Being Black in America

Being Black in America

I’ve been reading about being Black in America. Layla Saad, a Black woman from Oman, was the featured speaker for our Dr. Martin Luther King Day. She gave us advice on her insight on being Black in America today.

Then I’m also reading “Caste.” Caste gives us the description of caste as being about power. Both of these are helpful. Just to be sure, I asked my daughter if I should read both of these. Yes, was her answer.

Layla Saad begins by saying this about white privilege: “Begin within. Begin with you and white supremacy.”

Day 1 You and White Privilege

This book teaches me to see what happens to each and to all of us. She begins by saying that white privilege was for many years a comfortable way of being white. It did not demand too much from us.

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks.

So this day 1 is about white privilege. Peggy McIntosh carried on this understanding of what white privilege meant. She used it to describe the many ways being white meant for her. Her comments on being white is a catalogue of differences that she describes.

For people of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) it makes a huge difference in how they are treated.

She says that one example is being with people of the same race most of the time. Another is going into a book shop and finding the books by people of the same race.

A third example is not having to teach one’s children to be aware of the daily protections to be safe.

For people of color being safe in this world does involve the family in making decisions about this and other issues of safety.

She says we can make a list of Peggy McIntosh’s suggestions and see how they are impacting me!

Day 2 You and White Fragility

“White privilege protects people who are white and white-passing from having to discuss the causes and implications of racism.” Her advice is clear. Lack of exposure to issues about race has left us who are white to see its effects on people of color. We white people are not willing to see us being “ill-equipped” to handle the discomfort of racism.

Her second point is similar. Our conversations about racism and white supremacy if they are not colored by the contextual history, may make us unwilling to discuss race.

What are her ideas? She would have white people consider the issue of racism as being angry or defensive when threatened. Another way is silencing us. Both of these are real. They each represent the person who is being threatened as the one doing the threatening!

She says we have to look at white fragility. The concept is difficult to see. It contributes to a feeling of being fragile when it is actually our fear that trips us up.

If we can look beyond the stereotypes – racist people are bad, not racist is good, therefore I want to be not racist – prevents us from seeing the facts. One can still be a racist.

Being willing to let the facts in allows the truth to get into our intelligence.

There are another 26 days to go! I’ll bring more of these next time.