I've spend many hours this past few days reading thousands of hard words being exchanged in a number of diaries with long comments threads that were painful to read. So painful that several good folks feel the need to leave in order to take care of themselves, and I see others determined to stay and fight the good fight, as each perceives it.
I see some people standing on one side of the tall wall of racism that has stood between us forever, who see it so clearly they can count every single brick in it , because they have spent a lifetime behind it. Life behind the the race wall is their known reality.
I see others here who have never lived behind that wall, not ever, and may not even believe it exists. Or if they do believe it exists, they cannot possibly know for themselves how living ones life within it's limitations could possible feel. Or what effects it has over whole lifetimes. White Americans can only experience the life they have known: a life spent unconstrained by walls of racism.
So we have two groups of Americans here, Whites and People Of Color, living in the same land, each group defining reality based on their own life experiences, which are often very, very different. Two very different realities exist, where race is concerned. Which group then, gets to choose which of them gets to be considered the norm for all of us?
The majority does, because that's just how human's operate. Like validates like. People group up based on compatibilities and shared cultural beliefs and values because that's how we feel the safest, and how we justify and validate our beliefs and life choices, which we then pass on to our children.
Whether we think this divided system works well or not depends on which side of the wall we live. For a long long time, in fact since American was born, the white side of the wall has had all the power, so naturally Whites set all the rules and defined all the "norms" for everyone. This did not, as we know, work out well at all for People of Color: not those who were here before us, not for those we brought here to serve us. But all of that was so long ago. It is the past. It is time to move on. After all, we've elected a Black man as our President. What more proof do you need that America is not racist anymore? So stop whining about racism: get over it! The tall wall of racism has been toppled!
Like hell it has. Some bricks have been pried off the top of it, that's all. The most visible ones, like slavery, are indeed gone. There IS a Black man and his family in our White House now, something I never dreamed I'd see in this lifetime, the reality of which still causes me to get teary on occasion.
But look at what is going on here now, on this one small corner of the internet. Then try to convince me that wall has fallen down.
I am white and was born and raised in world filled with white privilege. Because of that simple fact of my existence, I know that within me is my very own personal wall of unconscious racism. How could there not be? How could any of us raised in an all white world NOT have absorbed by default, the effects of living in culture where white is right, and color is not?
And there in, I find my rightful share of the responsibility for changing things. It starts inside me; it means I need to admit my internalized racism wall exists. I did not chose it: I am not a bad person. I simply absorbed white privilege like a sponge absorbs water. It is my belief all of us raised up in a primarily white culture must have, to some degree.
For me to proclaim with absolute certainty "No, there is no racism in ME!" would mean (to me) that I know I have torn down every last brick of the racist walls within me, and I have totally freed myself of the effects of living a life of white privilege. I would be telling myself, and telling you, a untruth.
But I can see it in myself now, most of the time anyway, when it pops up in my thoughts or actions. I can handle it now, when someone points it out to me, if I don't see it myself, in advance. Sometimes it takes someone else pointing me in the right direction..someone who understands something I may not understand, because they've lived it, and I haven't.
That's my responsibility to identify and dismantle the walls within my own heart and mind. Until I do this, I can't see you or hear you or even begin to want to understand what you are telling me.
The foundations of racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism..all of the awful ways we label and try to hurt each other, start in our own hearts and minds, and because of that, we are NOT powerless at all, to each do our own part to tear down the larger societal walls that are keeping us so far apart.
So this is my fervent wish: that as many as who can, pause awhile and go within. See what there is to see, and thus, to learn from. Leave behind the need to judge any of it, or the self, or each other. I wasn't a bad person to hold those old racist beliefs. I just didn't know. I didn't see. It took awhile, and some good teachers, for me to be willing to go within to look, and a willingness to change who and how I am.
I know sometimes it all feels so futile, the road too long and way too hard. But over my 70 years on earth, I've seen much proof that we can move forward together. One changed heart and mind after another is all it takes to bring us one step closer to each other, then another. We can do this. Yes, we can.