We Know Already (or, The Saga of the Pontificators)

[xaara]

Slavery happened. The struggle for civil rights happened. Racial violence happened. Tension still exists.

For crying out loud, we know!

My school is something like 70% black. I don't notice that half the time - actually, the only time I really noticed was right after I'd returned from Italy (where everyone is white). It doesn't factor into my daily interactions with people of all races. Skin color is not even the first factor I use when describing someone. I might say "She has black eyes and medium-length straight dark hair, she usually wears bright tank tops, oh, and she's black." Never would I consider putting race first. And I'm not the exception; I am, in fact, the rule here.

So why is there a constant pressure from the black community for black pride, for black equality, for anger? I'm comfortable with my friends, at least half of whom have varying shades of brown skin, but when the school comes together for functions I'm almost always made to feel uncomfortable - an outsider - because of my skin color.

I realize there's really no way to express what I'm trying to say without sounding racist, but you'll just have to take my most sincere assurances that I'm not. I'm just tired of feeling like I have some sort of obligation to make things up to the world because I happen to be a middle-class white US citizen.

I didn't have a part in any of the civil rights struggles. My Italian grandparents weren't yet established enough in their new neighborhoods to have any part in them. But my maternal grandparents led a lawsuit to integrate public schools in Ohio and to bus the more distant children to the schools. Because of this, white supremacists in Ohio came through my grandmother's garden one night and ripped out all of her carefully-planted flowers, including her prize geraniums. Being the woman that she is (a woman I absolutely adore), she didn't complain. She simply replanted everything that was salvageable. As it turned out, that year yielded the most beautiful flowers of any of the years she had gardened.

That's the story I tell when people inform me that I don't understand. I do understand. I know what it's like to have a Southern Italian accent in Northern Italy. I know what it's like to have a Swiss accent in Germany. I know what it's like to be an American in Africa.

I know what discrimination is.

It's not happening here.

Open your eyes.

Comments

[sunshine-queen.livejournal.com]

amen to that, carm.

[teaghlach.livejournal.com]

I know EXACTLY how you feel. I'm from white suburbia but I still think nothing of it when I encounter people of other ethnicities. I started out in a college in Detroit. It was a black majority school. I lived in the dorms on a floor where everyone was black except for one other white girl. And I had no problems with it. I never even THOUGHT about it. Then, about a month after 9/11 (it was 2001, the year I started officially going to college), I was in my room with my roommate and all her friends (all of them were black). And there was this black speaker on tv going on about how 'the blacks shouldn't fight this war' and how it was 'the white man's war' and I slammed my book down and was all "EXCUSE ME?! How the hell does she figure that?" And for the first time in my life, I felt very uncomfortable being white. They all stared at me and then proceeded to go on and on and to my SHOCK, they AGREED with this woman on the television. I couldn't believe it. HOW does that promote unity and equality?

[xaara.livejournal.com]

It doesn't promote unity and equality. In fact, I take it as an insult to those who fought for equal rights for everyone.

It's not like some people are more equal than others.