liptonrm_backup | (no subject)

International Blog Against Racism Week has rolled around again (and almost passed me by) and as in years past, I debated whether I had anything cogent to say on the subject.

Because, as many of you may know, I'm white. I am the child of generations of white people. For goodness' sake, I don't think I even have any Italian or Slavic ancestors floating around on ye olde family tree. So I've always felt less than qualified to speak on the subject because who am I to type up a manifesto when I've never suffered as others have.

But then I realized that I do have something to say and it is this: It's okay to feel guilty. Actually, guilt can be pretty dang useful. No one person can change the entirety of society and instantaneously make everything perfect and equal, but one person can recognize racial biases in his or her own thoughts and actions and, because of guilt, learn how to excise them.

Anyone with eyes can see that racism still exists, to sometimes devestating effect. To deny this fact in an attempt to feel better about yourself only adds to the problem. Racism is destructive to everybody, no matter who they are or what they look like. Racism is a wound that still festers and if we don't face it in ourselves and others clear-eyed and head-on then it will never begin to heal.

Never stop asking yourself the hard questions, never stop analyzing your actions in an attempt to determine their real motivations and rationales. Only by healing ourselves can we begin to heal society because this disease is inherited and ignoring it only allows it to be passed along to the next generation.

When I was 11 I baby sat three very nice little girls. One day they gathered around me to tell me a story. They were all excited, even the youngest who couldn't have been more than 18 months old. They told me about how scared they had been earlier in the day when a black man had come up to their door. He walked by, first, and then came back, actions that threw their mother into a tizzy, she even called her husband in fright and wouldn't open the door when he rang the bell.

It turned out that he had only come by to tell them that he had noticed a VCR tape sitting on their porch. One of their friends had returned it when they'd been out. He was being a good neighbor.

But the lesson those girls learned wasn't about how silly their mother had been, but rather how they should be afraid of black men. I've never been able to forget how sickened I was to hear their story, and how disappointed.

We should be better than this, we have to be better than this. And we can be.