Oh, so that's where the racism was hiding.
Fair warning, guys, this is gonna be pretty self-focused and decadent. I'm not trying to make any major point or prop myself up as ~enlightened~, I just needed to get my thoughts out. Realizing you've lived in a town your entire life and yet never gotten the full picture of its reality is a little disorienting and I'm still trying to figure out how to properly process what I've learned.
I'm back down in Knoxville visiting the folks for Passover. It's gorgeous out, of course, because spring in Tennessee is always gorgeous, and Mom and I are enjoying a post-walk iced beverage at Panera. Mom looks at her watch and suddenly realizes that she said she'd go to a Trayvon Martin related rally that evening, since a work friend of hers was the head of the organization setting it up. After I went off to college Mom got a job--made herself a job, really, my mom's pretty awesome--working in mental health advocacy and that slipped along into working youth advocacy for the at-risk, abused, and mentally ill youth of K-town in general. A lot of both her clients and her officemates are people from East Knoxville, the more underprivileged part of the city. Mom wasn't sure how the rally would turn out given the disorganization of the organization, but she wanted to be there for her colleague.
I ask to come along, because my evening was free and hey, I need more SJ in my life. Why not.
The rally itself went off quite well. (My legs make an appearance at 1:00, while the vaguely unsettling ten foot tall paper mache Martin Luther King shows at 1:15.) There was lots of speaking, some local figures spoke very passionately, signs were held. All good and heartwarming, and if it had just been that I don't think I'd still be feeling like I'd been slapped in the face nearly a full day later. But the entire time during and after the rally my mom was gave me running commentary on what was going on and it was depressingly eye-opening.
At the rally were more people of color in one place than I'd ever seen in the entirety of my Knoxvillian 0-18 childhood. I did not, except in the most fuzzy of ways, know that Knoxville had a black community. I simply assumed that it had a very small population of people of color and did not give much thought as to the reasons why. If this sounds very dumb privileged white girl ish, there's a reason for it.
The thing about privilege is that it's like the Matrix. It surrounds you and so pervades your life that you don't realize it's there at all, and even after you're made aware of its existence you still don't completely grasp its immense influence on every aspect of society. The reason I never saw them is that there's a line drawn through Knoxville that delineates who's supposed to be where, and that line's a four to six lane highway. East of the Weigels is where the lower socioeconomic class people of color live. West of it is where 'my people' live. We never went east of the Weigels. We never had reason to. And so in my mental map it got labeled 'here be dragons' and never considered to exist.
Mom's job is east of the Weigels now, and because of it she'd had a better taste of the red pill than I have.
According to Mom, whose office is next door to the office for the woman who set the rally up, Knoxville's actually got a quite significant racial problem. One of the women who spoke at the rally was Taloni Lee, whose son was murdered by three teenagers, none of whom were ever imprisoned for their crime--she went on to start a youth empowerment organization to curb crime among young men. When the rally organizers held a call for the names of victims, a lot of names were spoken.
We left the rally when Mom's legs started to hurt and cut through Krutch Park to Market Square so she could look at the hats in the expensive stores there. She pointed out to me the fact that in Market Square, not a hundred feet from the location of the rally, every single person there was white. The lines, it seems, are so neatly drawn that they cut through Krutch Park itself and the field where the rally took place was on the border (due to the movie theater being there). I've been to the area countless times. Just hadn't really thought about it.
On the way home Mom told me about the magnet school I went to from first to third grade. It was set just on the other side of the barrier, and the attendees were a mix of elementary school age lower class black kids and white kids with rich parents. The idea, as far as I can understand it, was to encourage racial mixing and fluffy harmony and all that stuff, but let's say it was less melting pot and more highly segregated moonpie. I don't remember a lot about it, as everything pre-college is pretty hazy for me (this was around the time my symptoms were starting to manifest and so my perception of society would have been screwed up no matter where I was), but what Mom says jives pretty clearly with what I remember. Apparently during graduation, the lower class group attempted to raise the money to go to Six Flags to celebrate, but couldn't get enough money together.
Meanwhile, the white kids went to Japan. Mom says she found this out around the time she yanked me out and put me in mainstream schools...she didn't want me in a place so stratified. I never do give her as much credit as she ought to take. Now she's out being a badass for social justice and making advertisements and going to the state senate to badger legislators into doing their jobs right, and literally saving kids' lives through her work. When your mum is better at SJ than you are it's time to get your ass in gear and start measuring up. Might as well do something with this feeling of utter confusion.
I never actually liked Knoxville. The greenery's the only thing about it that's remotely enjoyable. But I at least thought I had the place figured and it's unnerving that I didn't.
I'm back down in Knoxville visiting the folks for Passover. It's gorgeous out, of course, because spring in Tennessee is always gorgeous, and Mom and I are enjoying a post-walk iced beverage at Panera. Mom looks at her watch and suddenly realizes that she said she'd go to a Trayvon Martin related rally that evening, since a work friend of hers was the head of the organization setting it up. After I went off to college Mom got a job--made herself a job, really, my mom's pretty awesome--working in mental health advocacy and that slipped along into working youth advocacy for the at-risk, abused, and mentally ill youth of K-town in general. A lot of both her clients and her officemates are people from East Knoxville, the more underprivileged part of the city. Mom wasn't sure how the rally would turn out given the disorganization of the organization, but she wanted to be there for her colleague.
I ask to come along, because my evening was free and hey, I need more SJ in my life. Why not.
The rally itself went off quite well. (My legs make an appearance at 1:00, while the vaguely unsettling ten foot tall paper mache Martin Luther King shows at 1:15.) There was lots of speaking, some local figures spoke very passionately, signs were held. All good and heartwarming, and if it had just been that I don't think I'd still be feeling like I'd been slapped in the face nearly a full day later. But the entire time during and after the rally my mom was gave me running commentary on what was going on and it was depressingly eye-opening.
At the rally were more people of color in one place than I'd ever seen in the entirety of my Knoxvillian 0-18 childhood. I did not, except in the most fuzzy of ways, know that Knoxville had a black community. I simply assumed that it had a very small population of people of color and did not give much thought as to the reasons why. If this sounds very dumb privileged white girl ish, there's a reason for it.
The thing about privilege is that it's like the Matrix. It surrounds you and so pervades your life that you don't realize it's there at all, and even after you're made aware of its existence you still don't completely grasp its immense influence on every aspect of society. The reason I never saw them is that there's a line drawn through Knoxville that delineates who's supposed to be where, and that line's a four to six lane highway. East of the Weigels is where the lower socioeconomic class people of color live. West of it is where 'my people' live. We never went east of the Weigels. We never had reason to. And so in my mental map it got labeled 'here be dragons' and never considered to exist.
Mom's job is east of the Weigels now, and because of it she'd had a better taste of the red pill than I have.
According to Mom, whose office is next door to the office for the woman who set the rally up, Knoxville's actually got a quite significant racial problem. One of the women who spoke at the rally was Taloni Lee, whose son was murdered by three teenagers, none of whom were ever imprisoned for their crime--she went on to start a youth empowerment organization to curb crime among young men. When the rally organizers held a call for the names of victims, a lot of names were spoken.
We left the rally when Mom's legs started to hurt and cut through Krutch Park to Market Square so she could look at the hats in the expensive stores there. She pointed out to me the fact that in Market Square, not a hundred feet from the location of the rally, every single person there was white. The lines, it seems, are so neatly drawn that they cut through Krutch Park itself and the field where the rally took place was on the border (due to the movie theater being there). I've been to the area countless times. Just hadn't really thought about it.
On the way home Mom told me about the magnet school I went to from first to third grade. It was set just on the other side of the barrier, and the attendees were a mix of elementary school age lower class black kids and white kids with rich parents. The idea, as far as I can understand it, was to encourage racial mixing and fluffy harmony and all that stuff, but let's say it was less melting pot and more highly segregated moonpie. I don't remember a lot about it, as everything pre-college is pretty hazy for me (this was around the time my symptoms were starting to manifest and so my perception of society would have been screwed up no matter where I was), but what Mom says jives pretty clearly with what I remember. Apparently during graduation, the lower class group attempted to raise the money to go to Six Flags to celebrate, but couldn't get enough money together.
Meanwhile, the white kids went to Japan. Mom says she found this out around the time she yanked me out and put me in mainstream schools...she didn't want me in a place so stratified. I never do give her as much credit as she ought to take. Now she's out being a badass for social justice and making advertisements and going to the state senate to badger legislators into doing their jobs right, and literally saving kids' lives through her work. When your mum is better at SJ than you are it's time to get your ass in gear and start measuring up. Might as well do something with this feeling of utter confusion.
I never actually liked Knoxville. The greenery's the only thing about it that's remotely enjoyable. But I at least thought I had the place figured and it's unnerving that I didn't.