Why white people should talk more about race

I don't think it's our minority friends' job to educate us, and white people probably should talk together more about race and other social justice issues. Sure, if racial minorities want to talk to us about these issues, that's fine, but it's not their job to get us up to speed.

Along those lines:
http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/

I was thinking of an anology; several years ago, I was talking to someone blind on-line and asking how s/he (I can't remember now) was able to read and respond on the internet. S/he ignored my questions and stopped talking to me. It wasn't that person's job to educate me; a simple search engine would have given me some answers about optical readers and other adaptive devices for helping the blind to read text. That person was probably sick to death of having to explain this sort of thing to clueless sighted people like me.

In my posts about Blogging Against Racism this week, I am not in any way setting myself up as an example. I am a racist. I'm also sexist, ageist, and so on. I think we all have hidden prejudices and assumptions that we could be examining more closely. Since I live in a society that has a centuries-old history of opressing racial minorities with after-affects that still linger today, I think it's my job to educate myself through reading, workshops, dialogues, and so on, to the best of my ability. It's easy to not think about race when you're in the majority and have had very little experience of discrimination based on your skin color. Most racial minorities don't have that privilege.

In the comments on my last "Blogging Against Racism" post, it was noted that integration only goes so far to solve racial tension and social injustices, and I probably am too optimistic about how things are going or could go in the future. I think it's true that spending time with others unlike us only goes so far to dispel our prejudices and does very little to change things like the Old White Guy networks in place in most industries in this country.

I've never seen this reality TV show, Black/White:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11394595/

But from the commentary I've read about it, not even walking in the other person's shoes for a time will change a person's mind. Apparently, from what I've read, the black family just had confirmed what they suspected all along: that white people say even more blatantly racist things when they think no minorities are around. And the white Dad held onto his conviction that blacks are over-sensitive and see racism where there isn't any, even after passing as black for a time.

This discourages me.

I don't know what the answer is, but the dialogue isn't even close to being finished yet.

Talking about race, and why it's scary

"Why White People are Afraid"

http://www.alternet.org/story/36892/

excerpt:
A final fear has probably always haunted white people but has become more powerful since the society has formally rejected overt racism: The fear of being seen, and seen-through, by non-white people. Virtually every white person I know, including white people fighting for racial justice and including myself, carries some level of racism in our minds and hearts and bodies. In our heads, we can pretend to eliminate it, but most of us know it is there. And because we are all supposed to be appropriately anti-racist, we carry that lingering racism with a new kind of fear: What if non-white people look at us and can see it? What if they can see through us? What if they can look past our anti-racist vocabulary and sense that we still don't really know how to treat them as equals? What if they know about us what we don't dare know about ourselves? What if they can see what we can't even voice?

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"I'm not afraid to talk about race; I'm afraid NOT to talk about race":
http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/essays/talking/

excerpt:
Many whites believe that talking openly and honestly about race and racism will lead to embarrassment and accusations of racial insensitivity, maybe even charges of racism. With these a priori assumptions, the conversations, if they occur, become defensive struggles, emotionally draining, sad attempts to avoid blame.

One more link:
Talking about race in the classroom (but applies to other situations):
http://life.familyeducation.com/race/parenting/36247.html

Open mouth, insert foot

I was talking to my Mom yesterday on the phone and told her about walking into a restaurant "full of old people." My mother laughed. She'll be 70 next year.

Somehow, I don't think of her as old, but she's well into senior citizen territory by now.