Not That Kind of White (BFB!)

I hate racism. I know, I know. A lot of people do. We all cringe at the thought of blatant racism in the guise of the KKK or the proverbial angry black. The everyday racism I’m thinking of is more insidious than we imagine, more prevalent then we realize. It’s an ugly monster and its right in our bathroom mirror. It’s a high wall, slippery to climb and topped with broken glass to cut your fingers. It happens everyday.

I’m white, but grew up in a typical blue-collar, working class, suburban south of Boston home. My mom was and is a waitress. My father was and is a cook. We never owned a house, and the cars were always used until my parent’s later years when they invested in a Saturn. I didn’t go to college. I wasn’t given cars. I didn’t wear designer clothes. I didn't have a trust fund. My parents couldn't afford any of what so many kids take advantage of.

I don’t get white folks these days. Why don’t I relate? Who are these bourgeois upper caste smug bastards with the Lattes? The ones with the minivans and McMansion in the suburbs, a white flight haven from the browns and blacks downtown?

My present day job uniform includes decent attire, laptop bag, slick do, wireless mouthpiece on head. One black guy in an airport store asked me how much I made. Like the naive goof I am, I told him. “Shee-it”, he says. I don’t make a lot of money for what I do. My car is a used Ford Ranger. I shop at Marshalls. I work a whole fucking lot, so much I barely have a life now. I have no savings and no investments.

Fuck his “Shee-it”.

Some minorities assume: white=privilege. Like I popped out of my mama and immediately started making money. They don’t know about my mom feeding us baloney sandwiches because she couldn’t afford anything else, how I waitressed and worked retail like a slave, and how I still do it now. Only I’m experienced and sane enough to somehow be called a manager and join what I consider the lower-middle class.

My whole life I was shit on by my own kind. I’m lucky I got away from it and came even halfway as far as I did. By all intents and purposes I should be much farther than I am. But I’ll get there.

I can’t blame that black man. Not really. We all make the same mistake. We see a person and size him up according to his ethnic appearance. It can’t be helped. We ARE different, after all. Different skin, bodies, voices, social and economic backgrounds. Black people make assumptions about us. We make assumptions about them. Same with all the other races.

Every time I meet a person of color they are a clean slate to me, a human being pure and simple. But society has imposed a set of assumptions on me that conflict my natural tendency to equalize all mankind. They taunt me in the back of my mind, daring me to slip up and let quiet, common racism pop up its nasty head. “You people”, it says. A separation. Us and them. They say the same about us. How can we climb this awful wall?

We aren't to blame, not fully. The black race is still recovering from the wounds of slavery. They are still angry, and white people are still scared and guilt ridden. The pain is still there, and it's a slow heal. The wall won’t come down right away, it has to crumble bit by bit. Each decade that goes by that the men and women of color climb higher on the platform of social and economical equality, a little bit of that wall will crumble. Each decade that goes by that witnesses the death of the old guard on both sides who held the deepest racist ideals, the wall will keep crumbling.

But it will remain if we don’t get rid of “You people”. The stereotypes must be challenged. Laugh at the ones that are real, discard the ones that hurt.

Until a man is truly judged by the content of his character and not the color of his skin; black, white, beige, red or yellow, the wall will remain.