A memo to my white friends who want to know how to support .
This is normally a life and wellness blog. I normally talk about healthy eating, exercise and how to be the best you can be but today, I am going to do something for my own mental health. I am going to express what I am feeling in this time of heightened racism awareness.
I was first made aware that I was different from the other kids in my second-grade class at St. Gerard Elementary School in San Antonio while standing in the milk line when a blond-haired girl told me my skin was dirty and I needed to go home and wash it. I remember asking my mom if I was dirty and her having to explain skin color and the fact that I am a Negro and not white and in fact different. This was in the 60’s and the school had been integrated a couple years before. I lived in a mixed neighborhood on the east side of San Antonio mostly black and Mexican with a few whites.
I remember when I was about 6 my grandfather drove from New Orleans to San Antonio to pick up me, my two siblings and my mom to drive us back to New Orleans to visit for a while and how we could not stop to go to the bathroom (the trip was more than 8 hours ya’ll) We had to stop on the side of the road in the bushes and go because no gas station along the way would allow us to use the bathroom. That was just the way it was back in the civil rights era. You rolled with it, no other choice.
I remember as a pre-teen marching to free Angela Davis through the streets of San Antonio. I remember having protesters in our home going over strategy for the marches and protest to come. I did not totally get what we were protesting about but I had my little brown fist up never the less because I knew it was important to our community.
Because I was of a lighter complexion with green eyes, I was more palatable then a darker black person. I realized early I was an easier black friend to have not to say there was any privilege I was just more acceptable. I have heard countless times that I was “ not like the rest of THEM”, or I was “different from THEM”. On several occasions I had to remind them that I was a THEM. I was easier to accept and thought to be OK with a slight racial joke or slur because I was not one of “THEM”. But the knife cut deep never the less.
I have been called the N-word several times before and you never are quite ready for that sort of hate. It shakes me every time.
I remember one time at work in the early 2000’s, a manager called me into his office. When I went in, there was another man sitting there. He did not introduce me to this person but the manager asked me to look down, and I did and he was tapping his foot, I looked confused and he said with all the privilege he could muster up, “They need shining” and started laughing. I looked at the guy in the room and was embarrassed and shocked and just left. I told a co-worker who advised me to go to HR but I did not because there were essentially no witnesses just his word against mine. I could not count on the guy who was there to back me up so I just stayed clear of him until he went elsewhere. The sad thing is the next day he was sticking his head into my office saying good morning.
I give you all these examples to say, this has been going on for as long as I have been alive because of the color of my skin.
So, on to the reason I felt compelled to write this, I am being asked by some of my white friends the same questions and I would like to answer them in the best way I can without sounding like an angry black woman:
1. Are you OK?
o Not even close. I am sad, angry, weepy, scared for my community, bewildered, and TIRED! Same conversation, different hashtag.
o What is going on in America is not new to me. This is my life every time I step outside my door.
2. What can I/we do to understand racism or what can we do to help you? Is there a book you can suggest, something to watch etc…
o First of all, this is not a frigging book report that you are going to get graded on. You are asking me to give you tips and tricks on how to be a better white person and how to recognize your subtle racism and I cannot do that for you. You need to search your heart.
o You can pay attention to what and how you say things. Start by never calling a grown ass black man “boy” or a grown black woman “gal”, offensive (you can look THAT up to see why). Small things, but big impact. See us as human and people not as the color of our skin.
o Check your friends when they tell racist jokes. Check yourself when you laugh at them. This goes way beyond using the N-word. That is not all there is to racism.
o Teach your children to accept all people as people. Do not teach them your prejudices as fact.
o One last thing is to VOTE to make this a better world. If you know your candidate cannot do that, vote them out. We have to start somewhere.
3. Do I want to join a forum to talk about what I have been going through?
o See answer #1
4. Not a question but the apologies I get for what have been going on for 400 years.
o I am not asking for you to make amends for all of your ancestors, I just need you to start with you. Be better, do better.
I read a friend’s post on Face Book where she posted a heartfelt picture of unity and one of her followers said he reached out to his “black friends” and no one will talk to him because he is white so he was done trying. That is exactly what has been happening forever, giving up when things get hard. Not sticking with it to truly understand because the conversation was tough. Yes, we are tired of talking about this every time there is a new hashtag with a dead black person’s name attached but if you truly want to understand, you do not have to wait for your black friend to talk to you. You have other resources, use them, we are not going to do the leg work on your understanding of racism, we are living it, you cannot fully understand the shoes I stand in.
Another thing, the protesters are protesting the looters are looting, they are not the same group of people. Don’t get them twisted or forget why the protesters are protesting.
I am going to end this on a positive note, I love all my friends, if you know me I am very selective and keep my circle small so if you are in it, I love you like kin and if you need to understand where I am standing right now, I so want you to search your heart. Understand how you can be a better human to all humans.