An open apology to People of Color

I need to do more

Often in my career I’ve held a savior complex: I’ve told myself I am doing enough, people should feel grateful to me, for “sacrificing” my “career” to “serve low-income students.”

This is a mindset we encounter in so many settings and especially in education.

Now I realize just how deeply white supremacy was ingrained into me by my dad. I have so many memories of what he taught me to think about black people. My dad liked to say that when he was a police officer they would Joke over the radio about seeing a “black boy in Beaverton.” When I backed my car into another car in Detroit and told my dad about it, his first question was a panicked, “was this guy Black?” He often comments on how Asians don’t know how to drive very well or how to take care of their yards: he told me, on 9/11, “find Afghanistan on a map son because soon it won’t be there anymore.” Whenever he is upset about a political issue, he looks at me and says, “shoot ‘em!” and attempts to fist bump me. He often expresses fantasies during political crises about the police pulling out machine guns and slaughtering every single person who crosses a certain line, regardless of their intentions. “Cross the line, shoot em! Cross the line, shoot em!” He says it again and again, joy in his eyes.

Now I see fully just how much this man has contaminated me: and I take responsibility for it.

I’m 36 years old and there is no reason why my psycho dad’s ideas should still be affecting my perception, other than the fact that I haven’t done enough work internally!! I’m not a literal teenager lol: I’m a fucking goddess in her 30s and yet I did NOT have the courage before finding my inner goddess to honestly assess the way in which I have refused to root out my own racism. I thought I was too smart for “woke stuff”, I thought I already knew all this stuff because of my work background: but I did fucking not. I still have remnants of those racist inclinations and I discovered them today:

I am in a state of extreme fucking fear.

I believe my dad wants to have me killed.

And everywhere tonight I have looked for signs of this: I have been consumed by paranoia, I see trucks and I imagine paramilitaries in there working for my dad.

I am fucking terrified that what my mom and dad screamed at me over and over again in middle school will now come true: “MEN WILL COME AND TAKE YOU IN THE NIGHT,” my dad screamed at me, like they do to conscripts in Russia I suppose as my German friend J reminded me:

and where do you think they will take me?

All I know is what my mom used to say when I cried and pleaded for them not to send me away with the men.

My mom always said, “they will take you out of your bed, take you to a van outside, and drive you away!! There will be nothing you can do about it!!!!”

Just screaming at me like that.

So then tonight I find that when I am in a state of fear, my mind still sometimes categorizes unknown black people as threats: not always, but when I am in a state of fear, I notice how my mind does this automatically, sometimes even when I have NO fear at all: especially if I am out in the dark, or see an unknown black person in the distance wearing what look like combo pants, a whole host of automated fear reactions sweep into place.

I have spoken about white supremacy and I have spoken about issues facing black people but I have never once truly admitted to a basic fact:

Even now, my mind automatically categorizes Black people in negative ways, and I have failed my Black friends because I let the white world believe I was something like a savior to them when they didn’t need me, when I took my experiences with them and romanticized these, when I said I’d be a champion to so many of my Black students and then I was not.

I recognize this now: I will do whatever it takes to stop this from happening.

I will get help for this, and I will be vulnerable as I do so.

I am done worrying, “am I a good person? Am I a bad person?”

worrying about our own self-definitions is not what Black and Brown people need from us.

I can’t speak to all they need from us,

but I am committed to two things right now:

stopping my mind from automatically categorizing them into negative or objectified or otherwise dehumanizing categories; thinking more about how they are feeling than how I am feeling.

The deepest psychological aspect of racism:

We aren’t born with racist demonic tendencies

We are raised by people like my dad: they automate us toward racist demonic tendencies

And our minds then automatically do fucked up things like this.

We will never stop unless we work VERY FUCKING HARD at it.

Do NOT spend time analyzing whether you are “racist”: labeling yourself as a racist or anti-racist is not the point. The point is to recognize that your mind is a PRISONER to a multitude of demonic attachments — like racism!!! — and you need to cut these away.

A lot of people are depending on us to be vulnerable and do this work.

people of color, I am so deeply sorry that I failed you in this way despite all my education, experience, and skills:

I will work so hard to be better.