Meeting my family in NW Arkansas in the quaint town of Eureka Springs for weekend get-aways is a possibility. I thought about all of it – and the fantasy was somewhat enticing! Southern food, southern hospitality, BBQ even!!

I seriously thought “what if” for 5 seconds and 5 seconds only. I talked to my mom and mentioned the fantasy of being closer to home. She agrees Tennessee is a beautiful state with southern hospitality, gorgeous state and national parks with miles and miles of greenery. And she, my conservative mom, also said, you think it’s gorgeous, but they are still living a confederate mentality. My conservative mom would rather have her lesbian daughter live in NJ/NYC or Dallas than duke it out with the Dukes of Hazzard in Memphis.

My fantasy didn’t include that part of it – though it’s true.

In China there is one pot. Get off into the smaller cities, with populations of 300,000 or so and you will seldom see a different race or even a white face. I travel to factories for product development and stay in 5 star Chinese hotels – and see maybe a few other white people. Saturday I had Vietnamese food in Xiamen – a gay black guy wearing a sexy off the shoulder tank top and carrying a trendy tote strutted past. My eyes fixated on him and my face lit up! On the plane ride home we had 1 black flight attendant in business class – she was so soothing, calm and sweet – honey was dripping from her mouth.  Seeing color on the plane (in a sea of business class filled with yellow and white) made me feel normal. My eyes seeing what they are used to, a reflection unlike my own.

When in China the reality of Uhmerika hits me. We bitch and moan in some parts that Uhmerika is not mixed enough, that we are unintegrated and myopic – that the melting pot isn’t working. It may not be working perfectly, but when I see no black faces, no mexicans, no middle easterners, no muslims, no fat people, no other white people in a country of bazillions, I appreciate my home – back on my street -  into the crayon box.

My life has been filled with relationship concerns, travel, summer, beaches, Texas, NYC/NJ in summer, fireworks and finances.

I wonder if not thinking about the black/white racial issues are a luxury that non-white people in the US have the freedom to forget as I so easily have in the past couple of months.

Is it? Does the freedom exist elsewhere?

White American’s look at US history through a singular, myopic lens. American history is Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492, stumbling upon the new world and the conquest of the wild west. Our history books present the founding of our nation from a singular viewpoint, the white man.

What if history books were written in chapters that contained the deep and meaningful perspective of non-whites, of those who were brought here in slave ships, or Indians who batteled white men to keep the land their family had lived on for thousands of years or Chinese who were used to build railroads in the wild west or Mexicans?

There is a fallacy of teaching and learning one history. It teaches white kids the white perspective only. We minimize the negative impact we have had on the non-white inhabitants of the US or the forced laborers and glorify the actions of white people. It reinforces a superiority of white over black.

Willie McGee, a black man, was arrested, convicted and executed in Laurel, Mississippi for the 1945 alleged rape of a white housewife.

Bridgette McGee-Robinson didn’t know who her grandfather was until she accidentally found some pictures and articles between her mother’s mattresses. When Bridgette McGee-Robinson became a woman, she went to Mississippi and interviewed anyone who was alive and had relevant stories – from a white reporter to the son of the white prosecuting attorney.

Listening to her story on NPR, the accounts from the black people in Laurel of  Willie’s involvement with the white woman contrast dramatically with the accounts the white people have. The old white guy Bridgette interviewed claims there is no way a white woman had consensual sex with a black man.. it was unheard of!  It probably did happen a lot, just no one would confess to it – which white woman in her right mind would confess to her Klan husband, father, brother or friend that she was attracted to a black man? The black people of Laurel knew Willie had been in a relationship with the white woman, and the sex was consensual. Nevertheless, Willie was convicted and sentenced to the chair.

The traveling electric chair was the method of execution in Mississippi. Mississippi preferred lynchings as they were thought to be a deterrent and send a strong message, but lynchings were not quick and painless. They were often botched and torturous, implemented in rag tag manner. Willie was electrocuted in the traveling electric chair which was moved from county to county for executions – a replacement for the inhumane lynchings. When Bridgette McGee set out to find the chair her grandfather was murdered in at the Mississippi Law Enforcement Training Center  it was gathering dust with a slew of softball trophies sitting around it.

Willie McGee was electrocuted for an alleged rape in 1945. He was killed in 1951 – 2 years before the tv show Leave It to Beaver hit the air. The white people of Laurel, Mississippi, where Willie lived and was executed, didn’t talk much about it afterwards eventhough over a thousand people witnessed the execution and more listened to it live on the radio. As most white people they wanted to put the past racism and injustices behind them and live in a state of denial, but for black families who look now back and see the history of white American’s racial injustices and traveling electric chairs – it’s not as simple – there’s no denying the past.

http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/84/history-of-capital-punishment-in-mississippi-an-overview

Robert of 1760 married Jane/Jennie Lewis Stuart daughter of Col. John Stuart who was married to Agatha Lewis Daughter of  Thomas Lewis who is the son of Col. John Lewis… This is my family history on my dad’s side, the Crockett side. I am descendant of the Crockett’s, Lewis’s and Stuart’s of Virginia and West Virginia.

When I dug all this up, through the internet and a Crockett family history book, it was the first time I truly “realized” that my family played a big part in the establishment of the USA.  Thomas Lewis was one of 4 surveyors (including the father of Thomas Jefferson) to survey and establish the Fairfax Line for Lord Fairfax. He helped negotiate treaties with Indians and he was a delegate from Virginia who helped ratify the US Constitution. When he died he was one of the largest land owners in Virginia – which says to me – lots of land, lots of slaves. (1) Col. John Stuart  was adopted into the American Philosophical Society by Thomas Jefferson. (2) He fought against the American Indians and attended the Virginia Ratifying Convention for the US Constitution.  (3)

Virginia is the spring of slavery in the USA with the first 20 African indentured servants (slaves)  arriving there from present day Angola. My ancestors moved from Europe to Virginia, prospered as statesmen, soldiers, and plantation owners.

White people are raised to see their white family achievements, accolades, military prowess and civil stature with great pride. We fought hard for our country. We were the first settlers, the first inhabitants, the great strugglers for this great nation. The foundation of America was built on the blood, sweat and log cabins of the adventurous immigrants. I saw the Liberty Bell for the first time last year and was moved to tears – really.

It’s easy for white people to leave out slavery, slaughter and dehumanizing torture from our memories of  US history. I don’t know how, but it is. White people have a collective curtain up separating our memories from the reality the rest of America has experienced.

The reality of my family history is (embarrassing, shaming?, shocking, regrettable). Although I would like to take great pride in their successes I can’t celebrate them as I might have a couple of years ago. When I found out the extent of my family history I felt the overwhelming urge to apologize to every black person I met on the street or at work for my families sins. Imagine that, a white woman confronting black people about slavery and apologizing to them on the streets of NY and NJ.., random, right?

American history has a sad legacy of subjugation, murder, and injustices of which my family contributed their fair share during its founding and through the Civil War- for this I sincerely apologize to the descendants of those who suffered for my family and others like mine to prosper.

* http://www.palmspringsbum.org/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I57026&tree=Legends

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lewis_(Virginia)

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_(Virginia)

3. http://files.usgwarchives.net/wv/greenbrier/bios/colebios/stuart.txt

Most white people pride themselves for being color blind. We see “you” as human, not Black, Mexican or Asian. We see you as a person with definable attributes such as creative, funny, weird, intelligent, annoying, friendly, rude, or (fill in the blank). Historically the creation of  “race”  is used as a form of separation so we try hard to see you as a human being – not an other -  no different than us except for the skin tone differentials.

My generation, born in ’67, was raised during affirmative action and quotas. Our parents benefitted from white privilege, and black Americans were fighting for the right to live as whole citizens. We were raised to exclude racial differences from our language to overcome racism; we were the first generation to attempt complete integration. We are trying to let Dr. King’s mantras live freely among us. We are trying to overcome.

The color blind conundrum is this:
With the present white pursuit of treating all men/women/children as equals we have excluded the overarching differences from our minds and our conversations. It isn’t a willful omission of “your” details, it’s white America’s attempt at equality from the only way we know how. We let the pendulum swing in the  opposite direction of racism, and we avoid to include.

Has our avoidance created “any” equality? Can the past 40 years of “progress” for most white American’s have any redeeming qualities? Is there a way to take black American’s desire for being seen and heard and white American’s rose-colored glasses off and create a further path to recovery for our country?

“Hello Birmingham”

hold me down
i am floating away
into the overcast skies
over my home town
on election day

what is it about birmingham?
what is it about buffalo?
did the hate filled wanna build bunkers
in your beautiful red earth
they want to build them
in our shiny white snow

now i’ve drawn closed the curtain
in this little booth where the truth has no place
to stand
and i am feeling oh so powerless
in this stupid booth with this useless
little lever in my hand
and outside my city is bracing
for the next killing thing
standing by the bridge and praying
for the next doctor
martin
luther
king

it was just one shot
through the kitchen window
it was just two miles from here
if you fly like a crow
a bullet came to visit a doctor
in his one safe place
a bullet ensuring the right to life
whizzed past his kid and his wife
and knocked his glasses
right off of his face

and the blood poured off the pulpit
yeah the blood poured down the picket lines
yeah, the hatred was immediate
and the vengence was divine
so they went and stuffed god
down the barrel of a gun
and after him
they stuffed his only son

hello birmingham
it’s buffalo
i heard you had some trouble
down there again
and i’m just calling to let to know
that someone understands

i was once escorted
through the doors of a clinic
by a man in a bulletproof vest
and no bombs went off that day
so i am still here to say
birmingham
i’m wishing you all of my best
oh birmingham
i’m wishing you all of my best
oh birmingham
i’m wishing you all of my best
on this election day

As an able bodied person I am capable of walking, talking, running, biking, hiking, skiing and basically attempting any physical challenge my mind will conceive. I don’t consider anything a hindrance to absolute achievement and success.

The air I breath, the invisible mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, flows into my lungs at birth freely… Its invisible presence sustains me. I don’t consider air unless it smells off, is mixed with pollution or my lungs fail me.

Last night I was talking to a close friend who couldn’t believe white privilege is a new concept/reality for me. “Why would I?!” I stated over and over emphatically. “It’s not something I have had to understand or recognize. Maybe I heard of it from Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson on the news, but it’s not something we discussed around the dinner table. It wasn’t a blip on the radar screen of my life. I was born into it, it has served me well apparently, from what I’m learning, and never kept me from achieving my goals.”

“You are telling me it’s something black people talk about around the dinner table? You guys sit around talking about white people and white privilege – this is a topic at dinner,” I asked?

“Yes!!” she said in disbelief. She was honestly surprised and dumbfounded I didn’t know a damn thing about it.

I replied with my best analogy, “White privilege is like air – unless you can’t get it into your lungs, unless you have asthma or are oxygen deprived, you don’t consciously know it’s there. It’s not something we grew up discussing. I never heard my parents or their friends discuss white privilege. Why would we? It didn’t hurt us; it helped us. You don’t think of the things that support you until you have a reason to. I never suffered from white privilege and we didn’t discuss how to keep it. It was just there for us.”

White people of my income and class status (dad was a lawyer and mom didn’t have to work) don’t usually sit around talking about the advantages we have in the workplace by virtue of our skin color. We don’t conspire ways to keep the power structure tilted towards rich, white americans – unless you are a Tea Partier. I never heard of any conspiracies but that doesn’t mean folks making millions and bazillions of bucks on Wall Street aren’t.

White privilege is like air to an able bodied person. We are born with it and don’t realize what we have until something smells off.

Yesterday on Abagond’s blog Lynn Gazis-Sax posted a link about Stereotype Threat under Abagond’s article Our Stories (My Sisters & Brothers!) and Theirs (White People). “Stereotype threat refers to being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group (Steele and Aronson, 1995).”

http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html

From what I’ve read about the Stereotype Threat, groups are influenced negatively by explicit stereotypes if they believe them about themselves. When we believe the stereotypes we let them become self-fulfilling prophecies and our awareness of the stereotypes is heightened.

The researchers use as examples women’s scores on math tests and men’s scores on math tests when competing against asian men – when women were in agreement with the stereotype that women are bad in math they performed worse than if they didn’t relate to the stereotype. Internalizing the negative stereotype can cause people to alter their career choices, educational choices and so on.

The info I read on the Stereotype Threat url points out that blacks are influenced by the negative stereotypes in the same way – when blacks believe the negative stereotypes they act in accordance – mostly – but not always.

Ok, so what does this have to do with me and this blog post? I’m not black, and I have no interest in math. I’m no expert on growing up internalizing negative stereotypes as a black person – that’s for sure.

The substantial battles of my adult life have been against fundamentalist christianity and middle class expectations. I’ve succumbed at times to their influences and had to push those influences away from my personal space or move out of the country to regain my individuality.

What struck me though about how to overcome Stereotype Threat were some of the ways in which people cope. Below are two:

1. Denial
“…those individuals who chronically deny negative, but claim positive, self-attributes in a given context — are better able to cope with stereotype threat through denying stereotype accuracy or self-relevance.”

2. Humor
“One’s sense of humor can also affect how one views and interacts with the world. Humor appears to buffer individuals against the negative effects of stressful events, producing less reported anxiety, physiological arousal, depression, and mood disturbances in response to negative events…… Humor is just one means by which individuals cope and hopefully avoid stereotype threat.”

http://reducingstereotypethreat.org/vulnerable.html#stigmaconsciousness

Is it possible to live in humor and denial of the stereotypes and not be oblivious? Is it possible to stare a stereotype in its face and have a sense of humor about it and achieve goals anyway?

My personal battle can’t be compared to a set of universal stereotypes affecting a race of people; I’m not that naive or arrogant, but I would hope that understanding stereotypes and their influences help all people who suffer from negative self beliefs to let them go.

**Thanks Lynn and Abagond for your references for this post.