Thoughts on Racism and Ignorance.

I know it has been a while sense I have posted anything. The truth is in recent years I have become more picky about what types of thoughts and ideas I post online. As someone working in the public school system I feel that it is important to be a responsible consumer of the internet and social media. With that in mind I want to assure anyone who is about to read this post that it has been constructed with a great deal of thought and care. I also want to say that what you are about to read is my personal attempt to work through my own thoughts, feelings and attitudes about the topics I am about to address. I realize that I am not an authority on anyone but myself and would never intentionally presume to be otherwise.

This morning as I was taking my wife to work I had a lot of things running through my head. As is so often the case my mind wondered between things going on at work and my personal life at home. In the process I began to have some disturbing thoughts and came to some hurtful conclusions. I’m not sure why but this morning it hit me, someday, when Tiffany and I have children they are going to experience things that I cannot begin to understand. I began to think about how one day when my wife and I have kids I hope we are living close to her brother and his wife because I realized that at some point I am really going to need his help. No matter how much my children will look like me or my wife all some people will see is how much they look like their grandfather. I won’t know what to say to them when someone decides they look suspicious and follows them around the store for seemingly no reason at all. I won’t know what to tell them if they ask me why it doesn’t happen to me.  It drives me nuts and the thought of not knowing what to say or do hurts me more than I can fully understand. What is even more hurtful is wondering what they will feel when they have to experience racism for the first time without me there to protect them.

In the 14 months that Tiffany and I have been married and the nine months we dated I have experienced racism first hand. I have watched white people follow my wife around stores as though she were about to rob them. I have watched white women look at both Tiffany and I then make a show of locking their cars as though they would have something we would want to steal. I have walked into stores and restaurants with Tiffany and noticed the disapproving stares of both black and white men, initially it bothered me. I stood next to Tiffany once in a checkout line and watched in shock as the black cashier hit on my wife (then girlfriend) as though I weren’t even there, as though because she looked more like him he had more of a right to do so.

There is part of me that would love to be an idealist and say that we have progressed farther than we actually have. I feel conflicted because I don’t know who specifically to blame. Ultimately, as a Christian I believe that sin is to blame for racism and bigotry. From my perspective, I feel that the uncomfortable reality is there are things about ourselves, thoughts, feelings and attitudes that we are not always proud of and would prefer to forget or ignore. On some level, in some way I believe that we all bear some responsibility for what is going on now and where we are as a culture/society.

In recent years one of the most important lessons I have learned with regard to working through my own ignorance and bigotry is the need to be painfully honest with myself, facing the uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and attitudes I have is essential to overcoming and working through them. I think the line between racism and ignorance is probably thinner than most white people would like to admit and wider than most black people would like to acknowledge. While I believe that certain aspects of racism are plain and simple, because racism is also a highly charged, emotional issue it has an unquantifiable degree of complexity that requires one to address it with sensitivity, vulnerability and honesty.

I feel that if I am going to be a responsible person, a responsible husband and one day a responsible father, I have to acknowledge that there are going to be things my wife and our children will experience that I will never fully understand simply because I am white. There have been and will continue to be times when the reactions of other people to my wife because of her ethnicity will fill me with anger, hurt, disgust, disappointment, contempt and even fear. But like I tell my student so frequently, emotions in and of themselves aren’t bad. It’s what you do with those emotions that determine whether they are good or bad.

Lately I have been doing a series of lessons called “The Seven Habits of Happy Kids”. The first habit is “Be Proactive”. When I explain this concept to my students I emphasize the importance of self-control and the role it plays in our success. I explain that while many things are out of our control, if we do a good job with those things that we can control we will be successful. I often point out that in many cases all we can control is ourselves and it is our job to do so. Maybe on some level there will always be ignorance in the world, if that is the case than I am responsible for not adding to it. In the end that is all I can control. In the end that is all that you can control, so are you?