It’s been fifty years since I graduated from high school. Beginning this blog post with that sentence startles me. I am getting (am?) old. Yet, when reflecting back on my high school years, there’s much that hasn’t changed, among them the conversations about race that I’ve had with those high school friends.
The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot, discussions about racism didn’t occur in our classrooms, and for my white friends, it was just a news headline. Student council elections were underway, and their immediate concern was getting into a good college. Attempts to introduce racism into our conversations were met with sympathy that I didn’t want or need. The problem was that my friends hadn’t even begun to come of age as white people in America, while, at 16, I was approaching middle age in terms of understanding what it meant to be black.
Today, when I talk to white friends from high school, our discussions about racism haven’t changed much. They try to convince me to dismiss Trump’s racist rhetoric and think about the policy changes that have made American lives better ... even for black people! They tell me that Trump has created more jobs for blacks than Obama did. They are not aware that this is a false claim refuted by his own administration. We talk about immigration reform. For the first time, I share that my father, a Jamaican immigrant, was undocumented and tell them about his path to citizenship under Reagan. I talk about bias when it comes to black and brown immigrants versus those from European countries. They assure me they have no biases but just want to remain safe and keep terrorists and drug dealers out of our country. I attempt to heighten their awareness about voter suppression, especially in Georgia. They believe the stories but turn the conversation to concerns about voter fraud. They’re appalled that I think Trump is racist, though they remain curious enough about my assessment to discuss it—only to quickly dismiss the facts I present as fake news. When I say that my facts come directly from Trump’s mouth and his behaviors, they counter that racial tensions started under Obama and that it was Obama who created all of this divisiveness. They don’t understand why I shake my head and just laugh. Let’s not talk about politics anymore, they say. I thought we were talking about racism, I tell them.
This inability to talk about racism is a by-product of the unexamined racial identity of white people and the social privilege that allows them to disassociate themselves from racism. With limited understanding of the complex and nuanced nature of racism, my high school friends remain unwitting students in a course on racial dynamics, only occasionally forced into the classroom by the Black Lives Matter movement, the Charlottesville riots, the NFL protests against police brutality, the rise of white nationalism, the black face scandal and Make America White Again politics.
They acknowledge that they don’t like to talk about racism and don’t find a need to talk about it. They tell me that their worlds have remained small compared to mine, limiting their capacity to identify with my experiences. Yet they have known me all these years and I am a part of their small worlds, however broad mine might be in comparison. They acknowledge that I am a black person who has experienced racism and it makes them feel terrible. They don’t know what they can do about it. I know they are speaking their truth.
I also know that not talking about racism allows my white friends to continue to believe they have no part in perpetuating racism. However, as an adult, having abandoned my commitment to their white comfort, I am no longer their safe black friend. The conversations about racism are challenging but hold promise that one day my friends’ whiteness will be visible to them.
