When I was in high school I was involved in a number of activities, including sports, band and drama. So, growing up in the near western suburbs of Chicago, I had a pretty diverse group of friends. But, mainly, like me, they were white.
After I graduated from high school in 1979, I tried to work as a musician-or actor when I could. I played in some bands and did some community theater. One of my very good friends from high school went to a college in Chicago and through him I began to hang out with a much more diverse group of people. Out of this group of more than 15 kids, I was the only white male. In fact, I was the only white in the group. The group was made up of mainly latinos and blacks.
They used the “n” word all the time. In fact, it would have been ok for me to use that word with them, but I didn’t. I’d heard that word used by whites in a totally different way and I wasn’t comfortable saying it. In fact, I’m still not.
From that group, I formed a strong friendship with a black guy in the group. We hung out together for years. This was during the era of tv shows like Starsky and Hutch, you know, the shows where the bad guys were a black and white duo. Not the kingpin, but the criminals on the street. We used to joke all the time about this because we were noticed wherever we went. If we went in a store, security watched us. It was new to me, but not for my buddy. It was funny to me then. Looking back, I realize I didn’t understand white privilege yet.
At one point, I went to a conference with these friends. I don’t remember anymore where it was or what the conference was about. I’ll admit it; I was there to party with them. I went to one of the breakout groups and sat next to the prettiest girl in the room. To make a long story short, I ended up going out with this beautiful black woman for about a year. She was from the south side of Chicago, near 67th and the Dan Ryan if I remember right.
I had a great time with her. We went to the bars and we always had friends. White people came up to us and talked with us all the time. They bought us drinks and wanted to talk to us about race and show us how cool they were about interracial couples. To be honest, I didn’t give a crap about race issues at this point in my life. I was colorblind. I didn’t understand white privilege yet.
As I was approaching 30, I got tired of being hungry all the time. I was 6’ tall and 150 lbs. So, I joined the army. I ended up in Germany as a 13B-or a cannon crew member. I worked on 8 inch self propelled howitzers. My unit was more than half black. We used to hit the bars every night, and yes I mean every night. We lived in old SS billets from the WWII era and they were not conducive to maintaining your sanity. There were nights when the group I would be drinking with might have a crip, a blood and a white guy from Alabama who had a confederate flag on his wall. We all bled green right? At least, that’s what I heard in basic training. The good thing about the army was that race was in the open. We talked about it, made fun of each other about it, and, sometimes, we fought about it. But we never ignored it.
After my 2 years in Germany, I joined up with the 24th ID in Georgia. I spent almost a year with that unit in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. When I returned from Desert Storm, I went to rent an apartment in Ludowici, Georgia for my family. I was supposed to meet my prospective landlord in a bar to sign the paperwork at about lunchtime. I brought a friend with me; we thought we might get some lunch and play some pool. When I walked into the bar with my black friend, it became immediately apparent that we were in trouble. All conversations stopped and everyone stared at us. If the jukebox had been playing it would have stopped. The bar was serving lunch to a nice-sized crowd of mainly working-aged white men. One of them said they weren’t serving lunch while a couple more got up and silently approached us. My landlord’s wife got up and literally ran over to us and pulled us out the door and told us to just go. We got in my car and left while the patrons of the bar spilled out onto the grass in front of the bar. That was a little scary, but it had nothing to do with white privilege.
Later, after I got out of the army, we started taking foster children in. I have lots of stories but I’ll give only a couple examples here. I was in a small town in northern Arizona and my family decided to stay and eat dinner there. My American Indian foster child and my biological son ran down the street and into the restaurant ahead of us. They were both under 10 then. A couple seconds later my foster child was being escorted out the door all the while telling the host that he was with my son. My son was sitting on a chair in the foyer looking a little freaked out.
Later, I adopted a little girl from Ethiopia. One day she was at school and another girl was bullying her friend. She stood up to the girl and told her to leave her friend alone or she would beat her up. I got a call and went as quickly as I could to the school. My daughter was in the Principal’s office with the Principal and two police officers. She was 7 years old. A couple weeks before that, my son had gotten into a minor scuffle at school and was given a warning. They didn’t call the police. My 7 year-old-daughter had stood up for her friend and they called the police. Of course, she is black.
I have many stories like this. As we grow up, our experiences shape us. We internalize the opinions and attitudes that we hear around us. Yes, we reject some, but other attitudes we hold on to. I can tell you that the Principal believed herself to be a fair-minded person. She told me she was enforcing the District’s zero tolerance policy for threats. But why wasn’t my son disciplined for fighting? I would argue that it was because this lady had internalized the idea that black people were more likely to be criminals and felt a stronger threat to the school from my daughter than my son because of her race.
I’ve always believed myself to be racially colorblind. People are people and I judge them by their actions. But only by experiencing the system through the eyes of my children of color, did I learn that the system is rigged and that my children of color are not on an even playing field. They have to work harder to be respected. My white children are given the benefit of the doubt that my daughter rarely experiences. We all have to look at our lives for those racist attitudes that we have internalized and don’t recognize within ourselves. I can’t afford to be colorblind because the color of my daughter’s skin affects the way people treat her.