am i a race traitor?

i hesitate to post this. i am afraid that many who read my blog will think that discussing race and racism are my only foci. i want to tell those reading my blog that i do live a very full and interesting life. i have a number of really good, supportive friends. emerson is one such friend. please visit her blog when you can. you can find it here. If you aren't forwarded there, go to http://thebigsigh.blogspot.com. she is one of my oldest friends and i truly appreciate her. we don't only talk about race or being black. our current conversations have revolved around jay-z's "encore" and the number seven (wink, emerson). but, i am moving futher from the question i posed as the title of the post.

as a result of the letter/email that i sent to my advisor, i met with her twice--once with just the two of us and a second time with the other class participant. i spoke with her, a white woman, about things that i've never shared with a white person. i shared with her a number of things that i heard growing up. when i was young, i had a number of "close" white friends. my mother would often comment to me and other family members that she wished that i had just one good black friend. my sister's best friend at the time was a young woman in our neighborhood named, andrea. andrea was black and came from a similar class and family structure as ours. since i was very young, my mother prepared my sister and i for successfully dealing, working, and interacting with the white world. she let us know that white people will stick together, they will always defend each other even if one is wrong. she prepared us for the world by also telling us that white people cannot be trusted, that they will befriend you and take your thoughts, ideas, and soul--if you let them. to a certain degree, when i was younger, i thought that this was a certain type of racist-speak. i half-heartedly listened to mother thinking that what she was telling me was similar to the racist speech that white people circulated about us. but, secretly, i longed for a black friend. i wanted my mother to be happy with my friends and invite them into our home. i thought that, to a certain degree, i was less than my sister in my mother's eyes because i didn't have black friends.

as i got older, i experienced everything that my mother said about white people. i saw, first-hand, how one of my friend's abandoned me because she thought that i received an academic accolade due to affrimative action and not my ability and merit. as a result, another friend continued to be her friend while she chose to allow our friendship to slowly disintegrate and become unrecognizable. over the course of a few months, i experienced how white people expect privilege and blame black folks when they don't get their way or when their privilege doesn't get them what they have come to expect as a result of that unearned privilege. i shed tears over losing my friend because i was black. despite our years of interaction and exchanging "bff" (best friend forever) necklaces, it was simple for them to walk away from me. but, they had each other. slowly i understood that my mother spoke from a desire to protect her baby when she spoke to me about race and white people. she didn't think less of me, she ached for the moment she knew would come, the moment she would have to put me back together as i cried in her arms--this almost-woman. i cried myself to sleep wondering why things hadn't changed. my mother had grown up during "jim crow." much of her first-hand experiences with white people were from afar, second-hand, and eventually, as an adult. those things that she had observed as a child were still true. how did i reconcile that as a fifteen year old? how do i reconcile that now? even as i sit here, over a decade away from that incident, i wipe my tears hoping they don't flood the keyboard of my laptop. another thing that has stayed with me since then,

white people will knowingly cause pain without apology.

so i shared these thoughts with my advisor. i put myself back in that vulnerable position. in addition, i told her that when i speak with other black people about experiences with racism, i don't have to tell other black folks how i feel. they know from experience, they intuit my pain, they empathize with the psychic damage racism does to me because their psyches have been and will be damaged in much the same way. when black people choose to speak about issues of race, they are coming from a vulnerable position because in that moment of speaking about how pervasive and damaging racism is, it is the first time they have had to put the experiences into words. so, in many ways, just speaking about race and racism is about proving to white folks how hurt we are by their thoughts, feelings, words, actions, and policy decisions. we have to search for the words to help white folks understand the damaged place from which we speak. and, often, it is more damaging to try to put it into words because we relive those moments in time. unfortunately, there are too many of those incidents to count. james baldwin wrote that there are virtually no words to describe the atrocities that black people have encountered living in this white world. other black people understand this and we talk with each other in feelings without words. white people expect words. and, with my advisor, i explained that. i feel like i am a race traitor.

in much of my post, i referred to my mother. i feel as though i have implicated her as a racist as she has had the most impact on my racial development. i cannot talk about my development without explaining her influence. but i am telling my story and i don't want people to harshly judge her. she is a phenomenal woman. i guess i know that much of what i say will be hard for white people to understand. and, rather than focusing on my experience, they will look to blame someone. the easy out is to do what i've seen many white people do to black children, telling each other that it comes from the home. also, i've outted part of the black experience to white people. i wonder at the dangerous ways whites may use this information against people of color--against me. while i am unsettled by sharing this information with other white people about the ways in which i see the world, i cannot remain quiet. we all have responsibilities and we must claim our culpability in this stagnant, foul-smelling dysfunctional country. racism isn't mine--i didn't create and i don't sustain it through my actions. i cannot remain quiet. in order to change the way things are we have to name the hurt in order to get past it.

but, in my mind, i'm afraid i've hurt black people--especially those closest and most important to me.