Now, please trust that I’m doing my best. Please also recognize that doing my best at teaching my children about race and racism, looks different from your best.
First, my kids are not white. This makes our worries, conversations, intentions and goals unlike yours. This isn’t because I think you’re racist. Rather, it’s because we live in a racially imbalanced social environment and — for some of us — racism is a matter of life and death.
Whereas, I was taught to uphold ideals of colorblindness and all people being equal, lessons for my brown kids about race and racism directly concerns preservation of their wellness, wholeness and their very breath. One of the reasons you’ve said, for why you taught don’t see color and everyone is equal, is that you wanted to raise good people. That I’m unsettled about race and want to end racism, comes from you introducing me to the notion of equality and your wish that I turn out good.
Second, I know and appreciate that you made a concerted effort and you didn’t give up. Primarily you taught me about race and racism to make certain I wasn’t blatantly racist. I am grateful for that and for your wish that all people have the same safety, freedom and opportunity. I recognize that you didn’t mean to cause any harm and, I have to say this, what I learned about race and racism did cause harm.
The way I was taught not to see color, isn’t good or helpful, it’s not even neutral. The idea that all people are equal is beautiful but, sadly, is not the reality we live. This isn’t a judgement against you. It’s me acknowledging what I’ve learned and building on it. I’ve come to see that I absorbed a framework of white as normal and race-less and it left me inept at talking about race or understanding bias — my own or that of others.
The colorblind creed told me racism was a problem only for people who possess race and for the white people who are intentionally racist. This provided me an out. I didn’t need to attend to the racism in our world because it didn’t involve me. I was taught a way of thinking and a way of being that upholds racism, not because you didn’t try but because this is how whiteness works and we’re both caught in its grasp.
Sometimes, it seems as though, because my best looks and feels different from yours, that I am rejecting or discounting you. If that’s how you’re feeling, I am sorry. I treasure so much of what you gave me.
In fact, your instruction and the ways you are in the world, provided the foundation for an expansive imagination for how things can be. You modeled a will to push boundaries and identify where improvement is necessary. You taught me to care for humankind enough to demand the best of myself, my people and our leaders. You taught me the importance of questioning culture and the idea that we can be countercultural. This is why, when I look at race and racism, I dream and expect more for white people. It’s why I expect more of us.
I know you. I know that you care for my family and me. I witness you selflessly put aside your own wants and needs because you desire the best for us. I know that you want to understand our fears and mend our heartbreak. I feel your love.
But, often, the ways you react to our experience, brings pain and frustration. When it comes to race, I catch myself wanting distance from you. I can’t help but attribute our troubles talking about race to our shared whiteness. That we — people who desire closeness and who love one another — cannot talk together about our race and how we might be connected to the racial imbalance we see, reveals how whiteness comes between white people and works to keep us apart. Too often I come out of these kinds of conversations, feeling alone. I think you feel this too.
When I try to describe the fear — for my black husband, brown kids and all people of color — please know that I am not lashing out at you. If you feel defensive or attacked when I tell you about my worry, my family’s pain or the realities of race and racism for brown and black people, please slow down and consider your response. I understand that you want to help and in so many other areas I find your wisdom, support and comfort unparalleled. But this is not what happens when we talk about whiteness, the history of white people in the US and our connection to racism.
As I share with you that I have work I need to do around race so that I can raise brown kids and love a black partner well, please know that this is not a dig on the effort you’ve put into me or about how you’ve failed. It’s an unavoidable truth, the outcome of my white socialization and it’s about how I’m trying to be accountable and responsible for the continued influence whiteness has on me. When we talk about how my family’s struggles are compounded and how our relationships across race suffer because of how we learned to be white, please don’t explain the experience away.
I’m not looking to blame you when I try to talk with you about whiteness or racism. One person alone, or one small group, did not bring about the racialized structure we’re stuck in today. My hope is that, together, we can agree that we live in a racist culture and that the whiteness we learned to live by sustains it. I don’t want to misspend our time and energy sitting in blame. My yet unreached belief is that we can be united in efforts to end racism.
We — me, my husband, our children and any people of color you say that you love — need you to push aside what whiteness might demand of you. Please, stop allowing whiteness to get in the way of showing the love and concern that I know you feel for us. I need you to resist the practice we white people learn of looking away from black and brown pain. I know what I’m asking of you isn’t easy. We’ve done difficult and uncomfortable things together before — I trust we can do it with race too.
I need you to hear me when I say that the racist system and whiteness I critique is not you, me or any individual white person. When I talk about taking apart whiteness, I am not trying to pick you apart or make you feel bad about being white. I am trying to un-learn the ways that I was conditioned to perpetuate racial inequity and I am trying to do this with you, my community and my family. I need you to come through for me, for my family and for yourself. I need you to recognize that racism is a problem for white people too.
Your reason for teaching me about not seeing color — that you wanted to raise good people — is why I care so much about racial inequality. Because you taught me about the importance of being a conscientious, well informed, continually learning and growing citizen of the world, I’ve come to understand that white people are part of the problem. It’s because you taught me to passionately pursue the things that matter to me — because you were the ones to first show me about healing brokenness in our world — that I must do something. This is why I can’t let it go. This is why I forever need to talk with you about racism and whiteness.
It’s also because you taught me so much about goodness — how we care for one another, even if we don’t know the other; how we don’t hoard resources but cultivate generosity in ourselves and others; how we love because love is life; it’s all of this that pushes me to better understand race, justice and equity so that I can better protect, care for and teach my own children.
Thank you. And please remember, I’m doing my best.
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