I'm a racist, too

Ever since I was a little kid, I have been fiercely anti-racism. I was raised in a white suburb on the west side of Cleveland, but my parents did their best to expose me to people of all cultures, races, and walks of life (as much as that is possible in Cleveland). Every MLK day, I would go with my parents to be the only white people in the room when my mother's friend, A. Grace Lee Mims would perform a memorial concert. I briefly dated a black guy from East Cleveland. I wrote and spoke about equality for all and being blind to color. One of my proudest moments was when, after giving a speech about racism at a speech and debate tournament, a young African-American kid came up to me and said something along the lines of, "It's really good to know that there are some white people who understand." I felt like the coolest person in the room.
When I was a senior in high school, I made friends with a girl from Shaw high school who taught me a lot about what it was to live in the ghetto. The first time I went to her house, her grandma almost called the cops because there was a strange white person on the porch. I was almost complicit in a gang fight until I sped up and yelled so much that Keinya's friend couldn't get out of the car to start with someone. It was with her that I walked into a quickie mart completely encased in bullet-proof glass. You told the woman behind the glass what you wanted and she would wander through the store and grab it. Then you would slide the money to her under the glass. She, then, would deliver the food to you through a bullet proof carousel. I had no idea such places existed. I was scared shitless and at the same time incredibly sad that people had to live this way. I learned about greens and fried foods and the appeal of crappy champagne. I also got named "honorarily ghetto" by the guy who I scared out of jumping out of my car on Saint Clair Ave. It's true, I don't fuck around.

However, I also had all these little remnants of where I was raised living inside of me. My neighbors always used to refer to everything that was cheaply repaired as "nigger-rigged." For years I didn't understand why my mom said "jimmy-rigged" and my neighbors said it the other way. Same with "ding-dong ditch." Where I grew up, that was called "nigger-knocking." And when you get the tip of a cigarette too wet, there was a racist name for that too. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized that the "n-word" was a part of those phrases. I know that that sounds incredibly stupid, but they were just words to me, words that almost ran together. I never associated them with the word that should never be said. Then a little light went off in my head and I was terribly embarrassed and upset that I had ever said such things. How could I have been so ignorant?
You have to understand a little bit about where I was raised. Cleveland is one of the most segregated cities in the United States. It's a little better now (I hear), but when I was growing up there (I graduated high school in 1996), the blacks and Jews lived on the east side and the Arabs and Indians lived on the West -- my side of town. There was one black girl in my class, three black kids in my high school (and, as far as I know, no Jews wait, I take that back there were two kids, brother and sister). Cleveland is a very neighborhoody place. The Italians, Pols, Czechs, Irish & more all have their own neighborhoods. From what I hear, you didnt' bother crossing in to those 'hoods if you had dark skin.
When I was in high school, my school was playing Rhodes High School (a largely black school) for a district championship in basketball. Someone from my high school was "joking" about wearing a white sheet to the game. The 8th graders behind me actually started chanting "kill the niggers" during the game. The stopped once I threatened them with a beat-down. My neighbor was with them and he told them I wasn't kidding. I'm glad the believed me, because I'm pretty sure I couldn't have taken on three boys by myself. Just a few years ago, my father had a Jamaican hospice nurse. She got pulled over in my little hamlet for a good old DWB -- Driving While Black.

I went to two mostly white colleges and so I wasn't really confronted with my own racism until I moved to the south side of Chicago to go to graduate school. It was there that all of my idealism crashed head-on into my lack of interaction with African-Americans. One day, I was riding the 55 to the red line to get downtown and I saw a black guy running in the park. I thought to myself, "Hm... I didn't know black people exercised." WTF?! How incredibly stupid is that? I immediately became embarrassed by my thought, but there it was. I couldn't take it back. My lifetime of living in white America and being largely exposed to people of color through the television had, apparently, taught me that black people are lazy. Unless they play professional sports or are running from the police. I also remember seeing a young black kid running one day (not in exercise apparel) and wondered what he had stolen. I hated driving through Washington Park in the summer. It was always lined with people showing off their cars and hanging out in large groups. I was outnumbered, and it made me afraid. I did what I could to avoid taking the green line at night because the green line/ 55 bus stop was in front of a check cashing place, a liquor store and a Harold's Fried Chicken. In my defense, most people I knew avoided that stop at night. But, still...
This is not to say I lived my life in Chicago in fear. It was the first time in my life I had made a number of black friends (although I always found myself saying or doing awkward things around them to show how I was "down" with black culture). I walked to work and came across a myriad of folks. My self-esteem grew leaps and bounds because the same men I was occasionally afraid of LOVED my big butt, little waist shape. It was about damn time my curves were appreciated! My boyfriend at the time was raised in Harvey, IL and his friends were another lesson in life lived without privilege. I would vehemently work to overcome by prejudices and, occasionally, have them reinforced. Once I had a guy tell me, "My momma brought me up on welfare, and I'm gonna bring my kids up on welfare!" Way to have dreams, man! Then again, when all you see around you is buildings and schools that are falling apart, I would imagine that it becomes hard to dream.
Now, I live in suburban Seattle and, to my eyes, Seattle is the whitest big city ever. The kids with whom I work seem to see color a lot less than I ever have. At the same time, it worries me that they don't know the history of racism. Is it good that they don't know the horrible things that people have been through, or do we need to teach then the past in order to keep it from continuing? What is the best way to bring people together?

What's my point? My point is that we HAVE to get to know each other. We have to stop sitting with only people who look like us in the cafeteria. We have to start having conversations between the frats and the Black Student Union. We have to start crossing the divide to get to know one another or else this will never, ever get better. We must be intentional about this. There is no way that integration will just happen. It is human nature to be around people who are similar to you. We all do it. When we travel abroad and hear an American, we gravitate towards them (unless they are the Ugly American). When we are new to an office, we look to people who dress like us, or work in the same department for friendship. We need to start going to the other side of town for movies, plays, grocery shopping -- whatever! Those of us who work with youth must find ways to get our kids out of their schools & churches and to the other side of town to meet other kids and build relationships across the racial divide. Without moves like this, Dr. King's dream is still a dream, and Obama's speech is just a blip in the campaign. Let's make it different. Let's help ourselves change.