Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Dr. Darrell White's Personal Blog

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Posts Tagged ‘dallas’

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.

 

Beauty and Camelot

“Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.” –Somerset Maugham.

What do you think? Is this true? Is it as necessary to the human creature to be nourished by beauty as it is to be sated? Or is Maugham saying that one is as keenly aware of beauty when it is present as one is of hunger? Is that the same question?

Or is hunger a metaphor? Is Maugham really saying that beauty is like desire or longing? Layered and complex, a more personal thing. You know, the old “I can’t tell you what beauty is, but I know when I see something beautiful.”

Do you remember those old Canon Sureshot commercials with Andre Agassi? It was a long time ago–he might have even still had hair. Agassi would do all kinds of silly stuff with a tennis racket, snap a few pics, and then stare into the camera: “image (pause) is everything!” Remember?

This week the United States marked 50 years since the assassination of JFK. Of note is that the image of Kennedy and the Kennedy White House as Camelot came AFTER his death; no one spoke of him or his administration like this while he was alive. It was his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, who gave birth to this imagery. “There will be great Presidents again, but there will never be another Camelot.” The image has endured.

Was this true? Was Kennedy a truly great President in his too brief 3 years in the White House? Was his America truly Camelot, Kennedy as Arthur, leading from a place so pure that all who followed would surely be the better for it? We know so much more about him now, 50 years later, than any but his closest friends did at the time. Does our awareness of the reality of the man, so at odds with the image, taint our feelings about “Camelot”?

The answer to that, my friends, is much like Beauty; you may not be able to put it in words, but you know where you stand on the question, whether Kennedy was truly Arthur, or simply an actor playing the role.

But Camelot, ah now, Camelot is something different altogether. Young or old, Americans look back on that time as something truly different. Better. Hopeful. Expectant I think is the right sense. It was a time when Americans expected tomorrow to be better. Born high or low, most sensed that each day dawned with the likelihood of better. At least it seems that’s our sense of it looking back some 50 years.

For some there is a sense that this has been lost, and this was certainly a recurring theme in the reportage seen everywhere this week. After all, the verse from which sprang Jackie’s “Brandstorm” quote was written in the past tense as well: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.” Is this true? Has Camelot come and gone, or is this, too, just an image?

Beauty and Camelot are much the same. Each can be considered an ecstasy, each as obvious as hunger or as inscrutable as desire. Indeed, each invoke a certain longing, something so personal as to be an irreducible part of who we are. We long for beauty, and we are nourished when we behold it. We long for Camelot, for ourselves and for most of us on behalf of our fellow travelers as well.

We must not let our longing blind us to the fact that, like beauty, in North America Camelot is now. Camelot did not die with Arthur; the “shining moment” was neither brief, nor did it recede into the myst like some modern “Brigadoon”. Look around you. See…really see what beauty has grown since November 23, 1963. Look in the middle where most of us live, not at the margins where lie the extreme. Arthur may have died, yes. He may or may not have been real, and we may or may not have seen one like him grace our round table since. No matter.

You live in a spot known as Camelot. Your shining moment is now.