Dear White America

[pnwmom]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/dear-white-america/

Dear White America,

I have a weighty request. As you read this letter, I want you to listen with love, a sort of love that demands that you look at parts of yourself that might cause pain and terror, as James Baldwin would say. Did you hear that? You may have missed it. I repeat: I want you to listen with love. Well, at least try.

We don’t talk much about the urgency of love these days, especially within the public sphere. Much of our discourse these days is about revenge, name calling, hate, and divisiveness. I have yet to hear it from our presidential hopefuls, or our political pundits. I don’t mean the Hollywood type of love, but the scary kind, the kind that risks not being reciprocated, the kind that refuses to flee in the face of danger. To make it a bit easier for you, I’ve decided to model, as best as I can, what I’m asking of you. Let me demonstrate the vulnerability that I wish you to show. As a child of Socrates, James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, let me speak the truth, refuse to err on the side of caution.

This letter is a gift for you. Bear in mind, though, that some gifts can be heavy to bear. You don’t have to accept it; there is no obligation. I give it freely, believing that many of you will throw the gift back in my face, saying that I wrongly accuse you, that I am too sensitive, that I’m a race hustler, and that I blame white people (you) for everything.

I have read many of your comments. I have even received some hate mail. In this letter, I ask you to look deep, to look into your souls with silence, to quiet that voice that will speak to you of your white “innocence.” So, as you read this letter, take a deep breath. Make a space for my voice in the deepest part of your psyche. Try to listen, to practice being silent. There are times when you must quiet your own voice to hear from or about those who suffer in ways that you do not.

SNIP

[truedelphi]

1. You and I don't often agree, but I want to thank you for this post.

Recently a homeless man was shot and killed in San Francisco. (I believe he was Latino, but it shouldn't matter.)

Those of us who have followed this closely know that he was given 30 seconds from the time the cops lept out of their car and issued commands for him to follow about putting his hands up in the air

Thirty seconds.

I am so sick and exhausted over situations like this. Over the past 96 hours, the last few letters to the editor that I read pointed out that if people were simply using common sense and did as the police told them, then they wouldn't get shot. Now I can't imagine that anyone who is or has ever been poor, or part of a counter culture or of a darker skin color could write such a letter. So I assume that the letter writers are white people. And I imagine that none of us here think like that.

If I was homeless and suddenly a cop car pulled up, lights blazing and sirens screaming, then I think I would be too startled to do anything for at least ten seconds. Being hard of hearing, I can't believe that I would know what they were shouting at me. I would be in shock. And probably every bit as unresponsive as the homeless man was.

This is now our America. When I watch movies dating back to the 1950's, before we had experienced our nation supposedly embrace Civil rights, people were robbing banks and not getting shot dead. Now a person can be shot dead because some older person in the neighborhood thinks they have a gun or a knife, and it might turn out that they have a burrito! And it is almost always people of color, or else the very poor or else the mentally ill. And almost as bad, the next week will show us newspaper readers how an entire segment of our society thinks it is okay these people got shot!

####

[pnwmom]

2. You're welcome. And I agree -- my reaction would be to be stunned, too.

I'm not that quick on processing stressful events like that -- I would tend to freeze. It is terrible what we have let our police forces become, in all too many places.

But the last paragraph had the biggest impact on me:

If you have young children, before you fall off to sleep tonight, I want you to hold your child. Touch your child’s face. Smell your child’s hair. Count the fingers on your child’s hand. See the miracle that is your child. And then, with as much vision as you can muster, I want you to imagine that your child is black.

I'll always remember having my first baby, postpartum hormonal, and suddenly being struck by the fact, while I was nursing my baby, that all over the world there were other mothers doing the same thing and that they loved their babies as much as I loved mine -- and how could we hurt anyone else's baby!

We are all connected, if only we could understand it. In that one moment, I did. But it's something I have to remind myself.

[brer cat]

3. Quite interesting and provocative.

The final paragraph is a gut-kick. As a parent and grandparent, I have often tried to imagine being the mother or grandmother of a black child, to attempt to create in my soul the love/fear/terror that must always coexist in the soul of the black parent. I can't do it, and that is white privilege.

[pnwmom]

4. Maybe the easiest way to put yourself in her shoes

is if you're nursing a baby and oxytocin is pouring through your body.



That's how it happened to me.