Race

Our book doesn't have a section on race. Given how much it has affected America, I find that a bit frustrating. I cannot pretend to know a ton about racism, though life has slowly educated me. Even so, while I know what it is like to try and stretch pennies until payday and to be out of work for an extended period, I do not know what it is like to do anything without the boost that comes from being white in our society. I didn't recognize that boost for a long time. When much younger, I probably would have resented it and rationalized it away should someone have pointed it out to me. I came of age in Reagan's America. Everything was focused on winning the Cold War and not suffering a nuclear winter (those were the bogeymen of my dreams).  

Traveling outside of this country helped me see our collective racism. I lived in Ghana for half a year. I've run basketball camps in Juarez, Mexico across the street from the prison. I've traveled a fair bit in Europe. And I lived in Canada for three years, inclusive of 9/11. Through this, I learned to see America from different perspectives. What I saw was not the America of my school textbooks. It wasn't a bad place per se, but it was flawed and hell-bent on ignoring those flaws, or worse, calling those flaws good. By the time I started recognizing those flaws, asking America to be better was akin to hating America in the eyes of many. Just as I came to see calling for improvement as the deepest patriotism I knew, admitting anything was wrong was virtually treason. 

Is saying white America has been manipulative and violent and unjust also saying that being white is bad? I don't think so. I think being manipulative, violent, and unjust is bad no matter what one's color. I would also go so far as to say being okay with benefitting from manipulative, violent injustice without doing anything to make the world less manipulative, more peaceful, and more just is bad. White Americans, it's not your fault you were born into a more privileged position, just like it isn't Black Americans' fault they were born into a situation more fraught with danger and disadvantage. But we do have an ideal we as Americans have yet to live up to in almost any manner: “All men are created equal.” We have long struggled with exclusion of different groups starting with anyone not owning land and continuing into many socio-economic and ethnic/racial permutations. Racial exclusion and oppression has been one of our most pernicious shortcomings as a nation.

From the Middle Passage to the auction block, from the Trail of Tears to the Residential Schools, from the slave patrols to redlining, from the "Yellow Peril" to the Japanese Internment Camps, American race relations have been fraught with tragedy, oppression, and betrayal. Generally speaking, European Americans have tried to stay the dominant group no matter the cost. The very fabric of our social and political systems were structured to maintain this position. As demographic numbers shift, many white Americans feel threatened by the loss of that dominant position. This has given rise to conversations represented in such books as White Fragility and How to be an Anti-Racist. A portion of white America is starting to think more critically about issues surrounding race than at any other time I'm aware of. Other parts of white America are doubling down on the past. The status quo as well as the past obviously do not represent conditions that Asian Americans, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans generally want to keep or return to. 

My experience as noted above is not definitive, complete, or representative (especially for those outside my generational, racial, and socio-economic group). It is provided for context in a difficult topic. 

So, here is your chance to enter into this conversation.

Option 1: As demographic numbers shift and we move closer to a 50/50 split between white and minority Americans, there has been a debate rising in energy and passion: Who gets to be an American? Who gets to have a voice? So, what does it mean to be American?

Option 2: No one is perfect. No neighborhood, city, state, or nation is perfect. Even so, it has become almost unpatriotic to question anything about America or the way we do things. Does it mean someone thinks America is bad because they think it can be better? What does it mean to be patriotic?

Option 3: Given the way racism is built into our current systems and institutions, how do people of color and white people move forward into something better? How do we fix our systems? How do we live compassionately and justly within those systems in the meantime? 

If there is another question surrounding race you would like to explore, please run it by me. There are a ton of resources on race out there.