I'm Racist - There, I've Said It....

I am, though I cringe to admit it, a racist... I am... truly...

I grew up in a time - the 60s - and a place - New Zealand - where black faces were hardly ever seen...

I grew up with, was educated by and with, socialised by and with whites - mostly people whose roots were in the United Kingdom, some who came from various parts of Europe...

I saw brown faces and yellow faces and olive-complexioned faces here and there, but black faces not at all... at least not until I was in my teens and my mother rented out one of the bedrooms in our house to students from Africa who were studying at our local university as part of the Colombo Plan...

There's a studio portrait of me as a young child, sitting on the floor, playing with one of those (now highly collectible) metal money boxes, made in the shape of a young black child, with a moveable arm that takes coins up to his mouth and drops them through the slot that is his lips...

At school we learned to read using the stories of Little Black Sambo:

we had that choosing rhyme: Eenie, meanie, minie, moh, catch a NIGGER by the toe, if he squeals, let him go, eenie, meanie, minie, moh...

and we had the BBC's Black & White Minstrel Show on television:

Nothing in this was thought to be disrespectful; in fact, it wasn't thought of at all - there was no concept of political correctness... and as young children, absorbing this through osmosis, without the capacity or experience to think critically about it, without a frame of reference/context to hang any of this on, how could we possibly know that there was anything wrong in this?

Of course, later when I got a chance to look at the world with mature eyes, to learn history, to travel and to think things through, I saw how caricaturish, stereotypical and inappropriate all of this was...

I don't know if anyone MEANT all of this to be actively racist... not in New Zealand anyway... I get the feeling that someone in education for example, working out a reading curriculum, saw the readers on the market, thought "how cute, kids will love these" and plowed on without thinking it through... while New Zealanders then were inventive and creative and bright and savvy in many respects, they were, after all, isolated down at the bottom of the world, away - in experience, distance and time - from much of what was fomenting in the US...

My point is that as a young child, I was exposed to, and took in, various disrespectful, RACIST images and messages about people of colour, mostly African and, by extension, African Americans.  And this stuff gets hardwired into the brain... it just pops up when a cue is triggered...

In 1990, I went back to school, to get a diploma in broadcast journalism.  As part of our coursework, we were required to undertake compulsory cultural sensitivity training.   I wrote about that here: White Privilege & Colour Blindness

To this day, despite that "sensitivity training" and my willing acceptance of the truth with which I was confronted in that class, certain images, sounds or real time 3D interactions will cause a racist thought to come to mind, a thought that was seeded in those early childhood exposures... I don't know how to stop those thoughts arising in a nano-second... I notice them, am ashamed and I send them packing...

In truth, while I've had a lot of interaction with people of all skin colours, from many countries, cultures, religions, sexual orientations, gender identifications, I still feel confused and foolish when I am around people "other" than me.   I feel ignorant and diffident around them... I am ALWAYS afraid that my ignorance will cause offence in some way... that I will do or say something that is unintentionally hurtful, demeaning, perceived as arrogant, patronising, RACIST...

And then I get pissy... I know I'm a good, kind, loving person who honours all beings, who is sincerely interested in deep, meaningful, respectful connection with others, who is not intentionally racist.   Why should I be on the back foot all the time, feel defensive in even the most superficial encounters with others who are not like me?

And then, finally, it all comes full circle, when on a Twitter thread yesterday some person I don't know comments in a discussion on poverty and education (with a sub text that poor black children have it harder than poor white children), that all white people are a plague on the earth...

I guess that might be poetic justice, that a person of colour makes global statements about the white race, just as whites have made global statements about blacks... But is that an improvement, an evolution?  

There was a complete unwillingness to acknowledge that oppression happens to all of us, to varying degrees.  That I might have more privilege than a black woman, but that I have less than a white man... and that black woman has more privilege than a Native American woman... That we humans have ALWAYS found ways to marginalise each other, to get power over each other, since the dawn of time, within our own families, clans, tribes and in relation to the "other", the "outsider"... We are in many respects, no different to wild pack animals, who have complicated rules around dominance.  We pretend we have risen above all that, but we haven't... we're just a lot more subtle - though no less brutal - about how we enforce it...

Nothing can/will change until we human beings deal with each other as unique individuals, without all of the baggage history has left us with... we can't turn the clock back... we can't undo what was done... in many cases, we can't fix it, though some countries, like New Zealand, are attempting to right some wrongs and heal some wounds...

What is to be done to help us move forward in some kind of state of grace?

Who Wins the Prize for Being the Most Victimised?

It's really stressful living in a country where the original sin of genocide and land theft hasn't been addressed, which is then overlaid by the atrocity of slavery, which is then overlaid by convict deportation, which is then overlaid by false promises of equality, freedom, justice and liberty for all... so much dysfunction... and so much jostling for the role of "most damaged victim"...

In my opinion, the ONLY people here who need justice and restitution right now, are the original people living in this land, on this continent... the rest of us arrived as immigrants and we all - of every skin colour - have huge privilege, taken/bought on the backs of that indigenous suffering, displacement and genocide... 

Deal with/heal that original sin/wound and much of the other victimising/victimhood will fade away...

Let me say up front, that I recognise and own my status/privilege as a white formerly middle class woman with the advantage of a good education... having owned that, and at the risk of being vilified, I'm going to admit that I can't be bothered finding my way through the maze of which race in this country, on this continent, on this planet, has been the most victimised...

I totally get that since I left The Netherlands/Holland as a child, I have been an immigrant to four countries and lived well in each, which comfort was paid for by the suffering of the indigenous people who had been colonised in times past; in some of those countries the first colonisers were white... in others, they were brown or yellow skinned...

I know what its like to be an outsider... coming into a country, speaking a different language, not knowing the customs, being of a different class... being teased, bullied, "oppressed" by other whites - yes, racism DOES exist within groups sharing the same skin colour...

and... I totally get the pain of the wounds inflicted by the colonisers... and wherever possible, reparations and restitution should happen...

and... this whole tendency to oppression thing is something it seems all humans on the planet have within themselves, individually and collectively... there's black on black oppression, yellow on yellow, white on white, brown on brown, 'red' on 'red' oppression... I've seen it, everywhere I've gone... In Singapore, for example, until recently it used to be white on yellow, yellow on brown and brown on brown... now that most of the whites are expat business people, not colonial rulers, it's yellow on brown, brown on brown...

and... we've been doing it since the beginning of gathering together in groups... check out the history of human interaction - conquest and colonisation - on every continent...

so, at some point, don't we have to give up on holding on to it all, because, really, aren't we ALL guilty?

I think I have just laid myself open to criticism from less privileged people, that "it's OK for you, you're white and at the top of the pyramid"... and yes, theoretically I am quite high up on that scale... My skin, gender and education get me privileges that other people might not have... AND... at the same time, poverty hurts my child as much as it does a child of any other skin colour... being an outsider, a minority anywhere is hard for any child of any colour or creed... how are we ever going to heal any of this if we don't find some commonality somewhere?

and just to prove the point, this article crossed my path today, highlighting the sad fact that this separation and bigotry is happening currently, amongst Native American people: On Card Carrying Indians and Those Indians Who Don't

 

Well... I've Been A Long Time Gone...

... and a lot has happened in that time...

the boy and I were homeless - in Seattle, on Vashon Island and back in Seattle... though we never had to sleep in the van or in a shelter, thanks to loving people in our lives, old friends and new...

we are now in transitional housing - we have a warm, dry, comfortable house to ourselves with our cats, with a big yard full of tall trees, in a beach-side neighbourhood just a bit north of the Seattle city limits.   And we have some breathing space to rebuild our lives here, seeing the courts said I couldn't take the boy back to Australia to live...

found out a while ago that the people the boy's father hired to represent him and give evidence in court on his behalf were FATHERS' RIGHTS people.... wondered at the time what was the hidden agenda being played out, given the weirdness of these peoples' actions and attacks - now I know... I didn't stand a chance against them, especially without an attorney representing me...

and I have to say I am seriously pissy that total strangers, with an anti-woman axe to grind, have managed to interfere in our lives so much!  There are things to be done about that - all in good time...

have pulled back from much of the social activism I was doing, including this blog, obviously!   Much of what I was seeing going on in the world and was dealing with personally, was making me angry and bitter and cynical, and using that anger to fuel my social justice advocacy, and having that arena as a place to vent my resentment, wasn't working any longer... I had to step back and focus on our own immediate environment and needs...

and I have been doing a second go-around with breast cancer... After a year of dithering and playing around with alternative ideas regarding treatment, I finally put my hand up for some neo-adjuvant chemotherapy to shrink the tumours prior to surgery and radiation... it hasn't been much fun and the novelty really and truly has worn off!  

and we have been doing unschooling stuff with classes on basic electronics, geology, astronomy and chemistry... and the boy started Aikido three months ago, loves it and has already earned his yellow stripe... he's aiming for a black belt, he tells me...

looking forward to the arrival of daughter number 2 in December, staying for a month... Haven't seen her for almost 10 years...

and so very, very grateful for all the kindred spirits in our lives, who have loved and supported us, and continue to do that, as we are walking this path... 

speaking of this blog... am kinda committed to getting it back up and running... I notice that on many older posts, the embedded videos no longer work - Youtube pulled them for various reasons.... I don't have the energy right now to go and find new pieces to replace them, and I probably never will have the motivation!   Sorry about that!