Colorblind

I have been blind.

I have been self-deceived. 

I have been ignorant.

Let me explain. Or try to . . . . 

I grew up in the immediate post-segregation era of the South/Southwest.

And I remember a few racial conflicts at school, but not that many, really. It was never so on-the-surface as TV and movies make it seem.

But I also remember people saying "the N word" to describe black people, people of African ancestry . . . and the "sand-N-word" to describe people of Arab or Indian descent, and other slurs to describe Asian and Hispanic people.

I remember it coming as a shock to hear it, even then, when segregation was less than a generation in the past.

But I do remember it being said -- when everyone in the room was pale.

Sometimes, I think kids said it just to be provocative.

Sometimes, I think kids said it to try it out like you'd try out a curse word.

Sometimes, I think they were copying what they'd heard grown-ups say.

Even so, these word weren't uttered very often, but I heard them.

And they stung my ears.

But I didn't say anything.

Standing up for what is right is hard to do.

It's even harder for a kid.

You want to be liked by everybody, even the assholes. And it's hard to comprehend, when you are young, that sometimes that's not possible, to be liked by everybody. You think you can thread the needle. Maybe just be silent and the bad stuff will go away and we'll all be happy.

So I was silent.

I got, maybe, a little more outspoken as I got older -- once, I took on a college friend on the topic of race. Once.  But mostly I still stayed silent, hoping the bad stuff would go away.

College, law school, career, marriage, parenthood: I was exposed to more people, more cultures, more points of view. . . .

And it seemed like the bad stuff did go away. 

At least, I didn't see it in my world anymore. Not even in secret when everyone was pale . . . .

With age, with wisdom, with experience, and with the ugly reality of racism staring me in the face, I understand, now, that I do not understand.  I do not understand what it is like to walk in the shoes of a person of color.

And I have not realized what a bubble I have chosen to live in, either, having excised the bad stuff from my orbit.

But, slowly, slowly, I have begun to recognize the subtle privilege that having pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes gives to me.

What do I mean?  I mean that people never assume I'm a threat. I'm a white middle aged woman. When I walk into a convenience store, no one assumes I might be there to rob it.  No one follows me with their eyes as I peruse the aisles.  I am essentially alone in there.  And in daily life, no one assumes I might not be that smart, or that I might be lying, or that I might be lazy simply because of the color of my skin.

So, disgusted and disturbed by this realization (that my skin color gives me a silent, constant advantage), I quite subconsciously decided at some point in my adulthood to sort of triple down on my notion that skin color doesn't matter, that skin color is utterly unimportant to a person's value as a human.

Towards this end, I began to remove the words "black" and "white" from my vocabulary, at least when describing other humans.

I've even avoided using those terms with my son. We tend not to talk about people's race first, and maybe not at all, except as an incidental interesting fact among many items that make up a person.

But . . . .

Recently, news and events in the world force the issue of race even into the consciousness of a white, male suburban child . . . And confuse him.

Now, now, I see that my utter avoidance of the topic of race in an effort to minimize its importance is a mistake. This is wrong thinking.

I mean, I do believe that one's skin color doesn't define one's worth.  That's not wrong thinking.

But I failed to realize that my willful colorblindness is, itself, part of the white privilege I abhor.

What I didn't understand until very recently is that a person's skin color does matter when the person may be instantly judged by some people -- by many people? -- based upon the shade of their skin.  A person who may be scrutinized in large and small ways because of the color of her skin cannot choose to be colorblind like me.

I don't mean to say that I think people of color are always overtly discriminated against the way they were 50 or 60 years ago.

But color, or the subtext of color, is always there. Unlike me, people of color can't just decide race doesn't matter and choose to ignore it. Race, on some level, always matters.

My wrong-thinking hit me in the face one day when my husband and I were talking about white supremacists (a sad topic of recent news) and my white son asked me if we were white.

Yes, really.

I'd been so meticulous in avoiding the topic of race that I had created this confusion for my little man. Even in my response to his question I couldn't release my discomfort with being a white person in a society where racism still exists.

I said, "That's what people call pale people like us, yes."

My discomfort with even calling my white self and my white son white is a problem.  Yes, it shows my extreme discomfort with the white privilege that I do have. I don't want it, but I do have it, whether I acknowledge and accept it or not.

My attempts to reject it by refusing to call white people white and black people black, inadvertently sweeps the issue under the rug:  If you fail to acknowledge that a problem exists, you cannot fix the problem.

While my colorblind attitude does teach my son not to see race as a proxy for human worth, it doesn't teach him that other people do use race as a proxy for human worth.  It does not teach him that such prejudice is or can be a barrier for people of color.  And, even though we did not create the problem of racism, people like him and me need to rally against it.  Sometimes, even though you didn't make the mess, you still have to help clean up the mess.

He needs to understand that, to some people, the color of our skin means something.  To some people, being pale with blue eyes is better than being brown with brown eyes.  And he needs to understand that people who think that way are wrong.  But, finally, he needs to know racism is out there . . . still.  I can't and I shouldn't protect him from the knowledge that racism exists. 

 It's a hard thing to teach: that race doesn't matter, except when it does.  One thing I realize now: you damned sure can't teach it while remaining colorblind. To teach how to resist racism, you have to allow that race and racism exist.

I see, now, that I need to ensure that he understands that it is out there because one day one of his friends who is not Caucasian may face a racist comment.

One day, one of his friends may be scrutinized while buying a coke at a convenience store for no reason other than his or her skin color.

One day, he might find himself in a room full of other white kids and someone may say a racial slur.

And I want him to feel the courage to do what I didn't do as a kid. I want him to have the courage, the strength, and the conviction to say, "That's not right."

It's not enough not to be racist. We must be ready to confront racism when we see it. 

So the bad stuff didn't go away, like I'd thought, like I'd hoped. I hid from it.  And this may be the most jarring and unsettling revelation for me: the world I live in is far, far uglier than I thought.

I will try to make it better, starting here.