When I read about Ferguson, I find myself thinking of a friend who, on first glance, is a strapping black dude. He’s over six feet tall and he’s muscled. In certain geographical regions and inside certain small minds, this is enough to categorize my friend as a threat. He’s big. He’s black. Therefore, in some places, he’s a crime waiting to happen.
This is some racist bullshit.
My friend worked as an English teacher and he’s a huge nerd. He’s a writer with a giant vocabulary and he’s got a big heart, the kind that falls in love around every corner with every new stranger who’s kind to him. He laughs out loud at the stories of middle aged white ladies and … you know what? None of this is relevant.
What’s relevant is that in a whole lot of places in the United States of America, this well mannered articulate nerd could get shot on someone’s front porch for ringing the doorbell to ask for help because his car broke down and his phone is out of juice. I keep thinking that somewhere out there is a redneck who thinks it’s okay to shoot my friend for no other reason than his size and color. Especially his color.
Again I say, this is some racist bullshit.
“I know,” I said to my friend last weekend while he was telling me yet another story about getting the stink-eye from a stranger based on nothing but his color. “I mean, I don’t know, not at all, but I know it’s fucked up.”
“You can empathize,” he said. “That’s something.”
But it’s nothing, it’s not enough. Here I am, another white person writing about Ferguson. Meanwhile, police stand in the streets in combat gear to fight people who have committed the crime of being born black. I think about the racism and sexism I’ve experienced personally, and it’s bitter, but it doesn’t mean I’m in mortal danger, it’s just small minded hate. We live in a world where I’m grateful for being a victim of small minded hate instead of being marked as a shooting target.
I don’t know what to do about this.
All I can think about is how this is some racist bullshit.
I was raised without the idea that I should, by default, be afraid of people who don’t look like me. I went to college with people who don’t look like me, and later, I traveled in places where I was surrounded by people who don’t look like me. I was educated, academically and socially, out of the idea that I should fear people just because they don’t look like me. There are hundreds of other pieces of information that will help us understand who’s a danger and what’s not and none of them, not one, is the color of a person’s skin.
I don’t want to be the enlightened person with “the black friend.” I don’t want my friend to be “the black friend” just like I don’t want to be anyone’s “Jewish friend.” Asian friend, check. Black friend, check. Gay friend, check. That’s racist too, and it dismisses our friends as an academic exercise in diversity, as objects.
You guessed it. Racist bullshit.
I don’t really have a point, only that I’m thinking about this. Only that I’m thinking about my friends who are not white. Only that dammit, we are supposed to be better than this. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream was for all of us. How long are we going to take to make it reality?
Don’t minimize being “another white person writing about Ferguson” – this is HUGE. I find it incredibly heartening when I see a member of the majority calling out racist bullshit. It’s impactful, and frankly, while white friends of mine might tell me privately they think something is racist bullshit, I don’t see it publicly enough.
So THANK YOU.
With sincere love,
Your black friend Karen
Did you see this? (http://qz.com/250701/12-things-white-people-can-do-now-because-ferguson/) Because it sounds to me like you’re not doing nothing.
thinking about this is probably the only way. I personally don’t care what people look like or believe in, but simply because I’m a privileged white stating this sounds patronizing already. it’s all so messed up.
Yeppers. A friend of mine is a Franciscan friar who lived in Italy for 10 years, but he’s originally from Zambia (where he’s adopted 16 [!] children and now runs an orphanage/school). About 6’2″, 220 lbs. My experience of Italy changed dramatically the first time we hung out when he was not in his cassock. Serious racist bullshit.
Have you ever heard about this couple: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/what-happens-when-a-neo-nazi-couple-discovers-it-is-jewish-1.315819
Being a black male and growing up in the USA being the most developed country it is racist at times. It is enlightening when people of the majority race speak out. Hopefully this will change think these situations over the last couple years have set the USA back. What do you think we need to do to change peoples perceptions?
I dunno, De’jav. I like the idea of a generation of foreign exchange students to places where they’re the visible minority (white kids to Africa! Black kids to Scandanavia!) so every one learns first, what that feels like and second, that color isn’t what defines if people are good or bad, but WTF do I know about fixing racism? And certainly it’s easy to imagine the backlash from a Christian conservative white family in, oh, let’s say, Texas, upon learning that their kid is going to spend the summer with a Muslim family in Lebanon as part of their high school graduation requirements.
Yeah, I don’t know. It seems like “Stop being a jerk to people who aren’t the same color as you,” shouldn’t be a lot to ask for. And yet.