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Brown Man Thinking Hard has posted an excellent video to help non-Blacks step into the shoes of a Black person in this “post-racial” America and discover just how flimsy the term “post-racial” can be. I have long had my own fantasies of opening a summer camp for heterosexuals called “Gay Camp”, where they have the opportunity to experience first-hand what it’s like to live as a sexual minority in the United States. And so of course I love this video, which takes a similar approach to examining racism, white privilege and residual Black reticence.
Although I’ve been personally aware of and pissed off at racism since kindergarten (I can remember my moment of awakening to it, in fact), I still found that this video had an impact on me. In particular, the picture of the white stick figure placed in stark numerical minority to the black stick figures made the back of my brain squirm in unfamiliar discomfort. And I find this interesting. Here I am a person who not only has despised racism for a lifetime but also has a first-hand understanding of bigotry because I’m part of a sexual minority, and still I could be affected by the imagery. What does this mean?
I’m tempted to conclude that it means that experience with one form of oppression doesn’t automatically and totally translate into complete empathy for another form. Because the truth is that as a white person, I’ve visited places where I’m a racial minority, but I’ve never lived as a racial minority in a racist society still struggling with a slavery legacy.
Perhaps the notion of “eternal vigilance” I was invoking last week in regard to the LGBT legal landscape applies to me as an individual as much as it applies to our community(ies) working for change on a broader scale. I’m glad this video pinged me. I will never know what it’s like to grow up and live as a racial minority, but I can play the reality game and at least be reminded that my disapproval of racism doesn’t mean that I can get lazy and forget the nuances of what racial minorities face daily.
Ok, enough about me. What did you think of the video? How did you respond to it on a gut level? Anyone willing to meander a bit further with me along my stream of consciousness can continue below the fold.When the video mentioned the de facto slavery that continued after emancipation, it reminded me of a chilling memory I had a few years ago while reading Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name. The memory was of ancient jars of turpentine in my grandpa’s garage. This was the 60s and 70s. Grandpa never threw anything away that might be useful, and those jars, which he occasionally asked me to fetch for him when he was working on some handyman project, were easily old enough to have been produced by the “free” Georgia black men described in Blackmon’s book. It is sobering to contemplate how we can unknowingly be using the products of something so horrific as home-grown slavery.
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Not all blacks were slavesAccording to the interview with Pam’s grandfather Asa T. Spaulding a really great man fighting for the free enterprise system.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/C…
that’s certainly truebut every black person faces the same racist crap regardless of the reality of their ancestry.
The empathy factorThanks so much for posting this. I am a gay white male. What I have learned about my experience with discrimination is that I must use my empathy for others who are facing oppression not to assume I know about all sorts of oppression, but to make sure I LEARN as much as I can about racism, sexism, etc. The empathy is just a starting point; it cannot replace the work we all need to do to understand each other’s lives and histories. While I admire Audre Lourde’s words that “there is no hierarchy of oppression,” at the same time I can’t assume that all oppressions are exactly the same. There are differences in experience, and to remain ignorant about these differences and these histories is shirking our responsibility to make the world safer and more welcoming to all of us.
You probably have alot of blacks in WA stateI like what Pam’s grandfather said, “”Academic excellence breaks down racial barrier”. Reading about Pam’s ancestry I think we may be related though my mother, early settlers to Robeson County who had a land grant from King Charles II. Same part of North Carolina and Croatan characteristics in appearance. I have alot of melanin in my smooth skin, always the darkest on the beach.
My sister is fair, and she took after the British Puritan Merrill’s early settlers of New England.
“Academic excellence breaks down racial barrier”It would be interesting to know his life experiences that led to the coining of that aphorism. He sounds like WEB DuBoise’s soul mate.
When everyone who is a minority has the luxury to be as average or as exceptional as people in the majority, then we’ll know we’ve arrived.
I like the way you summed it up.You said it better and more concisely than I did!
Racial DiscriminationAs a child barely 7 years old I was with my parents in Johannesburg, South Africa where my father worked on a project for several months.
Apartheid was in full force in 1963. When I asked where the maid and houseman went at night I was told to “nevermind” summarily dismissed.
Weeks later I struck up a friendship with the maid’s son, a year younger than me, and I was resoundingly beaten by the Africaaner who owned the home when this was discovered. I didn’t tell my parents of this experience because I was afraid they would beat me too.
A month later my parents were required to go to another town and I was left in the care of this Africaaner and his household staff. When he caught me playing ball in the back of the house with the maid’s son he beat me and sent me off with the maid and houseman to the absolute terror of the shanty-town outside of Johannesburg where the maid lived. She was terrified that I would be murdered and all but tied me to her.
As a white child in a black shanty town I discovered that my peers lived the same as me with mothers, fathers, in most cases and siblings. I admit to being terrified for about the first 15 minutes and then it became a great adventure.
Upon my parent’s return several days later I told them about the experience of the Africaaner, the shanty town and how much I really enjoyed going home with Tomas, the maid’s son and Marion, the maid.
The litigation that ensued was a nightmare but I am a much better human for having seen these things with my own eyes, having experienced the depths of hate and the triumph that love always attains.
Marion passed on several years ago but her son Thomas is a very successful businessman in the new Johannesburg. On my last trip I met his grandchildren and we laughed about him living in the same neighborhood now as where his mom was servant.
I like to think that having learned early that all men are created equal has kept me in good stead in life but there is never a denial that the reality of this oppressed nation of humans still exists today. The oppressors may change but the cast of people are always the same and that is “not free.” We are not free until all of us are free.
The video was a worthy effort to try to get whites to have a glimpse at what racial discrimination did to the oppressedBut like many explanations, it won’t put White people in Black people’s shoes, or in their skin, or their psyche.
Somethings just can’t be translated, can’t be explained, and can’t be fully known…to those outside the experience.
I would mention the exact same thing is true for men not experiencing life as women, straight people not experiencing life as gay/lesbian, and cis people not experiencing life as trans people.
My post wasn’t meant to not try to understand another person’s life experienceThat should be a goal, but you will reach a point when all your studies, all your empathy…won’t get you to the actual place of fully knowing.