Maine is the whitest state in the Nation. And I live in Northern Maine. Let me put it to you this way; if Maine was a soft-serve ice cream cone, it would be vanilla, and we’d be the dippy-do curl on the top. I’m not even sure if we have a racism issue here.
An embarrassing confession: A short while back my idea of racism was that it was an occasional misunderstanding between a pick-up-driving, red-neck, whitey mama’s-boy and some gang-thumping, bling-wearing homeboy from the hood. Ouch.
In my world, people are people, and most are good. Gather up any group of people anywhere and you’ll have some nice ones, some funny ones, some anal ones, and a knuckle-head or two. Okay. So look past some initial differences and what do you have? People. Meaning we are more alike than not. Meaning we are all equal. That’s really how I see it.
Then I spend three days in a room of intelligent, opinionated people engaged in “intense fellowship” discussing racism. What it is. Whose fault it is. And, most importantly, what to do about it. I felt like I was Polly-freakin’-Anna and I had fallen down a rabbit hole into an alternate universe.
I listened to educated, professional and articulate people share their stories. How the white man refused to get on the elevator with the black woman. How the white clerk followed the black shopper through the upscale department store. How black people feel the Iraq War is just another example of the white man oppressing another race. How the apartment, that was available only an hour before, was suddenly rented when the “white-sounding” black person showed up to view it. Is this what being black in America really is?
As unbelievable as these stories first seem to me, what really hits me is the emotional truth behind them. I didn’t know the residual effects of generations of hurt, fear and anger. How could I? I’ve never been exposed to it. It’s not part of my world.
My simple assumption that racism was a misunderstanding between ignorant people flies out the window. And I’m left wondering, “Do I have the courage and the tenacity to navigate through these turbulent waters? Can we truly make a difference?”
It takes about a nano-second for the answer to well up inside. “Yes! We can make a difference. People are people. And if it takes going from one knuckle-head to the next to the next to open minds, we will do it.”
This knuckle-head is in.
