By JoEllen Collins
In a time of increasing and, at times almost unbearably negative, rhetoric, how do we employ our own means of communication to best express our views and also react to the kind of racist issues that make many of us desire change?
As I have grown older, and as a former public speaker and teacher, I grapple with my need to just shut up sometimes and not insert my stories of similar situations I experienced or react to comments I thought required my response. I never would have dreamed I would embody the nightmare of being a “garrulous old lady.” Maybe I do.
This is a toughie for me as, while I like to share some of the amazing experiences I have known, I am trying to listen more and speak less. I am working with several wonderful people on examining and trying to improve our relationships with minorities. Our gatherings to explore those roles were in reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement, but we realized that our heritage requires that we be inclusive to all the unrewarded, disenfranchised or disrespected peoples we live among.
We have been reading many books and articles that might help us heal the wounds inflicted by “whites.” (Do we all “purely” belong to any racial group: does that appellation even hold truth in our very mixed society?)
The other day I was planning to attend a meeting of people from different backgrounds than I, and I was told by a friend that I might not be welcome there. I thought that shocking, as someone who has always been able to attend almost any gathering without fear. Nevertheless, I needed to go out of my comfort zone, even if the warning was valid. I realized something that I had never once thought of before. As an empowered white woman, I had never experienced that trepidation, something so many minorities have.
Right now, in the midst of all my learning and self-discovery about the truths I never realized about others in America, I still have trouble speaking up to racist comments. Last night, Joe Biden quoted the term “Silence is Complicity” when we fail to admonish demeaning, hateful words and actions. It applies to me.
I leave you with one example of a situation exemplifying the challenges to concerned citizens. What would I do or say if, as a friend witnessed, I was walking behind some young people who passed by a bus stop seating Black and Hispanic kids and yelled ugly racist terms at them? Would I have followed and admonished the bigotry of the passing gang? Would that have changed anything? Would my jumping in as the “white” savior have been fruitless or condescending, or an acknowledgement that maybe I shouldn’t “rescue” people who can help themselves, especially if I don’t even know them? Is there some way that a meaningful conversation could have developed?
I don’t know what I would have done. What would you do? What can we do, here and now?