I Am A Racist

"I wrote this piece after seeing the events and stories of the past few months while trying to collect my thoughts on those events and trying to determine how I arrived at the views that I have. After seeing many similar posts and discussions on social media, I felt that these discussions were almost reaching the point of this being a mentality that has been ingrained in many of my peers growing up in the South as a white person of the lower middle class. There seemed to be a dialogue lacking that really examined the idea of racism being ingrained in people like me from a young age and that idea being subsequently difficult to talk about or discuss in an open dialogue. People like myself may think these same thoughts and give no credence to their personal beliefs, but I feel the thoughts exist all the same and deserve to be acknowledged and discussed in a way that contributes to an open dialogue of honesty and critical analysis. The ultimate spur of this idea making its way to paper came from a CSPAN public opinion question asking for ways to begin healing the racial divide in this country. My immediate thought was just to acknowledge it exists and the first comment I read from someone else was from a thirty something white guy like myself stating that we just need to stop talking about it. I believe the first step of problem solving is being able to first admit that there is a problem. This is a problem that deserves to have that dialogue and admission, even if it is an uncomfortable thing to admit exists." - Taylor Lairsey

I am a racist. I always have been.

I grew up hearing words and saying words in casual conversation that I did not understand. I still do not fully comprehend the true weight of the effects that those words have on other people. I said them all. Any slur, epithet, or allusion that you can possibly think of, I have said. In moments of anger. In moments of "humor". In everyday conversation between the family that loved and raised me, these words were never said with any particular malice or inflection of hate. They were just words. Nobody corrected me when I would say them as they would when I was using swear words or intentionally speaking spitefully in an attempt to hurt another person. Their permission made me believe they were perfectly fine to say.

I then grew up. I heard the same words being spoken in my school by my peers, of all races. Sometimes people might be a little upset and give a "Hey man, not cool." But still, the response was not nearly as severe as when I was a child using profanity. I said these words with my friends. We would joke around and call each other these words, and genuinely laugh at our imitations of accents being made. I never gave it a second thought. It was never meant maliciously. We were just having a good time. I would go to classes on current events and hear and see the reactions from around the world about various events caused by racial tensions, but I never fully understood what was actually being shared with me. I missed the point of what those educators were trying to show me.

I became an adult. At some point in my life, I stopped saying these things as often. I have no idea where the turning point was or what made me suddenly feel slightly ashamed of myself if I was about to crack a joke or say something about another race. Maybe it was the experiences I had been through, or the places I had been. Maybe it was looking back throughout my education and realizing that I had not just been misled, but I had been lied to. Although the people who taught me were good natured and fantastic educators, perhaps they didn’t even know the truth about or question what they were teaching, and subsequently perpetuated those lies from generation to generation.

The Pilgrims and the Indians just didn't all come together and have a happy celebration as is depicted in so many textbook images. The Pilgrims were starving and dying in a new land that was not theirs in the first place. The people those Pilgrims were killing brought them food so that they did not starve. It did not stop them from dying at the hands of those they helped. It still has not stopped.

The slaves that were freed during the Civil War were free people, they told me. Those same people who were supposed to be free, could not vote. The North and the Union that had freed them did not want them in their cities. They were beaten just as badly by those who freed them as the slave masters that whipped them on the plantation. They were given 40 acres and a mule and told they were free men, to live their lives in a country divided between those that did not want them, and those that hated them for no longer being their property. They were never truly free.

They taught me about the Civil Rights Movement. How it gave Black people the same rights as everyone else. They did not tell me how people were still discriminated against in their search for jobs, education, housing, and for justice for their sons and daughters and mothers and fathers still being murdered by the people of the country that proclaimed them free. They were never truly free. They were never truly given the same rights as everyone else. They still aren’t.

The internment of Japanese American citizens into concentration camps during the second World War, the Bisbee Deportation of striking mine workers in Arizona of the early 1900’s, and the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940’s all serve as just a few of the countless examples throughout our country’s history that are glossed over or outright ignored by most standardized history education curriculum. The curriculum they imparted was full of idealism, but not quite grounded in gravitas with the entirety of the truth. I’ve come to realize, we have a history that has never told the full side of every participant’s story. Clearly, words and images, and the lack thereof have power.

At some point in my life I started listening and not just hearing. I listened to the words that I had heard and said for my entire life. I listened to the reactions of people those words were being said to or about. I tried to compare their reactions to what I had learned about the things I was not taught in school. I tried to think about these things and how they really came across to the people that they were about. I didn't get it. I still said and thought these words. Sometimes with a twinge of guilt, but I still saw nothing really wrong with it. I still have thoughts about people in more subtle ways that are ingrained in everything I absorbed throughout my life, either through the education system or the actions and words and beliefs of those who raised me. I see a person with dark skin walking towards me in an area I am unfamiliar with and my immediate reaction TO THIS DAY is, "Should I be afraid?" I immediately think that the idea is completely ridiculous. I don't even know this person I say to myself. But my brain knows, and has been trained since birth, that this person is different from me because of how they look and I should be afraid. I know I have to correct my brain and its entire lifetime of learned behavior. Every. Single. Day.

Every single day I have to take my entire life of learned behavior and remind it that there are hundreds and hundreds of years of human hurt, pain, and death behind the simple words that never really seemed that big of a deal to me. It's not how they are meant. It's what they actually mean. It's the weight of hundreds of years of history behind these words. Saying them is not just a word said. It is a distillation of a history of pain that you cannot comprehend if it has not been the history of your life. I will never understand these words fully. But they are wrong. They hurt. And if I seem angry in addressing it when those like me throw them out casually, it is not because I view myself as better than the person saying them. It's because I am furious at myself as well. I fear these thoughts will never go away. They require constant confrontation when they arise, and it infuriates me that some people will never even take the time to listen, when I know I hear these words echoing in my head just as often as they do. Listen. Hear. Speak out against them. It's not a one size fits all victory. It's a daily struggle with your own mind and the sum of your entire life experience.

I am a racist. I always have been. With work, knowledge, empathy, and love, I won’t always have to be.

Black. Lives. Matter.