OP here. I know the conversation has moved on and that’s great but several pages back someone expressed speculation on my motives so I thought I’d respond to that.
I am white. I wasn’t thinking of this thread as for white people only because I was hoping for a respectful dialogue but I was influenced by the article that someone else posted
I also think an OP doesn’t own a thread so I’m happy to see this thread evolve in any helpful way it can.
The point is that our views are informed by our experiences, small and large, personal and those we see or read about. And that is true for white people as well as Black people. Racism isn’t just some anachronism handed down from parent to child. And the idea or sense that all/most white people are racist doesn’t just come from treatment by police or banks, but also by random negative encounters with random white people and vice versa.
One day I was downtown with the kids and decided to drive past a rental house we used to own to show the kids and see if it was being kept up at all. It was the middle of the afternoon, perfectly nice day, predominantly Black neighborhood. (One of our tenants had once set fire to the house.) We emerged back on to one of the major streets and a cop car pulled alongside. She put down her window and yelled across to ask what we were doing there. I explained that we used to own the house. She said it was dangerous in that neighborhood and we should not stay there. A little girl was walking down the street. It was surreal.
We own another house in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. For years, news reports of some crime or other in that neighborhood invariably seemed to occur in the same block as the house. A chilling number of people have been shot within sight of the house over the years. We’ve had tenants go through drug raids. Had the house ripped up by cops hunting for drugs. If they find them, you don’t get reimbursed for the damage. We’re lucky the neighborhood is going through some renaissance and has improved.
Sseamom had teachers make incorrect assumptions about her D (not to mention the extremely patronizing attitude), but it’s not false that in our inner city a lot of children have no books, they arrive at kindergarten already behind, not knowing their letters or colors. School attendance is terrible, teachers are regularly assaulted, and the graduation rate is around 50%. I’ve had college students tell me they have never seen trig functions. One went to school in Harlem. My students from the suburbs are better prepared in general.
In some communities, a huge percentage of children are born to unwed mothers - to their considerable disadvantage for the most part. Many are teenagers. SIL is Hispanic. One of her nieces had 4 children by the time she was 22. A nephew has 3 sons by 3 different women (at last count). He can’t even see them because he’s a drug addict. One of the mothers is a drug addict as well. The grandparents are doing the best they can in an impossible situation.
I wouldn’t use motives so much as intent, @mom23travelers.
Evolving, or something like that, the thread has, indeed.
“Seam on had teachers make incorrect assumptions about her D (not to mention the extremely patronizing attitude), but it’s not false that in our inner city a lot of children have no books, they arrive at kindergarten already behind, not knowing their letters or colors.”
I think this is an important point. It’s not “the white man” or institutional / systemic racism preventing young parents from teaching their kids letters and colors.
It is curious that when there is a less than 1% population of students of color at a public school, that school being in an affluent area, the same types of assumptions regularly made about kids in an inner-city area are made about (or seem to be so) the kids who have essentially integrated the affluent public school.
When a family takes the necessary steps to enroll a child in forward-thinking, innovative programs which work under a different educational model than the local publics, and those same condescending attitudes make an appearance, it is difficult to process inside of one’s self.
These things, by the way, the little indignities, are able to be forgiven with time as more incidents and examples of the same do not present. That is a lesson in itself, as perhaps the astute, mature educator lets contact with the family and the student guide his/her statements and actions going forward.
In that case, it can be a win-win all around. When it happens.
Here’s what I have learned from working really hard to genuinely listen to black people in this racial charged climate.
As a white person I need to spend most of my effort on trying to change myself and other white people. If I spend my time trying to “fix” perceived faults in the black community at best I am ineffective and at worst I am victim blaming, deepening the racial divide, and artificially making myself feel better.
I’m not saying there aren’t faults. Of course there are. Just like there are among white people and other ethnic groups. Look at our presidential candidates. Anyone want to claim them as shining examples of what we should be measured by and aspire to?
It’s like when my husband and I have an argument. My default mode, and what feels right is to immediately attack his position, to point out his faults and mistakes. This gets ugly fast. But when my better nature takes over and I slow down and listen and try to see things from his point of view and, most important of all, truly examine myself for what I have done to contribute to the problem, then we can make real progress. We might not change each other’s minds but when we approach things this way we can always come to an agreement we can both live with.
But my husband and I are on equal footing. While all of us should be on equal footing in this country we are not. So I believe it is my duty as a privileged person to go further than what I feel is my “fair share” to combat racism.
@Waiting2exhale I wish there was a love button,because your posts always hit the nail right on the head! We are in an affluent area, and over the years I found myself having to educate the teachers about my children’s abilities. Unfortunately, you have teachers that dont have a Black friend, didnt associate with people of color in college, and still live in lily white neighborhoods. They have no idea about how to approach, or relate to us. I was a fierce advocate for my kids, but our district has a small disadvantaged area, and I always felt sorry for those kids, because many of them dont have advocates. When you are poor, or maybe not even poor, but you didnt go to college, you think the teachers word is golden, and so many times the teacher is wrong.
This is a quote from your article, but an example I’ve seen many times. In my experience above, why was the neighborhood “too dangerous” for me to even drive through? More frequent lightening? Little girls walking on the street? Moms pushing strollers? The local subway, what there is of it, passes down the border of a neighborhood which I apparently should not even be in. Those same young men who are lurking on the street corners are on the subway. If I clutch my purse, maybe it’s because I’m concerned about my safety. FWIW, I try to smile or stare vacantly at the wall, so I don’t appear antagonistic somehow.
The only racist comments I ever hear are from other white people. This is not because other ethnicities don’t have racists, but because white people just assume that because I am also one of “them,” I will agree with their racist comments. So I have started responding with an apology: “I am so sorry for whatever I did to make you think it was okay to say that to me.” I don’t do this with everyone (the 90 year old lady I visit at an assisted living place is a notable exception!) but I do use it on people who should know better.
And yes, we have to start with the children, by exposing them to kids of other backgrounds. Nothing cures bigotry like friendship.
@Massmomm awesome response!
Just yesterday a friend who is a very liberal woman made racist comments about Asians. I was so flabberghasted, I didn’t know what to say and changed the subject. She has also made very bigoted comments about southerners and midwesterners. (Ironically, assuming they are all bigots).
@Massmomm Great response!! One of my mom’s favorite replies to a racist comment is “You must be so embarrassed that you just said that”. Really makes people stop and think about the appropriateness of their comment.
I have heard racist comments directed at white people. The Nation of Islam used to stand on the sidewalks of Chicago and shout at the ‘white devils’ walking past.
I’ve heard shouts of ‘stuck up prissy white girl’. “Poor white trailer trash”
We once drove out of the tourist area of Jamaica and were surrounded by people pointing and shouting 'White People"!!
Couple of things:
@mom23travelers : I reread my earlier comment, which you later referenced regarding speculating on your motives for starting the thread, and am glad to see that I did not actually imply that in my comment. But, I was running about an hour ago and seemed to affirm something in that neighborhood. This is important to me so I wish to clarify. Where I wrote,
“I read the OP as being white, and looked at her stating her (?) need for input as one which made it easier for other whites to speak,”
that was an impression of what I saw unfolding in the thread, both in terms of my perceptions of the backgrounds of the participants as well as what seemed to be the way the thread was progressing.
The tone(!) of the threads do change when the perspective and/or voice of Blacks and other people of color enter it, speaking to life experiences, hurts, triumphs and travails. It was that which informed my above quoted comment, not truly your motives or intents at starting the thread.
I didn’t take any offense @Waiting2exhale and I agree that intents probably is a better word than motives. And I think your quote above is accurate enough really. I do want input from whites but I also really value input from blacks and other people of color. I’m happy to have a conversation with anyone willing to look at this situation with humility and honesty.
I am lucky enough to have grown up in a multiracial, multiethnic family. I’ve lived more of my life in situations where I was the minority in my neighborhood than not. This has richly blessed me in many many ways. But I am a very white skinned person currently living in a majority white neighborhood, state, and country. And even when I have been a minority in my community I was still in a respected position. I have so much to learn.
@TatinG: I suppose the constant submission of the ways in which my-pain-is-greater-than-your-pain is how these threads always turn out, when there was so much promise at the outstart for discussion, examination, reexamination, shifting perspectives based on the dialogue we are having when cogent points are made, etc.
Pizza brought in a harsh fact of life where the understood imbalances and differences in what can take place in one community may not at all be that is more normative in other communities, where no one community should be looked at as needing to shoulder the responsibility for parents’ failures to see, know and act to ensure that there is growth and progress among the youth of an ailing community. (Cogent point)
These things have to be looked at, certainly. Few would argue that starting from where one is to remedy, from the ground up, the problems and conditions one can see systemically plaguing a community is a bad idea or approach.
There are lots of systemic issues, across a swath of American life, that need to examined honestly and then, from the ground up, reworked. But that point would be arguable to many.
I doubt you’d get much argument about the drive-by (or walk-by) bitterness, bigotry, racist speech and verbal assault you have specifically mentioned. Wrong is wrong, and hate is hate.
Do you recognize these things in their less pernicious forms? When they are sprinkled in “casually,” as someone brought into the thread. When they are coded?
One thing which should be the goal, if I may, @mom23travelers, is to try and get to how we deal with, respond to. combat, explode, confront, commit or acquiesce to acts of racism. I understood some of those points to be an earnest part of the OP’s call for conversation.
Anybody up for a ‘that nice person from across the color line stepped in and spoke up on my behalf’ spin-off, where we could share some of the other side of living while _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _?
As you may guess, I have a doozy. Did this incident change my opinion of white people? Not on a case-by-case basis where there had been injury and insult, no. But it sure as heck affirmed my belief in the brotherhood of man.
I’d already held the belief, though.
^W2e, I don’t think other white people can tell us some of these things. For example, I didn’t know that it was offensive to ask Black people about their hair. In fact, on July 4 we were with a mixed race couple and their 2 D’s and I complimented one of the girls on her hair, which was long and stunning, and asked if she had straightened it. (She hadn’t, it’s just that way.) I sometimes compliment students about their hairstyles (both black and white) and may ask questions, but I’ve never seen that as some racist thing. Apparently, it’s offensive, so I won’t in the future. But how would I know that?
Well, @sylvan8798, I would have to say each interaction with regard to how our bodies are would have to be case by case as well.
I don’t see anything wrong with the casual question you asked, as long as you were not simultaneously reaching out and holding a handful of my hair in your hands. It has been instances of touching which have been over the line as far as I know, thinking back on others’ experiences and my own.
It is a sensitive issue, I do have to say. Perhaps in that case those offended (parents and child/ both students) felt you were implying that Black people do not generally have long, silky hair, and therefore implying you knew her “true” hair must be some other, less desirable state.
Yeah, that must have been a sticky situation.
I have to be honest. There have been times when I have seen black women who wore their hair in styles that I considered attractive or striking, and whereas I might have given a compliment to a white woman, I don’t feel that I can “safely” give a compliment without it being perceived as condescending or inappropriate.
(I don’t really know what to say behind that, Pizza. That’s a little disquieting for me, who speaks to everyone.)
I think all women are up for a compliment, at any time of day. There’s a kind of sisterhood in that (for me).