Confessions of a good white person

I felt OK about what I blogged yesterday. I like taking a thought and running with it. If it's a half baked idea like "when did the cops stop being 'helping guys'?" that sparked yesterday's post - writing is a cathartic way to explore that thought further.

But just as a splinter only partially removed often causes more pain than the buried one, exposing my thoughts can make me aware of how shallow I have begun to dug. And it gnaws on me until I get it all the way out.

Ignorance is blistering I'm afraid. I want life to be simple. The issue without the complexity of the facts is so absurd and obvious. Racism has always been so perplexing. I keep waiting for people to say "WTF are we doing?" and just stop. In the meantime, I want it to be OK not to look. But it isn't. And I know that. It just hurts too much to look.

But I looked anyway. And I saw what I knew was there. If Jezebel.com doesn't know what to do with 'good' white people that makes two of us. I don't know what to do with myself either!

http://jezebel.com/i-dont-know-what-to-do-with-good-white-people-1671201391?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

So who am I calling a good white person? I don't know if the shoe fits and I should wear it or not. Intention has to still count for something, as must empathy. It hurts. It all hurts too deeply for justice to ever be felt deeply enough. I want to make it right. I want to do it right (whatever "it" is) but there is just no way to do it "right".

It reminds me of that scene in Forrest Gump where Jenny begins to throw rocks at her childhood home, the sight of terrible abuse. After she is spent from the rage and effort of throwing Forrest says, "sometimes there just aren't enough rocks".

How can any one of us make it right enough for what has been so wrong and for whom have been so wronged? I want to live MY story but it is caught up in such a history that I must repeatedly check my blessings at the door and remember to lament what has come before.

The rocks are deserved. Yet there are not enough of them to atone. What DO I do now? Do I dip into the blood bath? Do I wait it out until the inflammation has subsided? Do I shut the fuck up because it's not my fight but vote privately and pray mightily for justice?

I am working hard, so hard, to raise good white people. It takes all of me. And I want them to believe in a world like the one I want them to aspire to create. I am their educator and I dread the telling of this story. Shame is hard to strain out, if I plan to tell the whole truth about our country. I don't want them (or anyone) to learn shame or self loathing. And to explain to my innocent what racism is draws attention to the absurdity of judging any person 'less than' for any reason - the least of which being that into which they were born.

But I'm still working this out as our country works this out. Please forgive me for not doing it "right" or for even doing it "wrong". I can't atone but I will work harder not to ignore.

As for the stones, in my life I fight hard against the temptation to judge. I took to heart the words "let he who is without sin be the first to pick up a stone." I think the wisdom in that lies in the knowledge that no one can throw just one. For every stone thrown another person feels entitled to pick up their stone. Before you know it the whole human race is stoned (and not in a good way). Whatever needs to be done, I know we can all do it better. I still believe that peace is possible and more than a stone's throw away.

Comments

[Lou Vaile]

great piece, Jill. i think the hard part for most of us to get, because we haven't been living as the subjects of racism since we arrived on the planet, is that we don't always know what the stones of racism look like. we're like, "hey, i would never throw a rock at anyone, so i'm good!", without realizing that it's so much more subtle than that. the stones of racism look like educational inequity, like laughing at "thug" characters portrayed on tv, adopting a "gangsta" pose for selfies, incarcerating young black men for petty crimes that their white counterparts get away with. we can't really atone when we're still benefitting from the subtle stones of racism that are still being thrown.

do i have racist reactions? of course i do. i was raised in a culture that told me to fear "the other". i tense up sometimes walking past a black dude on an unlit street, the ingrained fear that he may want to harm me winning over the fact that in 50 years, no black person has ever harmed me (plenty of white folk have, though--and i am not afraid of white people on the street). now, imagine being that black dude on the street, knowing someone is afraid of you, and all you're trying to do is get to your destination safely without being accused of harming anyone. sucks, huh?

how do we fix this? i don't know, but i feel as if it starts with listening. listening long enough to really hear what our black community members are telling us that they need from us, without being defensive. like it or not, you and i benefit from racism. it's time to step outside our comfort zone and address the subtle stones that hold racism firmly in place.

[Jill]

Excellent point and perfectly stated. You remind me of a conversation I had about this with a gentle giant composer friend of mine. He is just one of "those" helpful sweet souls. I was discussing this with him, a black man whose mom was incarcerated and he was adopted by a white family in the south. He has such a good perspective on all of this. But one of the biggest take aways which I've shared often is this moment when he described through tears how in the middle of the day, on is way somewhere in a public area, a white guy stepped into traffic so as not to share the same sidewalk with him. He said "Jill he could have gotten himself killed but he chose to take that route rather than risk it with me!" I'm thankful for him and for your friend who are willing to have these conversations and sort out the imagined stones from the real ones and the unitentional pebbles from the lethal and targeted boulders. But it doesn't take much to imagine how it feels to just have more than enough already damnit! Being a white woman then a bigger white woman had enough baggage for me. I can only begin to imagine... And you can see why I don't always want to.

[Lou Vaile]

love you