We Don't Talk About Race
I am very interested in studying race, racism, and systemic injustice. I have been researching, digesting, thinking about, meditating on, and processing as much as I can for the past several years, but recently, I found a book that has touched me more deeply than any other source, and I have found within its already-worn pages a call to additional action that has sparked a fire beneath me. I plan to publish stories here, from the heart, as a result of this call to action, and I highly recommend that you also read Ruth King's Mindful of Race. I plan to quote heavily from her text here, in this first entry, and then jump off more into recollection, memory, and other sources as I move along.
"If you are a white person becoming mindful of race, you have stories to tell about what it's like waking up to whiteness and its impact on other races, including white struggles and contributions to humanity. When you tell such stories, you demonstrate a way for other whites to talk about race, and that holds the promise of shifting the social narrative from dominance to synergy." - Ruth King
In certain circles of Southern society, you will hear the passive aggressive redirect of "oh, we don't talk about race" whenever the issue arises. I learned at an early age that I was not to talk about religion, politics, or race when around certain older folks in the small Southern town that I grew up in. It was the 1970's. Our schools had only recently been integrated. Our culture was changing fast, and there was pushback, talk of race riots and of keeping people in their proper places.
I knew that I was not to talk about race with adults, but in our recently-integrated schools, we were talking about race - a lot. Our schools were composed of an equal mix of black students and white ones. We bumped up against stereotypes and taboos frequently and usually not elegantly. In elementary school, I remember seeing the very large, old, white principal beating a young black boy, younger than me, with a hard paddle. His strokes were immense and practiced, and made a terrible resounding thud against the child's backside. The child cried out. The secretaries in the office at the time did not seem to notice the other child's pain and calls for help, but when they saw that I was frozen in place, slack-jawed and horrified witnessing his pain, they jumped up and helped me back to my classroom.
My great-grandmother witnessed a lynching when she was young. She was tormented by memories of that event for the rest of her life, and could remember the smells and sounds of the burning body. This was a family secret, kept from me, at least, until just this past year. My father told me about it in a hushed voice one evening as he was leafing through a Zora Neale Hurston book I was reading at the time. My great-grandmother's husband, my Pop, who I followed like a puppy dog in my youth, would load vegetables from his garden and guavas from his bushes into his truck to sell "down at the n***** market" on weekends.
Once, when I was very young, before school-age, I asked Pop where he was headed, and he told me "to the n***** market." When I got home, my father asked me where Pop was off to, and I said, "to the n***** market." I did not know about that word. I did not know that there might be another word for it. Without explanation, my father hauled off and slapped me. I did not get punished in that way often. My parents used to brag to friends and family that all they had to do to bring me in line was give me a harsh look. There was no thought to that slap; it happened as soon as the words had come out of my mouth. He explained to me then, or later, when I'd had time to stop crying, that we never were to use that word. That it was an awful, mean word. When I asked him why Pop used it, my Pop who was kind and gentle, my father told me that Pop was just "old-fashioned."
I was called a n***** lover by my white classmates in third grade because I was very fond of my friends who were black, in particular a boy named James who had a dazzling smile and deep, dark eyes, and who made me laugh and was so kind in a place where not many were. He and some of his friends tried to teach me how to dance at recess. They sometimes played with my hair. I wasn't asked to play by other kids very often. I usually spent free periods outdoors watching ants line up and march into their hills or finding small stones that I could use to write on the blacktop with like chalk. James pulled me out of my shell and willingly and enthusiastically invited me into his world. The white children did not like it. They pestered and poked fun, and then James moved away from that school. My uncle found out. He was a teenager, ten years older than me. He called me n***** lover, too. He told me that if I wasn't careful, my white would rub off, and I'd be a n*****, too.
But we weren't to talk about race.
Before I started school, I had a somewhat isolated childhood. We were squatting on some land that my Pop owned, living in a mobile home. On that same property - remnants of a land grant offered by the government to white families who were willing to settle this new land (recently taken from the native people who were living there) after the Civil War - lived my great grandparents, two of my great uncles and their families, a great aunt and her family, and an uncle and his family. I had not seen - or did not realize I had seen - any people with dark skin before a trip to the grocery store. I was young, very young. I recall sitting in the little front seat of the grocery cart. I have always been a large person, even as a child, so I must have been quite young. In fact, this is one of my first memories. Riding in the grocery cart, I remember seeing a child in another grocery cart, but this child had rich, deep brown skin. I could not take my eyes off of the child. At some point, my mother noticed and scolded me, whisper-yelling that I should stop staring. I did not understand why I should stop staring, but I remember possibly misinterpreting my mother's embarrassed correction as an instruction to not look at people with dark skin.
I think it's interesting when I talk with white folks about race (because now that I'm older I feel quite comfortable ignoring a lot of the social rules and etiquette that I picked up long ago) and they claim that they don't ever think about it. I used to think that they must be lying. How can you navigate this world and not give a thought to your white skin and the systemic privileges that it might afford? This racial privilege feels like a high-stakes game of Chutes and Ladders where the deck is stacked.
In this new time, which feels increasingly like a new Civil Rights Era, fraught with racial turmoil, police shootings and brutality, and what appears to be a wholesale disregard and/or disdain for black and brown people, it can feel even harder than it once was to talk about race, to claim whiteness.
"When white nationalists are the only whites talking about white group identity, it can force other whites to avoid claiming whiteness out of a fear of association. What is needed are more conscious white people to talk about themselves as a racial group." - Ruth King, Mindful of Race
If we don't talk about it, we perpetuate the systemic oppression that is literally killing people of color. I look at Jazmine Barnes, killed just last week in cold blood. No, it is not polite to avoid discussing uncomfortable topics like race. It is actually a fail-safe built into the systems that keep institutional racism alive and well. White people are taught not to talk about race, not to see race, so that the gears that keep grinding up people of color to our benefit continue to run smoothly. "Not being willing to speak freely about such racial truths, in your own words, is how white supremacy is upheld and privilege is maintained." - Ruth King
We must start to speak about it, write about it, sing about it. What were you taught about race as a youth? What racial traumas lurk in your family history?
"What happened to the historical or inherited trauma that goes hand in hand with hating another race? What was passed on to us? How does it live today? How did we survive? How is it that we have managed to be okay or considered superior as a race?" - Ruth King
If you witnessed racially-based atrocities as a child that were perpetrated by people who looked like you - maybe even your own family members - what seeds of that are you carrying forward? Would it ease your trauma if you could make yourself wrongly believe that the people who had suffered at other white people's hands were somehow lesser than? That they deserved it in some small or large way? Does that play into what makes white people commit violence against black people? Like in Charleston? Or like last week's attacks in Houston?
"When our racial inheritance is unknown or ignored, we contribute to racial ignorance and suffering and, through our actions, proliferate the unfinished business of our parents and ancestors in present and future generations. Racial ignorance and injury will continue until our history, hearts, and minds are transformed. What pains you to recall as you reflect on your racial identity and history? What racial traumas were passed down from your parents and ancestors, and how have you dealt with them?" - Ruth King
Do I carry the scars of my great grandmother? When she watched that man burn, what seeds were planted in her own mind, body, heart, and spirit? Have I handed them to my own children?
"If you are a white person becoming mindful of race, you have stories to tell about what it's like waking up to whiteness and its impact on other races, including white struggles and contributions to humanity. When you tell such stories, you demonstrate a way for other whites to talk about race, and that holds the promise of shifting the social narrative from dominance to synergy." - Ruth King
In certain circles of Southern society, you will hear the passive aggressive redirect of "oh, we don't talk about race" whenever the issue arises. I learned at an early age that I was not to talk about religion, politics, or race when around certain older folks in the small Southern town that I grew up in. It was the 1970's. Our schools had only recently been integrated. Our culture was changing fast, and there was pushback, talk of race riots and of keeping people in their proper places.
I knew that I was not to talk about race with adults, but in our recently-integrated schools, we were talking about race - a lot. Our schools were composed of an equal mix of black students and white ones. We bumped up against stereotypes and taboos frequently and usually not elegantly. In elementary school, I remember seeing the very large, old, white principal beating a young black boy, younger than me, with a hard paddle. His strokes were immense and practiced, and made a terrible resounding thud against the child's backside. The child cried out. The secretaries in the office at the time did not seem to notice the other child's pain and calls for help, but when they saw that I was frozen in place, slack-jawed and horrified witnessing his pain, they jumped up and helped me back to my classroom.
My great-grandmother witnessed a lynching when she was young. She was tormented by memories of that event for the rest of her life, and could remember the smells and sounds of the burning body. This was a family secret, kept from me, at least, until just this past year. My father told me about it in a hushed voice one evening as he was leafing through a Zora Neale Hurston book I was reading at the time. My great-grandmother's husband, my Pop, who I followed like a puppy dog in my youth, would load vegetables from his garden and guavas from his bushes into his truck to sell "down at the n***** market" on weekends.
Once, when I was very young, before school-age, I asked Pop where he was headed, and he told me "to the n***** market." When I got home, my father asked me where Pop was off to, and I said, "to the n***** market." I did not know about that word. I did not know that there might be another word for it. Without explanation, my father hauled off and slapped me. I did not get punished in that way often. My parents used to brag to friends and family that all they had to do to bring me in line was give me a harsh look. There was no thought to that slap; it happened as soon as the words had come out of my mouth. He explained to me then, or later, when I'd had time to stop crying, that we never were to use that word. That it was an awful, mean word. When I asked him why Pop used it, my Pop who was kind and gentle, my father told me that Pop was just "old-fashioned."
I was called a n***** lover by my white classmates in third grade because I was very fond of my friends who were black, in particular a boy named James who had a dazzling smile and deep, dark eyes, and who made me laugh and was so kind in a place where not many were. He and some of his friends tried to teach me how to dance at recess. They sometimes played with my hair. I wasn't asked to play by other kids very often. I usually spent free periods outdoors watching ants line up and march into their hills or finding small stones that I could use to write on the blacktop with like chalk. James pulled me out of my shell and willingly and enthusiastically invited me into his world. The white children did not like it. They pestered and poked fun, and then James moved away from that school. My uncle found out. He was a teenager, ten years older than me. He called me n***** lover, too. He told me that if I wasn't careful, my white would rub off, and I'd be a n*****, too.
But we weren't to talk about race.
"The racial crime is in disowning whiteness while still benefiting from whiteness. Memory is the most challenging part of racial healing. Coming together as white people and tenderly examining this thing called whiteness that other races seem to know about is a crucial link in racial healing and harmony." - Ruth King
Before I started school, I had a somewhat isolated childhood. We were squatting on some land that my Pop owned, living in a mobile home. On that same property - remnants of a land grant offered by the government to white families who were willing to settle this new land (recently taken from the native people who were living there) after the Civil War - lived my great grandparents, two of my great uncles and their families, a great aunt and her family, and an uncle and his family. I had not seen - or did not realize I had seen - any people with dark skin before a trip to the grocery store. I was young, very young. I recall sitting in the little front seat of the grocery cart. I have always been a large person, even as a child, so I must have been quite young. In fact, this is one of my first memories. Riding in the grocery cart, I remember seeing a child in another grocery cart, but this child had rich, deep brown skin. I could not take my eyes off of the child. At some point, my mother noticed and scolded me, whisper-yelling that I should stop staring. I did not understand why I should stop staring, but I remember possibly misinterpreting my mother's embarrassed correction as an instruction to not look at people with dark skin.
I think it's interesting when I talk with white folks about race (because now that I'm older I feel quite comfortable ignoring a lot of the social rules and etiquette that I picked up long ago) and they claim that they don't ever think about it. I used to think that they must be lying. How can you navigate this world and not give a thought to your white skin and the systemic privileges that it might afford? This racial privilege feels like a high-stakes game of Chutes and Ladders where the deck is stacked.
In this new time, which feels increasingly like a new Civil Rights Era, fraught with racial turmoil, police shootings and brutality, and what appears to be a wholesale disregard and/or disdain for black and brown people, it can feel even harder than it once was to talk about race, to claim whiteness.
"When white nationalists are the only whites talking about white group identity, it can force other whites to avoid claiming whiteness out of a fear of association. What is needed are more conscious white people to talk about themselves as a racial group." - Ruth King, Mindful of Race
If we don't talk about it, we perpetuate the systemic oppression that is literally killing people of color. I look at Jazmine Barnes, killed just last week in cold blood. No, it is not polite to avoid discussing uncomfortable topics like race. It is actually a fail-safe built into the systems that keep institutional racism alive and well. White people are taught not to talk about race, not to see race, so that the gears that keep grinding up people of color to our benefit continue to run smoothly. "Not being willing to speak freely about such racial truths, in your own words, is how white supremacy is upheld and privilege is maintained." - Ruth King
We must start to speak about it, write about it, sing about it. What were you taught about race as a youth? What racial traumas lurk in your family history?
"What happened to the historical or inherited trauma that goes hand in hand with hating another race? What was passed on to us? How does it live today? How did we survive? How is it that we have managed to be okay or considered superior as a race?" - Ruth King
If you witnessed racially-based atrocities as a child that were perpetrated by people who looked like you - maybe even your own family members - what seeds of that are you carrying forward? Would it ease your trauma if you could make yourself wrongly believe that the people who had suffered at other white people's hands were somehow lesser than? That they deserved it in some small or large way? Does that play into what makes white people commit violence against black people? Like in Charleston? Or like last week's attacks in Houston?
"When our racial inheritance is unknown or ignored, we contribute to racial ignorance and suffering and, through our actions, proliferate the unfinished business of our parents and ancestors in present and future generations. Racial ignorance and injury will continue until our history, hearts, and minds are transformed. What pains you to recall as you reflect on your racial identity and history? What racial traumas were passed down from your parents and ancestors, and how have you dealt with them?" - Ruth King
Do I carry the scars of my great grandmother? When she watched that man burn, what seeds were planted in her own mind, body, heart, and spirit? Have I handed them to my own children?
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