Where Is My Pride?
- Seattle Prep Ignite
- May 9, 2018
- 3 min read
When I was little, barely as tall as my father’s hips, I knew very little.
I tanned easily then, and reveled in the shades of my flesh.
One day I ran crying to him.
“Dad, I don’t want to be black!”
I knew not my ignorance.
Elementary school lunches were akin to age-old bartering.
We traded apples for gummies, sandwiches for goldfish.
We ate as much as we could to see who could eat the most.
We searched to name all of our heritage, to see who could be the most.
I had thought my white-to-white-to-white heritage was cool.
I never knew it would become a political point of controversy.
My class of 27 students had one black girl.
She and I were friends.
Then another white girl drove her out of school, her long yellow braid a white-washing whip echoing in those Catholic-school halls.
I thought I had known diversity.
We studied American History and I only ever felt anger and shame.
The people who shared the same skin as me were the monsters who dehumanized, harmed, abused native peoples with stunning culture.
They bleached the beauty of the past with an air of ignorant superiority.
I felt disgusted that I was related to it.
I knew of slavery but I didn’t know slavery.
Junior year my teachers opened my eyes to Beloved, by Toni Morrison.
It was the first book about a black woman by a black woman that I had read in school.
Every scene of destruction, every decimation of humanity, every crack of a whip, every bleeding wound, every desperation she was brought to, every depiction of insanity burdened my soul with an unnamable guilt.
Chinwe sat behind me during that time, a stunning figure of beauty.
I saw the hurt in her eyes as we moved through the unit and saw how the past still scarred her soul, and it hurt me to see.
I thought, “how could anyone do something like that?”
I heard racist jokes and comments floating around the classroom like circulating bacteria in a plane, trapped in the suffocating, contaminated environment that I felt somehow responsible for.
My guilt was unquantifiable.
As politics turned to the next election, the white supremacy and dominance crawled on my skin like spiders travel their webs.
I heard things like, “That’s enough of a black man in office.”
And I couldn’t help but wonder why everyone thought a white man should be the default when I remembered the American chaos under white control.
I was enlightened to the restrictive legislation that limited people based on race.
I was aware of the soul-devouring racism that caused divisions in families, controversies in politics.
I was confused.
Police brutality entered the scene. My eyes never closed.
It seemed like every time I watched the news, a new face crossed the screen while the news reporter spoke of their death.
The faces blurred together.
White cops were rarely given just sentencing.
I felt betrayed by my country.
On social media I saw #blackout.
From dark to light, I saw the most beautiful people.
Confidence, happiness, beauty, empowerment—the message of strength filled my heart.
Black Lives Matter grew in numbers against the injustices.
Like feminism, I knew that all lives mattered, but that the name pointed to the group most in need of care and attention.
I felt hope. I felt that this country could begin to level out its uneven racial grounds.
Then bit by bit, I saw white hands clawing at the growing, majestic tower of racial equality,
bricks crumbling to the abyss.
I couldn’t understand why people would want to destroy something so empowering and good, so strong, so pure.
I was hurt by the people I shared my privilege with.
I am proud to be an American but I am not proud to be white.
I am not proud of my racial ancestors.
I am not proud of the foundation of my country.
I am not proud of the racist bloodshed that feeds the soil I tread.
I am not proud of the cultural appropriation that pervades the media.
I am not proud of the white-washing I witness.
I am not proud of the guilt I experience that I did not cause.
I am not proud.
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