The other day, I wrote a diary where I introduced you to my aunt: The 63-year-old New York native who co-owns a home with my parents and who called her home insurance company to complain about a black employee who she argued was “scrutinizing” them because she was white.
The topic came up again last night where my aunt confessed that she was tired of being told that only black people are victims of racism (which she acknowledged as true) but that she was also a victim of racism herself and that no one speaks for her.
My aunt openly admits that she is uncomfortable riding the subway with black people, and that she crosses the street if she sees a black man walking toward her. She says she has every right to feel that way because of her experiences nearly 50 years ago.
My aunt went to high school in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, at an all-girls Catholic school that was almost entirely white. She took the subway home every day. During her freshman and sophomore years, she and other students were regularly harassed and even beaten up by black kids from a nearby public high school to the point that police would walk the girls to the subway and my uncle, her brother-in-law, would pick her up because she was too scared to go home on public transportation. According to my aunt, this effected her and others’ academic performance and kept her from being involved in extracurricular activities and she didn’t want to stay at school after hours or get there early.
One afternoon she and another girl were attacked by a group of black kids, and her friend had to go to the hospital because her hair was literally pulled out of her head.
My aunt explains that these experiences have made her scared of black people and because of it, she is equally a victim of racism as black people have been. That this experience of hers is equal to Jim Crow and all that came after it. That when Whoopi Goldberg complains of racism, she doesn’t take in account that my aunt is also a victim. (She watches The View religiously)
Now, it is no surprise that my aunt found herself in the middle of racial tensions in the late 1960s, and even my mother, who at the time was a young girl living in Harlem, explained that she had similar experiences with black kids throwing garbage cans at them in a park, but that my grandfather (who himself was a proud social justice warrior who was a friend of Vito Marcantonio), sat her and her brother down to explain what was happening, what Jim Crow was, and why they shouldn’t take these reactions personally. That while no one should be throwing garbage cans at young kids, they must also take into account what was happening outside Harlem to inflame such tensions and that my mother and her brother need to be better about fighting for equality and justice and not judge people on anything but their character. They fail at this today more often than they succeed.
I say that my aunt has no reason to still be afraid of black people because of what happened to her half a century ago. That it was a mistake that no one sat my aunt down when she was younger and explained to her that these reactions were the result of national issues. That this isn’t how black people are and that she should never judge people by the color of their skin just because some people with the same skin color treated her badly as a youth.
Instead the people around her, her parents, her teachers, her neighbors, told her “stay away from black people, this is how they act” and instilled in her that she is justified in being racist.
And she still believed it.
My uncle chimes in that it is still happening.
Hr talks about a bunch a black teenagers who get on an F train recently. According to him, they went up to white people, face to face and said “you won’t do nothin’, white boy” and terrified people.
One black girl, he explained, poured her Big Gulp over another girl and ran off the train laughing.
He explains that these examples show what happened to my aunt in 1968 is still happening today, and thus justifies her fear of black people.
Are my aunt’s and uncle’s stories true? Certainly my aunt’s seemed to invoke intense emotion when she was forced to remember it. I don’t doubt it’s true. My uncle’s...who knows. I tried to explain that white high school kids often do similar things (I did when I was on a train coming home from school) but it didn’t seem to register. These kids, he explains, made a point to scare people because they were black.
But even if their stories aren’t true, what you have then is two white people inventing in their minds incidents to justify their racial hatred. You have a delusion and you can’t reason with delusional people.
So often, we progressives talk about the need for a dialogue. That listenings and respecting someone else’s opinions and responding with truth will help bring the divide and bring us together.
And so often the same progressives come back from a conversation saying “well that person is stupid, no point talking to them.”
We're running out of people to find common ground with.