Passive Racism? Guilty As Charged

I was accused of being a racist one time, because I listened to the band Guns & Roses and Axl had made some pretty negative comments at the time.  Never mind that Slash was bi-racial, something the person accusing me of being a racist didn't know.

I was hurt by that, because I had spent a good part of my life standing up to racists and catching flak for it.  I have a very good friend to this day who visited us every summer for 2 weeks to a month through the Fresh Air Fund.  I just loved her.  When I was about 9, the first non-white family moved into our neighborhood.  I immediately friended one of the daughters who was just a year older than me.  I didn't care what color her skin was - I just wanted another friend.  Over the years, they were very good friends too.  At that time, with "blockbusting" going on engineered by real estate companies, once a black family moved into an area, they didn't show homes there to white families.  Houses on each side of us sold to black families.  One of those families I am still close to - they were like part of our family for so long.

Because I was friends with people of a different race, I was harassed from time to time.  There was one time when I was walking home from 7th grade and I was chased by an older kid with a baseball bat and called "nigger lover".  This was after one of my neighbors had been harassed by a group of about 40 teenagers and the police failed to respond until shots were fired (he fired into the ground to make them scatter when the cops didn't show up.)  I had a jock in school ask me if I would date "Bob" who was black and on the football and basketball teams, and quite large.  When I said I would if he asked me (with Bob sitting right there), he was astounded and kept asking as I kept asking "why wouldn't I?" in return.  Bob was the one who stood up for me for quite some time.

After high school I dated a friend who was biracial as well.  It ended badly, but not due to race.  While we dated, I could feel people staring at us if we went out anywhere.

I'd always been secure in not being a racist.  But now I know that's not true.  There's a passive racism that we with white privilege often encounter that we let slide.

How many times have I been in a crowd of people and heard the "code words" and not called them on it?  You know "the neighborhood changed..."

"They're not from here...."

"You can barely understand them... they don't speak English..."

"They are from a different culture than we are, what do you expect..."

There are more, but this is what I remember right now.  And when I was out with a group of people who were all white, middle-class Americans, there were many times I chose not to rock the boat and call them out on it.  I can tell you it was in nearly every situation you could imagine.

I kept silent.

My white privilege allowed me to stay silent and not rock the boat.  Sometimes, you just don't want to be the pariah of the group.  You don't want your children to be treated differently.  You stay silent.

It's not the right thing to do.

It's passive racism.

I'm sorry.

Comments

  1. janNovember 21, 2016 at 2:55 PM

    Never dated a black guy, but in my first year in college I did flirt a bit with the pool-playing basketball jocks. They made me very nervous, though. Two years later I did date a black guy, but he scared me and we broke up. Much later I got engaged to a guy from India. Haven't noticed passive racism lately, but will listen for it!

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