I have baggage too. Don’t know where it falls on the guilty to angry spectrum, but I’ll share anyway.
Growing up, I saw both sides of the race coin.
Being home meant being around black people, whether they be family, neighbors, and church folks. My parents, particularly my mother, were especially grounded in black culture. We had African prints on the wall, and the shelves were filled with African American literature and commentary. I was raised to be black and proud, which meant everything from knowing who Harriet Tubman was to being somewhat distrustful of white people.
But I was bussed to school across town, to the “white side”, where the schools were supposedly superior to the schools in my own neighborhood. Overall, the experience was positive. I made both white and black friends and never experienced any overt racism. But around 9 or 10, for inexplicable reasons, I started developing a bit of racial self-loathing. I envied the white kids for living close to school and for being in the gifted class (which almost all of them were). It seemed to me that their lives were more interesting than mine–that if we were all characters in a TV show, they would be the stars while the rest of us would be in the background. I felt that there was something shameful about being black, but I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it. My elementary school once had an “international day”, and my mother wanted me to wear a skirt she’d brought back from Kenya. I didn’t want to because I didn’t want to “be” African and stick out from the crowd. I liked my white dolls more than the black ones. When I drew people, they were white (and usually male).
Self-segregation happened in middle school. I aligned myself with the kids who rode my school bus, who were black, but I was still friendly with the white kids in my classes. I continued to see contrasts in white and black kids’ lives. The “honors” classes were filled with white kids, while the remedial classes were dominated by black kids. While I managed to make it to the honors classes, a couple of times I was “mistakenly” placed on the remedial track. I think those “mistakes” did a number on my psyche, but it would take years for me to realize this.
The reoccuring theme of my educational career was that to be young, black, and high-achieving meant being alone. There weren’t a lot of black kids in the AP classes I took in high school, and though I attended university smackdab in the middle of one of the “blackest” cities in the country, I was to be one of only a few black students there. The administrators charged with helping us black students matriculate put heavy pressure on us to succeed, because failure reflected on “all of us”. So when I failed an organic chemistry test, not only did I have to worry about my GPA, but I had to worry about the stereotypes I was fulfilling. Meanwhile, I attended classes with white kids who’d never interacted with blacks before. Classroom discussions were sometimes interesting. I’m sure some of my classmates felt I had an “angry black woman” persona. But I never experienced anything overt or hostile. Just misunderstandings. Which I what still encounter today.
I guess if I had to describe how I feel about race, I’d say I mostly feel tired. I’m tired of the loneliness I feel when I attend a conference and stick out like a sore thumb. I’m tired of my own irrational shame when I hear a new statistic, when I’m watching the news, or when I’m driving down certain parts of town. I’m tired of being paranoid and worried and afraid, and I’m also tired of the people who give me cause to be that way. I’m tired of being torn all the time–having to decide whether race really matters or whether it’s just an illusion, something that we could imagine away if we tried hard enough.
But I’m still the proud black woman my parents raised me to be. I love white people, but no longer do I feel that their lives are better or more worthy than mine. So I guess I’ve already lost some baggage. Perhaps there’s hope for all of us.
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