Front of the Bus: A Response
(Image courtesy of www.occupy.com)
This is a response to all of the negative comments I've received concerning my poem Front of the Bus. You can read the full poem here.
I remember walking with my black friend into a restaurant in a small town in Texas. A couple of white men walked by and murmured disparaging things to me and my friend as they left. I was stunned. It was almost the 21st century! Hadn't we moved past all that? My answer to you is, wake up. Of course we haven't. And it ain't just in the backwater towns of Texas, either.
Race is a touchy issue to tackle. Especially since I'm white. If I was a person of color writing about race, I would have a clearer role in the dialogue: feeling like I am treated differently at best, and a victim of outright bigotry at worst. Because, let's face it, if you're a person of color in this society, you are consistently reminded that you are a person of color. But I am white, come from an upper-middle class background, I live in suburbia, so...what could I possibly have to say about race?
As a writer, it's part of my job, as I see it, to find the the anomalies in humanity. For example, if I write about Suburbia at all, it's to point out that the white picket fencing cannot hide real life pain and drama behind the manicured lawns. So as a white woman of privilege, when I write about race, I try and put myself in the shoes of a person of color and try to see the world from their perspective. And from that place, the world is not as safe as it is for the real me.
So I recently wrote a poem that has gotten some mixed and strong reactions--a lot of people are angry. They are indignant. They can't believe that I call out our white ancestors and condemn them. They all have angrily stated, "I don't own slaves!" It seems as though they feel that people of color should just "get over it" because racism, at last my friends, has been eradicated. And if racism doesn't exist anymore, why all the fuss? And by God, haven't we done ENOUGH for "those people?" I wonder if these commentors even read the poem. It is not about slavery folks. It's about the here and now and how the here and now has been impacted by our past. But lack of reading comprehension aside, there's more to these comments than meets the eye.
I submit to you that if you deny that racism is no longer a problem in America, then you are part of the problem. The denial of racism is the new racism, and those who deny its existence are racist in a way that's even more insidious than a white hood.
The efforts the law has made to even the playing field with regards to race has spawned a new generation of racists. They use phrases such as "black privilege" and resent it when movements such as #blacklivesmatter occur because...They themselves do not believe that they are racist. In fact, they see black people all the time and accept that they are part of their churches, their towns, their communities. Why, they might think, people of color are even given scholarships for being black (or Hispanic etc.), and WE don't get scholarships for being white, and isn't that, in and of itself, a form of racism? Let's not even talk about Equal Opportunity Employment and Affirmative Action. Oh yes, many have rebelled against the current black movement by stating that "ALL lives matter equally." Well, of course they do. But all lives aren't being threatened equally, now are they?
Listen. You can tell me and yourselves that you have a black friend, or that you don't own slaves and you never would (as if that's even a logical assertion? You "wouldn't?" What??); you can tell me and yourselves that it's all blown out of proportion, this racism business. Say it all you want. The bottom line is this: unless you have walked in a person of color's shoes, you have no idea what it means to feel hundreds of years of prejudice come at you while you do something ordinary like walk down the street, shop in a store, or get stopped by a police officer. You don't KNOW. And you can't know unless you work very hard to try and understand.
Fear and hatred run deep in this country. You don't just erase all of history in a hundred years. Look at the statistics. The Washington Post reports that "although black men represent 6 percent of the U.S. population, they made up nearly 40 percent of those who were killed while unarmed." Those numbers are staggering. And while you try and justify that away by thinking your dark little thoughts about black men and criminal activity, let me remind you that we as citizens all have a RIGHT to live and to be presumed innocent until or unless proven guilty.
What I find most heinous is when people cloak their bigotry in God. "God is colorblind and ALL lives matter equally to Him." Funny, slave owners were bible lovers, too, and had no problem using the "good word" to continue their atrocities. Yeah, let's leave your white God out of this.
So go ahead and be angry that I am ashamed of how the people of OUR race continue to spill their ugly prejudice into our society like a cancer. Be angry that I want people of color to know that I can't possibly understand, but by God, I'm willing to try. I'm doing my part to bring awareness to whites everywhere that it is our responsibility to clean house; it is on US to even the playing field inside the law and out. All that your anger tells me is who you would have been a hundred years ago. You, my friend, you would not have been on the right side of history. And you're not on it now.
There is blood on our hands, and it takes more than you telling yourselves you 'don't own slaves' and 'today's black people were never slaves' to wash it clean. That dark little part of you that is so angry at my poem...that's the little voice inside of you telling you, and me, and everyone who reads your comments, that you are filled with resentment, hatred and fear. And it tells me you can't possibly understand another person's experience simply because you don't feel like you should have to.
I am doing my part to eradicate hatred and facilitate empathy and compassion. What are you doing? NOT owning a slave? Sorry. You're going to need to do a hell of a lot better than that.
