Like many, I am disheartened and feeling hopeless about the state of our country. I’m in pain and crying and stuck at home, unable to hug those I love and those who are hurting. Like most times I’m hurting and feeling hopeless and lost, I’m writing. I rarely post here. I write so much for other things I just don’t have the time, but I have decided to share what I wrote this morning.
There has been so much talk about racism and the word has been used to attack people, but does that actually help? It wouldn’t have helped with me. I did not and still do not believe I was racist, but I did have bias programmed into me by White society. This is my confession and apology, because I have no business calling out someone else if I am not honest about where I came from.
People see me today as a fierce advocate, but I wasn’t always who I am today. I grew up in a split home where my mother came from a family that believed in equality, education, and a loving open faith. My father grew up in a family of lace curtain Irish lawyers. They were part of the St. Louis high class so they were politely racist. No one used the N-word, but the Black help had to use the back door and were expected to get back to their own neighborhood when they were done working. I lived in two worlds simultaneously. As strongly as I believed in equality, and stood up to injustice against blacks and homosexuals, I didn’t know what equality actually meant and I wasn’t going to learn about it from my family. My best friend who I think was born woke helped pull back the curtain of my safe white life. A Black boy who was an orphan at a group home that my brother and I went to for counseling became my friend and was my first kiss. The way he was treated by the white kids, especially after we became friends, helped me see the truth about how horribly painful racism was. The “concern” my father had about me playing with the two Black girls I became friends with showed me how subtle my father’s racism was. My experience with queer friends at a performing arts high school opened my eyes to different ideas about gender and sexuality. But really, I didn’t fully understand until I was in my 30s. I didn’t realize that there were all these subtle ways that my bias showed, because I didn’t realize how deeply rooted that middle-class white socialization ran. And it wasn’t just about race. It was about everything that didn’t fit the norms I was taught. No matter how much of a rebel I was, I still didn’t understand and I had to find my own path and mature into someone who had the open-mindedness and courage to recognize my bias and do better.
Here is the truth of what bias I carried into my 30s. They were all fairly automatic at the time. They were expressed in my feelings and reactions to situations and not a conscious dialog as I’m stating them here:
I believed that if Black people just acted right like my token black friends in my white school, that they wouldn’t have as many problems.
I believed that Black women were too angry and that Black men sought out White women for status.
I believed that trans women were not real women because they did not pay their dues with a lifetime of struggling against the patriarchy.
I believed that homosexuality was not wrong, but I also believed that it was a biological dysfunction, like a birth defect.
There are so many more that I have identified and I’m sure I will discover more that I still carry. Every day I learn more and become more socially aware. It is a process of layers.
For every single one of these to be recognized and dismantled it took a conversation, a book someone recommended, a friendship that showed me the truth to change my perception or a class that taught me something that was at first very uncomfortable.
I now understand that gender and sexuality are not binary and trans people have lived with far more oppression and harm than this middle-class white girl could ever imagine. Trans women have been women in secret their whole lives. Trans men are not denying their gender because of some sort of abuse or a desire to escape their patriarchal oppression.
I now understand that Blacks do not have to “act white” and deny their culture and their pain to be treated fairly and have equality. Black people are not responsible for being police targets because they do not act respectfully. I have been belligerent with a police officer over a traffic stop and it never occurred to me that I could be shot or beaten for it.
I now understand that Black women are not necessarily any angrier than me and if they are, they have every right to be because they are treated in the most horrible ways and have to worry about their children in a way I never had to. When I see a Black woman get angry now, the feeling is, YES, I’m with you!
I understand that White men seek out trophy women far more than Black men and that Black men who have been accepted by White society are often given permission and encouraged to be with White women like it’s some sort of prize. I also understand that love has no gender or color. Love is love.
I understand that all lives do not matter and have never mattered in this country, AND that for me, who’s life has always mattered to say to someone who’s life has never mattered, that all lives matter is gaslighting. It’s whitewashing. It’s being blind and deaf to the truth.
I am watching what is happening in this country right now and I am hopeful for change but I’m incapacitated by the pain I feel for my fellow human beings of color. I am screaming inside for my fellow human beings who are being targeted with unimaginable violence because they were not born with bodies that express their true gender or their family doesn’t look they way others think it should look.
I cry for you. I love you. I don’t know if I ever hurt you with my bias, but I am sorry. I am sorry that people who look like me have hurt you for looking like you and loving like you. I am sorry that I have been protected by the system that is killing you. I am so sorry. PLEASE keep me honest. PLEASE hold me accountable. Please forgive me for the things I still do not understand.
And PLEASE forgive those who still have bias and think they understand but are not yet woke. They will get there if you have patience and help them listen.
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