Dear White Guy

Dear white guy,

I know you think it is funny when you make jokes about serious things. By serious I mean anything unhappy that doesn’t, in your view, affect you directly.

Things like rape, racism, foreign countries, urban poor, are best dealt with by saying something negative and pithy. Negative because if you say everything is stupid then you aren’t being racist. Because you hate all stupidity equally. There is a lot of stupidity out there, everywhere really, and you hate it all.

I get it. You are right, a lot of things are not as they should be and a lot of those things, we created. I understand you are a hard working guy who probably has kids that whine and the last thing you need is adults who do the same. You wish those grownups would heed the advice you give your own, “shut up and get back to work.”

I get it. I get it and please understand I mean this sincerely-

You are jack-ass.

I do not normally name call and that word is not one I ever say out loud, but I thought it the best word to most concisely and accurately communicate to you, in words that you appreciate, how you are acting.

First, let me say that condemning everything accomplishes nothing. No. That isn’t true. It accomplishes the annoyance of all who come within earshot of your wisdom. Even worse, and more troubling is that such an attitude makes you completely tone deaf to issues that are in fact important. To you.

Let me illustrate with a story.

When my oldest kid was four she whined a lot. Every night at bed time we had argument and tantrums. Every meal was a negotiation. Every morning getting dressed was a display of dramatic energy, noise, anger, and trouble. It was more than annoying and my wife and I did our best to not only resist giving into ridiculous demands but squash their genesis.

On one evening my child launched into a screaming fit because the world had conspired against her and the clock had actually struck 8:00. Bed time. What injustice! She kicked, screamed, complained, and I ignored it all. I sent her to bed. She got back up asking for water. I sent her to bed. She yelled down the stairs that she needed a night light. I responded, “go to bed.”

“I feel sick.”

“Go to bed.”

“I need medicine.”

“Go to bed.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Go to bed.”

She was persistent and she was loud. She began really holding onto this I can’t breathe thing, but I ignored it as she was yelling I can’t breathe in between blood curdling screams. Around midnight, because my softy of a wife made me, I took little miss I can’t breathe to the emergency room. The nurse at the desk didn’t ask a single question, just looked at the child and rushed us to the back room.

We spent three days in the hospital trying to get my daughters newly diagnosed asthma under control. We now travel with an inhaler and have to use it regularly.

Sitting next to that little girl for three days was humbling. The kid spent hours telling me she couldn’t breathe and I not only ignored it but resented it. I was quite the jack-ass.

The whole time my daughter was yelling things I assumed she was making things up. I ignored her. I bet if she would have yelled, “Dad, your laptop is in my bed,” I would have rushed upstairs just to make sure it wasn’t. If she would have screamed, “Wow I found a 100 dollar bill,” I would have rushed upstairs to reclaim it. Because to me and my life money and laptops matter. Going to bed at 8 and one little glass of water are silly.

Racism isn’t silly. Neither is rape or poverty. Many of you can go a whole lifetime without visiting the proverbial ER on these things because you aren’t black, a woman, or poor. Maybe you have never seen someone raped, surely never done it, never said the N word, and you work hard for the little money you get, so of course those things aren’t as big a problem as those whiny four year olds say they are.

How arrogant and selfish is it to assume that you know best in other people’s lives? How, when others are explaining, or screaming, about their experience, do you come to the conclusion that you know the truth about them better than they do? Why when someone is speaking or explaining about hard truths, would you mock and belittle?

Stop it.

Listen.

Stopping and listening is harder than ignoring and mocking. Because ignoring and mocking is stupid. The stupid thing is always easiest.

Black People Are More Racist; Part 1 of Many

My wife and I were once asked to describe ourselves in five words or less. Mine went something like Mormon, husband, artist, blah, blah, blah, hers went black, woman, something, something, something.
If this would have been a few years earlier her answer would have worried me. It may have even upset me.

Race was not just on her list but at the top. Race? Black? Really? I had not even thought to list my color. In my own mind color had absolutely nothing to do with who I was as a person. Race shouldn't’t even matter right? Listing that as the top thing on your list is a problem right? Was it wrong?

I should back up a bit.

Growing up I felt I had absolutely no culture. I looked at my Hawaiian friend with envy as his family performed traditional dances and sang songs in another language. I spent considerable time with a group of American Indian dancers and always secretly, or not so secretly, wished I would one day be adopted into one of their tribes. My family name is Scottish and with little to no real knowledge of the foggy isle, I developed an appreciation for bagpipes that I maintain to the present day. I loved and appreciated everyone’s culture mostly because I felt I didn’t have one of my own.

Then I left Utah.

I went to a place where I looked like everyone else, but I was nothing like them. We spoke the same language but the accent was new. The people were every bit as religious as I, we even worshiped using the same words, but the meanings were no where near the same. I knew songs these new people did not. I even celebrated a holiday in July they knew nothing about. I discovered something. I discovered I had a culture all along, I simply did not recognize it when I was in that culture’s cradle. I hadn’t recognized my culture because it helped me blend in with everyone else rather than making me stand out.

As I spent more time outside my native place I became more comfortable. I learned my way and place with new groups, still I found myself more comfortable more quickly, with those who came from the same place I did. I found I could relate quicker to those who went snowboarding not out of some X Games adrenaline quest, but simply because it was what we always did. It was what everyone did. I am very in tune with my own mortality, so much so that while I snowboard, I avoid the half pipe at all costs. Those who only know of snowboarding from the movies or ESPN2 have trouble understanding this, or even believing it. I related to people who went camping for fun, because it was what we all did for fun. I was, and still am to some point, comfortable around others with this shared culture because they are more likely to understand little things about me. They are more likely to get past what I am to understand who I am.

At work I quickly became “the Mormon guy”, and rarely became anything more than that. I paint, read, write, travel, love to talk politics, love football, and love movies, but if my work associates ever tried to talk with me one on one, they never got much past “so you don’t drink at all? How many wives do you really have?”

Sometimes my culture brings me in direct conflict with the culture I live in. I will not eat at Hooters, I will not go to your bachelor party if it includes certain activities or locations, and sports or parties are not part of my Sunday. I find most people are respectful of who I am and what I believe, but they don’t understand it.

I have a deep and all encompassing culture and all throughout my youth I didn’t know it. I never saw it because it blended with everyone else. No one had to point out my culture because it was theirs as well.

That’s why it did not, nor does it upset me, that my wife wrote black on her list.

We white people don’t think our whiteness is part of who we are.

It is.

We don’t see it because largely, every one else we see is white too. Try going somewhere whites don’t go. A club, a neighborhood, an island, or even continent and see how long your whiteness remains a non-factor. It’s O.K., its part of who you are. Do it your whole life and see if it doesn’t begin to shape you.
See if you don’t begin to feel comfortable with those who also relate to being white when no one else is. See if you don’t enjoy the comfort of being with those who don’t need you to explain yourself. See if your color makes it’s way onto your list.

I know this now. Because I know this I am not upset or offended, nor am I afraid of or alienated by, a black person declaring they are black. I do not mind black kids sitting together at lunch, or mind that there is a channel or a caucus where race matters. I do not mind it and it is not inherently racist.

It’s O.K. To some point, I get it.