Looking into his big brown eyes and the sweetest little baby smile I had ever seen, I felt a sting in my heart. I loved this little boy so much, but what would he be like when he grew up – would I be afraid of him? Would I cross to the other side of the street or smile awkwardly so as to hide my fear and discomfort? I rubbed shea butter into his chocolate brown skin and rocked him to sleep, and the thought that every black man I had ever seen had once been a precious baby like this…that thought was unbelievably painful. Because while I never thought of myself as a racist, and certainly didn’t ever go through a period of consciously believing that there was a qualitative difference between people of different races, my bias was still there. It may have been layered under thick blankets of hope and a cognitive belief in equality, but it was there.
As a child, I went through a phase where I only wanted black dolls. They were, in my opinion, typically prettier than the white dolls…and I was bored of having all white dolls. My dolls were a fairly close representation of my town and the public school system in which I grew up – completely whitewashed. I did not think a lot about race because I never really saw people of different races interact in real life. When I did, I put on my colorblind lenses and tried just to see everyone as exactly the same. That is, until this tiny, sweaty little infant stole my heart.
To be fair…as a woman with a lot of anxiety, I would probably cross to the other side of the street if I saw almost any man coming towards me…regardless of what they looked like. But it didn’t change the fact that the sweet black baby in my arms would grow up to be a black man – and I was afraid of my own reaction to that reality. I wanted to push it aside and continue to think of myself as good and right and progressive…I didn’t want to think of myself as tainted by racism.
What I learned is that racism is bigger than any one person’s experience. The fact that you participate in a culture that is set up to value and privilege one race above another does not make you a bad person – but it is something we need pay attention to and face head on. Most of us (myself, and the white friends I know intimately) would be repulsed if we felt like someone would consider us a racist…so we keep our distance from the meat and inner work of the topic. While we know from studies that we are programmed towards out-group bias before we even learn to speak…we still believe in our heart and mind that we are all equal. We post inspiring quotes about MLK in January and pretend that everything is going just fine. We are kind and compassionate to the people who enter our world regardless of the color of our skin. We strive for colorblindness as the end goal of our journey.
But I have to tell you something, friends. Something I have, embarrassingly enough, really only begun to learn in the past couple of years. Colorblindness is not the goal…and not only that, but placating our inner need to be good and right by striving towards colorblindness can actually keep us from fighting for positive justice…a justice that doesn’t simply strive to avoid conflict, but actually rights wrongs. True justice will cost us something. As a person who has occupied a position of privilege, it will cost a painful examination of the way we have come to view both ourselves and our world. It will cost us the comfort of staying silent when openly racist remarks are made. It will cost us our time and energy and effort. And y’all, it will cost us some of our privilege. That is the hard one, and the one I am still wrestling with and trying to figure out in real life. In what ways can I use my privilege to give advantage and favor to someone else? This is where I am circling, especially as a parent, as we make decisions that will shape the way our children view race, equality, and the humanity of all those around them.
I have had the great honor of attending a fairly racially and ideologically diverse seminary for the past year, and having all of these perspectives in the classroom has broken my heart and also filled it with light. I had no idea what I was missing out on before. I have listened to mothers share how they have to explain nasty looks and comments to their children, to fathers who have to teach their children how to safely navigate a traffic stop, and so much more. I have seen so much pain that is unfamiliar in my world, but I have also seen an unfamiliar resilience…and understanding that there is a strength that comes from within…within an individual, within a family, within a community, that can fill people with meaning, value, and grit in spite of pervasive difficult circumstances coming from all angles on the outside.
I still have a long way to go, both in unpacking my privilege as well as figuring out what on earth to do now. I am still figuring out how to be intentional about justice in the way I live my life – and I still don’t know how I fit into this story.
I do know this. Ignoring my own unconscious racial bias is not helpful. Pretending it’s not there doesn’t make me a better person. What is helping me to become a more whole person and giving me the possibility to become an agent of change is taking a listening and learning posture, becoming humble in the face of that which I don’t understand, and becoming open to costly action that I might undertake for the sake of the men and women of color that I deeply care about and admire.
To my white friends…I would love nothing more than for you to come on this journey with me. Does this post make you angry? Are you experiencing your own forms of systemic oppression that make it challenging for you to differentiate and empathize with people of color? Are you confused about terms that are thrown around in our culture? Do you care about equality and justice but disagree with everything I have just said about colorblindness? Let’s get a cup of coffee. I want to hear you and I want to have a conversation. Maybe part of my piece in this puzzle is to walk this journey with you – not judging you or trying call things out in you…but truly, to walk beside you. It is my experience that many of “us” really do care and long for equality, but we just still have so much to learn and it is HARD. Let’s learn together – you are not alone in this. Let’s pick this burden, that of educating ourselves and understanding the reality of what is still going on today, rather than asking those under the systemic boot to pick it up for us.
Love and peace.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
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