"No one is born a racist," said my professor mysteriously one day as if he held secret knowledge in his nose that would spill out if he didn't point it at the ceiling. "It's something that you're taught."
Is it déjà vu, or is actually the case that all my professors have uttered that elite phrase time and time again? Their tops tucked neatly in their Ralph Lauren bottoms that wrinkle just above their leather shoes. Sometimes their pencils will tangle in their dry and disheveled hair, especially when they, almost erotically, stroke academic whisps behind their ears.
When I was a baby I hear I was bald. My ruddy skull came out into this world helpless, and then my mama held me. The nurses, she said, cooed. She didn't tell me which of the nurses were black, white, red, yellow, or brown. She didn't tell me the color of my doctor, or the race of the man that baptized me. Instead, all I know about the people involved in my quiet entrance into the world are names, pictures, and words.
People have told me repeatedly, or perhaps it is only déjà vu, to count my privileges. I never counted my privileges when I was young, and I wouldn't even know what to look for. Would little me have thought to count my peers of color like the racially-sensitive do now? Would selfish me have believed that I was better off than the Mexican girl who had a phone and deluxe Barbie makeup kits before my birthday money from my grandparents even reached my immature hands? Every birthday, my gifted money was deposited straight into my college savings account.
When my Daddy said I couldn't have something, I always thought the only reason my friend could was because she was richer, or spoiled, or had saved up for years. I never thought it had anything to do with her skin color. Why should it?
My teachers tell me we're all equal. They say that as they look at me and tell me we're not. "White people were the KKK," they say. As they croak their pale skin grows ashy under the florescents waning overhead. "White people are selfish bigots."
I never thought walking in the store included strangers sizing me up for my skin color. People with Michael Kors handbags hissing at me because behind my thrift store wardrobe there's a neck of ivory flesh.
It wasn't until I went to college because it never happened before. People were just people, with their own colors and cultures. I didn't have to read through historic sins to decide which culture was better or worse. Today, tomorrow, the next day is just the way it is.
Now I'm counting black friends.
No one is necessarily guilty of racism if their friends share the same ethnicity, just the way those who have a diverse friend group aren't necessarily racist. But one would think so.
"I have a black friend," some say,
"Ah, but I've got three white friends."
"No, but I actually have a black, Hispanic, and Asian friend."
"My friend is Native American."
The conversations go on.
Meanwhile, we point middle fingers at those whose friends happen to share their same ideas and beliefs, and who also share their epidermal palette.
"Bigots," we say.
"Sheltered," we add.
"Racists," our media screams from the radios.
When I was young I'd watch the 70 lb T.V. screen spit out images to feast our hungry eyes. My family, after a long, relentless day would fall asleep on the couch watch black and white films on TCM. One of the earliest movies I remember seeing made me cry.
It was called "The Imitation of Life," and was about a white woman and black maid who team up to start a pancake line. Long story short, the daughter of the maid who was partially white rejected the race and culture of her black mother and broke her mother's heart. The last time she saw her mother after several years was when she wet her mama's coffin at the funeral, saying, "I'm sorry, Mama. I'm sorry."
At that time I thought the only difference between ethnicities was purely aesthetic; the color of the eyes the shape of the nose, the hue of the skin. I didn't want there to be a difference that wasn't simply skin deep.
"There's a difference" someone told me.
It's the kind of difference that would stop the building of the Tower of Babal God so so strictly forbid. The dichotomy of prints and sofa colors and the kind of cars folks drive. It's the faint scents come from the kitchen, whiffs of tortillas and goat's milk, or cornbread and ham, or chicken and greens, or kimchi or curry. It's what you wear on Sunday if you go to church at all. It's the way you speak and the way you know you shouldn't. Cultures can vary between ethnicities, but no ethnicity has the same culture.
How is having a culture wrong?
When I first started college, I'd scratch my skin til it was red. My heart would pound like a giant thumb against a tin pan when someone looked me in the eye. People scoffed when they walked by-- girls with car keys and iPhones, and guys trailing after them with moonpie eyes.
My first friends were those a different color as me. We'd laugh at each other still unaffected by textbooks. Then some day the next semester, a professor must have handed us a syllabus.
I remember sitting on an ancient brick wall on campus after a long day at school, waiting to see my only regular friend that semester. I had just called my mama, something not as common as it used to be the first few weeks of my freshman year when I was a homesick commuter without any friends.
I saw different friends walk by, now friends with each other in a friend group. They were speaking about racism. "You're my only white friend!" one friend pointed at me as I sat there uncomfortably, scratching my neck. "You could get in more sororities than me. You could run for president. You realize, don't you, that most people would accept you on this campus? You've got more privileges than me. White guys would go out with you, but they sleep with black girls on this campus & dump them the next day. The minority is so small that I know every black kid on campus. You're more welcomed than me."
I smiled and looked down, wondering what had happened.
I'd become the "white friend."
And now they were my black friends.
And we weren't just different now, but we judged each other based on stereotypes.
Somewhere, between the shelves of untouched books in the library, or the dorm sinks stuffed in vomit, or the thrilling games of beer pong, or the stuttering syllables spewed sweetly from my professor's mouth, we had given in to the saluted agenda of everyday racism.
I think it comes in doses until suddenly there's an apparent difference. When your teachers tell you John has more privileges than Harry then Harry gets mad. When John sees that Harry gets more attention from the teacher than he does, John gets mad. Soon they hate each other.
It's as if we are toddlers thrown into a baby pen and told to get along. If we weren't thrown in the pen we wouldn't know have to fight over space and toys. We would be able to get along on our own, without realizing that we are supposed to.
When I worked for $7.25 an hour at the Dollar Store, riots were all over the radio. Whites were angry against black protestors, and blacks were angry at the police. In the manipulation of news media, the problem became a racial stereotype. Blacks were supposed to hate the police, whites were supposed to adore them.
The news reporters would pick their stance depending on how racially sensitive they'd appear. Whites would share pictures in support of the police, blacks would share pictures against it. All while we watched.
Yet things aren't always so one-sided. White customers would come through the lines cussing out police officers, and black women would come through the lines anxious about their sons on duty.
There are many black police officers and there are many white protestors.
Yet in our eagerness to be as unracist as possible, we leave the humans behind. Flesh and blood. Not words or politics.
We chose our battles based on how racist or non racist things appear, forgetting that the world isn't always so black and white.
Somewhere between the caf and the US Constitution, I became afraid to call people black.
Black people got afraid to call me white, and instead opted for "Caucasian" or nothing at all.
"Is it okay to say black or POC?" we ask.
"I guess I can't say cracker?"
Somewhere, in the years postluding our pubescence and in the classroom seats of first adult adventures, we'd fear to have a political stance because we were told some stances were race-based.
I didn't want to be white.
Somewhere, between lies and power and media and literature we've become products of racism.
It isn't from our parents, from our churches, from our skin. It doesn't matter if we're white, or black, or yellow, or brown, or red, or purple, or green, or blue.
It happens when the sensitivity courses tell us we should have diverse friend groups only for the sake of diversity. That we should date that white girl because it makes us look something other than a racist. When the person behind the melanin is only accepted based on the color of her skin, and when our cultures are belittled because they're more than skin-deep.
I don't think diversity is wrong. But how is picking and choosing the better race different than racism?
Why are we taking sides?
How I've wondered the many times my professors have wanted to rip their skin from their body to exchange it for something darker, or lighter, or redder.
When my white professors slander their own skin color, and my black professors worry about how to speak to white students in the class for fear of appearing insensitive.
Racism isn't something we're born with. I think it's something we learn when we become numbers on papers and theories on PowerPoints.
"You don't really think of race before you go to college," say the professors, noses still reaching for the air. "Your eyes will open soon."
As I crack open my textbook in the classroom where we read books about segregation and riots and slavery and bombs, I look around the squirming room.
Racism isn't something you're born with. Racism is something you're taught.
