The fact that the playing field is not level means that life experiences are not merely different, but unequal and unfair.
This is a hard concept to hold on to. Theoretically I understand it, but essentially I ignore it. And yet, every so often I hear the stories and hear the pain. I take for granted that everyone has a life like mine—you simply do the work required and you are rewarded. This is extremely not so.
I’ve made it a point to not bring up personal stories from now on that involve people without their permission, and as a result I’ve removed about half of my blog entries. (The Wayback Machine probably still has them, if you’re seriously into stalking me.) And I won’t share the stories I’ve been privileged to hear, often from people who are barely able to handle the pain of reliving the stories.
But yeah. The field is not level. The equipment and resources are not equally distributed. The responses are not consistent. And in the end, there is no guarantee of similar outcomes for similar abilities. My world is stable and predictable. It is that way now, and it has been that way my entire life. Was I ever “between jobs”? Sure. But I never had a care that I wouldn’t find a job. My longest period of unemployment since mid-high school is about six weeks, and in that time I picked up odd jobs to carry me through. I have people in my life who are simply under-employed, and have been so their entire lives. Highly qualified, highly skilled. But they can’t get into their chosen profession or gain acceptance or move up the ladder. There’s always a reason why, but the pattern is simple: you don’t look like us.
This tilted field is destroying our family.
Not being believed, especially about an experience that is painful to begin with, is salt in the wound.
I think this is a key thing for me to understand. I really do this. Now, not as much. But I still do this, and I think it’s a combination of wanting ignorance as well as experiencing ignorance. I’m quite sure I hurt people in my insouciance. I regret it, and I’m working to change. But bottom line, I cause pain and I do indeed rub salt into those wounds by my lack of empathy and knowledge.
I now understand that the signals I was sending out to people of color were alerting them to keep quiet, since my ignorance might render their comments fodder for accusations of oversensitivity or paranoid imaginings. My oblivion acted like a wall, a warning of danger, between us.
<raiseshand/> This is me. God be blessed, some of my friends have stuck it out with me, and their pushback and voices have helped me to correct my behaviors. But I am ashamed and regretful for being this person. Some of that is the personal regret for not holding to my life principles—I really do believe in the equality of people, and I believe in love, acceptance, and forgiveness. But my behaviors and attitudes were wrong. I had good principles but ignorant execution. However, along with this indifference and this embodiment of white ignorance that I regret, I also look back and I see the many opportunities to become friends with people who gave up on me. I regret the lost relationships and lost connections, and I regret the pain these people felt at my rejection.
Rather than examining the source of the social tension I felt around people of color, I retreated to my social comfort zone—other white people.
<raiseshand while=”TRUE” /> This sentence was an Aha! moment for me.
While I had been conditioned not to see race at all, people of color had been conditioned not to bring up race to white people.
Yeah, I’ve observed this. It took me a lot of time to see the behaviors, and then more time to understand what these behaviors represented.
I maintained a degree of racial oblivion that made me a poor listener
If “degree of oblivion” is a circle, I’m at 359. I am trying.
Had I known then what I know now, I would have understood that I had the power to defuse that Zap line [the line that has power to stop us from crossing that line].
This makes it seem much easier than it is. Yes, I have that power, but the “zap” is still quite painful. It is much safer to stay in my lane, and by that I mean stay apart socially and culturally.
I thought of the Golden Rule, the set-in-stone belief I’d been raised on, that one should always treat others the way you yourself would want to be treated. The limitations of this adage in the realm of race relations struck me like a thunderbolt.
This was another Aha! moment.
Oppression can be held in place by good, but ignorant, people.
Again, a key idea. Remaining ignorant doesn’t absolve us of our participation in systemic racism, let alone personal racism.
How much of my not crossing the color line earlier had to do with not seeing, and how much was it my choice not to go in search of it?
Lordy, this was hard to read. I’d have to say that I was not curious about it, and that was by choice.
Questions
Have you ever had anyone doubt, dismiss, or minimalize an experience that was formative for you?
Formative to me was the death of my best friend at age 14. For the most part, I don’t share it. I don’t think I could have shared it well enough. I think that at that time, and for quite a long time after, I thought that it wasn’t important for others to hear, so I never shared it.
How did it feel?
While I didn’t share, I didn’t share because I believed it wouldn’t matter. That made me feel as if my concerns were not valued, and that indeed I was not valued.
How did it affect your feelings about that person?
There hasn’t been that “one person” who rejected the story. There was the whole system. I just expected it to be that way, and I kept my mouth shut. So the feelings are of alienation and separation.
For context on this series, see my kick-off post here:
To follow along with the others, see also:
Di Brown “Nixie” at https://dianabrown.net/blog-challenge-waking-up-white/
This chapter: https://dianabrown.net/waking-up-white-chapter-14/
Dawn Claflin at https://dawnclaflin.wordpress.com/