[Amonmymous] Times

When a man who can’t pronounce “anonymous” claims the speech of one of our greatest orators put him to sleep, we have to wonder about his grasp of words. If Trump is the best that many Americans think our country has to offer, what criteria are they basing it on? 

Is it the unethical and opportunistic way he runs his businesses and the government? The way he disrespects and objectifies women?  Or maybe it is his inability to understand the responsibilities of the office of president. Or it is his penchant for defying the rule of law. Perhaps it is his insensitivity to people with disabilities or maybe the way he attacks people of color with statements pertaining to their IQs and threats of deporting or imprisoning them. Maybe it is the way he has cuddled up to violent dictators, while disavowing liberals of any ilk here in America. Or is it because he treats immigrants as criminals, rapists, and animals by denying them refuge and snatching away their children? Or is it God ordained that we suffer this fool as some fundamentalists, who believe in the divine bestowal of white supremacy, suggest? Or is it because he claimed there were many fine Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017? Or, most importantly, was he the whitest white man in the bunch?

 If white supremacists think he is representative of supremacy, they are neither supreme nor intelligent. If the only way they can show supremacy is through bullying, taking away freedoms, carrying a gun, policing public spaces, and threatening the safety and wellbeing of others, we have to ask them, “What are you afraid of?” 

America, we all have a right to be who we are, whether that means being a Christian fundamentalist, an LGBTQ individual, a black American, a white American, a native American, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, atheist, able-bodied, or an individual with disabilities, a man, a woman, a gender-free individual. And, guess what? We can co-exist. 

That doesn’t mean a great, big love fest. It means understanding basic freedoms and supporting those freedoms for all Americans. All Americans have a right to worship or not worship as they choose. They have a right to vote. They have a right to be represented by their elected officials. They have a right to be in public spaces. They have a right to feel safe in those spaces. They have a right to make choices about their bodies and healthcare. They have a right to healthcare.

The way to do that is through respect.  Not the kind of respect you earn. That takes knowing someone, and we don’t have to know every person in America to respect all Americans. I’m talking about the kind of respect that acknowledges every person has a right to be in public spaces and to work a living wage job and to live in a decent and safe neighborhood and attend decent schools that are safe zones from violence and that have the same resources as every other school and to have access to affordable healthcare. We’ve lost that respect. Maybe we never had it. I am leaning toward the latter. 

I’m not going to tell some white guy he can’t think he is superior to me, as a white woman, and to people of color. If that’s his personal narrative, so be it. I have my personal narrative, too. But if he is out there trying to oppress women and people of color by controlling or denying social and economic opportunities and advances, so he can gain some kind of advantage and privilege, I am going to speak up.  The collective needs to speak up. We need to support equality. 

White people, I am mostly speaking to you, whether you are conservative or liberal, because our society and governance is based on a system that gives us a leg up just for being white while it disadvantages everyone who isn’t. We have to disavow that system. And we have to stop feeling hurt when the topic is brought up. Nothing will ever change if we can’t talk about racism and white privilege as concepts that operate congruently. 

None of us is morally superior, intellectually superior, or physically superior because of our gender or race.

Who can deny that Serena Williams is the greatest athlete in the past twenty years? Just fifty years ago, we’d never have expected a woman, and a black woman at that, to be the greatest athlete. That's because women weren't expected to excel in sports. Furthermore, she just had a baby. She almost died during delivery.  She survived and became a wonderful mother, and, no, she didn’t make a comeback to the tennis world, she took up where she left off. 

I have to divert a bit from my main message in this post, although it is certainly related to the topic of race and gender. We just finished watching the 2018 US Open Women’s Finals. Serena's greatness as an athlete in no way guaranteed a win in this grand slam tournament or in any other tournament or grand slam championship. She didn’t win this time. Naomi Osaka, who just broke the top ten in rank at age 20, played powerfully and strategically against Serena and deserved the win. But I do have some questions about the severe treatment imposed by the chair umpire. I can’t help but think he has different expectations for women than for men players, and Serena expressed the same concern.  And what he did was impact the match at a critical time. His interference ruined the match for both players who should have felt the match was about the competition between their abilities, not the man in the chair who felt offended because a woman expressed her emotions and then called him on his call – I’ve watched many men over the years swear, break rackets and do other things that could be construed as abuse, and they weren’t penalized by a point and then the loss of a game. It left both women crying at the end, and I cried with them. I cried because Serena still had a chance to turn the tables had he not taken a game from her, and I cried for Naomi who should have been celebrating what great tennis she played instead of feeling she won on an umpire’s call. That’s what happens when genders are measured against different standards, including another female who was penalized during the US Open for changing her shirt on court (she had it on backwards and removed it to turn it the right way around.). Come on, how unfair is that?  

The moral is we have to stop elevating people and awarding them privilege based on gender and race. Any of us has the potential for greatness, and it has nothing to do with gender or race.

Getting back to the topic of governance, there are many white males who are more than capable of being the president of our country and the leader of the free world. Trump isn’t one of them. He never was. He never should have had a shot, because he isn't qualified. But here he is, and he has put our democracy and our national security at risk, all in the name of making America white again. But it never was all white, not from the beginning and not now. That is the important point our elected officials must make again and again to quell this awful tide of supremacy and hatred.

We also cannot forget that there are many women and people of color who are also more than capable of being the president and leader of the free world. Hillary Clinton was one of them – the most qualified candidate in modern times. She was more qualified than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – both great leaders of our country. And I can list many, many others including Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, and Elizabeth Warren. They should be judged by their qualifications and not their race or gender.

So when people talk about who is qualified and who isn’t, it is imperative that we leave race and gender out of the conversation. The past eleven years have proven conclusively why that is. 

When one former president is elegant, intelligent, humorous, unifying, and passionate and the present president is unintelligible, blustery, self-centered, divisive, thwarted by his own administration, and an inciter of violence, the only lesson learned is that race and gender have nothing to do with how they acted in the office of president. It is the individual. One was qualified and saved our country from a depression; the other was unqualified and has brought our country to the brink of destruction. 

Americans, we can be better. We can coexist. We need all of us to do it. First we have to stop thinking some Americans are more equal and more deserving than others due to their race and gender.  We have to believe our greatest ideal: We are all created equal. 

It has to start in November. Get out and vote. Vote like our life and democracy depend on it, because they do. Don’t vote based on race or gender or religion or class. Vote based on qualifications and who can rise to the challenge of best representing ALL of us and who knows how to guide and explain why it is the best route to do so.  Yes, we are diverse, and that means we have a hard time understanding one another at times, sometimes because we don’t have the right words, but more often because we’ve stopped listening.  Our diversity means we have a better chance at the kind of progress and change that can lift all Americans, regardless of race and gender.  We can fix this mess. Vote.

Pexel.com photo

The Door of No Return

I haven’t been able to write for weeks.  I’ve attempted. I have pages and pages of words strung together, but none of it seems right. None of it expresses precisely what I want to say. None of it captures my moodiness, sense of urgency, restlessness, sadness, and discomfort. I can’t put a finger on it, let alone write about it.

My dreams are strange – secret missions, magic, journeys, Ricky Ricardo (not Desi Arnaz), mystery, murder, and chaos. They are an every morning occurrence in the quiet minutes before my alarm sounds. Some mornings I am relieved by the beeping of the alarm, and other days I wish to slide back into my alternate universe.

Most of my conversations and posts to FaceBook these days are political in nature. They center on equal rights and immigration and the Supreme Court decisions and reproductive health and jobs and health care and scandals and gun laws and the Democrats and the Republicans and the liberals and the conservatives and the poor and the wealthy and the minorities and the majority and the great divide in our country.

Sometimes Ronald says, “I know how much you want to talk about this (or that), but I can’t anymore. Not right now. I’ve lived this stuff my whole life. It hasn’t changed.”

He’s right. I’ve lived some stuff for parts of my life and other stuff for all of my life, and I understand how it can become overwhelming, how it can blot out what little light we have during our time on this earth because the stuff of which we speak is darkness and hatred and separation and blindness and ignorance and judgment and intolerance.

Can we alleviate ignorance? I believe sometimes ignorance is willful.

Can we erase hatred from a person’s mind? I believe it is learned behavior, but sometimes it seems organic, almost genetic, perhaps inherited like one’s ethnic knowing and migration pattern and the lore of the family and group from which it emanates. It’s powerful in that it blinds one from seeing another way, perhaps a better way or more righteous way, and it causes one to lie and to make excuses and to blame the target of the hatred.

Why is it common for some people to believe the following? Poor people are lazy. They don’t want to work. They feel entitled. Black men are suspicious just because they are black. Women need strong white men to make their reproductive health decisions because they can’t handle it on their own. Women don’t own their bodies. Women do not deserve equal pay for equal work. Minorities do not need doors to be opened in the workplace or at institutions of higher education by the law of the land because they are not qualified anyway. Gay people are bad and sinful and an abomination, and they could change if they wanted to. Illegal immigrants don’t want to assimilate. They want to steal our jobs and our country. Muslims are jealous of our freedoms and they are terrorists. Americans are white, and able, and smart, and fair, and deserving.

I am a woman. I am white, ethnically Irish and Italian. I am a Christian with no church affiliation though I spent my first twelve years as a Catholic and a year or two as a Lutheran. I grew up poor and lived on welfare for a short time in my childhood when my father had a heart attack and the doctor was not sure if he could return to work. I’m married to a black man – we are uncertain of his full ethnic makeup but know he is descended from slaves. I am identified as white when I am alone. I am identified as black or other or an abomination when I am with my husband. I made a terrible error in life when I married Ronald thirty years ago and gave birth to interracial twins twenty-nine years ago, at least according to some who feel no shame in letting us know what they think.

So many things are happening right now, personally and collectively, that shock my sensibilities. Each incident feels like a violent assault and my words jumble in my head.

I remember the ‘70s when I met my husband freshman year of college. The possibilities seemed endless. The feminist movement had taught me I was equal to men. The Civil Rights movement meant that we were all equal under the law. It was a new day, and we were unafraid even when stuff happened because we wanted to believe it was just the individual, that the collective thoughts on gender and race had changed.

Almost 40 years later, I know it isn’t just the individual. It’s a collective paranoia and attitude and hatred and fear and anger and wielding of power that makes stuff happen. It’s the collective trashing of whole groups of people and of individuals. It is the deafening silence of the horde that feels no outrage. It is the hurtful reality that no matter what, if you are not part of the majority, you are at risk of being judged differently and unkindly and harmfully and dangerously and fatally.

We are moving backwards quickly and harshly and violently. The movements that propelled women and minorities closer to equality, begun so many ages ago and fought and died for over generations, are stalled, and there is opposing momentum to push them backwards.

And the effort to push us backwards gets more vicious as the stakes go up, and the groups behind the pushback are more open about their intent, proud of their intent, strong in their conviction that some are more equal than others and are more entitled to enjoy this great country.

When we go one step forward toward equality, we are pushed back three steps. The SCOTUS decision to strike down DOMA vs. the SCOTUS decision to strike down the Voting Rights Act – one step forward, three steps back. The proverbial ink is not even dry, and the ones who believe some are more equal than others start the process to make inequality the law.

I am offended by Paula Deen’s tearful apologies on television after she lost her partnerships with several companies including Wal-Mart, Smithfield, Target, Home Depot, and the Food Network. I am offended that she wants me to believe she is the victim. I am offended that she wants me to tell her it is okay if she expresses her racist thoughts or that she took credit for cuisine that was stolen from enslaved people or that she peddled a quick path to diabetes and obesity. I am offended that many Americans believe she has a right to believe that people of a different race are inferior. I am offended that these same Americans claim it is their heritage that makes it righteous.

I am angry Paula Deen used her celebrity and wealth to try to protect her empire when her words and actions were so damaging, not just to the people they personally harmed but to our country that struggles to live up to its best ideals every day and every hour. I am angry that her book sales skyrocketed since this story broke, and I am flabbergasted by one comment out on the Wal-Mart website posted in response to Wal-Mart severing their partnership with Deen, “Way to go in supporting a fellow Southerner.”

What about all the Southerners who are descendents of slaves?

I am offended that some people believe Trayvon Martin didn’t have the right to walk to his father’s house in the rain. They believe he didn’t belong there, much like one of my neighbors who sent an email to the neighborhood saying there was a suspicious black man in the neighborhood carrying a clipboard. So scary! Another neighbor, an octogenarian, walked down her driveway and asked the man what he was doing. He said he was leaving bulletins in mailboxes about a landscape business. He was doing what countless other people working for small businesses do in this city, but because he was black, even in my multicultural neighborhood, it was assumed he was there for ill intent.

I am offended by the cross examination by the defense team of Rachel Jeantel, Trayvon Martin’s friend, who was on the phone with him just seconds before he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. I am offended by the defense team’s culturally insensitive questions and their effort to discredit her testimony.

I am angry that hardly anyone is asking if Trayvon feared for his life as he was pursued by an aggressive stranger who meant to do him harm. If someone were chasing you, wouldn’t you be fearful?

I am angry the GOP came out and said the striking of DOMA will bring society to a stop. There are so many other things that will stop society long before equality will. If they are worried about the sanctity of marriage, gay couples may be its last hope and bring it back in vogue.

I am angry that many white Southerners feel compelled to comment on my almost 40 years old interracial relationship often and offensively. I am angry that many white people consider themselves racial experts although they have spent their lives pretending they are race-less while assigning those they consider racial by describing them as other and different and negative. They have conversations about how people of color are racist, like the George Zimmerman defense team or Paula Deen or the GOP. They blame the victims of racism instead of the perpetrators and perpetuators of it.

They feel self-righteous, not righteous, in their stance. They are horrible, mean-spirited, vicious, small-minded people. There, I’ve said it. It doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me sad and angry and frustrated and disappointed and tired.

President Obama and his family visited the Door of No Return in Senegal this week. Millions of men, women, and children passed through this door and onto ships that transported them to the Americas where they were sold into slavery. I can only wonder at how powerful a moment that was for him, as I was struck silent just viewing footage of it in the media.

Such a long journey for millions of people, and such a horrible, inhuman fate awaited them. Yet, as a country, we refuse to address our hand in it and the awful legacy that is still evident in race relations today. That’s why my words left me. In 2008 I had hope, and now, each day and each hour, I watch in horror as our country steps through what feels like the door of no return. If only we could stop the horde and take a moment to regroup as one country of equal citizens under the law. Maybe then I’ll find my words again.

This painting helps to illustrate what my words fail to tell

The Obamas at the Door of No Return

Funny Vibe

No, I'm not gonna rob you
No, I'm not gonna beat you
No, I'm not gonna rape you
So why you want to give me that
Funny Vibe!

No, I'm not gonna hurt you
No, I'm not gonna harm you
And I try not to hate you
So why you want to give me that
Funny Vibe!

~ Funny Vibe, Living Colour, 1988

Sometimes I wish I could remember what it was like before I was race conscious. Blissfully ignorant, I believed racism had been outlawed with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I can’t claim ignorance anymore. The more I witness and experience, the more I realize that in our current collective frame of mind, racism is insurmountable and true change and true equality are a cruel fantasy.

I am not cynical, just weary.  I see the same weariness in my husband Ronald (for new readers, I am white and Ronald is black. We’ve been together for nearly 40 years.).

Ronald says, “Why do you write about this? It won’t change anything. It will only upset you.”

I’m already upset by it, though. Writing helps me to process it. As weary as I am over the whole thing, as hopeless as it feels, I want to make it better. I’d rather try to make change than tacitly perpetuate racism through inaction.

When Ronald is at his saddest he says, “I’ve seen too much.”

He is referring to when he was growing up in the projects on the Westside of Syracuse and then, later, when he served the community as a firefighter for 25 years and assisted people in crisis. The images are burned into his soul, and they live alongside me. I can’t turn them out. They are valid and real. They have a right to be here.

Watching media stories about the very white institution known as the PGA attacking Tiger Woods for “the drop” and Vijay Singh for “deer antler spray use,” Ronald recalled how certain officers on the fire department wanted to ruin his reputation and bring him shame just because they didn’t want him there. Their hatred, judgments, and actions against him had nothing to do with Ronald’s performance or abilities, but everything to do with the color of his skin. As a witness I felt immense sadness, helplessness, and anger. The same story is played out over and over, and it doesn’t matter if one is rich or famous or the best in the world at something or even the President of the United States. Skin color makes it so.
Everyone will remember that Tiger Woods took “the drop” at the 2013 Masters in Augusta, but they won’t remember that it was found to be a legal drop and that he did not have an unfair advantage.  They won’t remember that it was the PGA committee who determined the drop was legal and failed to let him know prior to signing his scorecard that a television spectator had called in a report of unfair play precipitating an investigation. They won’t remember how uncanny it was for the PGA committee to reverse its decision the next morning. They won’t remember that Tiger Woods is the number one golfer in the world because of his work ethic, drive, focus, and ability. They’ll only remember the commentators, Nick Faldo and Brandel Chamblee, calling for him to disqualify himself in a manner that suggested to me they might as well have worn white hoods and carried torches.  They’ll remember that deep down inside, they don’t think Tiger Woods deserves the title of the number one golfer in the world. Skin color makes it so.

I cringe when I hear about the kinds of attacks waged against President Obama. For a certain percentage of Americans, there is nothing he can do that is right. Hear them tell it, he doesn’t represent them. He is a tyrannical monster who orchestrated the Boston Marathon bombing and who plans to take America away from the very people who most deserve it – white people. Skin color makes it so.

It’s the mundane things, too. Like when we went out to eat the other night and the very nice, young, white waitress did not look or speak directly to Ronald the whole evening. She asked if we wanted separate checks and separate plates for our shared dessert, not just once, but several times, as if she wondered about my sanity, as if she could not imagine why we were seated at the same table, let alone sharing the same food and knocking spoons.

Her final attempt at figuring out the situation resulted in her handing Ronald’s credit card back to me instead of him. The scenario did not compute in her world. It ruined our evening. Skin color makes it so.

Then there are the events that change one’s life and one’s sense of self. They are specters that haunt continually and cast gray shadows that snuff out one’s spark.

I saw such a specter this past week as it hovered over my father-in-law. He has dementia, which is sad enough as we struggle with the loss of knowing him and of him knowing us.

“Who are you?” he asked me several times over the week.

Each time I patiently answered, “I’m Dianne, your number one daughter-in-law.” Sometimes he was fine and knew exactly who I was and minutes later, he didn’t.

One evening we piled into the car, with Ronald driving, to go to the carpet store to order new carpet for my in-laws’ bedroom. When we got inside the store, the salesman who approached us must have reminded my father-in-law of one of his supervisors from over 60 years ago.

“I’ve got something I need to say to him,” he said after I had led him to a chair so he could sit and his legs wouldn’t hurt so much. “I didn’t steal that loaf of bread.”

“He knows that now,” I said. “It’s been straightened out.”

“I want to tell him myself,” he said.

I know he didn’t steal that bread 60 years ago when he was a young father who moved his family up North so they could have a better life. One of his first jobs was at the Millbrook Bread Company. Like my father, he would not pick up a dime off the street if it didn’t belong to him. The truth doesn’t matter because that supervisor believed my father-in-law must have been the one that took that bread, and 60 years later the humiliation and anger are clear while other more dear memories are lost. Skin color makes it so.

When people are judged by the color of their skin, the scars go deeper than memory and time and space. They don’t fade. They embody pain, humiliation, depression, and anger. Skin color makes it so.

I’m sensitive to this, but that’s because racism is a chameleon, manifesting itself in different guises. My blissful ignorance is long gone, and I cannot recall how it felt. I am frequently offended, especially living down in the South where the attitudes seem infinitesimally different from the attitudes of the Jim Crow era. I am offended when people tell me not to take it seriously or to consider the source or that not everyone thinks that way or that I should just get over it. I can’t. I won’t. I’ve seen too much.

Instead I get that funny vibe like at the restaurant the other night or when white people stop and stare at us like we are engaged in something so unbelievable and abhorrent that they are going to post it on Facebook later and talk about it for the next year. Skin color makes it so.

The scars on this escaped slave’s back are painfully visible. This photo of Gordon was taken in 1862.

This is just one of the many subliminally racist images flooding the Internet. This is a target that bleeds when shot.  It eerily resembles President Obama. Looking at it gives me that funny vibe.

Are You Banicking?

It occurred to me that we don’t belong in North Carolina, a state where many people still harbor distrust of Yankees and the government. In truth I am a Yankee, I suppose, though just a first generation Yankee on my mother’s side and second generation on my father’s side. My husband Ronald is a first generation Yankee, but, unlike my recently immigrated family, his family had been Southerners for generations before his parents moved up north for better job prospects than could be had in a Jim Crow South.

It’s not that we don’t want to belong here – I love the weather and the beautiful landscape – but oftentimes we don’t feel welcome here.

I know we don’t belong when, like the other night, we were walking in a parking lot and a white guy and his family were walking across our path up ahead, and the white guy kept staring, then shaking his head, then staring and glaring at us, and shaking his head.

As soon as they passed in front of us and got out of hearing range, I said, “Really?”

“He’s got his own wife,” Ronald said. “Why’s he so worried about mine?”

“It’s not like you were dragging me against my will,” I said. For new readers, I am white and my husband is black. We’ve been together for nearly forty years, have two successful, adult daughters who are professional contemporary dancers, and we beat divorce statistics by decades.

Ronald may not have been dragging me along, but I feel dragged into a cultural war, and I am living in the heart of it.

Gun storeowners are describing what they call a “banic” – people worried about Obama passing a ban on assault weapons. So many guns were sold in November and December that there are few guns on the shelves today.

I can attest that the ammunition shelves are empty, too. Ronald shoots on a bull’s eye league, and we have been to just about every store in the area looking for ammunition, and we can’t find it. Ronald says if he has to stop shooting on the league for a while, then he'll find another hobby. It's no big deal to him. 

But it is to a lot of other people.We see store patrons staring forlornly at the empty shelves, grumbling about the Obama conspiracy to prevent people from getting ammunition. One guy we passed was saying something to his buddy about, “for when the war comes.” They kept staring at the empty shelves, perhaps wishing to find a stray box that hadn’t been scooped up earlier.

The guy at Wal-Mart said he got eight boxes on the delivery truck the day we stopped in there on an ammo search, and they were gone within the hour.

I hate going into sporting goods stores down here. Last week a trip to Gander Mountain elicited the same old thing: people stopping in their tracks and staring at us, like the family guy in the parking lot, when we entered the store. They display what we’ve coined as “the Southern stare,” meant to show shock and disapproval. Their expressions tell us what they are thinking: My country is going to hell in a hand basket; where did the America go that I remember, the one where people who aren’t white know their place?

I went out on the Internet thinking maybe he could order ammo online, but all the big gun equipment seller sites listed ammunition as “sold out, no backorder.”

This happened in 2008, too, and it took almost two years to right itself. People hoarded ammunition as if that will save them. Save them from what, I keep asking. But I know the answer: they want to be saved from people like us, or the Mexican family living up the street, or the gay couple around the corner, or the government that is “of the people, by the people, for the people” because they don’t think we should be included.

All those arms, all those assault rifles, and all that ammunition, are to protect a certain way of life – a life where white, heterosexual men reigned and enjoyed the privilege of whiteness while everyone else lived oppressed lives.

Why else would a Georgia man shoot a young man who mistakenly pulled into his driveway because his GPS directed him to the wrong house? The 69 year-old white pastor and Vietnam vet fired his gun into the air and ordered the man to leave, but as the young Hispanic man was backing out of the driveway, he lowered his window to apologize, and the man shot him in the head. He died at the scene. The pastor thought his home was being invaded, but why didn’t he just call the police instead of taking the vigilante route and killing an innocent person who hadn’t even gotten out of his car let alone kicked a door in to gain access to the house?

It’s dangerous to be a person of color, an interracial couple, or a gay couple. We are the people they want to shoot, or deport, or send to concentration camps, or erase. We have rights that include the 2^nd Amendment, but more than that, we share the right for equal protection under the law, and the right to be safe from people who think we don’t belong to their America. Because it isn’t just their America, it’s our America, too.

Ronald found ammunition at a small gun store located in New England. He’s ordered equipment from them before. While placing a phone order, the owner told him, “We don’t have that problem up here. We’ve got anything you want in stock.”

So much for the Obama conspiracy that says the government is preventing ammunition sales. The truth is people are scared, and they are hoarding ammunition. They hurt themselves, because prices will go up to follow demand. And it will have nothing to do with President Obama, Senator Feinstein’s bill, or the government. It’s just plain old capitalism, and the gun companies love it.

Their fear translates into hasty, bad decisions that could hurt or kill someone, including family members or friends or neighbors, but the banic continues.

I’m not banicking, but I admit panic is creeping into my psyche. I am in the heart of the culture war, in a right-to-work state, with a 10% unemployment rate, that declined to extend unemployment because it causes a “welfare dependency.” I am in a state that doesn’t support early childhood development because it is an “entitlement” unless you can afford to pay for it yourself, which means only wealthy people can afford it – this in spite of study after study that says early childhood programs increase school readiness and school success for all students.

I am in a state where “sovereign citizens” are so common the country’s leading sovereign citizen expert is a member of the Greensboro, NC police force. Sovereign citizens are people who refuse to follow laws imposed by the government – they register and license their cars under their self-named sovereign nations, refuse to pay taxes, and file exorbitant claims and suits against the government, costing taxpayers money.

I am in a state that has many sheriffs saying they will refuse to enforce any Federal weapons ban or gun control laws. It’s the same state that passed a marriage amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and the same state that refuses to pay restitution to the victims of involuntary, state mandated sterilization. It’s the state in which I learned about the Southern stare, and the state in which I wonder if we'll ever truly belong.

I understand we do not all share the same perspectives and beliefs, and we don’t have to. I acknowledge our differences while still believing we have more in common than uncommon and that we can live side by side, peacefully and respectfully. But my panic is growing because the outcome of this culture war doesn’t look good from this inside view.

You Say You Want a Revolution

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

You tell me that it's evolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction

Don't you know that you can count me out

Don't you know it's gonna be all right

all right, all right

You say you got a real solution

Well, you know

We'd all love to see the plan

You ask me for a contribution

Well, you know

We're doing what we can

But when you want money

for people with minds that hate

All I can tell is brother you have to wait

Don't you know it's gonna be all right

all right, all right

~ Revolution by the Beatles, 1968

Mackenzie, who is staying with us while transitioning to a new city, is working as a server while she is here. She needs to work a job that offers flexibility for when she is performing as a dancer and aerialist. She has seven years of experience in upscale New York City restaurants, where a good proportion of wait staff are performers, and both restaurants she contacted down here quickly offered her a job. She chose the one that is closest to us.

Last Saturday night she worked the dinner shift and, generally, at least in NYC, Saturday night dinner shifts reap good tips. She had a table of seven, the tab was over $150, and she thought the customers enjoyed their dining experience. She received a one-dollar tip.  Her base pay is under three dollars per hour. Added together, that’s not even close to being a living wage. Yet the restaurant general manager admonished her for not buying the uniform they’d decided they wanted their servers to wear a week ago. This, after she had already purchased a shirt to their specifications (a shirt that looks exactly like the shirt they decided upon and was actually more expensive) and had been wearing it for the two months she’s worked there.

She said, “I didn’t make any money. How do you think I’m going to pay for the shirt?”

Some of her colleagues commute forty minutes each way, and they can barely afford to fill their gas tanks, let alone buy shirts, and pay rent and utilities. Yet they are expected to give service with a smile.

Low wages are common here in this right-to-work state. So are jobs that don’t offer benefits such as health insurance. There is another reason restaurants on the whole are lacking business and tips are often less than the standard 15 – 20 percent. It is because many people are still suffering economically, and though things are getting better slowly, we could suffer major setbacks if Romney wins the election.

About half of America will disagree with that statement.

Low wages are becoming a trend everywhere in our country, though. Manufacturing jobs, the path to a middle class living in the 1950s through 1970s, have been replaced with low paying service jobs. Even for the few manufacturing jobs left in America, most are paying lower wages after chasing out the unions. I know my own company moved manufacturing out of the Northeast in order to close out the union and operate more cheaply overseas or in right-to-work states.

Executives are making more than ever and creating a class of super rich individuals. Mitt Romney supports them in continuing to make super salaries and receiving super perks, because he believes their wealth will “trickle down” to the rest of us. I don’t believe it. I haven’t seen it.

Some people are talking about a revolution to take back America, but when Ronald and I talk about it, we often say, “It won’t be the revolution people think it’s going to be.”

The reason we say that is because we need to come together, not push apart, and this election cycle is proving just how far apart we are. It isn’t the average American, you and me, who we need to rise up against. It’s all of us, the 99%, who need to rise up against the 1%.

“It’s not the haves versus the have-nots, it’s the have-it-alls versus the rest of Americans,” says Jacob Hacker, co-author of Winner Takes All: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.

He and his co-author Paul Pierson talked with Bill Moyers in January 2012 about the premise of their book. Their research has led them to the conclusion that in the last thirty years politics has changed our economy through organized combat funded by the super rich. On issue after issue our politicians cater to the rich and ignore the rest of America.

As I watched the interview a few days ago, I realized that this election clearly illustrates their premise.

As mentioned in an earlier post We Built This, the economy of the 1950s was good for everyone. There was better income distribution, and though the wealthy continued to get wealthy, everyone else was doing well, too. A rising tide lifts all boats, as Pierson and Hacker reminded me during the interview.  Further, they said middle class Americans had a voice through Labor unions, civic organizations, and the government.

After the 1960s the gap in wealth distribution grew as a result of failed domestic policies. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that almost all Americans, the 99%, lose in a shift where rewards are concentrated on a small segment of the society. Lobbying and big money fueled the disparity by getting directly involved in government. This election highlights the disparity. The Koch brothers and other billionaires have funded tens of millions of dollars to support the Romney/Ryan ticket.

Pierson said, “There has been a thirty-year war in which the sound of the voice of ordinary Americans is quieter and quieter in American politics and the voice of business and the wealthy has been louder and louder.”

I’m scared about Tuesday’s outcome. Can money really buy an election? I believe so. Can tapping into people’s fears and prejudices sway votes? I believe so. Can voter suppression work its insidious magic? It worked in 2000.

I suppose many feel that President Obama is part of the machine but I can’t help but believe he has compromised where he needed to in order to move his initiatives forward, like the Affordable Health Care Act which resembles Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan rather than the single-payer plan he originally envisioned. He believes our greatest recovery is in building out from the middle, as in the middle class, as opposed to the GOP trickle down theory.

The closest we came to a revolution in recent years was in 2008 when Obama’s grassroots fundraising helped him win the election. Hatred and fear were running high, and racism had an obvious impact, but he still won.

A little over a year ago the 99% tried to create a revolution, but I think they lacked organization and an agenda. Maybe they had the right idea, but implementation was haphazard at best. Camping out on Wall Street might have sent a message, but it didn’t have any teeth behind it and no way to make change happen.

This time around, unlike in 2008 when I wasn’t using social media, I receive about five emails a day from various liberal groups such as Emily’s List and MoveOn.org that give information and plead for donations. They worked.  I donated often, and I have high hopes for another win for President Obama despite a nagging uneasiness.

But the GOP is organized as well, and I get several phone calls and mailings a week from organizations such as the American Family Association and the National Organization for Marriage. They are trying to jump on the coattails of the super rich to force social issues changes that will impact the civil rights of some Americans.

I worry that people are concentrating on the wrong issues when we argue over a woman’s reproductive rights or the rights of two consenting people to have a legal union that protects them as a couple. When life seems overwhelming, people seek to control what they can.

In this right-to-work, religious, and swing state North Carolina, people’s words and deeds have frightened me. They use strong language in describing how white people feel disenfranchised by minorities  (racial, ethnic, and gender minorities) and how they will fight, violently so if need be, to retain their position of racial majority and the privilege that goes with it. It is their version of a revolution.

I don’t want to see people fight over the single piece of pie that is left to the rest of us after the super rich have taken their share. There is more than enough pie for all to have a hearty slice. A rising tide lifts all boats. So when we all do better, businesses will see more business, and people like Mackenzie will make decent tips because the people they are serving will have more to spend. But we need to do it peacefully, in collaboration and in consensus.

Jacob Hacker said the following during the interview:

“When citizens are organized and when they press their claims forcefully, and there are reformist leaders within government and outside it who work on [citizens’] behalf then we do see reform. This is the story of the American democratic experiment of wave after wave of reform leading to a much broader franchise and a much broader understanding of the American idea.”

I agree. We need to start a revolution.

Martin Luther King once led a revolution for civil rights and racial justice for all Americans. He said this in his commencement address at Oberlin College in June 1965:

“Now there is another problem facing us that we must deal with if we are to remain awake through a social revolution. We must get rid of violence, hatred, and war. Anyone who feels that the problems of mankind can be solved through violence is sleeping through a revolution. I've said this over and over again, and I believe it more than ever today. We know about violence. It's been the inseparable twin of Western materialism, the hallmark of its grandeur. I am convinced that violence ends up creating many more social problems than it solves. This is why I say to my people that if we succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness. There is another way - a way as old as the insights of Jesus of Nazareth and as modern as the techniques of Mohandas K. Gandhi. For it is possible to stand up against an unjust system with all of your might, with all of your body, with all of your soul, and yet not stoop to hatred and violence. Something about this approach disarms the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses, weakens his morale, and at the same time, works on his conscience. He doesn't know how to handle it. So it is my great hope that, as we struggle for racial justice, we will follow that philosophy and method of non-violent resistance, realizing that this is the approach that can bring about that better day of racial justice for everyone.”

Here is a photo of Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. sitting in a jail cell at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, AL (Bettmann/CORBIS).

I feel much the same way Hacker did at the end of his interview with Bill Moyers. He said, “The optimistic message is that politics got us into this mess and, potentially, politics can get us out of it.”

The Beatles ended their song Revolution with the following stanzas:

You say you'll change the constitution

Well you know

We all want to change your head

You tell me it's the institution

Well you know

You better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao

You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow

Don't you know know it's gonna be alright

Alright, alright

Vote. Make your voice loud and let it be heard. Start the revolution.

Another Brick in the Wall

We don't need no education


We don’t need no thought control


No dark sarcasm in the classroom


Teachers, leave them kids alone


Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

~ Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall Part 2

I’ve been en route and then busy with visiting family for the last couple of weeks, but I am home again, in my quiet house where I can cogitate without interruption, and I am ready to write.  Lots of words and ideas, jotted down so I wouldn’t forget, are pushing to break free, and I warn you, this post is lengthy and random, but it’s all connected in my mind.

Though most people don’t want to recognize racism or consider themselves a part of a racist society, it is integral in our societal structure, one brick laid on another and another, made strong with individual prejudice and what I’ve come to call willful or knowledgeable ignorance – the refusal to acknowledge what is right before one’s eyes, a denial of the truth.

There was a front-page story in the Winston-Salem Journal two Sundays ago: Separate worlds. The article begins with the following:

Many of Forsyth County’s public schools have resegregated over the last 40 years as national court decisions, and local political ones, favored neighborhood schools over racially and economically balanced ones.

It goes on to say:

Past Winston-Salem Journal and Associated Press reviews of the U.S. census data from 1980, 1990, and 2000 have shown Winston-Salem and Forsyth County to be the state’s most segregated major population center. In focusing just on Hispanic population data from the 2000 census, the Associated Press determined that Hispanics here are more segregated from whites than in any other city except Oakland, CA.

Can anyone deny the racism that exists in the town I live in? I’ve already warned Ronald that he will be responsible for selecting the next city we move to. Some people say everything happens for a reason; some think God has a plan and puts you just where you need to be to fulfill a purpose. I think I just made a poor choice, and yet, this may be the last place I call home. I think every place is similar, anyway.  Racism exists everywhere in this country.

I didn’t see the wrinkles and imperfections of this city when we used to drive down to the dance conservatory to see Cara and Mackenzie perform, or to spend time watching their classes, or to pick them up to take them home for the summer. The Carolina blue sky must have blinded me. Every day we live here teaches me that this town has plantation mentality. Every day I see that although we experienced racism in the North, here racism runs deep and true. It’s a part of the lingo and the philosophy that gets passed down through the generations. There is no denying it. And I’m not even out there talking to the citizens as Ronald is.

One white guy told Ronald that his great-grandfather owned slaves, and they were treated right. They even had doctors look after them when needed. He averred that they had a good life, better than what they might have faced in Africa.

“Do you know how much my great granddaddy paid for just one slave girl?” he asked Ronald. He had found his grandfather’s bookkeeping logs.

“Don’t know,” Ronald said.

“Eight hundred dollars. That was a lot of money back then. You wouldn’t abuse your slave when you paid that much for her,” he said, proud of how he had proven the humanity behind slavery.

“Oh, just like you wouldn’t mistreat the oxen or the other farm animals,” I said as Ronald finished up the story.

“Just like that,” he agreed.

“Never mind that you consider them animals and property, not people.”

“And they still want to believe it.”

“Take back America,” I said. “That’s where they want to take it back to.”

Ronald had been called a Yankee again and told that Yankees came down here for the weather but hated the people. Ronald told the white man that while he didn’t like the opinions of a lot of people he had met, he had never been rude or called them names as he had been since moving here.

“Did you remind him that the Civil War is over and that they lost?”

“Sometimes I want to,” he said.

I’m not perfect. My emotions are strong and deep and not always appropriate. There they are like banners, displayed for all who care to look, snapping in the wind on a bright day, hanging wet and limp in the rain, or rendered stiff and immobile in sub-zero temperatures. I don’t and won’t apologize for having them.

When we moved to the South, it was a big adjustment. Ronald lived his entire life in one city, and that was the same city in which I spent most of my adult life. We had always struggled to find a few close friends, mostly, I think, due to our being interracial. People, even when we could tell they really liked us, just couldn’t compute how to fit us into their social network. I had lost my aunt, with whom I had a close relationship, a couple years before.  (Ronald and our daughters had changed her mind about black people and interracial relationships.) Then I had gone through a rough patch with my siblings as I settled my aunt’s estate. The unresolved issues dampened my skin like fine, misty rain, and I wanted a big change. Moving was the big change we chose. I hoped we could run away and lose the past.

In the South we knew no one but our daughter, and we weren’t ones to think our children were obligated to entertain us. So I imagined we’d make new friends, and I would entertain a girlfriend or two on long Saturday afternoons spent drinking hot tea and eating scones, settled around a Scrabble board. We didn’t make any new friends. And most of the old ones never visited as they had promised.

I always thought I was strong and resilient, but the move knocked me down for the count. That surprised me. I didn’t realize how attached I was to our old home, the one we raised our daughters in, and to the city that I always thought looked dirty, worn, and gray. The doctor said my serotonin was low. She prescribed something to increase it.

It worked, kind of. I stopped having panic attacks, the kind that caused me to pass out in the shopping mall and crack my head open one humid August evening just months before we made the move.

Then I noticed something after taking the medication for a couple of months. My emotions were neutral. I didn’t cry at movies. I didn’t feel pleasure, displeasure, angry, happy, joy, or despair. I was completely and utterly devoid, empty. I imagined my soul had oozed out of my body and left behind an empty vessel. I thought, “The world could crumble around my feet, drop away, leave a void as big as infinity, and I would feel nothing.” I stopped taking it.

Within a few weeks, I was sniffling at movies again, loudly enough to disturb other moviegoers. Laughing out loud at commercials. Wearing my love like a hot pink blouse and my anger and sadness like itchy woolen leggings. I truly missed feeling, and I embraced all of it: the good, the bad, the best, and the worst. You can’t know one emotion without experiencing its opposing emotion.

I’ll never cede my emotions again.

So my last post, Checking the Other Box http://aboutracewriter.blogspot.com/2012/06/checking-other-box.html

was an emotional rant, most likely addressed to the wrong person, but warranted, valid, and real. It was as honest and authentic as can be.  I’m not afraid to show my humanity with all its imperfection.

“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be wearing dresses that show my knees,” I said to Ronald this past week as I stared at my reflection in the hotel room full-length mirror. I was traveling for work, and he came along because we were bringing his parents back with us for a visit.

“Why?” he asked. I know he appreciated how well the dress fit over my curves and the way my heels elongated my legs. Later that evening when we returned to the hotel, I watched a man back up so he could watch me walk down the hallway, my walk slower, more languid, than it was thirty years ago, but my hips still rolling in that sensual, feminine way. I like that kind of attention, distant and non-threatening.

‘My knees show what age I am,” I said. I think fifty-five must be the magic number. Rest my elbow in the car window and turn to see the skin above it fold and crinkle. Straighten my arms and look at my elbows, and the flesh covering them looks like tiny elephant knees. Glance at my hands, and notice how the skin is thinner and losing its elasticity. Stick my hands under the dryer in the restroom and watch the force of air swirl the skin in skittering patterns. I keep applying lotion, believing I can hydrate myself to twenty-something. Staring in the mirror, I noticed the skin above my knees looked crepe-like, spidery fine webbing etching my flesh. My once smooth and flawless skin has texture.

“Some women’s knees are like that their whole lives,” Ronald said. He’s always trying so hard to make me feel better, and I laugh at his attempts, not meanly, but sweetly and thankfully. I know, though, that his artist’s eye has wandered and explored every new crevice and crinkle. I think it must be painful to see the woman he pursued, photographed, plastered, and painted enthusiastically fade before his eyes like an old Polaroid snapshot. Even I, devoid of the sharp vision he has, noted how his eyes sit deeper in his face, the skin on his forearms, backs of his hands, and ankles is textured, and the bald spot on the crown of his head is growing. Disbelief rises. I think I don’t want to know, but why deny the truth? I refuse to practice willful ignorance.

I have to embrace aging the same way I’ve come to embrace my emotions. The alternative doesn’t appeal.

Neither does the alternative to speaking out about racism. My voice in the matter will be heard. I don’t want to shut others down, but sometimes their willful ignorance rattles my sensibilities.

A couple weeks ago the guys at the golf range told Ronald that President Obama stole his identity by assuming a dead man’s social security number. His grandmother aided and abetted Obama when he was fourteen and perhaps wishing for his first summer job. I got my social security number at fourteen for the same reason – to obtain my ready to work papers.

Apparently the conspiracy to turn us into a socialist country was born years ago by a conniving mixed-race child and his power-hungry white grandmother. The agencies of government that vet candidates for office were too dumb to discover the complex scheme, or perhaps they were in on it. But not the Tea Party and “Take Back America” conservatives – they were on to his masterful and evil plot to displace and disempower D. Whiteman.

“Snopes debunked that myth back in 2010,” I said to Ronald as he told the story, and I typed in a quick search. “Don’t they have the internet?”

‘They don’t want to know,” he said. “If not that, then something else. They just can’t say the truth. They don’t want a black man in office.”

Then my disappointment in humanity was further fueled by an experience we had this past weekend. We drove my parents-in-law back to NC to visit with us for a few days. Every place we stopped along the way garnered stares.

“Dianne, they’re just looking at you. They can’t figure out why you are with us,” my father-in-law said several times during our travels.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m used to it.”

“They think you’re our social worker or something,” my mother-in-law said at dinner in a Ruby Tuesday’s in Maryland. I had ordered my father-in-law’s dinner for him and then asked the waitress to bring him another soda as the first one had too much ice and was shades paler than the usual Coke products.

We had to turn in early. The drive is arduous for two octogenarians, so we pulled over at a Holiday Inn Express in West Virginia at around 7:00 p.m. I went in to book the rooms. That’s something Ronald and I figured out a long time ago. It’s using that white privilege I’ve spoken about in past posts. I’ll get the lowest rate. Why shouldn’t we get the white people rate? There should only be one rate.

We know this because one time when we went down to visit Cara and Mackenzie while they were at the dance conservatory, we stopped into a nearby Comfort Inn. I booked the room and got a really nice rate. Ronald was back a couple of weeks later by himself, I can’t remember why, but when he returned to the hotel, they quoted him $30 higher.

“I stayed here a couple weeks ago with my wife, and that’s not what we paid,” he told the clerk behind the desk.

“Impossible,” the clerk responded.

“Look it up,” Ronald said.

He did.  “They made a mistake,” he told Ronald, but he gave him the rate I paid. How could he not?

We chose the Holiday Inn Express because my parents-in-law have used them in their travels for the last fifty years and feel comfortable there. The reason my parents-in-law like the Holiday Inn is because back in the mid-twentieth century that was one of the few hotels that would let blacks book rooms. I guess there’s no way to know if they gave them the same rate as white people.

That kind of memory stays with a person. It’s like Dillard’s. A long time ago, they did not welcome black shoppers. My in-laws have never forgotten, and they refuse to shop there when they visit the South. Though I love the store, I understand why they don’t, even if it happened fifty years ago.

I booked two non-smoking king rooms, asked for the AARP rate (he never even asked me for my membership card), and told the clerk, an Asian Indian man who spoke broken English, that my parents were elderly and needed to be close to us because they had health issues. He gave us rooms across the hall from one another.

I returned to the car, we parked, got our luggage, and piled into the hotel. The clerk stared as we passed the desk. I had a bad feeling from the start. I’m not psychic, but I use my intuition, and nothing felt right. I chalked it up to a long day on the road and the worry that clutched at me because I knew this trip was going to be awfully difficult for my parents-in-law to make. As soon as we got up to the rooms, the evening slid into chaos.

The clerk did not give us two rooms with king beds as I requested. One room had a king and the other had two doubles. No problem, Ronald and I took the one with the doubles (we slept in a single dorm bed together for three of the four years of college), but the one with the king bed had a broken A/C unit. Ronald and I trudged back down stairs to tell the clerk. His uncle, a small man the same size as my father-in-law, stood behind him with a toddler in his arms. Ronald explained the situation. Then I added that if the A/C could not be repaired, we would have to move on to another hotel.  “You understand that my in-laws are elderly and have health issues. They cannot stay in a room without air.”

The desk clerk said he’d be up in twenty minutes. A half hour later, he still hadn’t come.

Ronald went back down while my in-laws propped open their door with a chair. I was trying to get them into our room to wait, but they didn’t want to miss the clerk. There were white people filing past us down the hall with dogs, lots of dogs. There must have been a dog show in town. They all stared as I stood with my in-laws, my father-in-law growing more upset as the minutes ticked by.

Downstairs the clerk told Ronald he was rushing him. Ronald explained, again, that his parents are elderly with health issues and the temperature in the room was well over 100 degrees. Finally the clerk agreed to come upstairs with him. The clerk’s uncle tagged along.

As soon as my father-in-law saw them, he wanted to explain the situation, but already tired and not feeling well, he was agitated and emotional. My mother-in-law made him sit down as the two men stooped around the PTAC (that stands for “packaged terminal air conditioner”) and examined it. Ronald stood nearby them. I waited in the hall.

After several minutes, the clerk announced the PTAC needed a new circuit board and maintenance would be there in the morning.

“Unacceptable,” Ronald said.

“Open the window,” the clerk answered. Even though it was evening, the temperature was still in the low 100s.

Ronald went into fire lieutenant mode. When you’ve managed fire scenes, you learn to communicate clearly, succinctly, loud enough to be heard, and with no room for interpretation. He did not curse. He did not lose control of his voice. He stood inches from the man’s face, his finger in his chest.

“You’re done. I gave you a chance to make it right,” Ronald said as the clerk backed out of the room, Ronald in close pursuit.

The clerk said, “Let them sleep in your room with you or take them to a different hotel and you stay here. You have another room.”

“Why don’t I call the police and they can help us sort this out?” Ronald said.

“Okay, okay, I have another room.”

“Too late.”

I jumped in. “I’ll see you at the front desk to check out. I already told you we’d be leaving if you couldn’t fix the air.”

Downstairs, my voice shaking, I said, “I explained to you that they have health issues. You see they are elderly. I better not see one cent charged on my credit card.”

Then he argued with me about the room numbers. He said we were in 320 and 322. We were not side by side but across the hall from one another in 320 and 321. I didn’t want 322 charged to my card.

“Really?” I asked. “Weren’t you just up there?”

“The computer doesn’t lie.”

“I don’t either. We are in 320 and 321. I want documentation that you cancelled the rooms.”

He said he had none and I took a business card from the desk and told him I would be checking to make sure he didn’t charge me. There was a white woman standing at the counter during our exchange. She stood with her mouth open and her wallet in her hand. As I stood waiting at the elevator to go back upstairs, I mouthed to her, “Don’t stay here.”

She excused herself from the desk and came over and whispered, “What happened? He was so rude to you.”

I explained. She said, “Oh, God, we prepaid.”

“Good luck,” I said.

I took my in-laws to the car while Ronald gathered the overnight bags, and the white woman and her family were parked next to us. It was the first she knew of our interracial status. She and I spoke again.  She offered the understanding that I wish for lots of times and don’t get as I navigate this interracial world.

I don’t think every white person hates black people. It’s the way our culture operates silently behind the scenes. Racism is institutionalized and systemic in how we live, work, and socialize. It’s about power and privilege and the oppression of others. Most people don’t realize it. They think racism is an individual thing, but it isn’t. That’s just plain bias or hatred. That white woman was kind and understanding, but in our society, she is still part of the majority race and benefits from that membership, just as I do. Until we eliminate the unwritten racism hidden in our social structure, it will remain, and the majority will continue to enjoy power and privilege while minority groups continue to suffer their status of “less than.”

Later, lying in bed with the lights turned off in our king room at the next hotel we found along the route, Ronald and I chuckled as we recapped our day before dropping off to sleep. We talked about all the people who stared and wondered what our story was. Then I mentioned the look on the hotel clerk’s face, how it went from arrogant to fearful, when Ronald went into lieutenant mode and told him we were leaving. We didn’t know if the man was stupid, rude, prejudiced, acting superior, or all of the above, but it had made for a very bad evening, one that we’ll talk about for years to come, no doubt.

“I guess all the white folks with their dogs were worried that the niggers were going to turn out the place,” Ronald concluded. He keeps a sense of humor about these situations.

“Yup, it’s always an adventure,” I said, laughing.

I told Ronald the story of the white woman who nodded to me one last time after I had pulled our car up to the front door to wait for him while he imparted a last warning not to charge our credit card to the clerk and his uncle. The woman tilted her head and smiled, and I smiled back at her and shrugged my shoulders.

We are all just another brick in the societal wall, but I hope that together we can modify the structure so there will be true equality. I’m talking about the kind of equality where everyone pays a better rate at the hotel and the clerk aims to please all of the hotel guests. We can’t run away and lose the past. Instead we have to shake up our willful ignorance and face the undeniable truth.