So my Mum is a typical, low information republican voter. She doesn’t watch FOX news — she doesn’t watch any news really at all, and as a result she is woefully uninformed about what has been going on the last few years since trump got into office.
The thing is, she supports a lot of Democratic ideas, but considers us to be naive, reactionary people who are bad for America and too concerned with being “fair”. She was very active in the local republican party when Dad was alive — he was a FOX watching, gun hoarding, “teapartier” veteran who was convinced that Dems are all commies and traitors — but he had his stroke before trump got into office and has since passed away almost a year ago. As a career military spouse, she buys into the party line that only republicans care about the military and they have been lifelong republican voters. She does not understand why I am not one like she and my brother are.
She is completely unaware of the things trump has done to undercut the military, our international diplomatic credibility, the war on LGBTQ+ people, immigrants and minorities. She is completely unaware that trump has spent one third of his presidency on the golf course, and only plays at his own clubs so he can charge the Secret Service for rooms and golf carts. She is unaware that he regularly says racist, sexist things and lies constantly. And she won’t hear about any of it, or look it up for herself, either. It’s “too negative” and “we can’t judge because he has a hard job”. The press is also suspect.
We’ve talked about all kinds of things since Dad has passed — about not touching black kids in the grocery store when she would never tolerate that when we were little, about how to fix the economy in the light of Covid-19 and the stimulus checks, about corporate greed and living wages and healthcare for all. And she’s mostly for Democratic positions — helping the poor, making things more affordable, paying people a living wage (though we disagree on how much that actually is) — and she “can’t stand” trump, but plans to vote for him anyway because he is the republican nominee. Like she’s not allowed to vote for anyone else, and Joe Biden is “just as bad or worse” than trump is.
But today’s topic was racism — and it was a series of difficult conversations over the course of the day. It all started because of the meme above — I was scrolling through Facebook and she asked me to go back so she could read it — and decided it’s “not fair”. I won’t bore you with the whole conversation, but there were cries of, “But *I’m* not a racist!” and some white tears and the words “black people getting all this special attention” were uttered.
She is a racist. A “soft” racist, not an overt one, but that is still racism. She thinks that it’s perfectly ok to touch black kids in the grocery store because she’s “harmless” and they are cute, but doesn’t do that to white kids. She thinks that black people “game the system” because she ran a cleaning business that hired black women (and paid minimum wage) who needed to keep their incomes below a certain level to keep medical insurance for their kids. She doesn’t mind that *I* get SNAP because I “need it” (I get $16 a month) and spend it on treats for myself, but black people are buying “lobster and steak” with their SNAP and “wasting it” while driving nice cars and having iPhones. She went to segregated schools in the south (graduated in ‘64) and does not have any black friends, but “knows” that black people “don’t participate the same” in white society by “choice”. She also thinks that black people are “too angry” over the past — as though racism just doesn’t happen because she doesn’t say the N word and doesn’t mind black people on her TV shows. So she’s totally a racist. I get that.
What I don’t understand is how to make her see the bigger picture. We went back and forth a couple times today about why there is protesting, who is doing the actual looting, police brutality and the role of black people in society. We talked about not centering the conversation on her feelings of being attacked or guilt, but of what needs to change in society to make it better for everyone. We talked about systemic oppression and basic concepts — black people are disproportionately imprisoned, passed over for jobs because of their names, randomly stopped on the street for being black, killed during arrests for minor crimes, live by a set of rules that white people never think about and so on — and I can almost get there with her and she goes back to “but *I’m* not a racist” as if that is enough and turns on the water works.
I don’t know how to be a better ally in this situation. I don’t know what words will make the light bulb go on for her. I don’t expect her to march in the street, I just want her to be able to recognise that racism is *very* much an ongoing thing and that the culture we live in perpetuates it at every level and it *has* to change. That she has to examine some of the beliefs she holds about race and adapt her behavior to the 21st century. She says “ I just don’t see it the way you do”, not realising that I see things they way I do because of how she raised me and what I was exposed to as an Army brat around the US and Europe. I’m not colorblind — I absolutely see race because black people never get to be not black. But I’m vocal about injustice and do not tolerate that shit in my little corner of the universe.
I’m open to suggestions on how to keep steadily bringing her along until she understands that Black Lives Matter — and that things are grossly out of balance in our society. She asked me when racism wouldn’t be a problem anymore and I told her flat out when white people change, and that people of color have every right to be angry as hell about how things are now, even though she doesn’t see the bad things that happen everyday.
I’m NOT asking black people to make me feel better, to congratulate me on my efforts, or to give me a solution to my problem at all. I’m really asking white people of the same generation and background to give me ideas on how to make it clear that we are the problem, and we have to get off our asses and sort it out one at a time, day by day until it no longer exists.