Racism: The First Step

For some reason I've been attempting to process all that has been happening in my head instead of in writing, which we all know doesn't work for me.

I care deeply and I've been wanting to say more, but I'm exhausted. I only know two ways to feel: all or nothing. The "all" was keeping me awake at night, giving me chest pains, and making me shaky. Every day is something new. Every day is some difference injustice, some other constitutional violation, some new threat to freedom.

But this morning, a couple of things hit me:

1) This may be how people of color feel 100% of the time.
2) If God gave me a love and ability for writing, then the worst thing I can do is sit on it when real things come up.

I'm not here to defend my character or be sure that you know my opinions on every facet of this issue. >deleted sentences that amounted to exactly that< If you want to go in-depth, let's get coffee and chat sometime. You know discussion is my love language.

It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to begin to see the racism situation for what it might be.

Do you remember Formspring? It was around when I was like a freshman and sophomore in high school, and it was a platform where your Facebook friends could anonymously ask you questions, you'd answer them, and they'd appear on like a rolling profile page. It was mostly used for trying to get your crush to think about you Differently, but one question and answer by a white "friend" has stuck with me for a decade:

Q: Would you ever date a black guy?
A: No, sorry, I'm not racist, it's just the way I was raised.

I remember thinking, "Wait, that is absolutely racist. What does that even mean? How can you think that's not racist? Are people raising their children not to date black people?!"

That, at age fifteen, was my first recognized brush with racism. A decade and a half on the earth, and the first time I experienced racism was as the most passive of passive observers.

And somehow I still didn't think racism was a real problem.

Some people have said that while personal racism, like the above, is disgusting and may exist, institutional racism is a myth. I can't speak to this from experience, but I think that on paper, that may be true; there may be no racist laws anymore.

Here's the thing though: as long as there is personal racism, there will be institutional racism, because people run the institutions. There ARE racist teachers. There ARE racist politicians. There ARE racist cops. It's not so much that we need to work on racist laws anymore, but racist people.

I can tell you the real turning point in my opinion of racism, and it is both ridiculous and profound.

It was walking in on Gabe watching the TV show Luke Cage a couple of years ago. I remember passing through the living room and watching for a few minutes. I kind of frowned and an absentminded thought floated through my head:

Why is everyone black?

The thought exploded into my consciousness and I made Gabe pause the show.

"They're all black," I said to him. He stared at me.

"Yeah?"

"And it struck me as weird," I continued. "My knee jerk reaction was, 'Why aren't there some white characters?'" I couldn't believe was was unfolding inside my head. "Do you know how many TV shows I've watched where everyone was white and it never even occurred to me? It didn't seem weird. It didn't seem anything. It was just the default. I see ten minutes of Luke Cage and..."

That was when it started to make sense.

The world IS different for me because I'm white. That's not my fault and I don't need to feel personal guilt for being born into this skin or what my ancestors may have done. However it IS my fault that I refused to see this sooner, and I SHOULD feel guilty if I don't fight for real equality.

I said REAL equality. Not just equality under the law, but equality that extends to dating, media, institutions, and everything in between.

Was the murder of George Floyd "racist," or just cruel? We can all have opinions on that, and the truth is, we will probably never know. But I think that might be just the disgusting, tragic tip of the iceberg.

There IS a problem. You might disagree about what it is exactly, but there IS a problem.

I'm sorry it took me so long to admit it, but I'm really glad that first step is over.

~ Stephanie

P.S. I know this can be really obnoxious and I AM trying to work on it, but the way I naturally understand things better is to challenge them and play devil's advocate. If we end up talking and I push on your ideas in a way that seems "wrong," just push back (logically). I want to understand.

Venting

I feel so bitter these days. Not every second of every day, to be sure. I have moments where I feel joyful or make someone laugh. But on the whole, all the things that have always annoyed me about the world seem to be increasing—in frequency and intensity.

I don't know how to explain it. It makes me want to stop being friends with a lot of people. It makes me want to stay off the internet forever. It makes me want to snap pencils in half. It makes me want to throw open my mind and spew things and watch people be taken aback (which, really, is probably just a restatement of that first desire.)

I feel angry a lot. The body-center kind of angry, where your heart beats faster and your hands tingle. The kind of anger that literally keeps me up at night. The kind of anger that can make a difference—for good OR evil, but mostly I feel the evil.

Lately I've had people complain to me about things that they're brought on themselves—I mean, just hand-over-fist, dragged those things off shelves directly above their heads and stood underneath them to watch them fall. As hypocritical as it is, I have a lot of trouble feeling sorry for people who have brought their troubles on themselves. For a person who brings many things upon herself, I have shockingly little sympathy. (Maybe that's why? Not that it makes it any less hypocritical, but maybe I lack sympathy due to the "takes one to know one" effect.)

I have trouble talking to people who complain about things they've brought on themselves. In these situations I feel physically incapable of speaking insincerely, so that leaves me saying a lot of non-committal half-truths punctuated with "LOLs." I don't want to be mean. I don't want to be ungracious. I think about all the things I've brought on myself that Jesus has loved me through and taken me back after. But somehow I still can't think of anything to say to these people that feels kind and gracious AND true.

I've also recently been the recipient of the ol' high school trick where someone passive aggressively calls you out in a disparaging Facebook status. As an Eight, I have a complicated relationship with other people's opinion of me. In one very true way, I do not care what people think of me. It is not important to me to be liked by everyone. But on the other hand, injustice makes me seethe. Unfair, disrespectful assumptions bother me, not because I care what people think, per se, but because it's WRONG; in this case, it reflects something wrong about the person who posted it, not me, and yet the person doesn't see that irony. I find this maddening.

I've also seen posts berating people for occasionally breaking the six-feet-apart guideline. The posts demand that people stop being so selfish and take initiative by always staying six feet apart. On the surface, that doesn't sound like an unreasonable request. However, when you think about it playing out in reality, it just doesn't work.

Say I'm on a bicycle and I see someone ahead of me on the sidewalk. I can't pass them because I'd be closer than six feet, so I cross the street to pass—oh wait, there are people walking on that sidewalk too, and, in THEIR effort to stay six feet away from ME, they panic/stop in their tracks/cross the street, where—uh-oh, they're in danger of being too close to the person I was trying to avoid, and the person I was trying to avoid has to run ahead to give these new people room, but then she gets too close to the person ahead of her on the sidewalk—

It is a nice thought. But in reality, you cannot expect people never to break the six-feet-apart rule. If you are so concerned about your personal safety, definitely wear a mask, stay home, precautions. But if every individual person is supposed to rearrange himself for every individual person, we're just gonna collide even worse—and no one will reach their destination.

Although it doesn't feel directly related, I wouldn't be surprised if this bitter, pent-up feeling is a side effect of quarantine. With two or three exceptions, I haven't seen anyone but Gabe in about eight weeks. I'm beginning to feel permanently disconnected from the aspects of humanity that I actually like. I'm watching as Americans become brainwashed into believing that anyone who stands up for his or her freedom is selfish. There is no other way to put that. We are being brainwashed into believing that standing up for your freedom is selfish. If your reaction to that statement is any form of, "Well, YEAH, wanting to go out in the middle of a pandemic/wanting businesses to be allowed to stay open/etc. IS selfish," then it sounds like you've already drunk the Kool-Aid.

Loving your neighbor by choosing to stay home, wear a mask, and keep your distance is a beautiful, godly decision. Embracing the government's authority to FORCE you to do those things is frightening, un-American, and dangerous. It is not selfish to want to make your own decisions.

I'm going to try to do a better job of giving this all to God. Clearly I'm currently doing a horrible job. I hope getting this out has been in some way therapeutic for me as well. It's been a long time coming.

~Stephanie

I Don't Want to Change the World Anymore

I'm not sure where this post is going. Some good posts have started out feeling like this, but a lot of others have ended up deleted. We shall see where this one goes.

I like to think of myself as a very reasonable, logical person—almost to a fault, at times. I have trouble empathizing. I don't usually care how people FEEL if it flies in the face of reason. I am a very black-and-white person.

When I was in eleventh grade, I studied American history, philosophy, and formal logic in the same semester. We dived deep into concepts like economics and Christianity. We constructed intense, rational arguments to defend our well-developed opinions. We memorized famous speeches that made us proud of being Americans, that made us want to change the world. We were going to change the world, and we declared as much to the adults in our lives.

In my memory, we were met with a lot of raised eyebrows and nods accompanied by smug looks. Sure, the expressions seemed to say. I remember when I thought I was gonna change the world. You'll grow out of it eventually. Their looks offended me and made me all the more determined to speak truth in a way that would make people listen.

I went to college to become a lawyer. I wanted to fight for justice using passion and logic. I wanted to persuade the world of what I knew to be true based on logic, history, morality. However, after an especially tedious class, I realized that becoming a lawyer was NOT the way I wanted to do that with my life. I became an English major instead, because what good are logic, history, and morality if you can't communicate them effectively?

I graduated in 2016. Election year. For all humans who had to endure that year while on a college campus, I want to offer my deepest condolences. If I hadn't already high-tailed it out of political science, that would've done it for me. Twenty-sixteen made me so glad I had evacuated the world of academic politics. To defend myself against accusations of racism, sexism, and bigotry from people who clearly must not know me was exhausting in a way that makes my soul feel tired just remembering it.

Back in high school, I loved to debate. I loved it so much that I would—and I am NOT kidding—seek out YouTube videos that went against my beliefs and engage in comment wars with strangers for DAYS. I would defend my beliefs about anything to anyone, and thoroughly enjoy myself. It might make me sad and frustrated and incredulous that some people wouldn't see the reason in what I argued, but it never discouraged me.

Now, I am tired.

Now, I understand the raised eyebrows and smug looks of the adults I encountered when I was seventeen.

It kind of makes me want to cry. It kind of makes me want to throw chairs against walls. It kind of makes me want to refuse to talk to anyone who believes differently than I do.

I feel very "done" these days. I'm done trying to get some people to see reason, and they're probably feeling the same way about me. I don't know that my logical persuasion has ever once convinced someone to change his or her opinion, and I don't know whose fault that is. Is it mine, because I'm not empathetic and winsome enough? Is it hers, because she refuses to see the error in her reasoning? Is it mine, because I'm too rigid and old-fashioned in my beliefs? Is it his, because he bases his argument on emotion? Is it mine, because I'm wrong but stubborn? Is it his, because he's wrong but stubborn?

I don't know. I'll probably never know. All I know is that talking about it does not seem to work, although I know that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to keep an open dialogue, be willing to listen—really listen—to people who think differently than us.

But I can tell you right now that I do not see myself changing any of my fundamental beliefs. How can I expect someone else to? *shrug* I guess I can't.

At this point, I don't want to change the world anymore; I just want to keep myself from going crazy. That seems like a big enough bite to chew these days.

Hopefully soon—now that I'm beginning to admit and process these thoughts and feelings—I will have a more encouraging, Christ-like update. Until then, don't expect me to join any comment wars.

~Stephanie

I Have Black Friends

I have black friends.

Of course, in my day, we just called them "friends."

My first "boyfriend" was black (age 4, we ran that preschool). One of my best friends is black. My best friend at college is black.

For 21 years, I have interacted with "people." Some people I like a lot. Some people annoy me to death. I think some people are really attractive. I think some people are pretty dang homely. Some people make me uncomfortable. Some people make me feel at ease. For 21 years, the world has been made up of "people," each unique, each uniquely shaping my life.

But now, I see color.

I have never been a racist. I am not a racist now. But all the screaming, raging, and fighting about racism and political correctness has shifted me from racially colorblind to racially anxious.

Now, if I bump into a black person, I make sure to say excuse me AND that I'm so sorry, lest she think I have a white elitist attitude. Now, if the cashier at the store is black, I push myself to be overly friendly and smile a lot, lest he think I take him for granted because he's black. Now, if a black man is walking behind me at night, I make sure to go slowly and smile if he passes me, to make sure he knows I made no weird assumptions about being unsafe.

I used to have friends. Now I have "white friends AND BLACK FRIENDS, WHICH I DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN NONE AT ALL, BECAUSE THEY ARE TOTALLY THE SAME AND EQUAL, EXCEPT THAT THE BLACK FRIENDS ARE ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT BECAUSE THEY PROVE THAT I AM NOT A RACIST."

I'm sorry, but what the hell?

I agree that racism is a real issue, in that it should not ever be an issue. People are people. Black people are people, and white people are people, and everyone has the ability to be funny or attractive or arrogant or stupid and it has nothing to do with skin color.

I already understood this, and I think a lot of other people did too. However, all the recent shootings and media uproar and Confederate Flag ridiculousness and a HOST of other junk have made it really hard to be colorblind. Instead of encouraging equal treatment, I think all the fuss has actually encouraged and exacerbated racism. People like me, who have been non-racist almost to the point of obliviousness, now find themselves noticing skin color. Isn't that the very thing we're trying to avoid?

Slavery was horrific. I am tremendously glad that it is in the past. We must remember that it was terrible and wrong and never gloss over it in a history lesson--but can we also remember that it is history? I did not personally enslave anyone. Neither did my parents. Neither did my grandparents. I would not do it now if I had the chance. Neither would my parents. Neither would my grandparents. Slavery was and is WRONG.

Slavery was horrific--but it was not my FAULT. No white American alive today is personally responsible for institutionalized slavery. No black American today has been personally abused by institutionalized slavery.

Obviously, true racists do exist, and they should be ashamed of themselves. But I really don't think all the pettiness and anger and guilt-tripping is the way to make racists change--white racists or black racists. I truly believe that racism does not make sense and that the truth of equality will prevail.

We fight for equality so that everyone can be treated equally. But I think it's time to stop FIGHTING for equality--we've been doing that for fifty years--and time just to start treating people equally. Let's all assume that people are people, and shut up about the rest. Imagine raising your kids in a society where no one has to say "white people and black people are equal," because the kids have never known otherwise.

Morgan Freeman said it best last year when asked "How are we going to get rid of racism?"

"Stop talking about it."

Come on, guys. I want to be colorblind again.

~Stephanie