I Am No Expert.
I’m old; I was born years before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream speech. I was born ten years after desegregation became law, but long before anyone decided to change anything.
My young adulthood occurred in Pittsburgh which, as a city, should have been substantially more desegregated even then.
When I moved to D.C. in my late twenties, I had no idea how different things would be. I moved into a melting pot. I moved into an area of the world that was not segregated.
The D.C. area is hugely overpopulated with people from every corner of the world. After my lily-white formative years, D.C. is a rainbow.
While it takes awhile to get used to the phoneme differences, it takes no time at all to realize that people are the same inside, no matter what they look like on the outside.
As if that were ever a question.
In my kids’ schools, whites were a minority – and we live in the suburbs. Three miles closer to D.C., it’s rare to see a white face in the classroom. Less than half the population of my kids’ elementary school is white; besides Blacks, Hispanics and Asians make up much of the balance.
My kids grew up with members of every race, color and creed. Their friends’ ancestors came from everywhere. No one ever told them “white is better.” It’s simply not true; they could see that with their own eyes.
They didn’t see color unless it was purposefully noted, like when they did West Side Story on stage and had to figure out who fit into the Sharks and who fit into the Jets. They laughed because it was so crazy, trying to figure out who was “white enough” and who was “Hispanic enough.”
Frequent travels have reminded me that racism is rampant in the U.S. Living in a racially diverse area provides a magnifying glass, of sorts, to show what happens when people stay segregated.
The ignorance is overwhelming. And I don’t mean stupidity; I mean lack of knowledge. People who haven’t lived in this kind of melting pot simply don’t know what it’s like. I don’t mean everyone elsewhere is racist; it’s just easier to stay stuck if you’re living in a segregated society.
It took me a few weeks, maybe months, to get used to the variety of humans here. But now it’s NORMAL. It’s good and right and perfect, just as God intended. But those who haven’t lived it – they just don’t know how combat their own feelings of instant judgement.
Still, I am no expert. I judge people instantly for other things: body language, voice tone, the way they treat their kids. I am constantly guilty of judging based on appearance.
But because I am less ignorant than I used to be, I’d like to say I understand, that I have empathy.
But I don’t know if I can. I haven’t felt the sharp edge of prejudice, unless you count the kind that comes from being a woman.
Come to think of it, I’ve had plenty of that. That sucks.
Still, I feel like nothing I can do will be enough. Living here isn’t enough. Raising my kids right isn’t enough. But what is enough? And what about protesting in the middle of a pandemic – is that smart? Where I live, I think it’s still a bad idea.
So what can I do? For now, I will be aware of my own judgements, and work on eliminating those. It’s a step.