things instead of just stating what she's always told me. Hard lessons to learn and I hope those girls forgive my ignorance, because I do still feel badly about upsetting them. But, I'm glad I learned the lesson regardless, because I've changed how I deal with information, racist or otherwise, I've learned to accept my innocence and simplicity. I'm not better or worse than most people, I'm just me and I've gotta do me. You gotta do you, but also try and learn or understand compassion. You getting offended over hurting someone else doesn't do you any favours. You think it's all nice and cuddly in your sheltered existence and I know it can be difficult to see things the way that they really are; to pull those demons from the corners, but it is worth it in the long run for you and for others.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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