Race Matters
I don’t really like to talk or write openly about race. I am doing so because it matters. It is important to me to write about what matters and race does. I remember growing up in Stuttgart, West Germany. I lived there for six years from ages 2 to 8.
We lived in a German community. My best friends were Veronica (a German girl) and Bernadetta (an Italian girl). I went to a German kindergarten and spoke German. We grew radishes and flowers in a school garden. It was idyllic. I was a little girl and knew nothing about the history of the country. The German people were curious about us (me and my siblings); they would come up to my mom and ask her if they could touch our hair.
After kindergarten, I went to school on the military base (where they, of course, spoke English). I still played with my friends in the German community. We knew nothing of hate. We just loved being together. Later, I learned that German schools (at that time) did not teach about the Holocaust. They didn’t want to face their recent horrific past.
My family moved to Atlanta when I was 8 years old. It was at the height of the so called “Atlanta Child Murders.” Compared to Germany, the U.S. was jarring. I noticed lots of littering. There also seemed to be many old buildings and streets that were neglected.
I didn’t understand that so much of Germany was newly built and reconstructed. Their culture of rigid precision and straight lines kept public spaces in check. People ascribed to community norms and didn’t buck the system.
Living in America
Living in America was very different. My elementary school was predominately black. Not mixed like the school on the military base. At that time, the kids all only spoke one language and I lost my 2nd language (German). The teachers were allowed to threaten and hit kids with rulers. By the time I finished elementary school, there were no white kids left for the 7th grade picture. All of their families moved away (white flight).
My high school was all black and mostly middle to upper middle class like my elementary school. I’d gotten used to the idea that in America, white people and black people did not live in the same communities. When my high school team traveled to play sports, it was a common differentiation “Are we going to a White area or a Black one?” There was a pride we had in competing against white schools and beating them. It was an unspoken but shared experience that we were doing what our ancestors were not allowed to do…be free, be great, and shine. We had tremendous cultural pride.
Every February we had Black history month and we would watch documentaries like “Eyes on the Prize” where we would learn all about the civil rights movement and the atrocities our parents and grandparents faced. We would take field trips to the King Center and to the King home/museum. We also took annual trips to the Atlanta Cyclorama. It was/is a mural or painting that ran the length of a large circular domed room. It would move or we would move…I was too dizzy to tell. It depicted one or several of the battles of the Civil War. We would hear the names of the generals and see the battle scenes and the confederate flags.
It felt like all of that stuff was so far behind us. I was young. It was the 80’s/early 90’s. I saw many successful black people in real life and on television. Even though I lived in a town that was (and is) divided in terms of where people lived, I didn’t really grow to understand the depth of racial division until I went to college.
The Quad
I went to Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. They were heavily recruiting minority students at that time. I fell in love with the beauty of the campus when I visited before my senior year in high school. I knew nothing, literally nothing about the place nor its history. I didn’t know who Strom Thurmond was, nor why there would be an institute there in his name. I later learned that Strom Thurmond was a politician who held held state office as governor and then national office as a U.S. senator. He opposed the civil rights act and the desegregation of schools.
My first week on campus I was walking with my roommate, a white girl name Caroline, through an area of campus called the Quad. There were 4 huge buildings that housed the white fraternities. They had the biggest confederate flags I had ever seen draped between the windows, hanging down the outside of at least one of the buildings from one end to the other. I knew those flags well from Black History Month and the Cyclorama. I knew what they stood for and how they made me feel – unwelcome and afraid.
Caroline and I walked arms linked at our elbows as we moved quickly thru hostile territory. The boys who were outside stared until we passed. We didn’t speak of it and we never walked that way together again. I realized that elements of the confederacy were alive and well. I realized that I would experience race in a different way than I did in my community in Atlanta.
How We Talk About Race
I have shared a small amount of my racial, national, cultural, language, class and ethnic biography here. I haven’t discussed sexism nor have I discussed the daily or intermittent challenges that I faced then or now as it relates to race. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it is deep and vast and filled with experiences that are hard to describe and not often believed by those who haven’t directly experienced it. I also have not discussed religion. Religion is an important aspect of identity, however, I also find it to be largely driven by race and place of origin. I have also not addressed sexual orientation or gender identity etc…not because they don’t matter…but because, like religion, people have all of these experiences and identities across races.
In this blog post, I am talking about race through the lens of my experience. I always notice race/ethnicity. It is never something I am ignoring about who someone is or what my experience is of them, including my expectations of them. It has been my experience that race is a taboo topic between races. Minorities speak within a group about their experiences. Generally speaking, minorities do not speak to white people about our experiences.
So as a white therapist, you may have a minority client who never mentions race to you. You could come to believe it is a non-issue in their lives. Perhaps some do discuss race with their white therapist. If so, this is an important symbol of trust or it speaks to just how tired and fed up they are on matters of race. As a black therapist, I have found that almost of all of my clients of various cultural, racial and religious backgrounds talk to me about their experiences. Yes, that includes my white clients…in fact some of them come to me for that very reason.
There are of course a few exceptions (inter-racial relationships and close friendships). But generally speaking, we (minorities) don’t share those experiences with non-minorities. We have vast inner and outward experiences that are generally denied or questioned when we give voice to them. The questioning and minimizing of one’s experiences is dehumanizing and exhausting. Almost equally as stressful are all of the questions; then the shock, awe and sometimes guilt that leads to a focus on themselves and then the burden or implication that we (minorities) might assuage or absolve the white person’s feelings. It’s too much and I refuse to participate (regularly) in that process. It is draining. It is overwhelming and burdensome. It’s not that hard to understand oppression when you stop denying, minimizing and extolling the “long ago-ness” of its very existence (I digress).
What Therapists Can Do!
I think what therapists of all racial and ethnic backgrounds can do is listen, learn, read and study.
- Listen to your clients’ experiences. All of your clients of various backgrounds. We all have a racial narrative. For some people, it may be very ill defined and full of melting pot type statements like “I don’t see race.” Others will have a clearer picture of their identity and experiences. They will be more like a salad bowl metaphor than the melting pot.
- Learn about race matters. Be curious enough to find factual information. Learn about the history and the present. Step outside of your comfort zone. Take responsibility for educating yourself. Learn about your own identity. Explore the past. Understand how you came to believe what you believe about race and why.
- Read think pieces, biographies, and memoirs of people from various backgrounds. Don’t ask me or others for recommendations. Go out and explore. Take 100% responsibility for educating yourself.
- Study multicultural factors in counseling and psychotherapy. All counseling is cross cultural counseling. White people are not a homogeneous group. White people have ethnic identity that in some cases was stripped via name changes and mainstreaming to assimilate so as not to be discriminated against.
Lastly, each person is different. My experiences are shared along side my siblings, but we all had different experiences of our childhood, teen years and certainly early adulthood. So remember, each client is an interesting unfolding story.
Let’s not lose our individual humanity, empathy and connections with one another to an angry mob mentality.
Copyright © 2017 Ruby Blow. All rights reserved.
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