Silver and Other Spoons

Recently, a Facebook friend posted a photo of a little white girl holding a sign that said “Privileged” on it. Being of the same shade as she, I didn’t know quite how to feel about that, but to be honest, I was a little defensive. “Great,” I thought. “Now I’m supposed to feel guilty for being white.” 

Guilt usually follows having done something we know to be wrong. But when it comes to skin color, that was out of my control. I didn’t get to pick mine.

The other thing about guilt is that it typically produces two responses. One is defensiveness, as you see me exhibiting here. The other is self-punishment. But the good news is that guilt is not the issue. What it is about is recognition of where our racial attitudes come from, and how we change them.

These things are deep-rooted, visceral, and even unconscious. A white person sitting down with a black one for a coffee, a couple of weeks’ worth of marching, or even rebuilding police departments, are all important, but these measures are just the start of a process. Epiphanies have meaning only if they result in changes that last. In the 19^th century, Reconstruction worked for a while, but it didn’t stick. Maybe the country wasn’t ready for it. But that was then. Are we ready now?

I used to be in favor of financial reparations as compensation for the white sins of the past, but am no longer, because they are simply too easy. If African-Americans are paid as penance for systemic exploitation, those paying them will prematurely believe the debt has been settled once the checks go out. The root of the word “reparations” is “repair,” and throwing money at what’s broken doesn’t necessarily fix it. We can accomplish much by seizing this moment to make those repairs, but they won’t happen overnight. It may take generations, during which time not race, but racism, will have to be bred out of us.

Not to trivialize all this, but in the backyard here at home, we have both black squirrels and gray ones. They are not separate species, simply the same animal with genetic variations. The squirrels seem to get along well and don’t seem conscious of the color difference, or maybe it’s just not important to them. They are too busy doing squirrel stuff. That may give us a clue to knowing when we can say we are healed. But the road to that place is a long one.