I grew up in Memphis, TN, which is perhaps the most archetypal city of racism. It is the city where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Its history includes the irony of a district called Whitehaven.
(Whitehaven was blatantly organized as a suburb for upper class white people in the late 19th century. It stayed that way until the Civil Rights Movement. Now it is predominantly black.)
My parents were openly, unabashedly racist. My education and upbringing were colored by the casual use of words like 'niglet' and 'porch monkey.' I was taught a strict dichotomy, an unsparing worldview in which white was good and black was bad. If my room was a mess (and it usually was), my father said it looked like a 'nigger' lived here. He said that because in his culture, according to his values, the gravest insult to a white girl is to be associated with anything black.
When I grew up, I left Memphis, my father, and that culture without a backward glance.
Since then I have lived in many different places. A dorm room in Evanston, IL where I smuggled a mad prophet in defiance of I do not know how many rules. A residential hotel on Polk Street in San Francisco. A gated community in Texas, briefly. Now I live in Fairfax County, Northern Virginia. One of the most cosmopolitan places in the USA, on account of being near the capital of the nation that strives to rule the world.
At first glance, you might think that this affluent, multicultural place is a post-racial paradise. The schools, especially, actively encourage an exploration of ethnic diversity. I have two daughters, and I am delighted that they are not being exposed to continual overt racism.
However, not all racism is overt.
In fact, most of it is insidious.
When my husband and I moved from Texas to Northern Virginia, I was three months pregnant. We moved without having any idea of where we might find a place to live. My husband's sister knew a real estate person who found us our first apartment on Mosby Woods Drive. The condo area was charmingly named after Confederate commander John S. Mosby. It is right off a street called Plantation Parkway. Fairfax High School (one of the best public schools in the nation) which my daughter would have attended had we stayed living there, used to have a 'Rebel' as their mascot. It is now a lion, but they still call themselves 'Rebels.'
The place I live now is called 'Colony Park.'
I want to believe that racism can die in America within my daughters' lifetime. But I know it won't, unless white people take an aggressive anti-racist stance. It is uncomfortable for white people to talk about racism. Indeed, some people go to extreme lengths to avoid it. But the entrenched, invisible-to-white-people racism in our culture needs to be seen, acknowledged, excised.
My 94-year-old father-in-law lives in a retirement community in Culpeper, VA. One Easter, after we had dinner with them in the elegant dining room with its silver buffet and crystal chandeliers, I asked my girls if they'd noticed something about the experience. "Did you notice how all the people eating there were rich old white people? And all the people waiting on them were black." They blinked at me in bemusement, rethinking what they'd seen.
This isn't about 'race baiting.' This isn't about 'white guilt.' This is about looking with clear eyes at things that are wrong. Inequity is the enemy of us all.
(Whitehaven was blatantly organized as a suburb for upper class white people in the late 19th century. It stayed that way until the Civil Rights Movement. Now it is predominantly black.)
My parents were openly, unabashedly racist. My education and upbringing were colored by the casual use of words like 'niglet' and 'porch monkey.' I was taught a strict dichotomy, an unsparing worldview in which white was good and black was bad. If my room was a mess (and it usually was), my father said it looked like a 'nigger' lived here. He said that because in his culture, according to his values, the gravest insult to a white girl is to be associated with anything black.
When I grew up, I left Memphis, my father, and that culture without a backward glance.
Since then I have lived in many different places. A dorm room in Evanston, IL where I smuggled a mad prophet in defiance of I do not know how many rules. A residential hotel on Polk Street in San Francisco. A gated community in Texas, briefly. Now I live in Fairfax County, Northern Virginia. One of the most cosmopolitan places in the USA, on account of being near the capital of the nation that strives to rule the world.
At first glance, you might think that this affluent, multicultural place is a post-racial paradise. The schools, especially, actively encourage an exploration of ethnic diversity. I have two daughters, and I am delighted that they are not being exposed to continual overt racism.
However, not all racism is overt.
In fact, most of it is insidious.
When my husband and I moved from Texas to Northern Virginia, I was three months pregnant. We moved without having any idea of where we might find a place to live. My husband's sister knew a real estate person who found us our first apartment on Mosby Woods Drive. The condo area was charmingly named after Confederate commander John S. Mosby. It is right off a street called Plantation Parkway. Fairfax High School (one of the best public schools in the nation) which my daughter would have attended had we stayed living there, used to have a 'Rebel' as their mascot. It is now a lion, but they still call themselves 'Rebels.'
The place I live now is called 'Colony Park.'
I want to believe that racism can die in America within my daughters' lifetime. But I know it won't, unless white people take an aggressive anti-racist stance. It is uncomfortable for white people to talk about racism. Indeed, some people go to extreme lengths to avoid it. But the entrenched, invisible-to-white-people racism in our culture needs to be seen, acknowledged, excised.
My 94-year-old father-in-law lives in a retirement community in Culpeper, VA. One Easter, after we had dinner with them in the elegant dining room with its silver buffet and crystal chandeliers, I asked my girls if they'd noticed something about the experience. "Did you notice how all the people eating there were rich old white people? And all the people waiting on them were black." They blinked at me in bemusement, rethinking what they'd seen.
This isn't about 'race baiting.' This isn't about 'white guilt.' This is about looking with clear eyes at things that are wrong. Inequity is the enemy of us all.
