Breaking My Silence
I should preface this by saying that I am not sure exactly where to start. There have been so many events in this country in the past year or so that have equally scared, confounded, and angered me. I have largely kept silent, kept my opinions and thoughts to myself, but the latest terrible incident, in my own backyard, so to speak, has somehow become the turning point for me. I feel like I cannot continue to be quiet. Maybe it’s because things are starting to hit literally too close to home - if this isn’t a “shit just got real” situation, I don’t know what is. And yet, this shit has been all too real for too many people for a very, very long time.
I’ll start with a simple statement: I am a white woman who has called Charleston, South Carolina home for 30 of my 36 years, and I am married to a black man. We met in Charleston doing volunteer work as teenagers, 20 years ago this summer. The Charleston we grew up in as children is much the same as and much different than the Charleston of today. The Charleston of 15 or 20 years ago is the place where people our parents’ age gave us dirty looks for simply holding hands in the mall in high school; the place where a young white teenaged boy on King Street said to me, “Why don’t you find yourself a nice white boy?” as he passed us by; the place where a long since closed pizza joint had tiles with swastikas inlaid outside its front door. Yet, the Charleston of today rarely gives us a second glance. If there are dirty looks or nasty comments, I don’t see them or hear them. If people are upset or offended by our being together, and our now having a child, well, I guess they’re just getting better about hiding it. I’d like to believe that people have become more open-minded and more tolerant, but as the world saw last week after the events at Emanuel AME Church, there are still people hanging on to the idea that white people are superior and that black people are inferior, simply because of the color of their skin.
The fact that there are people who cling to this racist idea is both surprising and not. I grew up a “military brat,” and spent my entire childhood and most of my teenage years befriending and living with and going to school with kids of every color and culture and background. Life was really a melting pot in Charleston for kids who lived in military housing back in the 80s and early 90s when the Navy was a big presence here. I grew up with white friends and black friends and Asian friends and Hispanic friends - that was normal for me. Outside my insular, yet very literally colorful, accepting bubble, my husband grew up going to two different types of Charleston schools: when he went to public school with mostly black children, he was never considered black enough for them; when he went to private school with mostly white children, he had racial slurs thrown at him with abandon. We had two very different experiences of the same city. The same city that has seemingly come together in the past week, irrespective of skin color, to mourn, to protest, to grieve, to support, to console… But I have to wonder, how long will this last? Is this genuine?
I feel like those two questions are starting to be answered, and quite frankly, I am not happy about the answers. The saying goes that actions speak louder than words, but I find that all too often, a person says one thing and does another, and the actions, and maybe even the words, are “correct,” but their true thoughts are not always in line with the public face they put on. In the wake of the awful massacre at Emanuel AME Church last week - because that’s what it was: a massacre, a hate crime, an act of domestic terrorism - I find myself feeling the same emotions I have felt in the wake of many events involving people of color over the past year or so. Once I work past the initial shock and sadness that yet another white person, another white police officer, has had so little respect for the life of a person of color, I get angry. I get scared. And I get quiet. No more. I am speaking up, here and now, and letting my feelings be known. I know that, by and large, as a white person, my job, so to speak, when it comes to matters of race is to sit back and listen and learn from people of color, to defer to their experiences with respect, and I will continue to do that until the day I die. I will not, however, continue to sit in silence while people denigrate and disrespect the people I love because their skin is a little, or a lot, darker. I have had to listen to people in my own family tell me as a teenager that my now-husband and I couldn’t get married because our children won’t know where they belong. Well guess what? We did get married, and we have a smart, hilarious, beautiful daughter, who will likely grow up and consider herself a person of color, and you know where she belongs? With her father and me, the people who are raising her to be a good, kind, tolerant, compassionate person. I have had to hear about people in my own family referring to my preschool-aged daughter as a “thug.” I scroll past a lot of hateful, ignorant comments on social media, made by “friends” who I grew up with, who I thought were more understanding, savvier, when it comes to issues of race in this country. I’m here to say, right now, that I will be silent no longer.
I feel as though people are allowing themselves to be swayed by, and distracted by, false arguments and the media’s bullshit, and the rhetoric of the people who raised them to have these racist thoughts in the first place. I’m done allowing this stuff to make me angry - and I am done with the people who continue to perpetuate it. If you believe that a young white man would not have killed nine black people in that church in Charleston last week if that damned Confederate flag weren’t still flying on the state house grounds, you are sadly mistaken. Yes, it is absolutely a symbol of racism and hate, and it should never have been endorsed by our state’s government, and yes, I absolutely agree that it should be taken down. I was there 15 years ago when it was taken down from the top of the state house and moved to the grounds - but has it done any damn good? I was stunned and pleased to see so many people of all colors coming together in vigils and marches and unity chains in Charleston in the last several days, but does every single person who participated in those events truly believe that white people and black people and other people of color are truly equal? If you have said aloud or thought to yourself any time over the past week or so, “Hey, way to go Charleston, way to show places like Ferguson and Baltimore how it’s done,” you are in essence telling black people they are doing it wrong, and you should be ashamed of yourself. If you believe that men like Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Walter Scott would still be alive “if only they hadn’t been breaking the law/running from the police,” you are wrong. These men would still be alive “if only” they were white. If you have found yourself responding to #Blacklivesmatter by crying about how “all lives matter,” you are missing the damn point, and are likely a white person who has never had any doubt that their life matters, when our police departments and judicial system and a whole lot of individuals have shown time and again that a black life is worth less. If the idea of a white woman and a black man loving one another, having a child together, and getting married upsets you or makes you feel threatened in any way, you are not someone I need in my life. If you think I am ridiculous or overreacting when I say that I worry about my husband when he leaves our home and goes out into a world that tells him he is inferior because his skin is brown, you should probably forget that you know me.
I am done. I doubt I am going to change very many minds, and that is not what I am here to do. I have enough on my plate to live my life and raise my child and love my husband. It is not my job to tell someone that they are wrong, or how they’re wrong. From now on, I will simply stop interacting with people who have racist ideas and spew hate and vitriol, whether it is in person or online. It’s a judgment call - sometimes you can have a conversation with someone, challenge their ideas, ask them what makes them think what they do, and other times, you can question and lecture and lead by example until you’re blue in the face, and it won’t matter a damn. My parents raised me to love all people, and I am truly sorry that other people’s parents didn’t because I think we need all the patience, tolerance, and open-mindedness we can get these days. I don’t have a great way to end this. I don’t have a bombshell or a last point to make. I’m just…tired. I’m just tired of feeling angry and helpless and hopeless, and I know that what I feel lately is not even a tiny fraction of what people of color feel every single day of their lives, and until that changes, we still have a long damn way to go to make things truly equal, or even just a little bit better.
Anonymous comments are turned on. So long as any discourse and discussion is kept civil, anonymous comments will be left on. Any racist or otherwise hateful comments will be deleted at my discretion. I am linking this post on my Facebook account, my Twitter account, and my Tumblr account.
I’ll start with a simple statement: I am a white woman who has called Charleston, South Carolina home for 30 of my 36 years, and I am married to a black man. We met in Charleston doing volunteer work as teenagers, 20 years ago this summer. The Charleston we grew up in as children is much the same as and much different than the Charleston of today. The Charleston of 15 or 20 years ago is the place where people our parents’ age gave us dirty looks for simply holding hands in the mall in high school; the place where a young white teenaged boy on King Street said to me, “Why don’t you find yourself a nice white boy?” as he passed us by; the place where a long since closed pizza joint had tiles with swastikas inlaid outside its front door. Yet, the Charleston of today rarely gives us a second glance. If there are dirty looks or nasty comments, I don’t see them or hear them. If people are upset or offended by our being together, and our now having a child, well, I guess they’re just getting better about hiding it. I’d like to believe that people have become more open-minded and more tolerant, but as the world saw last week after the events at Emanuel AME Church, there are still people hanging on to the idea that white people are superior and that black people are inferior, simply because of the color of their skin.
The fact that there are people who cling to this racist idea is both surprising and not. I grew up a “military brat,” and spent my entire childhood and most of my teenage years befriending and living with and going to school with kids of every color and culture and background. Life was really a melting pot in Charleston for kids who lived in military housing back in the 80s and early 90s when the Navy was a big presence here. I grew up with white friends and black friends and Asian friends and Hispanic friends - that was normal for me. Outside my insular, yet very literally colorful, accepting bubble, my husband grew up going to two different types of Charleston schools: when he went to public school with mostly black children, he was never considered black enough for them; when he went to private school with mostly white children, he had racial slurs thrown at him with abandon. We had two very different experiences of the same city. The same city that has seemingly come together in the past week, irrespective of skin color, to mourn, to protest, to grieve, to support, to console… But I have to wonder, how long will this last? Is this genuine?
I feel like those two questions are starting to be answered, and quite frankly, I am not happy about the answers. The saying goes that actions speak louder than words, but I find that all too often, a person says one thing and does another, and the actions, and maybe even the words, are “correct,” but their true thoughts are not always in line with the public face they put on. In the wake of the awful massacre at Emanuel AME Church last week - because that’s what it was: a massacre, a hate crime, an act of domestic terrorism - I find myself feeling the same emotions I have felt in the wake of many events involving people of color over the past year or so. Once I work past the initial shock and sadness that yet another white person, another white police officer, has had so little respect for the life of a person of color, I get angry. I get scared. And I get quiet. No more. I am speaking up, here and now, and letting my feelings be known. I know that, by and large, as a white person, my job, so to speak, when it comes to matters of race is to sit back and listen and learn from people of color, to defer to their experiences with respect, and I will continue to do that until the day I die. I will not, however, continue to sit in silence while people denigrate and disrespect the people I love because their skin is a little, or a lot, darker. I have had to listen to people in my own family tell me as a teenager that my now-husband and I couldn’t get married because our children won’t know where they belong. Well guess what? We did get married, and we have a smart, hilarious, beautiful daughter, who will likely grow up and consider herself a person of color, and you know where she belongs? With her father and me, the people who are raising her to be a good, kind, tolerant, compassionate person. I have had to hear about people in my own family referring to my preschool-aged daughter as a “thug.” I scroll past a lot of hateful, ignorant comments on social media, made by “friends” who I grew up with, who I thought were more understanding, savvier, when it comes to issues of race in this country. I’m here to say, right now, that I will be silent no longer.
I feel as though people are allowing themselves to be swayed by, and distracted by, false arguments and the media’s bullshit, and the rhetoric of the people who raised them to have these racist thoughts in the first place. I’m done allowing this stuff to make me angry - and I am done with the people who continue to perpetuate it. If you believe that a young white man would not have killed nine black people in that church in Charleston last week if that damned Confederate flag weren’t still flying on the state house grounds, you are sadly mistaken. Yes, it is absolutely a symbol of racism and hate, and it should never have been endorsed by our state’s government, and yes, I absolutely agree that it should be taken down. I was there 15 years ago when it was taken down from the top of the state house and moved to the grounds - but has it done any damn good? I was stunned and pleased to see so many people of all colors coming together in vigils and marches and unity chains in Charleston in the last several days, but does every single person who participated in those events truly believe that white people and black people and other people of color are truly equal? If you have said aloud or thought to yourself any time over the past week or so, “Hey, way to go Charleston, way to show places like Ferguson and Baltimore how it’s done,” you are in essence telling black people they are doing it wrong, and you should be ashamed of yourself. If you believe that men like Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Walter Scott would still be alive “if only they hadn’t been breaking the law/running from the police,” you are wrong. These men would still be alive “if only” they were white. If you have found yourself responding to #Blacklivesmatter by crying about how “all lives matter,” you are missing the damn point, and are likely a white person who has never had any doubt that their life matters, when our police departments and judicial system and a whole lot of individuals have shown time and again that a black life is worth less. If the idea of a white woman and a black man loving one another, having a child together, and getting married upsets you or makes you feel threatened in any way, you are not someone I need in my life. If you think I am ridiculous or overreacting when I say that I worry about my husband when he leaves our home and goes out into a world that tells him he is inferior because his skin is brown, you should probably forget that you know me.
I am done. I doubt I am going to change very many minds, and that is not what I am here to do. I have enough on my plate to live my life and raise my child and love my husband. It is not my job to tell someone that they are wrong, or how they’re wrong. From now on, I will simply stop interacting with people who have racist ideas and spew hate and vitriol, whether it is in person or online. It’s a judgment call - sometimes you can have a conversation with someone, challenge their ideas, ask them what makes them think what they do, and other times, you can question and lecture and lead by example until you’re blue in the face, and it won’t matter a damn. My parents raised me to love all people, and I am truly sorry that other people’s parents didn’t because I think we need all the patience, tolerance, and open-mindedness we can get these days. I don’t have a great way to end this. I don’t have a bombshell or a last point to make. I’m just…tired. I’m just tired of feeling angry and helpless and hopeless, and I know that what I feel lately is not even a tiny fraction of what people of color feel every single day of their lives, and until that changes, we still have a long damn way to go to make things truly equal, or even just a little bit better.
Anonymous comments are turned on. So long as any discourse and discussion is kept civil, anonymous comments will be left on. Any racist or otherwise hateful comments will be deleted at my discretion. I am linking this post on my Facebook account, my Twitter account, and my Tumblr account.