Questions...

Happy New Year!

Since I have a constant rotation of goals going on I don't generally do resolutions. I've always felt that resolutions seemed kind of negative. Fixing things that are wrong with you, while goals seemed more positive, striving toward bettering things. Probably just a framing thing. So in the spirit of re-framing I am going to put forward a few resolutions... 

I resolve to continue to be the best and most me me that I can be. I resolve to not only keep looking for answers but to keep looking for better questions. I resolve to keep making lists of goals and stretch goals and challenging myself to be more than I thought I could be. 

Happy New Year to you all! I hope that 2018 finds you being the best you that you can be and striving to be even more.

That was my New Year's Eve status this year on Facebook. I wanted to put it up here because what I'm about to talk about falls in to this resolution. Ask better questions.

I have been listening to a podcast from Scene on the Radio called Seeing White and it's been fascinating. Partly because it's exploring something that was actually new to me this year. The idea of when race became a thing. Specifically white. I think most of us just assume that it's always been this way. But when Brent and I were in Washington DC this year we toured the Smithsonian's newest museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and I discovered that white as a construct was relatively new. And unsurprisingly it had to do with slavery.

(I highly recommend the museum, by the way, but it's not a frivolous trip, it's heavy. It makes you really think. Brent said he wasn't sure how any white person doesn't leave wanting to apologize and any black person doesn't leave really angry.)

So anyway, the concept of white as a race started in the 17th century. Before that people were defined by where they were from. And even after that there was a lot of that going on. Still is really, but even more so in the past, the Saxons hated the Celts for instance. And now we would never think to separate them from each other, just white. But it was used to "other" people so there could be less guilt about slavery. If there were white people and the white people were the best people then holding the others as slaves was a good idea and really was best for them, poor backward souls. Not even kidding, those were the rationalizations.

So back to the Seeing White podcast. It's talking about race and racism in the United States. And it's incredibly interesting. And I am learning a lot. There are things being covered that I had no idea about. Because we are really bad at teaching history in our country. We like to polish it up and spin it and make things tidy. History is never tidy. And our history, the history of our country, is really messy. But because we refuse to talk about it we can't move past it.

I live in a really white city in a really white state. When Brent and I first moved here were both noticed it, you can't help but notice it if you move from someplace else. He grew up in Michigan and I grew up in New Mexico. When he first moved to New Mexico from Michigan he noticed how few black people were around. I hadn't ever paid attention to that. We have a lot of shades of brown and white, hadn't realized how lacking in black we were. You don't notice what has always been. But Brent noticed that there was a lack of black and more shades of brown than he had been used to. When we moved up here we noticed that the shades of brown and black were lessened immensely. And you had to go to different neighborhoods to see any diversity at all. What variety we have here is pretty segregated. There are historically African American communities in Portland, Hillsboro has a higher Mexican population, and where Brent and I live we have a high Asian and Indian population, though that is growing and newer, but it's always been higher than the rest of Portland because of Intel and Nike, now it's just even higher. But even with that I can go most days and count the number of black or hispanic people I see on one hand. It's white around here.

And when I found out that it wasn't white by coincidence but by design I was shocked.

Portland? Liberal Portland?

Well, yeah. The KKK was huge here in the day. Our constitution had rules about no black people built in to it. It was a sundown state. As in you could work here, or travel through here, but if you were black you needed to be gone by sundown. You couldn't live here. That's why it's so white around here. The people that settled this state were white. The people that passed down their land passed it down to their white kids, who passed it down to white kids who....see where this is going? Even now it's got a really nasty racist underbelly that shows itself more and more these days.

These are the sorts of things you find out when you start asking questions. And we have a whole lot of these sorts of things in our history as a country. And we try and tidy them up. South Bad. North Good. Well, except for the fact that there were race riots in New York over the Civil War. White people beat up black people in the streets because they didn't want to go fight a war for "them." And the mayor of New York City wanted to succeed rather than be part of the Union. New York City. Our history is complicated. Abraham Lincoln would have kept slavery intact if he thought it would save the Union. Ralph Waldo Emerson who gets a lot lot of love for being anti-slavery wasn't anti-slavery because of the slaves, it was because he thought it wasn't good for white people. He didn't care about the slaves themselves, just thought the barbarism of holding slaves was beneath whites. Or more specifically Saxons. He hated the Celts as well. But we don't read those books by him. Only the ones we have polished and shined. History is messy, people are messy.

And we built our country on this foundation. And we don't want to deal with it still. The things that are left. The generations of head start that white people got with land and money. The way we still "other" anyone with different skin coloration. We say insane things like "I'm color blind." Well you only get to be color blind if you are white. Really. When you know you aren't going to be judged first by your skin it's easy to say that it shouldn't matter. But when you carry your difference on your face? Then it's not so easy. And we shouldn't be color blind anyway. We should respect the differences. Race doesn't really exist scientifically. We are all the human race, that's it. But culturally? There are differences. And differences upon differences. Where are you from? What part of the country? What traditions are passed down? What beliefs does your family hold? Culturally there are a lot of differences. So color blind is stupid. How about instead of saying you don't see color you see it and see if it's benefiting you while disadvantaging someone else?

Ask better questions.

What is the real problem with our race issues in this country? Why do we have them? And why can't we talk about them?

I'm a middle aged white woman. Trust me I know it's hard to have this discussion. I have black friends and their lives are different than mine. I know there are people out there that don't want to believe it but I've listened when they talk about their experiences and they are different than mine. I believe them when they talk about things that have happened to them because of the color of their skin. And I've seen it. I've talked about it before, my best friend and I had very different experiences in stores depending on if we were shopping with my mother or hers. Two black women and a white one or two white women and a black one. The math ratio made a difference. Don't be color blind. That doesn't help deal with those sorts of problems.

As I was listening today I was flashing back on arguments I've had with other white people over the years and thought, everyone should listen to this. And HEAR it. But the problem is, they won't. The people who do not want to recognize that our forefathers built the racism in to our system would never seek this out to listen to it. And if they did they would spend so much time getting defensive that they wouldn't be able to hear it. Because that's what happens. Defensive. "I'm not a racist!" You might not be, but you have benefited from a racist system. And because you have, it behooves you to try and fix it for the next generation coming up. If you want to be colorblind you need to make a system that is as well. But you don't. You want to stomp around and make clear that you aren't racist and everything you have you got on your own and there was no benefit and....

I don't know what will fix our issues. I don't know how to repair the foundation we were built on. I don't have any real answers. But I'm going to keep asking questions. I'm going to keep seeking out the messy history. I'm going to keep looking at what is there. Ask better questions and you'll learn so much more than you ever thought you needed to know.