grappling with whiteness

Every time I write out my thoughts on racism, I feel self-conscious, presumptuous and self-indulgent as a white person. But writing helps me process my thoughts and move forward. Also, it is clear that white people need to talk about issues of race more. Otherwise, for us, race is the perpetual elephant in the room and nothing will change. In fact, one thing I am committed to is to consistently bring the topic of racism to the forefront with the white people in my world.

So, here goes my latest two cents...

Taking it in

Since my early years in this country, I have been concerned with issues of race and racism, a topic close to my heart, perhaps because some of my strongest initial bonds in the US were with friends and lovers who happened to be people of color, and who opened my eyes to their experiences. As a white person, I have wrestled with trying to grasp how the reality of living in a racist society impacts me and how I can be useful in efforts to counter and not collude with the oppressive system that exists. This process has taken on a special significance for me since I have become a mother of a white child whom I want to raise with an antiracist consciousness. More recently, I have also become a stepmother to a biracial child, and, again after many years, I am now involved in a black-white interracial relationship.

I spend time every day learning about the inner workings of interpersonal and systemic racism and its impacts on people of color, as well as the meaning of whiteness in all this. I listen with an open heart to my friends' and strangers' stories, read about and watch videos discussing issues of race, I participate in interracial dialogues and workshops. I monetarily support community and civil rights organizations I believe make a difference and occasionally attend protests. Last year I completed a human rights fellowship in Europe, listening to and writing about the struggles of people of color there to educate the international community as well as my white circles in deep denial. I need to know how life is for people of color in the motherland, in this heavily stratified society, and in my overwhelmingly white city. I feel the need to compare how other whites grapple with white privilege, and the responsibility it bestows on them, on us. All this in order to grow and be able to be a good ally; to even perceive injustice, let alone challenge it.

While I process all this, I feel the pain of racism people of color share with me deeply, although it will never be first-hand since I am white. Simultaneously, I get frustrated at how invisible and ungraspable the traps of whiteness are to me. I get impatient, often admonish myself for being slow to understand and, moreover, for not doing enough to upset the status quo interpersonally, and on a larger scale, institutionally.

Parenting right

As a white person who hasn't come across many effective everyday antiracist role models, to use the words of Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy in their book, Raising Biracial Children, I am not sure "how to approach parenting in a way that explicitly acknowledges the omnipresence of race in daily life." I want my family to be one in which "active attention [is] devoted to addressing and explaining race, and where children are encouraged to assume an antiracist stance;. . . where [my son] learns the meaning of [his] whiteness and [learns] to critically challenge notions of white supremacy." I certainly don't come from a family with such a conscious upbringing, so this feels like an uncharted territory. But I know there are valuable resources, such as this article on how to talk to kids about race, available for parents.

In order to provide my children with clear guidance that helps facilitate healthy racial identity development, I feel it would be helpful to form a group of those dedicated to our own growth as antiracists and antiracist parents. That is my next task. (One model I found out there is White Noise, a group of white parents with white children who have been meeting for two years to learn together and support each other in ending white supremacy.)


Claiming whiteness

In my own journey towards racial awareness, being of Jewish heritage (specifically, the granddaughter of concentration camp survivors) and an immigrant whose family was poor for many years, I am still having a hard time claiming my whiteness and claiming US history as my own, even though on an intellectual level I grasp the fact that I am now a part of a racial hierarchy stemming from a very particular historical past, from which even I, a white person who didn't grow up here, benefit tremendously.

I only say this to acknowledge my particular vantage point and history; not as a cop out, keeping in mind the words of Bonnie Berman Cushing and Jeff Hitchcock in their book Accountability and White Anti-racist Organizing: "In an increasingly multiracial society, the historic and present baggage of whiteness and white privilege lead many to eschew a white identity. Yet the privilege remains."

On a cognitive level I grasp that. I am familiar with Peggy MacIntosh's Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege. I get that I have advantages in this society because I am white. For instance, I never get racially profiled while driving or walking down the street. I don't stand out visually in most places in my predominantly white city. I don't generally get followed around in stores as a suspected thief or questioned about items I'm returning with or without a receipt. I am not feared or harassed by the police when in public in a group of my white peers. My skin color makes me seem financially reliable when I pay for merchandise. I don't get called racial epithets. Statistically, I can count on better quality health care and more longevity than people of color. I am aware of all that, but, to be completely honest, there is still a resistance in me in letting the reality of white privilege sink in. Why?

Part of the resistance to claiming my white identity stems from the immigrant and the Jew in me having resisted assimilation so strongly in order to preserve my authenticity and sanity, that I have eventually found comfort, even pride in inhabiting that "otherness" ascribed to me here of someone foreign, someone with an accent; about living psychically on the margins of American society. But when it comes to racism, as a white person I am in the oppressor group. I benefit from the system, and like most white people with whom I have had conversations about this, I have a hard time deeply acknowledging that. For me in particular, it is scary to be associated with the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), middle class mainstream influence which I have so vehemently tried to filter out of my life and my identity because, in many ways aspects of that culture have felt empty, hegemonic and oppressive. Clearly, this disassociation on my part needs bridging, which can be found, for instance in the commonality that for US-based whites, it is key, even if profoundly upsetting, to acknowledge that in American society, we automatically get the benefit of the doubt while we stand on the shoulders of men and women of color whose land, cheap or free labor and lives were (and continue to be) taken from them, seen by whites as nothing but fuel for this capitalist beast in whose belly we now find ourselves.

What a history to inherit.

Untangling race at home

Now I'm in a relationship with a man of African slave ancestry. I don't know how to make sense of our different histories coming together yet. Conversation about racism is a daily occurrence. I am learning so much from him and at the same time continuing my own work. While it is true that every intimate relationship is intercultural, to a degree, since the partners almost always have differences in backgrounds, communication styles, and world views to meld, in a black-white interracial relationships, the weight of history and the reality of everyday racism sometimes plays itself out in a more pronounced way. This is especially true, I'd venture to say, in geographic locations where people of color are disproportionately outnumbered and highly visible in a perpetual sea of white faces (as one blogger described in her piece, What does an all-white room mean?). As Randall Kennedy writes in his book, Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption, "at the dawn of the twenty-first century, a wide array of social pressures continue to make white-black marital crossings more difficult, more costly, and thus less frequent than other types of interethnic or interracial crossings."

Our most visible differences aside, my partner and I do have some experiences in common. Both of us are immigrants, acutely familiar with being uprooted and on the margins in this society. We are both deeply rooted in our home cultures since we moved to the US as teenagers. We share similar political views. We are "blended culture" people who each speak several languages and are widely traveled. We are both college-educated, both divorced, each a parent to one child of the opposite gender from us. Although race is blatantly salient in our relationship, so are gender, class and culture. All these are so intertwined that it becomes quite a puzzle to try to untangle or isolate them to get at the core of differences or conflict. But it's worth trying. We have overcome several big points of friction already, and excavating the sources of the disagreements has been key.

Longing for healing

But back to the impact and implications of living in a highly racialized society on my experience as a white woman. I have come to recognize that my domain of impact in this life is not organizational or political; it is relational. As law professor and author Randall Kennedy argued when explaining why he chose to write about interracial relationships:

People usually expect talk about regulation of laws at the workplace, the regulation of race with respect to housing markets, the regulation of race with respect to education… People don't think about spending a lot of time on the regulation of race with respect to marital intimacy, sexual intimacy. Though if you think about it, if you think about how people get jobs, if you think about how people conceive of themselves, if you think about how people learn about the world, these sorts of relationships are incredibly important. Friendship as an institution, dating as an institution is incredibly important. One thing that drew me to this subject was the extent to which actually people did not talk about it and thought of these relationships as rather trivial. . . This topic is actually more important in social consequences than some of the other institutions upon which we focus much more time.

The place where I connect most intensely around how racism impacts me as a white person is the pain of loss. I am keenly aware of how racism can cause friendships and close bonds to rupture and fall apart or to never form because of mistrust in the first place. On an emotional level I get how racism divides us. And that is the place that spurs me on; it's the desire for this society to become whole, for us to heal, to find each other alive and breathing under the rubble of centuries of injustice, and to feel the richness, vibrancy and joy in bridging the divide. Only when we come together being our authentic selves, speaking and hearing each other's truths, can we create long-lasting change.

So, I'll keep doing the work of learning and engaging with others … for that; for the love that was, is and that could be.

Do "white schools" make white kids racist?

Last month, ABC News reported on a study of elementary and high school students, aimed at finding out whether children use race to socially exclude other children from their groups.

The study of nearly 700 fourth, seventh, and 10th graders of different ethnic and racial backgrounds living in the mid-Atlantic region found that "children and adolescents who had friends from different ethnic backgrounds were significantly more likely to say it is wrong to exclude someone because of their race, citing unfairness or hurting the feelings of the excluded child as reasons."

"In contrast," the article continues, "students who reported few or no cross-race friendships were significantly less likely to view excluding someone on the basis of race as wrong. Their reasons were often based on a lack of familiarity, such as, 'They won't have much in common.'"

Specifically, "European-American children attending 'all-white' schools were more likely than European-American children attending 'mixed ethnicity' schools to use stereotypes when explaining why someone might not be friends with someone, or invite them home to their house, solely because of their race."

This is interesting. At first glance, it makes sense. However, I wonder about the conclusions that can be drawn from this study. Some of the most enlightened white anti-racist activists whose work I read, respect, and learn from, grew up in very homogenous surroundings, comprising of almost only white people. Vegankid, for example, who is part of the Ally Work collective, grew up in a small town with only two families of color. It was Vegankid's sexual identity and his experience as a Queer person that acted as a brigde for his developing of empathy for those affected by racism. You can read Vegankid's Learning Empathy story here.

Like Vegankid, Rachel of Rachel's Tavern, another brilliant anti-racist activist and blogger, grew up around all whites, and her parents, like Vegankid's taught her to treat everyone with respect and dignity. In her piece, Racism and Empathy: Some of My Approximating Experiences, she remembers challenging her white classmates on their racism. For that, she was called a “nigger lover” and threatened. As a result of these experiences, she began to develop a sense of empathy towards people of color. She writes: "I am by no means saying I get everything. I just know what I felt like when these things were directed at me. I knew the fear, the powerlessness, the exasperation, and the anger that racism was creating in me. Because of these experiences (and others), I dedicated myself to fighting racism."

I guess my thoughts on whether integration is really key to lessening racial prejudice in children are mixed. Of course, having friends of color inevitably leads to empathy for those affected by racism, however, maybe the logic in this study is faulty.

I think the failure is in the fact that racism among whites is rarely discussed. White children, in general, receive virtually no anti-racist education. White privilege allows whites to not have to think about race and racism unless directly confronted with it. White children who have friends of color are probably more likely to learn about racism and discuss it in their circles. But this doesn't have to be the case.

As seen in the two stories above, it is completely possible to develop an anti-racist consciousness in a predominantly white environment.

I am by no means advocating segragation. What I am saying is that many people do not have a choice. They live where they live, they go to school where they go to school. Still, lack of a racially diverse environment doesn't and shouldn't have to be an indicator of the degree of race awareness and empathy.

Though I live in the whitest major city in the U.S., though I grew up in a predominantly white society, and though I am married to a white man with whom I have a white child, I feel a moral responsibility to work on helping to eliminate racism. Why couldn't most white children develop the same kind of desire and turn a future study like this on its head? What's stopping them? I am apt to think it's the white adults in their lives who benefit from White Supremacy and white privilege too much to rock the boat. I don't want to be one of those people and I am working very hard to counter, on the one hand, the reality reflected in this study and, on the other, the very stereotype of the bigoted, racist, and ignorant white person from Whiteville that this study perpetuates.

graffiti from the pit of hell

First, look at this beautiful scenery. This river valley is truly one of the most gorgeous places in my area. My husband, son, and I went on a hike there today.

When we sat down at a picnic table to eat our lunch, low and behold, I noticed the graffiti on the picnic table - in German. Scribbled on the table in thick black marker were the words which the Nazis placed over concentration camp gates: "Work brings freedom." But the author also added the word Jews in German.


This hit me right in the pit of my stomach. My grandparents and many other relatives were imprisoned in concentration camps, many died there. How could anyone propagate this kind of thought and hate today? And in one of the most beautiful places in our region. Truly despicable. I took a picture of the sign, then tried my best to scratch it off the table with a sharp rock.

Racism Still Poisons Decisions on Toxic Sites

As a follow-up to my piece on the beef I had with the MSNBC article that mentioned high cancer rates in minorities, but not a peep about environmental racism, here is something that I just found on the web.

Today there is an article on Bloomberg.com, implicating government of environmental racism. In the article, Racism Still Poisons Decisions on Toxic Sites, columnist Cindy Skrzycki discusses a recent report by the United Church of Christ in Cleveland. The report, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, according to Skrzycki, suggests "that decisions made by federal, state and local governments, as well as by companies, have penalized minority groups."

Skrzycki cites several examples of how racism influences the formation and interpretation of governmental policies on the environment. Her piece leaves the reader with a lot of questions, but at least it raises important points about institutional racism that are often omitted in mainstream news.

story beneath the story

A lot of my posts on here have nothing to do with parenting - directly, that is. They have to do with awareness raising, which to me has everything to do with becoming an anti-racist, and anti-racist parenting just stems from that. So here goes one.

As far as news items go, there is always a story behind the story presented. I have learned to take almost nothing I read in the papers for face value and to read between the lines and follow my hunches on what is being left out. Well, an MSNBC story I read today said that recently researchers from Loma Linda University in California have stated that "racial disparity in cancer rates and outcomes may be driven by genetics as well as socioeconomic factors." In other words, the researchers found that genes may be to blame for the higher of cancer among minorities.

The socioeconomic factors eluded to in the story had to do with "lack of health insurance, poverty, cultural barriers, and limited access to good medical care." But what the story left out was that environmental and institutional racism play a huge part in this equation.

A recent report from the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, “which serves as an update to a landmark 1987 study uncovering the proximity of minority groups to hazardous waste sites across the country, found that an even larger number of Hispanics/Latinos and African-Americans live within two miles of one of more than 400 such facilities in the U.S.”

Hmmm. . . If genes and poverty are the sole culprits for high cancer rate, we, the readers and those at the center of the inquiry regarding cancer rates, are left with no agency. But what if racism is put in the spotlight, then we suddenly may have somebody (perhaps lawmakers & corporations/lobbyists or our own privilege to not have to care) to blame. Hmmm. . .

demonizing the racial "other"

This is an older post from another blog I am too busy to upkeep. I decided to cross-post it here, because I find it especially relevant in light of Bush's latest pet peave, his "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" platform, which, by the way, I spent an hour researching today, unable to find the detailed text of the bill. Government should be transparent. I always get angry when the public is excluded from the governmental process. Politicians are supposed to represent us and seek input from us, not withold information from us. Uggh!

I thought the post below is also relevant in light of the media's racialization of the Virginia Tech tragedy, which, I have the feeling will unfortunately play beautifully into the hands of the Bush cronies, who will use it to further stir up anti-immigrant sentiments, hoping to push through the above-mentioned and very problematic bill.

The reason I call the Immigration Reform bill problematic is because, as Angry Asian Man reveals, the "immigration reform draft (leaked to the public) could be as devastating as the Chinese Exclusion Act..." Various groups are are "calling the document's principles 'inhumane' and 'un-American' because it calls taking away the right of legal immigrants to sponsor their relatives to join them and breaking up families as a result."

See what I'm talking about? The text of the bill the groups are criticizing was leaked, not made accessible to "we, the people." So, the only part of the bill that I have learned about was the one dealing with legal immigrant sponsorship of relatives. What else is there in the bill, I would like to know!

First, let me explain how the post below relates to the topic of immigration reform and the Virginia Tech shooting. As more and more Americans feel the heat of the rising prices of oil, the plunging value of the dollar, decrease in living wage work opportunities, massive lay-offs, etc., the trend of scapegoating groups perceived as alien has increased. Additionally, since 9/11, policies have been put into place that have significantly curtailed the constitutional rights of the people in this country. Much has been written about many of these laws, passed by capitalizing on the public's (& politicians') irrational fears of immigrants and groups perceived by "mainstream" America as a racial "other." (For example, you can read Naomi Wolf's piece Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps). Thus Juan Santos's reference to fascism.

As you read, I recommend you add Asian to the quoted writer's references to the historically persecuted groups of color.

Now the post by Juan Santos, an LA-based writer and editor, about the need for white people to wake up to fight the fascist regime spreading in this country. Here is an excerpt:

Real oppression – and just as importantly the consciousness of one’s own oppression in the US - has next to nothing to do with the white left. . .

. . . Where are the no-fly-racially-profiled white “terrorists”? Where are white people required to prove their citizenship to rent an apartment? Where do whites come under instant suspicion for deportation? How many European whites are subject to the conditions in Guantanamo? How many have been tortured? How many whites have been stripped of the writ of habeas corpus, held without charges, without access to a lawyer? How many whites are among the native Indians, Blacks and Chicanos in the US, who together comprise the single group most targeted for incarceration in the world?

Obviously, there are none.

That’s why there is no mass movement against fascism in the US.

Because fascism targets the Other, and everyone damn well knows it.

. . . Even if it’s never spoken aloud, everyone knows in their bones that white people are exempt, that white people as a group are not the target of overt violent oppression in the US, and that they never have been and never will be. Guaranteed.

That guarantee is their blue pill, what makes them sleep.

The only people who’ve stood up en masse against the recent rapid escalation toward fascism in the US have been Brown people. Migrants and Chican@s stood up in our millions against the fascistic Sensenbrenner bill, a race law which would have rendered every migrant a felon, and every Chican@ a suspect in a felony. The Sensenbrenner bill would have made the barrio every bit as much a zone of official terror as the ghetto – even more so.

We were all that stood between the status quo and outright universalized fascism in the US.

But almost nothing and no one stood between colonized peoples of color and fascism in the US.

Black, Red and Brown have lived under virtual fascism - mass terror, police occupation and mass incarceration - for a generation now, since the War on Drugs and mass incarceration took the place of segregation and Jim Crow laws.

But it wasn’t the white US-er who was targeted, just like it wasn’t the German, but the Gypsy, Slav and Jew.

. . . Why, then should we be surprised at white silence today?

. . . White people could still wake up; they could still learn to resist the fascism that their culture has programmed them to accept.

But it will take a new understanding; they will have to start seeing themselves as a group like any other, not as a “white nation,” and not as “individuals,” and they will need to begin to understand and to break with the Inquisitorial fear of being different that permeates their culture to its very core. They will have to learn to see their culture’s depth of suspicion, its rigid obedience to the “rules” of the white middle class game, and to experience first hand the depth of violence it reserves for those who betray it.

They will have to stand strong against it, understanding that their own culture and its agents are their mortal enemy.

Most of all they will have to learn that their apparent “privilege” makes them no different at all: that in the long run they are not exempt or superior.

a must-read for all white people & parents

Just discovered a great blog thanks to Racialicious.com.

This post, Helplessness of white people, is a must-read for all white people. We, white people, need to educate ourselves and each other about racism and white privilege. I totally agree!

I've heard countless times from people of color that they are sick of being put in the situation of having to educate white people about racism and privilege. It's an additional load on top of the racism people of color have to deal with. We, whites, need to take ownership of white supremacy and privilege. I am new to the struggle, but I realize at least that much. And check it out. There is so much already available, in the form of blogs, for example, for us to learn from. All we need to do, just to begin, is to take a little initiative instead of expecting information or validation to be served on a silver platter. We can read and learn and think without putting people on the spot or just being plain abnoxious. That isn't too much to ask, is it?

these, too, are my people

When I think about who "my people" are, you know, the communities I identify with, the first group I'll usually list is Czechs. I am a Czech by birth and nationality. (My son is also Czech; he actually has dual citizenship.) I lived in the Czech Republic until I was fourteen. I still have close family and friends there, I'm fluent in the language, and go back frequently. So I feel close affinity with Czech people. But it troubles me deeply to know how racist my people are.

Earlier this month in Geneva, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) reviewed the Czech Republic's compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The findings are devastating, yet no surprise to those of us who've been following the developments in the country's minority/majority race relations.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in the Czech Republic, whites make up about 97% of the population. The Roma (also known by the derogatory term Gypsies) are the largest group of color, who make up somewhere between 1 and 2% of the total population. The Roma people have suffered persecution for centuries. During World War II, more than 90% of Czech Roma died in Nazi concentration camps.

Today the discrimination continues. According to CERD, these are the manifestations of (institutionalized) racism against the Roma in the Czech Republic today:

- Racial segregation in education. Approximately 70% of Roma children are being categorized as mentally handicapped, and therefore receiving a substandard level of education.

- Vulnerability to evictions and segregation in housing.

- Coercive sterilizations of Romani women. Under communism, the Czech Government sterilised Romani women programmatically, as part of policies aimed at reducing the "high, unhealthy" birth rate of Romani women. These practices are still being perpetrated today.

- Racial prejudice against the Roma people. According to a recent opinion poll, 76% of the white Czech population describe persons of Romani origin as "very unlikable."

- Police brutality. Roma are common targets of violence by the police.

These are findings reported in 2007! The report inevitably concludes that "the measures taken on behalf of the Czech Government to combat racial prejudices and discrimination against Roma people currently remain insufficient."

Based on the above findings, Prague Daily Monitor reports, CERD made the demand that:

The government [must] report back to the Committee within one year – instead of the usual five - on four key areas: adoption of the Anti-Discrimination Act, reparations to victims of coercive sterilization, ending segregated education, and establishing an “institution…to receive complaints of racial discrimination.”

The full text of CERD's recommendations can be viewed here

When I think about all this discrimination taking place in my country of birth, I feel sad, angry, sick to my stomach, and sometimes very alone. Racism is so ingrained in most white Czechs that embedding in their consciousness even the idea that the Roma are people too seems farfetched.

I remember an incident that shook me to the core once. I was back in the Czech Rebublic during one summer while in college. A university professor that I had assumed was quite progressive and open-minded, told a racist joke in a group of white Czechs and my American boyfriend. I challenged the professor. He looked me square in the eyes, and in everyone's presence proclaimed: "Yeah, I am a racist. So what?"

All I could do was stare at him wide-eyed with nothing left to say for a moment. I walked away and cried, realizing people like him, too, are my people. Aware of their own racism, but indifferent to it and to the people their attitudes hurt.

What heartens me is the work of young Roma journalists and activists who are fighting to educate, organize, and reverse the discriminatory history of the country. I have met a couple of them. Jarmila Balážová, for example. You can read her bio as well as an interview about her perception of the relationship between the whites and the Roma here.

Unfortunately, I don't know many whites fighting the fight. They are out there, but I haven't met them yet. I only know of one white Czech woman, Milena Hübschmannová, who fought for and with the Roma. According to The Guardian, "She was a professor of Romany studies at Prague's Charles University, and one of the leading experts of her generation, if not of all time, on Roma culture and language." Dzeno Association, an organization serving to promote Roma human rights and an end to discrimination and racism, said of Hübschmannová: "She was well loved for her modesty and her willingness to help among Roma both in the Czech Republic and abroad. We knew her as a loving, good-hearted woman and we will remember her as such." She is one of my heroes. She died in 2005.

If I ever move back, which my family may very likely do for some time, I want to work alongside the Roma activists as a white ally. I hope I am not one of these "pseudo-humaniarian people" that Jarmila in her interview says "feel something for the Roma - even if it's compassion, admiration, or even love - as if a single mass." She says these people "love the Roma, just as foolishly as [those who] hate them." I constantly question my motives with all this anti-racist work that I want to do. I don't want to do it for the wrong reasons. But this wasn't supposed to be about me. Back to Jarmila, whom I admire because though she sometimes feels that "certain powerlessness, when you can't budge that boulder that slightest bit you'd like to," she keeps on plugging away. Bold and unstoppable, against the current of hatred spouted by people who are white and Czech like me.

Tracing Race: one immigrant's journey from race awareness to anti-racist consciousness

I have often pondered what it is that my husband and I had in common in our lives before we met. We share many of the same values, though we grew up in different parts of the world in very different environments. We both grew up in small families with a lot of quiet time to ourselves, respect for nature, close siblings, and often minimal, yet loving supervision. Those are the commonalities we've known about for a while, but only recently did we both realize that one of the experiences we both had was that of growing up white in a homogeneous community, comprised almost exclusively of other white people.

Unlike my husband, who is American, I am a white European immigrant to the U.S. who grew up in the Czech Republic, a former communist country, where whites make up about 96 to 98% of the population. As a comparison, my husband's home state's white population is about 90% of the total.

This is interesting. We are now white parents of a white child in the whitest major city in the U.S. (coincidence?) and are working on our own race awareness and thinking about how to raise our child in an anti-racist way. In order to parent this way, I find that I have to do a lot of soul searching. How have I thought of "race" throughout my life? What was I taught about the concept and how do I perpetuate what I was taught? What kinds of things do I want to perpetuate and how are these related to what's ingrained in me? In order to begin to answer some of these questions, I need to look at my early experiences and how these have shaped me.

In my country of birth, the largest racial minority of color are the Roma people, a self-identifying term of a group also known as Gypsies. According to unofficial estimates by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations and the European Roma Rights Center, there are approximately 200,000 Roma living in the Czech Republic. This would make the Roma people about 2% of the total population, though on the census the numbers are much lower, one of the reasons being mistrust of the government and historically-based fear of categorization and discrimination based on race.

The second largest group of color are the Vietnamese, who, according to the census make up about 0.2% of the population.

Because I grew up in such a homogeneous culture, having had only a couple of short-lived friendships with a few Romani children when I was very young, I was very sheltered from the concepts of race and racial diversity, though not from the concept of racism. The only memories of outright racist comments I have were those made by whites about the Roma. These had to usually do with stereotypes regarding negative personal characteristics that white Czechs commonly attribute to this group. I also remember jokes about Asians. You know, the ching-chong-style ones a la Rosie O'Donnell.

Despite this, I don't remember having any negative feelings about any groups based on race growing up. Maybe a little bit of fear around groups of Roma, because of the stereotype that many Roma are pickpockets. Mostly I din't think about race. It just wasn't on my radar.

I do remember feeling confused about why the Romani kids in my class were dropping out one by one until there were none left by the third grade. Today I know more about institutionalized racism in the Czech school system (and all other sectors, for that matter) and about the racist practice of segregating disproportionately large numbers (between 46 and 75%!) of Romani kids in special education schools. It is estimated that between 75 and 85 percent of all Romani children drop out of "mainstream" schools. Why? Much of it has to do with discrimination, absence of inclusive curriculum and multicultural teaching techniques, the lack of diversity among school staff, and in general, a sense of alienation these children often experience in, let's face it, racist and hegemonic institutions. From my own observations and readings I've done, I have found that this parallels the experiences of many minority and immigrant children in the U.S.

Because people of color and whites live very separately in the Czech Republic and because a vast majority of the only children of color with which I came into contact left school, the majority of my childhood was spent surrounded solely by whites. It was at the age of fourteen that I suddenly found myself in an environment where whites made up only the tiniest minority - maybe 2%, in my own estimate.

When my family immigrated to the U.S., I began attending a high school program for new immigrants. The majority of the students were Asian and African. The school had some Latinos and just a handful of Europeans. Three or four of us, I think. I was thrilled. Ecstatic, in fact. "So many new people to befriend! So many cultures to learn about!" I remember thinking. Freshmen year I had three best friends: a girl from Ethiopia, a Romanian girl, and a girl from Laos. I flirted with a boy from the Philippines and began learning vocabulary and phrases in all the above languages. I felt totally in my element.

When my English got "better", I was transferred to another alternative program, this one catering to American-born teens returning to school after having dropped out. Many of these students, or so I was told, had been in gangs or were teenage parents. All students but two in this program were black. Only one of the students, an African-American girl became my friend, but we never really got that close because there just wasn't enough contact time. The foreign children and I shared the experience of being new to the U.S. and learning English as a foreign language. The African-American girl and I seemed to have very little in common other than attending a school where "rejects" congregated.

After a year in two alternative programs, my Ethiopian friend and I were transferred to our neighborhood high school. I felt a sense of community with the other English as a Second Language (ESL) students, but the ESL classes were academically not challenging enough for me. Mainstream classes were too difficult, because I was still new to the English language. My friend and I skipped classes together and talked and joked freely about race and race relations, albeit in what many would now call politically incorrect terms. This was my first opportunity to reflect with another person on the questions of race.

On Ally Work, a blog dedicated to "helping White people fight White Supremacy", contributors Rachel and vegankid talk about the significance of approximating moments in the development of empathy needed for anti-racist work. To quote Rachel, "approximating moments are a way Whites can develop more empathetic orientations. . . that help Whites grasp what it is like to be the victim of racial discrimination."

One such defining moment, I remember clearly, occurred when my Ethiopian friend related a story of traveling to the city, where ironically I live now, shortly after an Ethiopian man was murdered here by racist white skinheads. My friend was terrified. Hearing her talk about this had an enormous impact on me.

At the time of our friendship, I began to feel like a social outcast, because school wasn't working out for me since my mainstream American teachers didn't have the skills or time to include English language learners. Maybe that's why I gravitated towards others in the school that may have been perceived as "outcasts" by the school system.

My first love interest in regular high school was an African-American boy who ended up in "juvie" . At the time I became obsessed with listening to rap, R&B and African-influenced world music. Though I couldn't understand most of the rap songs I listened to, I thought I had "found my groove." I was mad about white on black racism, though I had a very limited understanding of the underlying historical context. Around that time I began dating my first boyfriend, who was also African-American. I hoped to have a child with him, because I believed that if races mixed, racism would be eliminated. A few other interracial relationships followed. This intense race awareness-building phase lasted a couple of years and while in it, I managed to humiliate myself thanks to some very awkward and insulting interactions I initiated and ridiculous papers I produced in college.

In college, I also learned about my family history. Though I knew that my father was Jewish, I didn't know that most of his family members were imprisoned and died in concentration camps. I had heard a sanitized version of this as a child, but, perhaps because my family wanted to protect me emotionally, I hadn't really ever learned what all of this meant. I was also not in touch with my father and we reconnected during my college years. He came to visit me and told me stories about his parents and relatives and gave me a little star of David pendant. This was another defining approximating experience for me that shook me to the core.

Other than friends, authors like June Jordan and Tony Morrison opened my eyes to racism and oppression.

The strangest paradox of that time is this: Perhaps because I was so ignorant and naive (though teaming with compassion for the oppressed), I felt completely free to pursue friendships with anyone and say whatever was on my mind. Now that I know more (of course there is still so much to learn!), I am more reserved and fearful of bridging the gaps I, too, was socialized to internalize.

The quiet, inward phase of learning about oppression and trying to understand the inner workings of this culture and my place in it lasted many years. I have lived in the U.S. for nearly two decades, but it has taken me this long to finally begin to be able to put my finger on what it is I have experienced and observed here.

The new phase of my life, as I see it now, is about continuing to learn (and unlearn much of what I've internalized), but also about talking about this process, taking a stance, and following through with action. After all, that is why I started this blog. I look forward to linking up with other allies in this work, because it is crucial to not work on this in isolation.

I don't want to be paralyzed by the fear of saying something wrong or the fear of being punished if I stick my neck out and act against injustice. I want to take responsibility for the white privilege I've inhereted and help dismantle white supremacy. Though I may have once been a stranger in this land, this is my home now. And I do come from Europe, the cradle of white supremacy. And because I am beginning to see clearly how racism plays out, it is my responsibility to work towards social justice. I vow to continue doing internal work, an essential step towards becoming an anti-racist parent, and to follow up with action in a more public sphere. What that looks like will begin to materialize the more I focus on anti-racism work.

could O'Reilly be onto something?

There was a bit of buzz earlier this month about Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly saying they’re scared to have black friends because they could say something wrong and get yelled at for it. I would normally not waste any breath or energy on these men, whose rhetoric I find utterly messed up and angering. But, what caught my attention was the reaction in the liberal circles that Beck’s and O’Reilly’s statements got.

I first learned of Beck’s quote on Sam Seder’s Air America show. A caller called in about it and Seder just dismissed the whole thing very quickly with one phrase “Oh, Beck is just a racist.” And then he moved on to something else. Many other liberals on blogs and such just smirked at this incident, arrogantly placing themselves on a high horse with that “I’m so much better than him” attitude.

But I thought to myself, as much as I hate admitting this, the Beck/O’Reilly combo is on to something here, though I’m not sure how sincere their comments were – and who cares if they weren’t since these men are pretty much just shock jocks in suits anyway, right? My gut feeling is that in this case, they speak for a lot of white people who are terrified to say the wrong thing in front of a black person. What are they scared of? They’re scared of making another person mad, they’re scared of being called racist, they’re horrified of being associated with the crimes committed against people of color in this country, afraid of being perceived as ignorant, or to be seen as bad people.

As I sit here writing this, I wonder if I am one of those white people. I remember one very significant time I said the “wrong thing” to a black person. And it was so bad and offensive that I made the person furious. Did I mean to? Of course not. I said it out of ignorance. In fact, I thought I was being friendly and funny. And yes, I it was a terrifying situation. But the crazy thing was that we stuck through it and talked and hugged and cried together and I learned something. I will never forget that moment. It was one of those breakthrough events in my life.

In friendships or conversations with people of color, as a white person I am inevitably going to say offensive things. I, like most other white people, have been conditioned to think racist thoughts. I may not always get challenged on these things and that’s fine, because hopefully I can get better at challenging my own thinking. I may not get any affirmation that I'm doing fine or better, but that's fine. I can learn to notice that myself. The trick is to not let the fear that we, white people, will make a mistake stop us from getting close to people. As anti-racist activist Paul Kivel says in his book on how to be a white ally to people of color, "Don't take it personally, . . . don’t be scared of my anger, (and) make mistakes.” So, persevere, I say. Get close and stay close, if you haven't yet. You know you want to. I know I do.

the new form of racism

What do you think of the points in these essays: Colorblind Racism and Colorblind Racism vs. Old Fashioned Racism? The books by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva from which this blogger Rachel, who is a professor of sociology, quotes sound excellent, dont' they?