Eyes Open: I'm trying to learn... chapter 1
I was brought up in a small southern town in the foothills of North Carolina. Not much diversity, but some. My family was nice- nice enough to raise me to be nice in all the right ways. And not just my family. The culture, so it seemed, the way it was, was that you just didn't "see color," when it came to someone's skin. Be nice to everyone. Everyone should be the same and treated as such. It is only now, 38 years into my life, that I realize that "not seeing color," is maybe not the best way to be nice. I have a lot of work to do to get to the bottom of what that means. Years and years of learned behavior. Even fear, really. As ridiculous as that sounds. Fear in that I will say the wrong thing, or be offensive to someone, not meaning to be. Years of staying silent for the feeling that it wasn't my place to speak up. Who was I to say anything at all? Why was I so afraid? Is that in and of itself racist? The fear of being racist? What does that mean about me? A lot of self-reflection, hard truths, and realizations in this year of our Lord, two-thousand and twenty-one.
I've started doing some of the work. And by that I mean I have started reading some books. I know that isn't much, but it's a starting point.
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
White Fragility, by Robin Diangelo
So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo
Up first is Ijeoma Oluo's book and this excerpt that struck me:
And why should my lived experiences be believed over a person of color's lived experiences? I feel I've heard this argument quite a bit- discounting and dismissing or comparing. Because as a woman, as a woman who is on the larger side in body size, I have experienced forms of discrimination. I've even written about it in this here blog. I believe those experiences happened to me, and the feelings that stemmed from them. But IT'S DEFINITELY NOT THE SAME. It's definitely not discrimination that has affected my life in the long-term. And it's definitely not right for the "world," such as it is, to NOT deem a person of color's experiences as valid. What a maddening thing- twilight zone-to be told, "no, that's not right for you to feel that way or to interpret your experience like that." In other words, "YOU'RE WRONG." When it comes down to just something as basic as feeling and how we perceive our lives and experiences, and those things aren't even believed or counted, what more horror am I going to uncover as my eyes continue to open?
I am so sorry, people of color. I am so sorry. I believe you.
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