Breaking radio silence...
So, it's come to the point where I feel I have to say something about this entire racial clusterfuck that is tearing the country apart. To set the stage for what I'm saying, you need to know more about the world I live and grew up in. I live in the capital city of a southern state and here, well. Walking while black can get you shot, or beaten or worse and most people still use the N word when there are no people of color around to hear...and sometimes in broad public with no shame at all. In public they pretend to be decent and non biased, but at home that all changes. The privacy of home or like company lets the ugly truth out into the light. It breeds and festers like rot.
You go into the wrong neighborhood here and you will get hurt. There are places in the hills and hollows, Hollers, in local slang... that should a black or latino or any person of color go, they won't come out again. It's an unspoken knowledge. Never mentioned but known by everyone. I remember a sign on a county roadside when I was about twelve that said " N****** will be shot on sight, drive safely. " it had been there for years, old and weathered and yet, still standing, obviously tended to and long standing. I am only 28 years old. They took it down at last when I was around nineteen, but everyone still knows that unless you're white you don't take that road. Everyone likes to say they aren't racist though, even while they teach their white daughters to fear black men and their sons that those dirty lazy black folk never mean any good for anybody and that you can't trust one as far as you can spit, because they hate white people, all of them.
I'm a white woman who grew up in this atmosphere and today, even though I know it's all racist bullshit...there's still a charge of fear when I interact with black people. A clawing uncertainty that I forcibly shove into a box in my soul, where all the ugly parts of myself go, because it is an unworthy, indecent sentiment. But it's still there, deep as blood and bone and memory, years of teaching, subtle and unsubtle. I never noticed color except for how beautiful dark people were when I was small. How smooth their skin looked, how much nicer than mine...too pale and patchy with red and freckles and boring. I wanted to grow up and look like THAT. My grandmother used to tell a story that when I was three or four, that on a city bus I reached out and touched a black woman's arm to feel her strange, pretty skin and then asked my grandmother if when I grew up I could look like her.
I don't remember this myself, but it ended with my grandmother slapping my hand for touching her and talking to strangers and many repetitions of the story to the friends and family. All white. All making me feel stupid and foolish and as if my admiration was wrong, a joke...a funny story for everything to laugh at. But the first time I was aware, truly aware of the otherness of Them, and it was always Them with a capital T in my house; was my father telling me when I was six or so and talking about how much I liked Michael Jackson that if I ever came home with a black man on my arm that I would never be his daughter again, and that they'd never find the body of the N***** that touched me. This is how racism is born.
My grandmother was more subtle, with her it began with teaching me fear. Fear and uncertainty, painting black people as strange, unknown , dangerous. Something to be afraid of and avoided at all costs. You never knew what They were capable of...especially the men. They all want white women to be with them, as status symbols. To show that they got one over on us. They'll rape you if they can. Never be with one alone or god forfend make eye contact. I will never forget the disgust on my grandmother's face when she found out a cousin of mine had given birth to a biracial child. She said that the girl ought to be ashamed of herself, and that no decent man would have her now with a mongrel in her arms. As if that gorgeous baby girl was some sort of animal...not even human. How many people never question it, any of it? Never notice the subtle or very unsubtle indoctrination and pressure? It just is. All these things to them are true....except for how they aren't. It's just what was pounded into my, no..our heads from when we were small. A litany that never ends and is reenforced by our peers and elders, encouraged but carefully, nurtured like a poisonous plant in the dark places, in private until it grows too big to hide. An undercurrent, not a tide in most cases. Yet the results are easy to see, and tragic.
Nothing is simple, the lines blur and mix and all anyone will do is finger point because no one wants to face the truth, because it's too ugly it doesn't fit our image of ourselves. I read that poor woman's story and I could see in my head how it had probably happened. The death of her child, unnecessary and untimely. A boy that will now never be a man. A life ended by stupidity and fear and a hidden and not so hidden culture of lies and distrust. I can understand how this boy must have felt when that angry man confronted him, just...for being somewhere he had every right to be. How many times had it happened to him before? Someone charging up to him and likely yelling because they saw something that was only there in their minds, unconscious or conscious. Looks and mistrust, a white person switching seats on a bus to be further away from him, and stares he could feel on his skin like lasers, watching him like he was a bomb that might go off.
How afraid was he of this grown man? He must have been terrified, because there it was, the elephant in the room that sparked the disaster. In his face an impossible to ignore. Born from fear on both sides, one of Otherness, the other of how easy it is for those who are the right color to get away with....anything at all. A young man, cornered and scared and frustrated and offended and young, so so young. Seventeen is such a far cry from anything resembling true adulthood for teenage boys. There's so much going on, a thirst to prove themselves, not to be seen as weak. Peer pressure and the general crap that is being a guy and trying to learn to be a man.
How quickly does fear turn to anger? Especially in any teenage boy, because I've never met one of any color that would't have died before admitting to being anything but tough. Then it escalates into a physical altercation, that's just what happens because of course, his upset and his rightful anger is interpreted as evidence that he was up to something.....and then it all collapses into a spiral of rage and reaction and like dominoes falling it ended in an unarmed child being shot by a man who should never have had a gun on him in the first place. Why was he armed? he wasn't law enforcement of any kind yet that gun was on hand and it was at close range when he shot it. If you have a gun, you intend to use it. No one picks up a gun just because. Especially not to confront another person. Why not a tazer? Why not have waited for police like he was told to do.....instead he went armed to confront Treyvon. He went looking for trouble, and the result is a dead child, a grieving family and yet...he stands unashamed. Unpunished by law. I wonder if he even had the balls to look at that poor boy as he died.
No matter what happened, you don't bring a gun to a fistfight and you don't pick a fight you don't intend to win. Everything he did that day speaks of aggression. Even his lies betray him. Everything that the man has said points to one thing. He was looking for a confrontation that day...and he got it. The man is guilty because he shot an unarmed child. A minor under the law. Period. End of story. There is no reason he shouldn't be in jail right now....except for that thread, spoken and unspoken that runs through everything that police department has done and every statement that has been made in the guilty man's defense. That the shooter was right to be afraid. That it's okay. It sickens me to my soul to hear it, watch it and have to be part of it. Worst of all because that indoctrinated fear is in me too, like a stain in my soul that all the scrubbing in the world won't wash clean. All this argument is just....showing the lie for what it is.
It is a line in the sand that no one can ignore right now. It is showing us just how deep the divide really goes and lots of people don't like it at all that their bias is being so brutally exposed. Anger breeds anger, we fear needlessly and strike....they fear us in return and strike back and the cycle goes on and on because it perpetuates itself by using it's result to justify it all, an attitude of see? We were right! When there should be no we, no they. Just...us. It has to stop, I choose every day to do my best to make the cycle stop with me. To see truth, not simply what I was trained to expect. To fight that ingrained reaction, to face the ugly, unworthy parts of myself that soaked up the poison poured into my ear as I grew up and to get rid of them, to silence them so as to be better than what I was raised to be. I don't always get it right, it's a road I was never trained to navigate but I try as hard as I can and hope that it helps. Maybe if we all did the same, the world would be safer for all of us. It would certainly be a better place. I've said my piece, good or ill. If I'm wrong, tell me. If I'm right, that too. No one learns in a vacuum. No one can change without knowing what they're doing wrong. I want to do it right, and that's the first , most important step.
You go into the wrong neighborhood here and you will get hurt. There are places in the hills and hollows, Hollers, in local slang... that should a black or latino or any person of color go, they won't come out again. It's an unspoken knowledge. Never mentioned but known by everyone. I remember a sign on a county roadside when I was about twelve that said " N****** will be shot on sight, drive safely. " it had been there for years, old and weathered and yet, still standing, obviously tended to and long standing. I am only 28 years old. They took it down at last when I was around nineteen, but everyone still knows that unless you're white you don't take that road. Everyone likes to say they aren't racist though, even while they teach their white daughters to fear black men and their sons that those dirty lazy black folk never mean any good for anybody and that you can't trust one as far as you can spit, because they hate white people, all of them.
I'm a white woman who grew up in this atmosphere and today, even though I know it's all racist bullshit...there's still a charge of fear when I interact with black people. A clawing uncertainty that I forcibly shove into a box in my soul, where all the ugly parts of myself go, because it is an unworthy, indecent sentiment. But it's still there, deep as blood and bone and memory, years of teaching, subtle and unsubtle. I never noticed color except for how beautiful dark people were when I was small. How smooth their skin looked, how much nicer than mine...too pale and patchy with red and freckles and boring. I wanted to grow up and look like THAT. My grandmother used to tell a story that when I was three or four, that on a city bus I reached out and touched a black woman's arm to feel her strange, pretty skin and then asked my grandmother if when I grew up I could look like her.
I don't remember this myself, but it ended with my grandmother slapping my hand for touching her and talking to strangers and many repetitions of the story to the friends and family. All white. All making me feel stupid and foolish and as if my admiration was wrong, a joke...a funny story for everything to laugh at. But the first time I was aware, truly aware of the otherness of Them, and it was always Them with a capital T in my house; was my father telling me when I was six or so and talking about how much I liked Michael Jackson that if I ever came home with a black man on my arm that I would never be his daughter again, and that they'd never find the body of the N***** that touched me. This is how racism is born.
My grandmother was more subtle, with her it began with teaching me fear. Fear and uncertainty, painting black people as strange, unknown , dangerous. Something to be afraid of and avoided at all costs. You never knew what They were capable of...especially the men. They all want white women to be with them, as status symbols. To show that they got one over on us. They'll rape you if they can. Never be with one alone or god forfend make eye contact. I will never forget the disgust on my grandmother's face when she found out a cousin of mine had given birth to a biracial child. She said that the girl ought to be ashamed of herself, and that no decent man would have her now with a mongrel in her arms. As if that gorgeous baby girl was some sort of animal...not even human. How many people never question it, any of it? Never notice the subtle or very unsubtle indoctrination and pressure? It just is. All these things to them are true....except for how they aren't. It's just what was pounded into my, no..our heads from when we were small. A litany that never ends and is reenforced by our peers and elders, encouraged but carefully, nurtured like a poisonous plant in the dark places, in private until it grows too big to hide. An undercurrent, not a tide in most cases. Yet the results are easy to see, and tragic.
Nothing is simple, the lines blur and mix and all anyone will do is finger point because no one wants to face the truth, because it's too ugly it doesn't fit our image of ourselves. I read that poor woman's story and I could see in my head how it had probably happened. The death of her child, unnecessary and untimely. A boy that will now never be a man. A life ended by stupidity and fear and a hidden and not so hidden culture of lies and distrust. I can understand how this boy must have felt when that angry man confronted him, just...for being somewhere he had every right to be. How many times had it happened to him before? Someone charging up to him and likely yelling because they saw something that was only there in their minds, unconscious or conscious. Looks and mistrust, a white person switching seats on a bus to be further away from him, and stares he could feel on his skin like lasers, watching him like he was a bomb that might go off.
How afraid was he of this grown man? He must have been terrified, because there it was, the elephant in the room that sparked the disaster. In his face an impossible to ignore. Born from fear on both sides, one of Otherness, the other of how easy it is for those who are the right color to get away with....anything at all. A young man, cornered and scared and frustrated and offended and young, so so young. Seventeen is such a far cry from anything resembling true adulthood for teenage boys. There's so much going on, a thirst to prove themselves, not to be seen as weak. Peer pressure and the general crap that is being a guy and trying to learn to be a man.
How quickly does fear turn to anger? Especially in any teenage boy, because I've never met one of any color that would't have died before admitting to being anything but tough. Then it escalates into a physical altercation, that's just what happens because of course, his upset and his rightful anger is interpreted as evidence that he was up to something.....and then it all collapses into a spiral of rage and reaction and like dominoes falling it ended in an unarmed child being shot by a man who should never have had a gun on him in the first place. Why was he armed? he wasn't law enforcement of any kind yet that gun was on hand and it was at close range when he shot it. If you have a gun, you intend to use it. No one picks up a gun just because. Especially not to confront another person. Why not a tazer? Why not have waited for police like he was told to do.....instead he went armed to confront Treyvon. He went looking for trouble, and the result is a dead child, a grieving family and yet...he stands unashamed. Unpunished by law. I wonder if he even had the balls to look at that poor boy as he died.
No matter what happened, you don't bring a gun to a fistfight and you don't pick a fight you don't intend to win. Everything he did that day speaks of aggression. Even his lies betray him. Everything that the man has said points to one thing. He was looking for a confrontation that day...and he got it. The man is guilty because he shot an unarmed child. A minor under the law. Period. End of story. There is no reason he shouldn't be in jail right now....except for that thread, spoken and unspoken that runs through everything that police department has done and every statement that has been made in the guilty man's defense. That the shooter was right to be afraid. That it's okay. It sickens me to my soul to hear it, watch it and have to be part of it. Worst of all because that indoctrinated fear is in me too, like a stain in my soul that all the scrubbing in the world won't wash clean. All this argument is just....showing the lie for what it is.
It is a line in the sand that no one can ignore right now. It is showing us just how deep the divide really goes and lots of people don't like it at all that their bias is being so brutally exposed. Anger breeds anger, we fear needlessly and strike....they fear us in return and strike back and the cycle goes on and on because it perpetuates itself by using it's result to justify it all, an attitude of see? We were right! When there should be no we, no they. Just...us. It has to stop, I choose every day to do my best to make the cycle stop with me. To see truth, not simply what I was trained to expect. To fight that ingrained reaction, to face the ugly, unworthy parts of myself that soaked up the poison poured into my ear as I grew up and to get rid of them, to silence them so as to be better than what I was raised to be. I don't always get it right, it's a road I was never trained to navigate but I try as hard as I can and hope that it helps. Maybe if we all did the same, the world would be safer for all of us. It would certainly be a better place. I've said my piece, good or ill. If I'm wrong, tell me. If I'm right, that too. No one learns in a vacuum. No one can change without knowing what they're doing wrong. I want to do it right, and that's the first , most important step.