"The Soul is dyed the color of its thoughts"
Marcus Aurelius
THE SOUTH
I grew up in the south. In Texas to be exact, in a small university town where people of color were a minority, but deeply embedded in the community. As an elementary child I of course knew of Black people, we even had a Black woman that would come to my home in the mornings to help my sister and I get off to school because my parents both worked. Mrs. Brown was her name. I liked her. She was kind to me. I knew she was an African American, but her skin color didn't matter to me. I loved her because she loved me.
I also grew up, sad to say, speaking slang names about Black people as if it was an every day matter. Names today that are abhorrent to me to use. I made sure those names were never used in our home while I was raising my children. Racial slurs were common language back in the 60's. Jokes about Black people, nursery rhymes with implicit racial slurs, children's songs and ditties; they were all just part of my acceptable everyday growing up childhood. The "other side of the tracks" the "black shanty town" the repulsion I saw on my grandmother's face when a black man stopped to get water for his overheating car and asked for helped, the socioeconomic differences, and the segregation of Black and White. It was all part of southern living, and just "normal" to me.
I was much, much older before I began to realize the impact, and the ignorance I had lived in growing up, and even more recently to realize how ignorant I was about my own "white privilege." As I look back now, I can see how my entire culture and childhood experiences were speckled and dotted with racist and blatant disregard for the African American race. I learned much of these racist words and attitudes from my grandparents who were openly racist and hateful toward the Black race as a whole.
They even participated in clandestine KKK type rituals when I was young. My other family line came from Tennessee and I even have a great- grandfather named after the very first KKK leader in the 1800's, Bedford Forest. My family line, I am ashamed to say, were racists of the worst kind. I was a product at the time of my upbringing in my acceptance of these things as just normal life in the south.
I was also an innocent child that didn't understand any of this, nor the impact it had on me or on the world. Fortunately, my parents were college graduates and had differing opinions than their own parents on the racial issues in the country back in the 60's. While racism was all around me, and accepted in my culture, in my own home away from my grandparents, I was taught tolerance. Slang words were not used. I wasn't reprimanded, but I had a different experience that allowed me to eventually see things differently than the racism of my extended family and my southern culture.
DESEGREGATION
I'll never forget the first day back to school in January of 1970 after Christmas break in my 3rd grade class. I remember looking out the front windows of the school where there were what seemed like hundreds of Black children pouring out of the belly of dozens of bright yellow school buses.
Texas schools were de-segregated by law, in my home-town beginning in January of 1970. Black schools were dissolved and the Black children were bussed from the "other side of the tracks" as the ghetto was called, into White schools. I was confused about all the unrest I felt as a child in elementary school after that day. Turmoil ensued. Fights broke out in the hallways. Black vs. White, discrimination and unrest was an every-day experience growing up from that day on.
As an eight year old child, even though I'd grown up using racial slurs and playing childhood games and singing songs that were discriminatory, I didn't understand. I didn't put the pieces together between these Black children and the horrid things I was singing and saying against the Black people. I was totally ignorant. In fact, so ignorant that I made friends with the Black children in class and out on the playground. It felt normal. They were children in my class, they played as I did, and though I saw they were different than me, I saw more their similarities than the differences. Black children were kids my own age, they played and ran, and swung on the jungle gym at recess like I did. They were my friends.
NEW FRIENDS
Then there was the unforgettable day in 4th grade when my teacher asked me to come outside the door of the classroom with her. I was scared when she called me out, going outside with a teacher meant you were in trouble! I was terrified and embarrassed in front of the class that she took me outside. What had I done? I didn't like attention brought to myself and I was never one to get in trouble. So when Mrs. Gerdis simply said outside the earshot of anyone, "I noticed that you've made friends with Natasha (a little Black girl) and I wanted you to know that I think that's really kind and wonderful of you." I was confused.
Why was making friends with a class-mate such a big deal? At 9 years old, that made no sense to me? Why take me out as if I'm in trouble and praise me for just doing what kids do, play together? After that I started to notice that Black and White children didn't really play together on the play ground. They were segregated. I was indeed the only White child that played with a Black child. 
I remember feeling different, and even mad that the Black people were mistreated that way. I was determined to be friends with all, and especially my peers of color.
IGNORANCE AND RACISM
As an older teen I became more aware of racism and of the slurs and ugliness of how the Black people were mistreated in our society. I became a champion of Black people, I hung out with them as much as I could, they taught me to sing Black Blues, Negro spirituals were beautiful to me, and Harriet Tubman became my favorite heroin. My Black friends told me I had a "Black soul!" I felt that was a deep compliment, and to this day I still feel it as a compliment. I resonated with their history, I felt terrible about their mistreatment, I had all kinds of empathy. I also ignorantly thought that all that ugly mistreatment had mostly ended with the civil war and with legally enforced de-segregation. I was very, very ignorant. I was also living White privilege and had no real idea the continued challenges that the Black people had, and the freedoms I took for-granted. I was even more ignorant on how my ignorance was actually supporting discrimination. Until a few years ago.
In 2017 I decided to offer a continuing education course on ethics for mental health therapists and psychologists like myself. I wanted to include a section on race equality and non-discrimination. After all, I wasn't a racist! I felt I had a special understanding of the Black people because I had a "Black Soul" and I wanted to help educate others about this topic.
So to ready myself, I read books about Black history, about slavery, about the KKK, about the unfairness of treatment towards the Black people, and most of all about White freedom and privilege and the history of the United States post civil war and how the government intentionally promulgated slavery through political means. I learned about how Racism is continuing to this day. I was aghast to know that segregation laws were still in effect in some southern states, even in the 2000's! I read voraciously, talked to people and others about their views of racism and how it still exists. I attended other continuing education courses that included sections on racial, religious, gender and other discrimination and really tried to educate myself about this topic.
What happened to me was no less than transformational. I began to see and understand just how much racism was and is still alive in this country today! I realized that I was blind, color blind, and ignorant. I realized I not only lived in a racist world, but I was a product of this world, and therefore an ignorant racist too!
Since that time I have worked to become aware of my privilege. I have worked to be aware of my status and what I can do easily that perhaps a woman my same age but of a different race would not be able to so easily. I have worked to learn me, to be more aware, and to be more humble and teachable about the injustices in our nation and the discrimination that still is quite alive in our culture around race, religion, sex, gender and identity.
PROTESTS OF OPPRESSION
GET EDUCATED
So what can we do to change this? Learn. Be Humble. Acknowledge your ignorance. Seek to understand. Read and educate yourself. WAKE UP to the truth that is all around us! Speak out, and speak up. Recognize and understand our own culture and biases. We can't continue to do the same things over and over again and expect different results! We are the only ones who can do something different, we are responsible for our choices even if we are ignorant of their etiology we must become educated about ourselves and change our behavior. Find out what is happening in our country and lets truly bring equality to all.
Here is just a few links to get your started to see and understand the depth and breadth of this problem in our every day lives. They indicate, based on research and facts, how racism is still very much alive and strong in America. Racism shows up in places and ways we are often unaware in the housing market in health care and health outcomes, and many, many other ways. Check out this research-based website here on racism.
At the Couple And Family Institute of Tri-Cities, we are dedicated to equality in our treatment of all people. We are open to learning more, and we want very much to support and offer services to any and all regardless of race, color, creed, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Check out our services. We are here, helping relationships with all the magnificent diversity that is in our world.
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