I’m Not A Racist
I’m not a racist. But there’s a racist living inside me. Born within the sweet but stunted world of 1950s Pennsylvania where we grew up entwined, it was nurtured by eating “n***** baby” candy Saturday mornings at the movie theater, from weaving in and out of wide-eyed racial tension at WFEC’s Soul Music Reviews, and driving through the ghetto that stretched from 6th Street to 7th, from Division Street to State – the only place where we’d see cars double parked in the middle of the road.
This part of me has had a life of its own all these years but I got bigger than it long ago. Like all the other parts I see inside me – the narcissist, the judge, the “not enough”, and more – I discovered they are not me, just parts of me which get triggered by one circumstance or another.
I’m not a racist, nor a narcissist, a judge or not enough. These are just parts of me who spend each moment looking out through a lens for something specific, some threat, something intolerable, waiting for some other shoe to drop. I notice them and these days they are like the subtle sensation of a phantom limb. They’ll always be there but I’m present enough now in every moment to notice them as they arise, sometimes as a thought, sometimes as an impulse, real and tangible inside the private environment of my experience.
This racist gets triggered simply by me seeing a black person. It’s that easy. But there’s no judgment. There never was. My parents did a beautiful job of modeling that for me. The racist simply says, “oh look, it’s a black person”. It never meant anything to me more than that, but it’s a formal designation of difference. No paranoia, no repulsion, no disrespect. Just recognition that I’m talking with someone who comes from a different tribe than me.
What I see as the problem with this part of me is not so much a descent into wariness as that it runs counter to another part that I happen to cherish. That’s the part that has the orientation that we’re all in this together.
Probably instilled in me by my father, we’re all in this together is with me when I walk past a stranger or when I see someone in distress. It’s running the show when I engage in a conflict and when choosing to recycle my plastic. It holds me as I listen to zealots and take in TV news. It’s the home I live in, from where I invite others in.
My father did all those things and he did them naturally and sincerely, with grace and charm and a charisma that made everyone feel special. He grew up in Steelton, a Jew among Catholics, and owned a shop on the edge of the black ghetto in Harrisburg. He was loved by everyone – really. That’s because he truly loved everyone and showed it freely.
In so many ways he helped those less fortunate, giving jobs to those who showed sincerity, speaking in court in someone’s defense, gifting many at Christmas, bringing convicts home for dinner from the penitentiary where he volunteered as a teacher and getting them furloughed to be able to come. Many were black, and I saw how much they loved my dad.
Those experiences preceded my candy-filled Saturday morning movies, the soul music reviews, and knowing the word “ghetto”. Life started with that foundation of respect, a feeling that permeated recognition of differences and overpowered any concept of superiority. I’ve been waking up since then to various parts of myself, containing some, indulging others, consciously engaging in relationships both internally and externally from the perspective that no one is required to sit in the back of the bus, that we’re all just bozos on this bus.
So even though the racist in me, that part that recognizes the difference in color, lets me know it’s there, my association is one of love and compassion, humor and wisdom, and being in it together.