On race

When I was a child, my brother played soprano bugle in a Drum and Bugle Corps sponsored by an American Legion post.  The corps was interracial, as central New Jersey has always been a melting pot.

One night, when the fathers got to the American Legion post to pick up their children, there was some time to kill, so they decided to have a beer together at the bar in the post.  The bar refused to serve one of the dads, who happened to be a person of color.

The other dads left the bar, got their sons, and the sons all quit that Drum and Bugle Corps.  The corps disbanded, as so many other members quit too, appalled at the treatment of their son's friend's father, or of their friend.

That was the first time my parents talked to me and my brother and sisters about the obligation that comes with being white. I was taught that I have an obligation to reject racism, to reject people who are racist, to call out people who base their decisions on skin color, and to stand in solidarity with the people of color who I interact with.  I was taught that looking the other way when people are discriminated against is as bad as practicing discrimination yourself.

When I moved to Louisiana as an adult, I was not one of those people who thought the South had prejudice and discrimination and the North didn't, because I had been raised to really look and see what was real, and I had lived through the race riots in New Jersey in the sixties.

What I wasn't prepared for when I moved to Louisiana was the extraordinary breadth of the palette of skin tones that can be called white or black.

I have sat in rooms in Louisiana where the person with the darkest complexion identified as white, and several people in the room with fairer complexions identified as black.  And I came to understand just how artificial a construct race actually is.

That is not to say that people of color are not disproportionately discriminated against in America.  They absolutely are.  And those of us who are not discriminated against must stand with them, must protect them, must cry and bleed with them when they are hurting.

But race is an artificial construct.  The color of my skin no more informs you about me than the color of my hair, or the color of my eyes, or my height, or the texture of my hair.

Skin color is just another physical attribute.  We don't pick it, and we can't change it, it is just a thing.

I totally understand and appreciate that many people's life experience and formation has been influenced by the color of their skin.  I totally understand and appreciate that when you are under attack, it is normal to trust the people who look like the people defending you, and distrust the people that look like the people who are attacking you.

But just because someone shares a physical attribute with someone, that doesn't mean they are anything like them.  Would you consider thinking all white men with dark hair are psychopathic killers because Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson were white men with dark hair? It is equally ridiculous to make assumptions about a person based on the color of their skin.

And therein lies the great problem that we need to overcome in America if race relations are ever going to improve.  We all need to admit that the color of our skin has shaped our formation.  Has shaped the history of the United States of America.  We have to admit that institutional racism exists.  We have to appreciate the distrust and discomfort our brothers and sisters of color have of white people, and of the police and judicial system.

And then we need to stop letting skin color matter to us, and treat everyone the same regardless of the color of their skin.  All the while remaining conscious of skin color, so that we white people are prepared to defend and protect our brothers and sisters of color should that become necessary.  It won't be easy to grow past this horrible divide that seems the deepest it has ever been in my lifetime.

But we are all humans.  We are all connected.  We are all part of the collective fabric of our families, our neighborhoods, our towns and cities, our country, our world.  We can overcome this artificial divide.  But we have to work on it.  This is a problem that will never go away unless we actively work on making it go away.