Conversations with white people about race #1
Getting started: What do we need to know?
When we turn away from conversations about race with people of color, we lose valuable opportunities to enjoy warm connections and enlightening freedoms that come with understanding race relations on a personal level. Creating contacts and building networks with people from diverse backgrounds ushers in rewards for an expanded heart, an open mind and the personal growth available from engaging people raised in different cultures with different points of view. Truthfully, you may want to pack your courage in getting started, but I promise you — with sincere effort, the work will be worth it.
If we can accept that our opinions may be steeped in the blindness of our own limited experiences with race relations, we can become prepped and ready to listen and learn. We can realize that receiving new input doesn’t have to hurt, even if it counters our established views. Nor do we need to shed our thoughtfulness in the consideration of new information — of course, new input needs to be measured for accuracy, but compassion is a necessary companion for this search. Without it, we run the danger of becoming self-serving individuals, effectively eliminating some of the most enriching experiences in life. We may even unwittingly join a trajectory that supports those who do harbor cruel intentions against people of color. If we insist on maintaining our old views — if we choose to ignore the voices of other people in need — we risk allowing very dark forces to rise within our society, forces similar to those that infected Tulsa in 1921 and Rosewood in 1923.
If our comfort zone advocates for color-blindness — if we believe that we are all equal and therefore each should realize and take responsibility to live this reality— if we think that this alone will eradicate race problems, then care should be taken to understand that this view is not safe, not for people of color and not for us. People of color usually and often lead a daily reality that reminds them that they are not white and may not partake of the same privileges. The lifelong impact of racial discrimination often leads to a glut of mental and physical health challenges. If this doesn’t open your heart, consider that a society infused with discriminatory practices will sooner or later include threats against your welfare as well. Ultimately, you cannot be selective about who gets clobbered — it is the nature of the beast to drive everyone to submit to its authority while enforcing disturbing ideologies that can change like the whim of the wind. If compassion is not the leading tenet, we are all in trouble.
All people are worth the effort it takes to understand them, especially when we realize our shared identity. We are sharing this planet as sentient beings together, and if it isn’t working for some, it isn’t working for any of us. Concern for others must prick our hearts when we witness injustice because without that, our very humanity is demeaned.
There’s a wide range of attitudes among us that can influence our willingness to engage in conversations about race. Some realize the disparities in racial opportunity and dis-opportunity, and others are only beginning to identify and mitigate racial implicit bias. Our views do not make us bad people. Indeed, we have likely grappled with our own thoughts about it at times, wishing that unjust racial policies and laws would simply go away. The time has passed, however, for well-meaning passivity, and it is now critical to recognize our complicity and act.
Are you on this spectrum of white color-blindness? If so, where? You’re not alone, but we must break the ceiling on our collective ignorance. Only then, can we ask the right questions, such as what can I do? How can I help? How can I better understand myself in terms of race and race relations?
Watch this Op-Docs from the New York Times and see if any of it sounds familiar. Let’s start by being honest with ourselves. Times.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXow7olFyIM
For educators: https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/belonging-and-inclusion-in-identity-safe-schools/book276090
