I don’t want to be racist, but I am.
I don’t want to be classist, but I am.
It is time for me to admit to both.
I have done my level best to rid myself of the deeply imbedded effects of racist attitudes that were instilled in me during six decades of living in the white culture. With painful honesty, I must admit that I have not been succeesful.
How can I tell? One small example is because to this day, I have trouble remembering the names of my black neighbors in this senior apartment building: my eyes just cannot seem to remember the different facial characteristics of black faces, as well as they can remember white faces.
I had the same trouble with Native American faces, and Mexican American faces too, until life afforded me the opportunity to actually live within each of these cultures long enough for this to go away, and for each face to come into clear and unique focus in my mind. Only then, could my eyes easily see the full uniqueness of each non white face, and remembering names became easier.
So deep does racism exists within me, that even though I have tended to feel more at home with cultures other than my own, this subconscious effect is STILL operational in me. How deep does culturally imbedded racism really go? How far down inside do its tap roots lie? I still cannot answer that for myself because I have yet to get to them. I wonder if I ever can?
And now I have to confess to even more blatant racism, that seems to be growing fast within me, as I’ve watched with growing horror, what my own white culture has managed to do to the America I was (rightfully or wrongfully) once so proud of.
How hard it is to see how this white culture of mine has twisted and mutilated basic values and principles so dear to me, and turned them all inside out and upside down, to make them all about power over others, and rampant materialism. How hard it is to know how my own white culture has overridden basic principles like honesty, integrity, fairness, justice, collaboration, and concern for the common good of all, and trrumped all of these with a me-first kind of unrestrained, insatiable greed and need for power over others.
So now, here I am, even more of a racist that I was, for not only am I still dealing with remnants of my own old racist programming toward people of color, but a much stronger fear and distain, and distrust for the WHITE culture that I am technically a part OF.
Not only that, the older I get, the more “classist” I become! Although I honestly do not know how this can be avoided, by those of us who always lived in the mid to lower “class” of white America. How can you NOT feel this, after a lifetime of living the proof of it every single day? How was I suppose to NOT see the differences in the opportunities open to me as a woman born in 1940 in a bible belt Midwest blue collar culture, and the rich white people (mostly men) of my time? How am I supposed to ignore a lifetime of being treated as less worthy, as a low income person, than someone with money is treated? How can I ignore the reality that the riches of this land are flowing faster than ever to the very elite top layer of American society, while the rest of us grow poorer every day?
And now that I have totally fallen out of the still (somewhat worthy) class of productive, tax paying American citizens, and fallen all the way to the bottom of the pile into a category called “Old, Poor and Disabled,” I am REALLY getting an in my face 24/7 view of how little my wonderful “white culture” values the “least among us”.
No, I cannot deny my classism or my racism. I can never rid myself of them either. They are alive and well and growing fatter every day for the richness of evidence all around me that is feeding all of it. And now it is all flowing out of me towards my own white culture.
There is one comfort I have and cling to, and that is the fact that I have always known, since childhood, that I was a “misfit” in my own white culture. I was never able to swallow everything I was told, without tasting it first, and spitting out the parts that tasted bad. For a time, yes, I got worn down and did do my level best to conform to it all, and all that accomplished was to win me a near terminal case of alcoholism.
I am, and always have been since my birth, a person without a culture of my own.
When I lived with the Native Americans and watched them celebrate the richness and wonder of their shared spirituality and culture, while welcomed to share it, I knew I was on the outside looking in.
In Laredo, observing the Mexican American people celebrating their incredibly rich cultural legacy, again, while welcomed warmly, I was on the outside looking in.
And now as I come to the last part of this life span, I am really grieving this loss. I have never known, nor will I ever know in this lifetime: what it feels like to have the strength and comfort of a cultural heritage of my very own to lean on for strength and comfort.
So I am immensely grateful to All my Relations who have been graciously willing to allow me to share their rich cultural heritage over the years. And to all the “Other-Americans” I’ve met and grown close to over the years, who have always felt as disenfranchised in the white world as I have, and have been down a long path similar to my own. Without you all, as hard as you were for me to find, I don’t know if I’d have survived intact.
And to the younger “Other-Americans” there are now, please, please find a way to honor who you are fully enough to create your own genuine culture, based on who you are in your authentic selves.
Create your own celebrations and cultural rituals, so you have something of comfort and value to hand down to your own descendents, based on your own core values.
But most of all, no matter what you are told, or how you may be penalized and punished for non- conforming with what this American culture has become, know in your deepest heart there is NOTHING wrong with you, at all. Nothing. And do not allow anyone or anything convince you there is.
Because right now, perhaps more so than ever, there is a need for Americans to focus inward, and find out for sure who we each really are in our own deepest selves: that center core where none of the propaganda or current “programming” of who we `should be” has penetrated yet. Please.
Take enough time off from everything going on, to dig deep enough to get to that core place, and then listen to the soft and pleading voice you will find, that may have been drowned out for so long.
That is the voice of the center core of our very being. It has access to wisdoms the mind alone can never reach by itself. When we can truly hear it, it will give us all the answers and direction we could ever need, to create the richest lifetime we could ever ask for and, I believe fully, the one intended for us to have. Not alone, but together.
I believe with everything in me, that those “core voices” will not tell us to fear each other, or build walls against each other, or fight and kill each other but to see and embrace each other. I believe they will tell us how to share and accept and to CELEBRATE our differences in ways that strengthen all and broaden everyone’s horizons.
And I believe this: that when enough of us can hear our own “core voices”, and those of others around us, those voices will come together slowly, and create a harmonious hum that will start softly at first, and build in volume, until it can not be ignored by anyone. I can already hear this soft and deep hum.
It will gather strength, and be such a joyous, hopeful sound, that others will want to join the chorus and will, until it is the common song we have all sought forever, called peace.
The search for this peace begins right here, inside of me.
And right there, inside of you.
And you and you and you,
and all of us.
I will be at the polls next week to cast my vote.
Then I will sit nearby awhile, and listen very closely, for the soft, quiet hum I know I will hear.
(Crossposted from http://www.maneegee.blogspot.com/)
