Posts Tagged ‘black’
Understanding is the Bridge to Empathy in Race Matters
Only twice in my life have I ever noticed that I was different. That I was, or could be identified, as “other”. Now to be sure, at neither time did this realization make me uncomfortable. That’s probably because I was in a relatively familiar setting, just among a rather homogenous group of people where I was the guy who stood out. Being the only person in church or on the basketball court who is NOT of color was for me, a non-large very white male, more a case of “huh, that’s different” than a case of ” be on guard”.
More than anything else, that is likely part of the core of what is meant when we hear talk of “white privilege”: I am only at risk if I actually do something wrong.
Sitting here in suburbia, in middle-age, it’s instructive to look back at how I’ve arrived at such a place. A place where I always feel like I could belong no matter where my place takes me. The town of my earliest youth is probably most responsible for this. Southbridge was a dying mill town in Central Massachusetts, although none of us kids new it was dying at the time. Settled initially by French-Canadien ex-pats, a second wave of migration from Puerto Rico occurred before I went to grade school. 10 or 15 percent of my classmates were children of Puerto Rican immigrants, but I knew them only as kids in school or teammates on the various fields of our youth. We fought side-by-side 100 times more often than we ever fought facing each other. Sure, they were different. Their grandparents spoke Spanish while most of ours spoke French.
Home since childhood has been driven more by economics than any other factor. Most of my life since then has been lived in worlds that roughly track the Southbridge of my youth, roughly 80% White/20% Black or Brown. People of color were either there when I arrived (and so belonged as much as I), or arrived the same way I did (and so belonged as much as I). At this point I should confess that I’ve never given too very much thought to the color mix of my surroundings. This may also constitute “white privilege” I suppose, the privilege of not needing to be aware of color at all. What makes that kind of funny is that until the very last major move of my life, each time I’ve moved to a new place, many people assumed that I was Black prior to my arrival. Darrell White the presumably Black football player arriving at a new high school or at college? Nope. Short, skinny white guy. Darrell White the first ever Black med student or Black resident at my respective schools? Sorry to disappoint. Still, short skinny white guy. Only my voice is 6’5″, and with no accent whatsoever it is colorless.
How about those two instances where I did feel different, in church and on the basketball court? In church it was mostly humorous since the other congregants made such a huge effort to make me feel welcome. Indeed, as the only White family among the churchgoers at the Black Baptist church one Christmas it was more than comical when the pastor, my friend the Rev. Mel Woodard, introduced us from the altar (over my gentle objection) to the congregation. “Please welcome The Whites!” With a twinkle in her eye “Lovely Daughter” leaned over to me in the pew: “Duh!” No, other than the obvious pointed out by Megan, in that setting the group made sure that only the most superficial differences existed for me in that room. I would only be “other” if I chose to be.
The basketball court just down the street from Wills Eye was a bit of a different matter, and because of that more instructive when examined through the magnification of the retrospectometer. The rules of pick-up ball are clear, and they are largely consistent in every park in America. There’s a line-up of who has “next”, and if you are not a regular you just call “next”, wait at the end of the line, and hope that you can assemble enough talent on your team to last more than one game. Here, like in church with Mel, mine was almost the only White face, but here I was “other” in every sense of the word. My turn as “next” kept getting lost on the list, the wait for that one game almost 2 hours before one of the park leaders acknowledged the tiny injustice and put my team on the court simply by joining us as our fifth guy. The other White guy was on the team, of course, and he was a stud baller. A bit to the right of average for that park, that game was the first time in my life when I was more conscious of what my game looked like than how I was playing. Who do I pass to? Do I take the open shot?
We lost the game, of course. Not so much because of anything I did or didn’t do during the game as that the other team had a guy named “Jelly Bean” and no one could stop him (pretty decent player; I think his son was somebody in the NBA or something). In the comfort of not needing to be the least bit introspective, of not needing to learn anything at all from that morning, all I got until this past week from my encounter with Philadelphia inner city hoops was pissed off that I only got a single run after waiting two hours for my “next”. It’s only now as I look back that I realize my sense of being scrutinized, of being conscious of how I looked while playing rather than just playing, needing to be much, much better than the other “average” ballers there that day because I was White.
The events–church, a pick-up basketball game–are trivial, but the fall-out, however long in coming, is not. The fact that it is now 30 years since my non-battle with Kobe’s dad and I am just now aware of how I felt may be part of what is called “White privilege”, but moments like this are to be encouraged however long they are in coming, don’t you think? My oldest friends of color, roommates and groomsmen, as well as friends of more recent vintage will likely welcome this sense with little more than a playful “what took you so long” wink, and begin the dialogue. The Rev. Woodard’s congregants didn’t even need the comfort and cover of friendship to offer a wink (and in their collective case, countless hugs), so aware were they of how it feels to be “other” until proven otherwise.
Sympathy, my friends, is not enough. Sympathy is situational and episodic, and is therefore also transient. After all, who among us but the most hardened bigots or the most unreachable psychopaths cannot find sympathy for the family of the man killed while instinctively reaching for his wallet, or the families of the officers gunned down while on duty? No, sympathy is not enough because it is only something that we feel, and not something that we are, or even choose to be. Empathy is the magic elixir because empathy cannot be set aside. Empathy is to feel with, not simply to feel for, because it is a part of who we are. But empathy is hard, and empathy takes time. No one would wish the loss of a loved one on another in order to feel “with”. Sometimes empathy is little more than a spark, and sometimes that spark is so small that it goes unnoticed or ignored.
There is a bridge, though, between sympathy and empathy, and it is understanding. Like a physical bridge one must look to the other side and seek to be there. Like any bridge one must have the faith that over the crest in the middle, beyond the road you can see, there lies ahead a clear path to the other side. The trip may be a difficult one, but as with all trips, it will pass much more easily if in the company of others who either seek to understand as well, or better yet others who already do. Like all those men and women who came up to me in church and hugged me after Mel’s introduction. Like the guy at the park who joined my team, made sure I got “next”, and told me to come back for a run the next Saturday.
Like Sheldon and Steve, Rasesh and Mel who will hold my hand and guide me as I climb the bridge myself.
Thoughtfulness in a Self-Important World
Thoughtful: 1) Contemplative, pensive. To give deep consideration to an idea, news, or concept. 2) Showing consideration for the feelings or needs of other people.
How much information is too much and who gets to make that choice? Is there an element of timing in that question? For instance, is the amount of information that is ultimately enough (and not too much) subject to some kind of schedule, and if so who gets to choose when the information is made available? I’m prompted to think about this by a couple of very current events, or types of events: two instances of death resulting from police/citizen interactions, and more than several instances of government officials or public individuals enmeshed in scandal, or the appearance of scandal. You’ll not find commentary here about the particulars of any of these current events; I have no standing and therefore will offer no comments. My over-arching thesis, though, is that the twin virtues of transparency and disclosure have been tarnished in these instances by the evil twins impatience and entitlement.
Think about it for a moment. Events that are large and important fairly cry out for patience and a deeper, more thoughtful discussion. One that begins after facts have been extricated from the web of innuendo that is born in the bosom of personal opinion. The stampede of analysis now comes even as a story unfolds, before it even ends. It matters not whether we are observers of an event that touches on a certifiable “big theme” (e.g. racism), or one that is tiny, local, or personal (e.g. infidelity). The commonality rests not with the protagonists in the event but rather within its observers, especially those who comment: it’s all about them.
Are you old enough to remember when it was considered unseemly to be a self-promoter? Even if you are, it’s tough to recall those days before the ever-connected world when blatant “look at me” or “listen to me” behavior was met with the collective cluck of a society bred for humility. This “cult of self-promotion” not only imposes itself on big events and grand issues (comments that begin with “I think…”), it also means that no one is to be allowed a privacy if the entitled and impatient self-promoters decide that they simply must know, well, whatever. Right now. “A universal, wrathful demand of the public for complete disclosure” about everything and anything. (Gideon Lewis-Kraus)
The need to know trumps all; one who asks the question in some way is granted all manner of primacy over one who might have the answer. It’s can be uncomfortable to watch at times.
The phenomena is not without irony. Witness articles critical of self-promotion that tell the story of someone who is almost famous for talking about not promoting him/herself. Nice, huh? It’s like a hall of mirrors, a kind of “Inception”. Trust that it doesn’t escape my attention that there are more than several folks out there who consider “musings” and “Random Thoughts: a form of self-promotion. An irony within a discussion of irony.
There’s a certain power in thoughtfulness, a seriousness that induces thoughtfulness, in turn, in the listener. If we always know what you think or what you did precisely when you thought or acted, how are we to ascertain what, if anything, is important? If one demands full and immediate disclosure of any and all information, regardless of how significant or trivial it might be, or how public or private the consequences, how are we to order anything at all along the grand/small continuum? At some point the primacy of the inquisitor must find its limit, if only for a moment.
A moment of peace for the rest of us, should we care to think about something deeper than the event in question. A moment of peace for an individual who might harken back to an earlier day, one when it was possible to graciously decline to offer anything at all, lest it encourage someone to be interested enough to ask questions.
Driving While Black: Thoughts on the Zimmerman Trial
No matter what the story eventually turns out to be, there is very little that is good that is likely to come out of the Trayvon Martin debacle and the ongoing Zimmerman trial. Not for the Martin family, not for Zimmerman the neighborhood watch guy, and probably not for society as a whole, at least for quite a while. Why? For the simple reason that it is now 2013, we’re still having this conversation about race and profiling, and nobody has yet demanded the kind of change that would have prevented this tragedy.
Let’s go back a bit, shall we? How about a trip to 1979 and suburban Rhode Island. I’m driving the family beater, my close friend in the passenger seat waves at a police car as we drive by on our way to the mall. My close friend, STILL my close friend, happens to be a very large Black man. You guessed it–flashing lights followed by “license and registration (no please).” Why? A version of Driving While Black. Not a lot of young Black men in my home town. At the time this particular young Black man was a student at Williams College and would go on to have considerable business success as adult.
“Come on, Darrell. That’s ancient history. Things are different now.” Well, let’s move forward a bit. Dinner at the White house (ironic, huh?) sometime around the year 2000. My good friend the Rev. Mel and his beautiful wife are joining us at our house for dinner. Mel, a black Baptist minister, drives a bullet-proof Mercedes sedan. Never more than 5 mph over the speed limit. The Woodards were late for dinner. When I teased him about it Mel just shrugged his shoulders and said “DWB.” Even impeccably dressed for a dinner out, Mel was still a Black American man. Apparently not a lot of Black men driving Mercedes in Cleveland at that time.
Now? A young Black man in a hoodie returns from an errand, surely guilty, in the mind of the security agent, of something until proven innocent; apparently not a lot of young Black men in hoodies in that neighborhood. A non-Black man approaches the youth, surely someone to be feared (by the young Black man) until proven otherwise. The fault, my friends, lies on BOTH sides of the conversation. At this late date in history it no longer matters what came first, you know? One side of the conversation needs to openly acknowledge that the vast majority of the other side does NOT participate in violent criminal activity. This part of the community needs to openly acknowledge this unassailable fact and aggressively teach that lesson to people of all ages. The other side of the conversation needs to openly acknowledge that their ARE small parts of their community who DO engage in violent crime, and to go about the hard work of isolating the criminals as the outliers they are and shunning them as a pox on BOTH communities.
We need to be done with the blame game. Indeed, indulging in finger-pointing at this late historical stage is also a type of enabling. By taking the easy way out, blaming this one for not fighting harder against unsupportable prejudice, or pointing the finger at that one for some weak justification for criminal behavior based on whatever, is quite simply enabling the prejudiced and the predators to both continue their pathologic behavior patterns. In my opinion the fault lies on both sides of this divide. There is no rational way to decide who goes first when it comes to solving these two problems.
NONE of us could have personally influenced the tragic outcome of that encounter in a random Florida neighborhood. ALL of us…Black, White, and other…have the duty and the responsibility and the ability to do the hard work necessary to prevent what STARTED it. There is no “you/he/they” have to go first.
We should all start now.