I come from a homogeneously white community. I went to a mostly white high school. My family attended a homogeneously white Southern Baptist church while I was growing up. I went to a predominantly (overwhelmingly) white institution for my undergraduate degree. Up until June of 2012, I hadn't really experienced any environment where I was cognizant of my race - because I hadn't ever really been forced to come to terms with it.
It wasn't until 2012, the summer that I started Teach for America, that I began to understand just what cards I had been dealt, and how these cards gave me an automatic Wild Draw Four in the UNO card game of life. Before that summer, I never saw the pattern - that every time I played that Wild Draw Four, I somehow drew another when it came time to replenish my hand. I could Skip my way through traffic stops, Reverse my way out of wronging someone (intentionally or not), and leave someone else Drawing Two whenever I needed things to swing in my favor.
I still remember sitting in those initial conversations and circumstances, somewhat confused and unsure. Should I feel guilty? How can I get other white people to understand this? What is my responsibility in this situation? What microaggressions have I perpetrated? I didn't know that some of these questions would be still on my mind today - four years later.
First, however, let me say: I am as guilty as any other white person of perpetuating racial inequality.
- I have had moments of incredulity when trying to understand why pants need to be worn sagged.
- I have been in disbelief when my students had a full-blown fistfight over a sheet of notebook paper.
- I have remained silent upon hearing other white people use the n-word with careless abandon.
- I have laughed at names that seem nonsensical or have what I deem to be spelling errors in them.
- I never thought to ask why there were never more than 2 students of color in my advanced and AP high school classes.
- In high school, I wore tan-colored foundation on my face to a Halloween party because I decided to be MC Hammer, and that was the darkest "makeup" I could find at Walmart. I didn't understand why upper-middle-class-Kentucky-Walmart didn't carry darker makeup. (**this one makes me cringe/writhe with embarrassment/shame the most**)
This is not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.
I couldn't see the difference, or what was wrong with the way that I was acting. Needless to say, two years in Chicago as a white teacher in a black school on the south side changed a lot of things about how I saw myself and how I understood the world.
It took me a minute, but I began to understand that school was the only safe space for my students, and that maybe I wouldn't be very concerned with learning geometry either if I were worrying about which blocks to avoid on the way home, if I would get to eat dinner that night, or if I would be able to help my family pay my mom's hospital bills.
It took me a minute, but I began to realize how I possessed an endless my list of family members that could readily assist me in financial hardship, compared to how some of my students will navigate college and beyond as financially independent individuals.
It took me a minute, but I began to understand why my roommate, a person of color, was upset when people called him articulate.
It took me a minute, but I began to understand why I was able to sign a lease for an apartment in Lincoln Park without any prior background check or application... on the same day as the apartment showing, and that it so happened to be the day that I was the only one of my three roommates that could go apartment hunting.
Because none of those things would have even crossed my mind before the year 2012.
As we have seen this past week - we (white people) cannot continue to collectively turn a blind eye to the way things are in America. I cannot keep refusing to argue (because "it's not even worth the fight") when people close to me insist that we should be saying all lives matter. We cannot keep loving black culture while murdering black people. We cannot stay silent.
Speak up, friends. While our generation may not have actively created this mess, we are long overdue to fix it - with actions.
"We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying, that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't." - Clint Smith
It wasn't until 2012, the summer that I started Teach for America, that I began to understand just what cards I had been dealt, and how these cards gave me an automatic Wild Draw Four in the UNO card game of life. Before that summer, I never saw the pattern - that every time I played that Wild Draw Four, I somehow drew another when it came time to replenish my hand. I could Skip my way through traffic stops, Reverse my way out of wronging someone (intentionally or not), and leave someone else Drawing Two whenever I needed things to swing in my favor.
I still remember sitting in those initial conversations and circumstances, somewhat confused and unsure. Should I feel guilty? How can I get other white people to understand this? What is my responsibility in this situation? What microaggressions have I perpetrated? I didn't know that some of these questions would be still on my mind today - four years later.
First, however, let me say: I am as guilty as any other white person of perpetuating racial inequality.
- I have had moments of incredulity when trying to understand why pants need to be worn sagged.
- I have been in disbelief when my students had a full-blown fistfight over a sheet of notebook paper.
- I have remained silent upon hearing other white people use the n-word with careless abandon.
- I have laughed at names that seem nonsensical or have what I deem to be spelling errors in them.
- I never thought to ask why there were never more than 2 students of color in my advanced and AP high school classes.
- In high school, I wore tan-colored foundation on my face to a Halloween party because I decided to be MC Hammer, and that was the darkest "makeup" I could find at Walmart. I didn't understand why upper-middle-class-Kentucky-Walmart didn't carry darker makeup. (**this one makes me cringe/writhe with embarrassment/shame the most**)
This is not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.
I couldn't see the difference, or what was wrong with the way that I was acting. Needless to say, two years in Chicago as a white teacher in a black school on the south side changed a lot of things about how I saw myself and how I understood the world.
It took me a minute, but I began to understand that school was the only safe space for my students, and that maybe I wouldn't be very concerned with learning geometry either if I were worrying about which blocks to avoid on the way home, if I would get to eat dinner that night, or if I would be able to help my family pay my mom's hospital bills.
It took me a minute, but I began to realize how I possessed an endless my list of family members that could readily assist me in financial hardship, compared to how some of my students will navigate college and beyond as financially independent individuals.
It took me a minute, but I began to understand why my roommate, a person of color, was upset when people called him articulate.
It took me a minute, but I began to understand why I was able to sign a lease for an apartment in Lincoln Park without any prior background check or application... on the same day as the apartment showing, and that it so happened to be the day that I was the only one of my three roommates that could go apartment hunting.
Because none of those things would have even crossed my mind before the year 2012.
As we have seen this past week - we (white people) cannot continue to collectively turn a blind eye to the way things are in America. I cannot keep refusing to argue (because "it's not even worth the fight") when people close to me insist that we should be saying all lives matter. We cannot keep loving black culture while murdering black people. We cannot stay silent.
Speak up, friends. While our generation may not have actively created this mess, we are long overdue to fix it - with actions.
"We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying, that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't." - Clint Smith
