A Deeper Conversation Awaits

"Mommy did you know people with my color skin use to be mean to people with darker colored skin, like Zion's."

"Tell me more, Olive."

"Well, like they use to order them around and tell them they couldn't do stuff, but thats just not fair."

"You're right Babe, its not fair at all."

"I mean Zion's the same as me. And Aleisha. And Fatu. And Eva and Elaine. And Isaacc, I mean his skin's really dark, even darker than Zion's."

"And he's a cool kid who wants to play, just like you."

"Yeah! Its not fair."

This conversation happened over a month ago and I didn't say, "Olive it still happens today." We talked about people working to change society, to make it more fair for everyone, including her friends with dark skin.

I didn't tell her racism is still alive and well today--I didn't have that conversation with my daughter.

Its part of the privilege I wear, with my mostly white skin, not needing to prepare my children, as young as six, to encounter racism daily, from individuals and institutions, in all their interactions with the world.

Letting my daughter think racism is part of our history, something to be studied in school, the week of Martin Luther King day perhaps, and not a current reality that we benefit from in all aspects of life.

This is my privilege too.

The way I can drive over the speed limit, knowing if the police pull me over the worst that will happen is I'll owe the court some money; and its just as likely I can smile pretty and be off with a warning.

The way I don't have to speak for being "white". The way "white" is not used to describe me when I move somewhere new.

"You know Christy, she's that short white girl."

The way I am trusted when I walk into a store not to shoplift. The way people smile at me when we pass on the sidewalk instead of crossing the street.

This is the bare bones beginning, a mere whisp of what it means to be white in the United States, today.

The world is wide open open to people who look like me, and yet so many of us white folks claim this as reality for everyone, not seeing the way doors open with ease for our ivory skin, trying to explain to people of color that they just got it wrong, if only they tried harder, if only they didn't take it all so personally, if only they didn't make it about race,  if only they talked differently, if they only they dressed differently, if only they were more white like me.

I'd like to go back to that conversation with Olive and not just talk about all the kids she loves who were "once" considered second class citizens, but let her know that the world today is still unfair.

I need to tell Olive that its not a "use to", that in 2016, many people with skin the color of ours still believe they are inherently better than men and women with darker skin-- that an old tape still plays in the back of my mind, one I need to rewind, rewrite, erase, that says my white face is somehow purer than mahogany or ebony, redwood or sapphire.

Nothing will change without the unpacking of biases, absorbed, like breath, through my fair-skinned pores, stored in the closets of my back brain.

Racism is my problem.

Racism is a white person's problem.

I owe it to my daughter to have this conversation, to help her understand the privilege she wears, so she can unpack it, and work towards dismantling the powers that be, as she becomes an even better ally for her friends with skin a darker hue than ours.

Comments

[Kristen H]

Eloquently written, mirroring my experience as a white woman and mother, and touching on the inherent privilege we are immersed in and how to fully see it, recognize both its power and fallacy, and how to open our children's eyes to it as well. I have been doing more and more reading on this topic (and finding more and more authors like Isabel Wilkerson and Tim Wise who decisively debunk the notion of "race" having any scientific validity) in the hopes I can better articulate how being white confers certain systemic advantages that are so numerous and long-lived it's impossible to overstate how profound the impact is, for those of us who hold the power and write the laws and the history books and for those of us who don't.

[Christy]

Kristen, thank you for sharing the authors you are reading as I'd like to be more articulate on this topic and understand deeper how I can raise my children and those I teach/counsel to understand the systematic privileges white people benefit from daily.