International Blog Against Racism Week

rilina's round-up of links, again.

I feel like I've told all of these stories before; most of them I have, I'm sure, but I don't know how many I've told on livejournal, or which ones were told recently enough for people to remember. It won't hurt to repeat anything, I suppose.

I am white. I grew up in an inner city neighborhood, my schools had high percentages of black students. Racism within the students was almost unheard of, though a few signs emerged as we grew older. I don't know what the black students at my schools experienced when they were at home, or what their families went through, but when we were at school, there were no race lines. There wasn't a "black kids' table" at the cafeteria. Some of the 'popular girls' were black, one of our valedictorians was black, some of the dorkiest people in the school were black; I never heard anyone mention any of these as unusual, it never even occurred to me that they might be until recently. My white mom hoped for years that I would date the son of her black best friend (Alas, if only Jimmy had had a sister...). Race issues came up frequently in classes, and they were discussed thoroughly; we had black and Asian and Indian and Hispanic authors in our texts; black history month was a big deal- at my high school, we had a day-long 'Multicultural Show' during the last week of February that was organized and put on entirely by students.

This is what I knew, so I assumed it was like this everywhere.

When I started college, I had classes that did not have a single black person in them. I'd never had a class composed entirely of white people before, and it made me uncomfortable. I tried to ignore it, because I didn't feel like I had a reason to be uncomfortable; after all, I'm white, so it wasn't as though any of the other students would single me out. But it didn't feel right, as much as I tried to not notice, or to not feel relieved when I did have someone, anyone, of color in my class. The next year, a white friend of mine from high school started at my college and complained of the same thing, which relieved me. I'd become half-convinced that I was just being too sensitive. One of these all-white classes once had a discussion of race; the entire thing felt so wrong to me that I couldn't bring myself to say anything the whole time. Not because white people don't have anything to say on race- obviously not, or why would I be writing this post?- but because it seemed so pointless to have a discussion without different perspectives represented.

I spent two months in Nevada last summer; there were ten of us, and all of us were white. We spent a lot of time driving around, from our camp to wherever we'd be hiking or surveying or digging that day, and so we spent a lot of time listening to the radio, when we could get a station at all. Most of the time, what we caught was country or classic rock, to genres which I know nothing about. Everyone else would sing along with the radio, but I never knew the words. Everyone else would encourage me to join in, but I would have to shrug and say that I'd never heard the song before. They generally did not believe this was possible. Finally, one day we happened to catch a song by Eminem. By this point I was annoyed that everyone thought I wasn't singing along because I was too shy, and so I belted out the entire song. I think they knew of the song (though maybe not, because a month later no one would believe that "Move, Bitch" was a real song), but they certainly didn't know the words. At the time, I was just pleased to prove that I knew music just as well as anyone else did. Whenever we would catch a rap song on the radio they would play it for me, or I would demonstrate ebonics- BEV, AAVE, whatever you want to call it- for them, which they found hilarious. But there's only so many times you can be told "Hey, I need to laugh: talk like a ganster for me!" without starting to feel like a trained dog. And it only took being asked to explain why "inner city people are so much less cultured than anyone else" once to piss me off. By the time I came home, all I wanted was to be around people who would not be surprised or amused by things I found natural, who wouldn't give me dirty looks for knowing how to dance to "Candy Shop".

I am white, so I get included when in conversations when white people feel free to insult something that they assume I will agree with. I hate having the same conversations over and over again, trying to be civil as I get brushed aside with "all rap music sounds the same and is meaningless" or "listen to this ebonics phrase I know!" If the only place you've heard people speaking it is MTV, don't use it. You don't speak the dialect, and you're embarrassing when you try. But that's still better than when I have people tell me "well, I could never imagine dating someone who wasn't white" or "I was alone and they were black! Of course I should have been nervous". Sometimes I wish my background was more obvious, so that I wouldn't have to deal with these idiots, or at least they wouldn't think I was on their side.

One last story, because it's one of the earliest things that shaped my perception of race issues, even though it sort of sounds like an after-school special. When I was in grade school, there was a guy six or seven years ahead of me, named Paul. He was black. He was also very smart, funny, and charismatic; one of those guys who seems destined to be a politician, because everyone likes them. He came back from the high school to our grade school fairly often, to visit his old teachers, so I'd seen him around. The year he was a senior, a statistic came out; I don't remember exactly how it went, but it gave the percentage of black males who died before 25- or maybe it was 21- as compared to the percentage of white males who did. Paul was fascinated by this study. He spent a lot of time talking about it, debating why it was what it was, and what it meant, what could be done to change things; he said that he felt like he would end up being yet another example. Later that year, before he graduated, he was shot at a bus stop when he was caught in the middle of a gang fight, and died.

I want to talk about racism, but it's such a big topic that I don't what to write. These are the personal experiences that I think about the most; if anyone has any other suggestions for topics, feel free to offer them. Of course, I could always track down some sources and do a post on the many, many way the cannibals in PotC 2 were incredibly factually inaccurate.