If you were to approach me roughly six years ago, I never would have even recognized that I was a cultural being. As an adult now, reflecting on my upbringing I was either completely ignorant on cultural diversity or it was communicated subliminally that Whites are better than other minorities.
I grew up in a small town whose population was once 50,000 to 60,000 people, unfortunately when two fires burned down most of the town in the 1950’s the town never truly recovered from this devastation and the population has teetered between 600 and 1,000 ever since. To this day when I tell people where I am from, they cringe as it is known for being full of fanatical Christians and many small-minded individuals.
I am sharing these details as growing up in this kind of environment led me to seek out exposure to other ideas, experiences, and religious philosophies. At 11 years old I begged my parents to allow me to attend a concert in downtown Milwaukee, WI. My first encounter with a black middle- aged man consisted of him appearing homeless is shabby attire and asking me for some money on a busy street corner near the concert hall. I gave him all the extra money I had brought with me that night and my parents were upset with me when I returned home that night. I heard: “you worked so hard for that money! he was probably going to buy drugs with it!”
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I worked illegally in food service from the age of 11 because my family of seven was a special population family living below the poverty line most of my young life. My family actually operated like a Mexican American family in the way that my cousins might as well have been my siblings as extended family was everything, but like the current Mexican American trend where the mothers in both my immediate and extended family were considered: ‘the head of the family instead of the father unlike the tradition of White culture. To this day I am still as close to my first cousins as I am my own siblings. Often my extended family was also my nuclear family and I convinced myself that when I moved out of my parents’ home, I was determined to make something of myself, not be poor and make my family suffer like I did. Sadly, even with economic assistance there were many nights I went to bed hungry and if I did not wake up earlier than my siblings’ I knew the milk would be all gone as well as WIC funded Kix cereal in the morning.
Financial stress led to verbal and physical fights between my parents and they eventually divorced. At the age of ten many individuals I encountered would just tell me about their problems and it was as if I had an invisible sign on my forehead that read: “tell me everything because I am a good listener.” I often was very aware of others around me in any setting as well as their emotions and the body language they would express. I was not able to make this connection until many years later in the middle of nursing school that being a counselor was more suited to my talents.
As I grew older and was in my teens I was exposed to more peers of different ethnic groups. One of my good friends in high school Jasmine, was African American, and we did not ever discuss my being white and her being black. Every image I had ever been exposed to at this point portraying African Americans was negative. It did not help that my Grandfather was a long-time police officer in a metropolitan area, and he would often openly discuss that we had to be careful of those “Black men and Latino men,” as those were often whom he had arrested during his career. Therefore, it was deeply ingrained in my implicit bias that black and Latino men were dangerous and to run the other way when I encountered them.
Towards the end of high school is when 9/11 occurred and I remember the widespread panic about Muslim Americans in the United States, anytime I saw a person wearing a head covering or a man that appeared to be from the middle east I would automatically associate the individuals with terrorism and did not feel safe.
I am aware that these are just stereotypes and I will overcome them by challenging the fear that I feel in my gut that I feel when I see a person who appears to be Muslim and use positive self- talk about the person I have never met before. I will also make the effort to try and say introduce myself to the person if we are standing next to each other at any given time.
I have many white peers and family that do not believe that White privilege exists. I do believe you would have to be in absolute denial not to recognize that as a white person is society it is very easy to live your life freely and buy simple things that you need. Consequently, being a person of color, it is very rare that you could walk into the drug store without being followed by the staff (because you might steal something), and just to buy a white flesh colored band aid for your dark skin. I as a white college student can go to class and hear about Flint, Michigan and not have to question if my water in my glass is clean as I gulp it without a second thought of whether it is safe to drink.
I can recognize Imperialism for what it is and what it has destroyed. I am sure I will fail though at times lacking the courage in certain situations, but I will try to remind myself that racism will only end if I am as outraged about it as are ethnic minorities.
I understand that it would be foolish for me to say; “I am no longer racist because of this particular course”, furthermore, to try to say I have even reached of an active state of Helms’ Autonomy stage of my white racial identity. In all confidence I can safely say that what took years to learn about minorities, will take years to correct innumerable implicit racial schemas and bias’s in my hidden within my experiential system.
I recognize that it is impossible to erase all the of racism I have been exposed to overnight, but I can attempt to counteract it by accepting responsibility, bringing awareness to my own implicit racist beliefs, then plucking at each false belief one by one, and only slowly over time. It saddens me how essential this multicultural education and information would have been to me at such a pivotal age. I do understand though; it is part of a long withstanding dominantly White agenda that I was not made aware of in my own internalized racism before now as it keeps the endless cycle of privilege and oppression in motion (Johnson, 123-124)
