Like every good-hearted American, the events of the past few weeks and months have been increasingly discouraging and depressing for me. All of the videos, some of which I can’t watch...at first I tried to watch them all. I wanted to bear witness. But it was too much. I watch the moms and families, listen to them talk about their loved one, bear witness to that instead of the violence. It is heartbreaking. Maybe because of my autism, I’ve always felt the pain of all humanity. Maybe everyone can feel humanity’s pain and they can ignore it. I don’t know, I’ve only ever been me, and since I was a little kid I was deeply, deeply concerned about the state of civilization. It’s gotten louder. The population has doubled during my lifetime; if it seems more crowded to you over-40’s, that’s because it is. But it has also gotten louder because when I was a kid, there weren’t stores filled with cheap imported goods made under unthinkable conditions that are for all intents and purposes modern slavery. But I digress.
I was trying to explain the situation to my Brazilian friend. I told him that my people, white Americans, especially white Southern Americans, do not understand that black people are human. We of a certain age were mostly raised to believe in offensive, subhuman stereotypes about our neighbors and schoolmates. Most of us figured it out when we started school, but there are still a lot of white people, I am ashamed to say, who hold these views. This leads my people to unfortunately devalue the lives of our black brothers and sisters, even when they don’t understand that they’re doing it. It’s like pointing out water to a fish. Therefore, we have to remind them that black lives matter too, just as much as white lives. It is so very hard for my people to learn this, that is has to be repeated over and over.
What I can’t get my head around is that this has been happening all along. It took a while to really sink in. The violence isn’t new, it’s the citizen journalists who are new. The videos are new. The deaths have been happening all along. And black people have been trying to tell white America for years that this was happening, and have been frustrated in their efforts. We wouldn’t listen. We ignored it, and enabled it, and tacitly approved it. How many people have died while we were turning away? It is unthinkable, for me. I am ashamed of the color of my skin right now. And I’m amazed that black Americans have been so patient, so determined, so relatively nonviolent in their response to the oppression. My brothers and sisters, I am in awe. And I am woke.
Maybe there should be a #WhiteMindsCanChange movement. It’s going to be hard to change white attitudes; it permeates our culture so thoroughly. I believe that enlightened white people have a duty to whitesplain this to any unreconstructed racist they encounter. (Do not attempt if subject is armed.) This racism, it’s a white problem and white people are going to have to solve it. We can’t expect the black community to fix it; we built it. And besides, they have other stuff to do. Like grieve, and comfort one another.
As we all know, racist attitudes are now getting worse because that, that THING is making it seem normal and OK to be a flaming asshole racist. Even the young are affected, and I had so hoped it would die out. We are all one human family, and we need to pull together, because we have several dangerous situations we need to address. We don’t have time to argue with idiots anymore.
If you are a person of color, I want to offer you my apology. In the past there have been times when I let someone’s racism slide because it was easier. I am so sorry. I am so sorry that you’ve had to teach your children to be afraid. I am so sorry that it took us seeing it with our own eyes before we would believe you. I hope now we can find the political will to seriously change the system.
It feels so...nothing, what I can offer. It’s so inadequate, yet what adequate remedy can we offer a mother who has lost her child to a police officer’s bullet? Nothing. If it was me, I’d be out of my mind with grief. I’m so sick of the hate. I’m sorry that my apology is so meaningless and insubstantial. My stupid, silly white guilt doesn’t help anyone. I just feel so sad for everyone right now. All I can offer is that I am even more determined to change the world, and if I have to piss off tons of white rednecks to do it, that’s ok.
Thanks for listening.