Post by hots2trotsky on Sept 18, 2017 22:30:35 GMT
The Piedmont of North Carolina in the 1990's was such a strange place as it related to race. The Greensboro i was raised in was at once an inter-racial community of loving, dancing, laughing peers and a deeply racist power structure that could break out with real ferocity at any moment. I was 12 when i remember being confronted with my first explicit act of racism- I was in a group of all white boys after school and Tommy Snider told a joke to the group of 6 or 7 of us. The punchline of the joke ended with black people and nooses. I'm 40 years old this year, so its been 28 years, and i truly do remember in vivid detail how i felt when i saw all the other boys either laughing or at least smiling. Today that sort of thing makes me physically ill but at 12 i really just felt betrayed and lost and scared and sad and confused and like a lot of my assumptions about people and humanity had just been ripped from beneath me. I didn't really think too much about it and i said "that shit isnt funny Tommy." That was about all i could come up with.
This episode has been a continuous source of instruction for me over the years. It is worth noting that i survived 12 years on the planet, and in NC for that matter, believing that most people weren't "very racist." As a white boy i was able to live 12 years without once experiencing any form of discrimination and my first real recognition that it was even a real thing came as a consequence of a joke told about somebody other than me. My first experience with racism was actually intended as a gift in a way- an admission letter into the group, the clan of white maleness. At least that's the way it felt.
My position at 40 is very much like my position at 12. Two days ago a guy came by to drop off some wood for the coming winter. As i was helping unload the wood and stack it we chatted and he said that he had come here from Florida to escape. I asked him what he was escaping and he said "well you know 5 years ago things just weren't looking so good." He didn't mention Obama but hes a white guy and i'm a white guy and he was sizing me up to see if i was down with the clan. I came out of my closet (as a radical leftist living in rural NC) and forced him out of his (as a trump supporter and weak kneed racist) and before long we are chest deep in a culture war.
I've been around justice work for years but always on the sidelines. Most of my friends(i don't have many) are community organizers, radicals and miscreants and over the past 5 years I've heard more and more of us talking about how white people really need to start training white people. That is happening but i think white culture really needs to take over white culture and reshape it fundamentally. In the next few years i hope to be more and more a part of that process. I know too many women and particularly too many women of color who are asked to go into rooms of white people and wade through their(our) predictable resistance and nonsense about issues that are painfully obvious to anyone who has made any good faith effort to see them. So i arrive at this kindly offered class in an effort to learn more about what CRT is and to listen to people like Dr. Keene who have an important mix of lived experience and academic knowledge. And i'm excited to connect with some kind hearted like minded folks.
This episode has been a continuous source of instruction for me over the years. It is worth noting that i survived 12 years on the planet, and in NC for that matter, believing that most people weren't "very racist." As a white boy i was able to live 12 years without once experiencing any form of discrimination and my first real recognition that it was even a real thing came as a consequence of a joke told about somebody other than me. My first experience with racism was actually intended as a gift in a way- an admission letter into the group, the clan of white maleness. At least that's the way it felt.
My position at 40 is very much like my position at 12. Two days ago a guy came by to drop off some wood for the coming winter. As i was helping unload the wood and stack it we chatted and he said that he had come here from Florida to escape. I asked him what he was escaping and he said "well you know 5 years ago things just weren't looking so good." He didn't mention Obama but hes a white guy and i'm a white guy and he was sizing me up to see if i was down with the clan. I came out of my closet (as a radical leftist living in rural NC) and forced him out of his (as a trump supporter and weak kneed racist) and before long we are chest deep in a culture war.
I've been around justice work for years but always on the sidelines. Most of my friends(i don't have many) are community organizers, radicals and miscreants and over the past 5 years I've heard more and more of us talking about how white people really need to start training white people. That is happening but i think white culture really needs to take over white culture and reshape it fundamentally. In the next few years i hope to be more and more a part of that process. I know too many women and particularly too many women of color who are asked to go into rooms of white people and wade through their(our) predictable resistance and nonsense about issues that are painfully obvious to anyone who has made any good faith effort to see them. So i arrive at this kindly offered class in an effort to learn more about what CRT is and to listen to people like Dr. Keene who have an important mix of lived experience and academic knowledge. And i'm excited to connect with some kind hearted like minded folks.