I've been meaning to do a semi-meaningful blog for several weeks now, but have had nothing in particular to say. I think I talk less in the wintertime. But I had several talks with my Dad this weekend about race and gender and sexuality - 3 issues to which my Dad has had a standard set of responses ever since I knew they existed. For my own sake, and for my Dad's sake, I think I need to write out a response to his arguments, because no matter how much we duke it out, he can't seem to remember a thing I've said by the next morning, and reverts back to the same old habitual thoughts. Also, he is by no means a standard old white man, but he is certainly an old white man, and thus represents a group of people who tend to be the most vocal and forceful opponents to "progress." This is exactly why I find it so dramatically frustrating when I can't convince him; because if he, one of the more reasonable of the bunch, can't be convinced, then this effort is futile. But it is also why I care so much about having the conversation in the first place. I don't know if anyone else will have any interest in reading this, especially because it's gonna be a doozy, but it's something I want to think through, and so I am.
THAT SAID.
We will start with race. I have always felt a little dangerous talking about race, because I'm white, which supposedly means I am ignorant of it, and don't experience the weight of the struggle on a day to day basis. I think this is true. But fortunately, my graduate education has given me multiple opportunities to study the dynamics of race and to actually hear some African American folks share their thoughts and experiences. This has been one of my favorite parts of my time here at Candler, and while I don't think, by any means, that reading a few books qualifies me as an authority on the subject, I have learned that we must talk about the issue, no matter how unqualified we feel. We have to talk about it, because not talking about it is ignoring it, and ignoring does make us ignorant. It also makes us negligent.
This is where my Dad's point comes in. Here is the sum of my father's wisdom on race in America:
"Race will continue to be an issue as long as we make it an issue. It's a problem that we create by calling it a problem, and by categorizing people by the color of their skin. As soon as we stop asking people to specify their race on surveys and applications, the problem will recede."
This is a pretty logical extension of the color-blind stance toward race - i.e., that we should judge people only on their merits and thus, not see or acknowledge their race. This is what white people think the world wants from us. And this is where we are wrong.
I was genuinely surprised to find this out, and I'm not sure why. I guess I'd come to think that seeing race at all is the same thing as racism, because I had never really seen modeled any healthy ways of acknowledging race. Most of the time in my experience, acknowledgment came in the form of generalizing and stereotyping, and even a nice stereotype is judgmental, it's a reduction, and reductions are usually trouble.
But here's what happens when you don't acknowledge race: you judge everyone as if they have the same resources, the same values, the same goals, and the same opportunities. Usually, the set of resources, values, goals, and opportunities that you take as the norm is the set of your own race/gender/class. So if you work to get good grades and build a successful career and achieve, and even though it's hard, you make it, you assume that those who don't succeed must not have tried as hard as you.
I hate to break it to you, white folks, but this is not true, and I'm pretty sure it circles right back around to racism. Plenty of people are trying just as hard as you, and all they can get is $6.50 an hour at Walmart. Plenty of people could never imagine that they are capable of anything more. They live in conditions, in worlds of hopelessness, that you could not imagine. They are too busy trying to put food on the table to dream. And honestly, plenty of people are not so impressed with your success, and, with good reason, are mighty angry with the way you've used it, and don't want anything to do with your "values." Some of these people are 13 year old boys, and that complicates the problem. Kids think all kinds of things for all kinds of bad reasons, and before they get a chance to think like adults, they throw their lives away on crime and drugs, and then you take them to prison. And then you tell their wives and partners that it doesn't matter how hard your life is, how few resources you have, how much or little you knew about sex when you started having it, you're having that fucking baby or else God hates you. And thus, you banish them to the cycle, and all the while, keep pointing that finger.
But before you go and take a disadvantaged, disenfranchised people, and judge them against a people with centuries of privilege, maybe you could at least acknowledge that we are not all the same. We are not, and whose fault is that? Maybe it is not yours, you child of the 21st century, but most emphatically, neither is it theirs.
Of course, I should clarify, all black people are not living in squalor, or in prison, they're not all struggling single moms or inmates. They are also a people of remarkable achievement, even many of those single moms and inmates are people of remarkable achievement. relentless strength, rich beauty, creativity and innovation, home-grown wisdom and hard-earned scholarship, courageous dissent, compassionate compromise. Come on, Cornell West? Toni Morrison. Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, James Cone, Richard Prior, 2Pac, W.E.B. DuBois, Barack Obama. It is a brilliant heritage, and for many of us, our public education robbed us of its history. This is the other side of the story: when we refuse to see race, when we insist the balance has already been struck, we have no incentive to dig into the past and recognize the achievements and contributions that have gone unnoticed by a racist America. Here, we cheat ourselves. We have so much to learn from these geniuses that our history books have tried to contain in the month of February. Also, we learn to live by the lie that all America's successes, all her great moments, have come at the hands of white men. No, we must acknowledge, we must notice. We must confess our ignorance, and we must sit and learn. And we must celebrate.
I am surprised that I have gone this whole post without addressing the seismic shift that Obama's election has brought to the idea of possibility among many in the black community. It definitely changes things, and for all the reasons I've brought up here, it is such an important victory for us all. But obviously, it doesn't solve everything. Obviously, the conversation is still worth having. I am pretty sure this would convince my Dad of absolutely nothing. Oh well. It convinces me.
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