Why does skin color matter?
This paper is from my perspective, a white girl, who has only glimpsed at the rejection found in the black american race. My perspective is one who wants to group everyone as fellow human’s instead of calling attention to race and color. In feeling the tension of race through experience and through articles, I am noticing that it is not enough to just accept difference. My new challenge has to do with being willing to sit in the pain and tension with people whose daily lives are affected by their race? James Cone, from the perspective of Black Liberation Theology wrote about Black Power that refuses to respond to white oppression and is pressing to find identity in being black. Cone’s article, “Black Theology and Black Power,” calls the black church to fight once again for freedom and equality. I would encourage everyone to read this article, to sit with race tension and what it feels like unable to justify or erase the oppressive dehuminizing actions of whites on the black race.
I come from a mixed race family with black adopted siblings growing up in a predominately white world. I remember hearing of my siblings being treated differently because of the color of their skin. It felt so foreign to hear this narrowmindedness. There were many differences between me and my siblings, which I saw as human differences.
Growing up, we moved to Alabama, where I was the only white girl in my school. I found it life-changing to be the minority. I felt incredibly lucky to get an inside view of a different culture, a culture in many respects that I liked better than my own Dutch culture. I found people much more expressive both in body and words. Dance and mucic were a part of the very fibor of the culture. My culture held back words connected to emotion, what I experienced in the Black culture was that these passionate words were spoken. It felt more honest. I found humor was infiltrated into everything and that my serious life needed to be broken into with laughter.
Some of my fondest memories were going to Black Churches. I loved the vibrancy, the long entertaining messages, and the embodiment of music. I loved rocking to the rhythm, flowing colorful dresses, big conspicuous hats, and fans to keep us from sweating too much. In my school choir, I learned a lot from the black spirituals. I soon felt the effects of black oppression and heard more and more stories connected to the atrocities from my race onto this beautiful/broken culture. One of my most profound memories was when our choir sang at a small packed church for Marin Luther King Jr. Day. The service went on for hours. I think everyone in the church had something to say. They were all talking about white oppression. There was a lot of anger, hurt, and dreaming of something better. I sank in my pew. I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb. I have never felt so white. My body felt like a huge building was collapsing on me. In that moment, I felt THE WEIGHT OF OPPRESSION. It wasn’t fun and games, lets all be friends, it was real. The oppression of MY white race. Everything in me wanted to change the color of my skin to black. I felt disgusted, horrified, and guilty as charged. I might not have done the things spoken about but I was tied to the oppressors in a way I did not understand as much as I felt.
To be honest, I am uncomfortable looking at skin color. I hate how devisive it becomes and the pain in that division. I don’t like feeling like I am on the wrong side, hanging with the oppressors. But it is more than that…in my whiteness, I am powerful, oblivious, ambivalent, privileged, majority…a narcissist because I can. Difference has always been intriguing to me in my privilege, but I have never lived in the shoes of those that fight daily to be seen, heard, or understood because of the color of their skin. Black people’s skin color is seen first, while my skin color is hardly noticed by my culture, unless it is compared with the chocolate color of my sister’s. We do not stop and recognize how we are contributing by our silence, our apathy, and our bias to sameness. My last thought is that LOVE can be demonstrated through sitting in the tension and listening.
