I Should Have...
Confessions of a white coward 💔
I should have spoken up when I heard you titter amongst yourselves about how funny Black peoples names sounded to you. How amusing you found their hairstyles. Hairstyles that I secretly and quietly loved and found to be beautiful as well as ornate. But I was young, and raised to respect my elder family members. I knew it was wrong and uncomfortable feeling even as a sheltered brainwashed child. It bothered me then, and still does. But I wrote you a hall pass in my mind. They're just from a different generation, I told myself, not really considering the fact that many members of that same generation and ones before it were already fighting the good fight and trying to eradicate white supremacy. I didn't even know enough of that history at the time to even be able to articulate that fact, however.
They taught us very little about any of that in the white-centric 80’s school system. We were taught that racism had been solved and that obviously nobody was racist anymore because we didn't see the KKK with their white hoods burning crosses in people's yards. We didn't hear the adults around us throwing the N word around all willy nilly. At least I didn't. I never heard you say that word, loved ones, and it gave me a false confidence in your motives. A misattributed conflation of my own moral compass and yours. The lessons we were taught on racism always referred to it as a relic of the past. You tried to sell all of us children the same narrative but it was always just a thinly veiled lie.
Especially here in this very, very white town, where, even today, someone can refer to a fellow resident as “Black Chris” or “Black Tony” because everyone will know exactly who that person is referring to with that simple designator. The town in the state that was originally formed as a whites only state because they didn't want to take a side in the slavery fight. The same town where my sons have both attended a middle school named after a vicious racist slaveholder. When I pointed out to you how much that fact disturbed me, do you remember how you rolled your eyes? (“Oh brother” right?) The very same town, in fact, that in the 1920’s hosted a nationwide meeting of the KKK with representatives from klaverns from all different states. Yes. My small town of Roseburg Oregon. They had a big picnic at the fairgrounds catered by the ladies league followed by a little march down Jackson Street. Something for the whole family! It's in the local museum, etched into history for anyone wanting to see. But you never wanted to see, did you? I guess it was just a different time, huh?
I should have spoken up so many times when I didn't. When you were all calling Chinese food “chinky chow”, something that I was unequivocally disturbed by and knew was wrong. But again, I wrote you a hall pass in my mind, thinking that it was ok as long as you weren't saying it directly to an Asian person. I was wrong. It was never ok or excusable. I know that now. I was just too much of a coward and a cowed, respectful child to speak up. You raised me that way. Fearful of the heavy handed authority of both God and man. Desperate for love and acceptance that was doled out only as a reward for obediently following the herd. I was born afraid to rock the fucking boat, possessed with the innate fear that I, myself would be jettisoned into the cold waters. The few times I tried to speak up, I was dismissed as a “bleeding heart liberal” and shamed back into silence. The first of the many, many times that label was lobbed at me in the form of an intended insult, I didn't even have any conception of what a “liberal” was. All that I knew was that I could not fathom why it was a negative to want people to feel accepted and safe. To care about others as much as I cared about my family members, simply because they were other human beings. I still don't get that, and I guess I never will.
🎶“Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”🎶
Leaving aside the now very obvious racist shit included in this little Sunday school song, the message was fairly clear and unambiguous even to a small child. Jesus loves everyone, right? The whole Skittles rainbow of humanity. I didn't learn this on my own. You taught me this. Why was I wrong to embrace this message and internalize it? Why did you laud the kindness and generosity of spirit that you claimed Jesus possessed when you rejected those very things in your refutation of my moral compass? Why was it wrong for me to wonder why you would instruct me in such ways and then contradict them in the same breath? You cannot and will not ever answer this to my satisfaction.
I should have spoken up, when during the family dinner party, all of you in unison declared, in tone deaf denial that “when we were kids, there was no racism here that I remember” and then not even five minutes later, an elderly Aunt recalled that in the 1960’s when she worked as a secretary at the local elementary school in Lookingglass Valley, that the one and only black child they had ever enrolled in that school was forced, along with his poor mother, to sit in the front office and wait while she called the superintendent to ask because she “didn't even know if they were allowed to enroll him”. She tendered this candid admission with literally zero self awareness of the fact that this anecdote was completely at odds with your unified and audacious claim of no racism having been present at that time in your lives. Nobody else but myself seemed to make that connection. She added, almost as an afterthought, that the family didn't stay in Lookingglass Valley very long. I can't imagine why. I did speak up a little bit then. I couldn't help myself. It felt as though my head would explode if I stayed mute. But when I emotionally and appropriately expressed my horror at the thought of how very targeted and scared that poor mother must have been, how humiliating it must have been for that poor child and his mother to have to endure such overt and discriminatory behavior; how they must have been hurting inside, knowing that their very legitimacy-their right to be there and take up space- was being questioned, you all looked like deer caught in the headlights. Everyone fell silent or uncomfortably cleared their throats. Different topic please! The conversation just moved along. Nobody could tell me I was wrong and so they simply ignored what I had said.
I should have made a bigger deal about it. Demanded that the conversation shift back to the former topic. I should have forcefully demanded that you all look me straight into my eyes, and advocate for such a thing being acceptable. But I didn't do that. To my shame, I allowed myself and my empathy to be silenced once again, lest I once again be painted as the unstable radical one who just couldn't accept reality. Lest I ruin this family dinner. I should have walked out, but my fear at you turning that hatred and venom on me was too much. My fear at the fact that I have counted on the generosity of your purse to sustain my children and I, once again, overrode my initial impulse of anger. I let it shut my mouth, acid and bile rising in my throat like always.
Well, my loved ones, there are no more fucking hall passes to be written. The ones I have already tendered have caused irreparable harm both to my psychological health and society as a whole. I have removed myself thoroughly from your backwards facing conception of spirituality. Your preachers now openly voice, with utter certainty, lessons that are the antithesis to the values that were first presented to me upon my choice free indoctrination into the cult. There is no prosperity to be found in your gospel, financial or otherwise. You are bankrupt, if not in cash flow then in morality, certainly. There will never again be another “I should have” lingering in my mind and piercing my heart with the needles of guilt and the knowledge of my silence. There is more shame to be found within that silence than there ever was in my bleeding heart label. I will wear that label as a badge of honor until the day I die. You will wear your badge of shameful complicity and direct assistance to this heinous white supremacy in the same way. Our paths diverged long ago, and I don't see them ever converging again. I will make my peace with this. I would rather make peace with this in my heart than continue to attempt to silence my conscience while protecting the feelings of the unworthy. If that means we can no longer relate, oh relative of mine, then so be it.
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Please remember to take care of yourselves out there, my dear readers. Find a little kindness and offer it up to someone in need of it today and every day if you can. The world may be burning, but still we will persist. Make good trouble and always, always, always speak your truth. Much love….
bPNWc 😻
Dear bluePNWcats, your words were so painful but so eloquent. Being Jewish I did not grow up with that hatred in my home. No I grew up with that hatred all around me. From fist fights being called a goddam Jew, usually getting beaten up in the process. To every put down I had to endure because the other person was someone who could hurt me if I protested. To the world at large. I know it is hard to understand this but one Saturday we were going to synagogue when on the news was an announcement that a synagogue in Atlanta Georgia was bombed. This was somewhere in the 60's. I often wondered how people who were going to church would have felt if they heard such news. That a church anywhere in the US had been hit by a bomb. Would they have had second thoughts about, is my life in danger just because of my beliefs? Most of the people who have not felt that kind of prejudice will never understand it. Those who have lived in its midst and have broken away from it and now understand how toxic and debilitating that way of life is, like you, now you can appreciate what someone like me grew up everyday of their life. Please do not misconstrue what I say as being bitter. I know there is good and bad everywhere and that not all people are bigoted and hateful. But when you have experienced such bigotry it sometimes takes a little time to trust people. I am sorry that the people in your world were not better role models but I would say, even they grew up with that environment it was not their fault. In a way they were brainwashed, just as their parents were and their parents before them. It is unfortunate that there is so much ignorance, bigotry, and hatred in this world. I am ever hopeful for a world where people can live in harmony with one another. The human race can be so much better and could accomplish so much to help one another if they could only let go of the hate and respect one another. I am not saying we all have to love each other, it would be nice but not reasonable but I will gladly take respect for everyone as a normal. It that too much to hope for? Be well. Shalom Dan
I was born in Charlotte NC in 1961. We lived in Southern California for about a year in 1965-1966, then back to Charlotte for about a year, and finally to Spartanburg SC when I was in first grade. Except for that year in California, I have lived my entire life in the Carolinas, including when I was married (Charlotte, Rock Hill, and York were the places I lived as a married lady). Schools were still segregated when I started school, but in the early 70s, schools in Spartanburg were desegregated without much fuss in Spartanburg, although other cities had problems. Racism was all around, and still is. In fact, it's worse, because of the rot at the top. Some of the things that you heard people say about Blacks, I never remember hearing, but the "n" word was freely used. I used it, and thought nothing about it, until sometime in my teens, when I realized it was wrong, and stopped using it. It's hard to call out people for saying racist stuff, especially if they are loved ones, who are otherwise good people. I have done it, but not consistently, I'm a white coward too. However, I will try to overcome that, because it's more important now than ever, with that rot at the top of the nation.