Exploration into Racism

I’ve been invited to explore racism. The stimulus for the inquiry was a discussion on another blog, Mondoweiss,  by an old friend (I hope he is still), Philip Weiss, who has opened up a similar inquiry there.

I want to take this time to first explore what racism is, how it plays in my inter-personal relationships and how it gets expressed in collective consciousness and later in political policies.

In all respects, I’ve been a perpetrator or bearer of racist attitudes, a victim of racist attitudes, personally determined to break through racist attitudes, and a healer in some cases of racist attitudes.

I’ve perpetrated racist attitudes almost entirely in the form of keeping emotional distance, originating from a combination of unfamiliarity and fear. I don’t believe that I’ve actively encouraged racism really at any time in my life, towards anyone. I very easily and quickly see past the surface of skin or culture, to face and person.

I’m Jewish, and the context of the discussion originated in the inquiry into prospective anti-Arab racism associated with the institutionalization of harms to civilian Palestinians, and also public propaganda of Arabs associated with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

There is so much racism floating around, that its almost difficult to isolate and analyze. My family had similarly mixed attitudes to mine. My father and my mother had very different approaches. My father was outwardly offended by racist comments (really towards anyone) and would silently rage about it, rarely even talking about it to family (except my mother, whom he felt permission to argue with). In practise, he was kind, assertively so, forgivingly so. He had two experiences of black employees stealing from him. One was a long-time employee who stole $10,000 of merchandise from him annually over at least a ten year period. My mother spoke of him in the worst terms you could imagine.

The other individual was young. My father had grown to trust him to make regular bank deposits. At one point he skipped off with the money and disappeared. It was striking to me to hear the contrast between the language that my parents used referring to the two different individuals. Both my father and mother forgivingly stated that they understood the life-stress that he was under, and that he gave in in moments weakness, in contrast to the rage they felt of betrayal by their long-term employee.

The irony was that the man that stole over an extended period was more outwardly compliant, deferential. The young guy was more assertively black, clothing, outward support for more assertive black leaders.

May father also strongly supported civil rights efforts and legislation very early from my memory. (I don’t remember specifically – I was 5, but heard later that he had contreversially anti-racist opinions about proposed busing in our hometown in New Rochelle in 1960).

My mother was different. She expressed racist comments periodically, but when a real person needed her help, really in any way, she stood up and more vocally than my father (financially, legally, protection from insult). Growing up, a black woman cleaned our house regularly. She was both part of the household and definitively not, a household employee. Another neighbor visiting spoke of her derisively, and was never invited to our home again.

I knew very few non-Jewish people as a child. Fewer blacks. Prejudices broke down fast in the late 60′s, when everyone my age started smoking pot, and also playing music together. Color was nothing. There were some cultural divides, different networks of friends, different ways of speaking, reacting to things. It was new to have black friends, to go to black neighborhoods to hang out sometimes.

Race was a sensitive subject. We never talked through race, neither the liberal Jewish white community, nor with black friends. We mostly avoided the subject.

Still, us liberal Jews were afraid of black neighborhoods. We were afraid of Italian neighborhoods, not so afraid as feeling excluded from wasp neighborhoods, very afraid of the south (the murdered freedom riders – from our hometown, and Easy Rider, each imprinted).

I never met an Arab until much later. My uncle and others hated Arabs (some certainly prejudicial, some confirmed by hard experiences he told about very very briefly of his WW2 service in North Africa).

In the early 70′s and later, more and more of my black acquaintences and tentative-good friends, also became more aware of race, in the form of black pride and identification.

The things that progressively broke the racial hesitancy for me were just spending time, meditation itself and the experience of meditating with others from different communities, and most pronounced was relying on someone from another race or culture to defend me or protect me in ways, and vice-versa. That hastened the breaking through. Ironically, the same time that I was breaking through, my friends and acquaintances were just learning of black pride and identification. I was personally hurt that some of my black friends didn’t keep up contact after high school, but I accepted their growth path.

In the mid-70′s, when I was a zealous food coop advocate, I worked with a black preacher in my hometown to set up buying clubs. I had an agenda beyond social service, to convince everyone to become vegetarians.

I’ve used conspicuous flaunting of my “anti-racism” at times, as almost a form of racism. “One of my best friends is black”. True and also self-advertisment.

I had an Arab part-time study partner in business school. But, he was so refined, cosmopolitan and affluent, that he seemed “white” to me. He lied low entirely. He did not draw attention to his ethnicity, nor to mine. We just worked together on computer code and systems configuration.

Through the yoga/meditation group that I was associated for a long time, I did meet many non-white, non-western trustable individuals. People were encouraged to inter-marry racially (though few Americans did), and a few adopted black, Indian, South Asian children. Accepting people from different genetics or culture into ones home (especially with the deep and intimate trust of childhood) certainly obliterated any residual racial attitudes.

Family, friends, solidarity, spirituality, music, intoxication (pot) broke through racial superficialities for me.

Contact in a word.  Acceptance of skin color, of upbringing (I’m the only person I’ve ever met that had the same history as mine, that’s a joke, but also not), of emotions, of personal history, of social history.