About five years ago I was driving around the Berkeley hills with someone I'll call a comrade in the arts. A very "well educated" Celtic-Anglo-French American mother of two; happily married and fortunate enough to live in one of the wealthier, very nice parts of Oakland, California. A friend that I performed music with and often did some work for. I consider her a great talent though I have not seen her in ages. As the conversation turned to talk of my occasional presentations in area schools she commented:
"I hope you don't have to deal with all those diversity Nazis, you know? The ones that are always on about how bad I'm supposed to feel because I'm white? With the whole 'don't you wish you weren't related to all those oppressors' and I'm like actually 'no', in fact I'm proud I come from highly intelligent composers, conquerors, writers and artists! We actually have a hell of lot going for us historically! And my kids are not going to feel ashamed about who they are either."
The rest of the conversation was pretty much along the same lines. Add to that the very negative experience she had working a retail job while attending CAL, continually being bullied by two African American girls and there were not many discernible elements of patience and equanimity to be found regarding her views on race:
"They'd touch my hair and say 'you're good looking, for what you are and sit on their fat asses, never do any work and make nasty comments for no other reason besides the fact I'm white." More of the same type of statements followed including how shopping out in " Walnut Creek aka whitey town" (her words said with gusto) was always preferable.
It is uncomfortable for an anti-racist to know how to respond to such an acquaintance's experience. You may have a similar conversation with a stranger whom you happen to sit with for ten minutes on a park bench and possibly you've said similar things yourself. Societal conditioning tells white people to nod their heads and/or try to either change the subject or commiserate and let out the "inner rabid racist" that supposedly all POC feels lives inside every white person. The latter position has some truth to it, as the subconscious thread in American race relations, buoyed largely by the media's pandering to historical stereotypes , that says because the white power structure is omnipotent and all knowing that it will label, or worst, cast out, those who dare dissent and side with the "others". And because ultimately most people bow down to power.
Granted this was not a friend in the close sense, this was an employer and someone I was friendly with through the arts. It made me wonder how many white employees nod along. Yet, it would be wrong not to acknowledge that her experiences were hurtful and that she has every reason to want to raise her children without guilt. Yes you'll hear people of all races act as she did. The upper middle white liberal guilt and self hatred in the Bay Area is legend and much of its well intentioned original principles that grew out of the Free Speech Movement at CAL long gone in favour of conspicuous consumption and blatantly hypocritical attempts at diversity (eg: marching for Tibetan liberation while paying women poverty level wages for childcare etc). Meanwhile the miserable poverty and crime that many African-American, Hispanic, Asian and White people endure in the SF/Bay lower class is some of the worst in the country. (Due to the sharp class and race distinctions in Oakland, virtually all white wealthy parents have their children in private schools at some point.) Alongside those two, very real extremes is a small but very committed, very stalwart community of every type of person, activist, economic background, age, race and combo thereof imaginable (many of them parents) who "keep it real", get things accomplished and who make community groups in places like Berkeley and Albany the storied torch-bearers of successful diversity that they are.
My friend was not interested any of the aforementioned groups and in fact she recoiled from all of them openly and I'm sure she still is; that is her choice. In the end, I told her that my views were very different. Even if I had lived a few of her exact same experiences and acted just as she had, I had simply seen the nastiness of few far too many times to let it harden me. I won't be a cog in the continuous human machine of hypocrisy and primitiveness that is racism. I refuse to not continue to judge people as individuals and assess situations as I came upon them and that is how my children will be raised. But hard nuts to crack aside, when, after acknowledging our own experiences and responsibilities with internalized or blatant racism, how does a friend stay true to the good fight when a friend or acquaintance (of any race) acts like a bigot?
Explain how you've decided that you cannot yield to stereotypes and racism in the bigger picture? Or if you embrace racism (be it subtle or outright) than explain why. What do you think?
