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The tagline on Karilogue.com is “Where Words Happen,” but I’m out of words. Outrage, sadness, anger, rage, despair, helplessness–none of these words is accurate; not even when put together, do they say enough. If I’m out of words, maybe Black America is out of words, too.
And it’s hard to speak up when a knee is on your neck.
Every single day, White supremacy is a knee on the neck of Black America.
What I’m asking fellow White people to do, is to unlearn what they have been taught, be it explicitly or implicitly. That is the intent of this blog post: to ask you to put honest effort into unlearning what you have learned.
I grew up thinking of myself as a non-racist. I had Black friends, Black boyfriends. I mean, that means I wasn’t racist, right?
No. It means I didn’t consciously judge people by skin color, but I was absolutely a part of a system that was–that still is–racist.
Every time I think I’m not a part of that system, I need to remember that I am.
The adults in my life, the teachers who schooled me, and my peers would say that racism is bad, but they were showing, simultaneously, that there were times when it was acceptable. I learned to operate similarly, with actions that didn’t always match my words.
I have a lot to unlearn.
When I was a young child, people used the N* word around me. It wasn’t often, but it wasn’t absent. The word was in jokes. My grandparents had a candy dish that used to hold black licorice shaped like babies; the candy was nicknamed N* babies. That word was only said in private; I was learning that something might be socially un-acceptable outside, but acceptable inside.
Racism isn’t acceptable anywhere. Doors don’t change that.
When I was in elementary school, I went away to summer camp. I called my grandparents one day from the payphone that campers were allowed to use–I was asking my grandmother to send me a care package of her homemade chocolate chip cookies. When she asked me about my friends, I mentioned that I was the only White girl in my cabin. When I returned home from camp, my mother wanted to know why I would tell them that. They’d called her after talking to me, laying into her, asking what kind of camp she was sending me to. Instead of my grandparents being called out on their racism, I was being scolded for telling them that the girls were Black. I was learning that it was okay to hang out with Black people so long as you don’t tell some White people that.
When I was in middle school, I was taught that Ebonics was bad English. Adults in my life told jokes about Ebonics and I repeated them. I think I believed that when you’re not insulting someone to their face, the language isn’t harmful.
It is. It is harmful.
In high school, I learned that the Civil Rights movement ended racism. There’s no greater lie that I was taught in school, than the lie that racism was no longer a problem in America. I was taught that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “I have a dream.” They didn’t teach us that he also said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” That statement matters. And they certainly didn’t put the emphasis on the fact that King’s fight for equality got him killed. That should be the emphasis when we talk about King–not the dream, but what happened to the man who had the audacity to dream it.
In World History, we learned about how bad Naziism was in Germany, but we never learned about how bad White supremacy is in America. Our textbooks told on Germany but gave a pass to America. We were taught that Southerners owned slaves, but we weren’t taught that Northerners grew rich off of them.
My first serious boyfriend was “half-Black”. My parents tried to talk me out of dating him. They said it was because we would face difficulties from other people. I was being taught that the answer was not to combat racism, but to stick with someone who was White. The easy way, not the right way.
As an older teen, not in the 1800s or the 1960s but in the early 1990s, I learned that the KKK was marching in a nearby town parade, 48 miles outside of Philadelphia–a distance I mention to remind you that this isn’t about the South, or way out in the boonies–it’s about America. The KKK handed out pamphlets at the parade. They were recruiting KKK members 7 miles from my house.
Soon, I learned that the KKK had a post office box at the post office where my family had a post office box, 50 miles outside of Philadelphia. I now wonder if I was ever picking my mail up while standing a foot away from a KKK member.
When I was in my early 20s, people around me had me convinced that unqualified Black applicants would get a job before I would. Colleagues told jokes and I repeated them. I guess I still believed that when you’re not insulting someone to their face, the language isn’t harmful. That was wrong. It doesn’t matter who doesn’t hear what you’re saying–you’re still saying it and someone is hearing it. You’re hearing it. You’re internalizing it. Your words can be harmful even if you, yourself are the only one thinking them.
Still in my early 20s, I lived in an apartment above a restaurant 46 miles outside of Philadelphia. I eventually learned that the leader of the local KKK would meet with his lawyer in the restaurant. Our landlord, the restaurant owner, knew it. He said he didn’t like it, but he remained complacent. In the North, in the 90s, below the bed where I was sleeping, a KKK leader was eating.
My mother is in her 60s and we just had a conversation about racism last year. She wondered when my grandparents had become racist–at what point–because they hadn’t, she said, been racist when she was a child. She said they were always friendly toward the Black family in town. I asked her, What about behind closed doors? She answered, “Oh, yeah, behind closed doors–” to which I replied, “Racism behind closed doors is still racism.”
I have 44 years of learning to unlearn. My mother has over sixty years of learning to unlearn. America has centuries of learning to unlearn.
We need to unlearn complacency.
I now have the obligation of making sure that my daughter grows up with less to unlearn. An obligation to her, and to society. If you’re a parent, you have great influence over what your child learns. I’m asking you: please give them less to unlearn.
