My intention here is to tell my own story that may well be filled with holes; after all it is I that is doing the telling, without benefit of research or other opinions from those around me at the time. My take is that white people are easily on the defensive about racism; okay, it's not my take only. In any case I think sometimes we need an open canvas upon which to write or tell a story--the story of how we got here, wherever "here" might be.
I am 70 since April of this year, but the story won't be made extra long on account of that fact.
I was born in Brooklyn-- Midwood to be exact, though at the time we called it Flatbush. In my elementary school were Jews, and more Jews. I felt sorry for the one Protestant girl in my class and remember her name accordingly: Carole Smith. She was one of a couple of people who attended school on the High Holy Days, before the schools were closed in New York for those holidays. I seem to have thought, though I don't remember this now, that the majority of people in the world were Jewish. This went on till I was 13, though it seems unlikely and inexplicable now.
I was born a liberal-- okay at least a Democrat. And when there were discussions of civil rights, at times members of my family of origin would pipe up about how Negroes could go on welfare, when they would never have. I knew then that there were big differences, that as Jews they may have lost life and even dignity but they didn't have the rape of their families, their language and customs etc. I was scared to go for the Freedom Rides, but I was a folk singing believer, if not a practitioner. It never occurred to me to question why there weren't black people in my neighborhood or why there were so many in what had become slums.
I went to camp in the Berkshires when I was 16 and there was a black kid, who was there on a dance scholarship. He went on to Alvin Ailey and he liked me. I wasn't attracted to him, and needed him to know it wasn't because he was black. When I was 18 I met a not yet famous black actor through a friend of a friend, then went to see him at an Off-Broadway preview in which he was starring, and the rest was a short history. I was proud that he was black, but perhaps prouder that he was who he was and I was with him.
Let me go back to being Jewish, though it's not as sexy. I loved it, the being Jewish. My father's family was rebellious, more secular and socialist and my mother's was more obedient and religious. I loved foreign languages and music, and as such the Hebrew melodies I heard in Sunday school and then synagogue made me feel a wonderful sense of reliability and belonging. I almost begged my parents to become Kosher when I was 11 but they wanted no part of it, not even any religious practice whatsoever. So I kind of wandered away from it, rebelling in my own way. In an Orthodox camp where I was a counselor at 17, I smoked on the Sabbath and sang, "Virgin Mary had a Baby Boy" to the kids in my bunk.
There has been, no doubt, tension in my mind regarding Jewish history. We were victims, since the beginning. No; wait a minute, we were chosen. Our Exodus was special, and of course the Holocaust was unique in its degree of sadism and terror. Yes, I could agree with Carl Jung that we are all potential killers and we have the blood of slavery on our hands and in our legacy. But give me a Holocaust film, and I go back to where for me the most brutal thing in the world was the Holocaust.
Now is the time where immigrants are found dead in boats, automatically having been placed first into slavery and brutality. Now is the time where most progressives hate Israel while I consider myself confused. Now is the time when it is time to talk about white racism, and I find myself thinking about what would help make it an interesting and enlightening experience, rather than one filled with humiliation and degradation, which can never help. I think of James Baldwin and his writing, and his stress on dignity.
This reminds me, and part of this may be a propos of being Jewish, being of the meeker population in high school, let's say. My family of origin, my parents namely, fought all the time. They didn't hit, but they yelled and accused and most mornings I woke up to the sound of yelling that was scary. I was a sensitive kid, and being yelled at by my brother for daring to boast that he was an artist in my class when I was 7, stunned me. But then, who was I to feel that this was trauma, when compared to what black people had been through. I hadn't been raped or kidnapped or beaten, so who was I to dare feel traumatized.
The story doesn't end here, but I see this kind of sharing as something of a beginning of dialogue, perhaps talking out loud about something (let me talk for white people, which is already a big jump) we still contribute to. Living part of the year in Ft. Collins, Colorado, where there is much of the flavor vanilla, I personally live far from diversity.
I feel white people need, if they so are ready, a space to talk about the history of their racism and the way it still lives. As such we need help, but not the kind that engenders self-hate only. Because that will turn; it always does.