2 of 30 How I Learned Racism is Real and Present

Yesterday I was frustrated every time I sat down to write. I went on an afternoon bike ride to see if I could unloose some insight. Here’s what came, “Write what you know.” I thought about this for a while, but I didn’t really get still before I’d position myself in front of my laptop and let my mind race off only to have it come back like a dog sent after an imaginary stick returning confused. Unlike the dog who continues to wag his tail hoping for another chance to retrieve a stick, I just got discouraged and felt like I’d never be able to write clearly again.
Late in the evening I was kicked back on the couch, still so discouraged I was ready to extract myself from another creative endeavor I’m committed to because I was sure I’d mess it up too from lack of real skill. Tears and quiet, simple but desparate prayers and time helped begin to erase some of my anxiety and replace it with calm if not confidence.
My dad used to tell me that the answer to begin getting out of a seemingly permanent state anxiety or sadness was to dig a hole. He’d go on to explain that the act of doing something useful, something that required moving your body, would begin to take you out of your own head and provide perspective. I got up from the couch and washed the few dishes that had accumulated after dinner. While at the sink, I remembered a story I’ve told often. It’s about the day I realized racism was still alive and kicking in our country and not just a few isolated incidents perpetratd by irrational human beings who had their heads put on backwards. Until that day I truly believed racism was mostly a thing of the past, preserved in history books but not a major present concern.
My ignorance stemmed from the fact that I grew up shelterd. Every neighborhood we lived in was an even mix of black, white and hispanic families in similar economic positions. Our neighborhoods were friendly and safe. All the children played together at the park accross from our first apartment in Evanston. In our second place, the alley was our playground, our favorite game piggy bounce out and when the weather didn’t allow us to play outside we’d spend the afternoon at the house that had the best snacks in the cupboard any given day. In our third place, our first house, we were the only white family on the block. All of our neighbors were black except possibly a family accross the street. I think one of the parents was white though I never met them, just their boys who I went to school with. By the time we moved there I was 15, almost 16 and not much for staying close to home so I only have a few memories of babysitting a little girl next door. In all of those places, from age 4 to 20, I never heard mention of racism as a current reality.
There was only one incident where the color of my skin triggered anger in others. It came from of two girls I barely knew. I was in 8th grade. I briefly dated (what does that amount to at 14?) a boy from another school. He was black. One day after we decided not to date, though we were still friends, a white girlfriend and I went by his apartment to see if he wanted to hang out at a nearby park for the afternoon. Two of his cousins came to the door. They told me he wasn’t home and proceeded to yell at my friend and I as we walked away. They followed us accross a busy street, still yelling, calling us names that referred to our being white, throwing tennis balls at our backs. I don’t remember being afraid. These girls were a bit younger than us and I had no context to understand what they were accusing us of to deserve being the target of their agitation. One negative incident directly related to skin color was not enought to open my sheltered eyes.
When I was 15 and my boyfriend, who had very dark skin, proposed, I said yes (I wasn’t the most mature 15 year old and had no concept of marriage so we only lasted another few months). I was neither aware of or alerted to any disapproving looks from strangers when we walked around town. He was part of my family and I was accepted by his. None of the close friends in our group ever mentioned discomfort at our difference in looks because our town, apart form the north side, was racially mixed and so were a good portion of the young couples seen around together.
Our town prided itself on being different (I found out later), so maybe we were in the lucky pockets that really were differnt to some extent, or maybe no one who knew the present reality of racism thought or wanted to talk about it when we were having so much fun. I know I’m spilling my ignorance all over the page here trying to figure out how I missed the elephant in the room for 20 years.
Where I grew up is a direct result of my mothers awareness of racism and the need for concrete helpful action from everyone to heal the wounds it created and build a world where the content of ones character is all we weigh in the balance to decide who we want our friends to be. She chose the neighborhoods for their diversity. She discussed the reality that we are all one human family matter of factly so it was just another easy truth to me, like the sky is blue but I didn’t think about it like, hmmm…, I didn’t think about anyone ever considering that it wasn’t the case except a few extreme people in white hoods on tv, people that never touched the surface of my real day to day life and were (to me at the time) irrelevant in the scheme of things and easily forgotten.
I was also surrounded by a faith community that believes, among it’s main tenets, in the elimination of prejudice and the oneness of mankind. At meetings, Holy day observances, Baha’i children’s classes and casual gatherings,the group was always mixed, racially and ethnically, always full of accents from faraway places (especially Iran) and discussion focused on celebrating our differences and our similarities the way one enjoys a variety of flowers in a garden each with unique colors, shapes and scents.
This is why I was only thinking about the threat of violence in our area as we drove by the recreation center on April 29, 1992 and my mom told me that L.A. and other large cities were going up in flames from rioting and people were dying because of a verdict in a case involving someone named Rodney King. We lived in walking distance from the Chicago border.
Terrified and wide eyed I asked my mom if we should go to her in laws house in the country for a while until things calmed down. My mother can be called testy but she is generally mild in sharing her irritation so I rarely see her get intense or fierce. But at that moment she turned to me angrily, looked into my eyes and said in a cold voice, “Are you going to run away and lose this opportunity to do something to help or are you going to stay and be part of the solution?” I received it in my gut. I was being called a coward and at the same time challenged to put my actions where my beliefs were.
How did the horrible destruction of whole neighborhoods, innocent lives and harmful illusions happen with one verdict? I would soon find out.