Starting off:
So this week I have a personal essay tackling realizations I have had in the past few weeks about my own childhood, my own implicit bias, and my own privilege.
I ask that you read all the way through and that you keep in mind I can only speak to my own experience. If you feel differently about anything I would love to have an educated discourse about these topics.
June 7th 2020 — Somerville NJ
Growing Up in America — conditioned to ignore the Black Experience
There were no Black kids at my school, no Black kids at the beaches, no Black people driving around my town, no Black people visiting, and no Black people even working in Monmouth Beach, that I remember. I grew up in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey — a neighborhood whose population consists of 3,228 as of 2018. In the whole time I lived there, no joke, there was not a single Black person that I ever saw or knew of as a resident of the town. Maybe I was conditioned not to notice their presence, even if Black people did exist in the town. Maybe this was only my experience living there but even today in Monmouth Beach, according to demographics from Data USA, zero Black people live there. The population is 94.4% White Alone, 3.05% Hispanic or Latino, and 1.82% Two or More Races. Two or more races I guess could refer to some Black people, but not that I have ever noticed.
I never thought about the fact that my father was the darkest person I knew in that town, being Portuguese and Puerto Rican but still white-passing. When I moved to Shrewsbury in 2014, I never thought about how the only Black people I saw in town were people driving through or working there. The population of this idealistic, quaint town is 95.4% White Alone, 1.78% Hispanic or Latino, and 1.58% Asian Alone. If Black people were in these towns and just not in the statistics, maybe it's a good thing that I never noticed Black people in my surroundings. Maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t see their presence as unusual or maybe my memory serves me right and there actually were no Black people.
I never stopped to understand the consequences of growing up in basically only white neighborhoods. I never thought about how odd it was that my parents told me our late dog Patrick barked at Black people. Growing up the same way I did, Patrick never saw Black people — besides maybe at the Vet’s office or during car rides. Maybe I am exaggerating some of my experience. I definitely knew Black people existed, I definitely saw Black people in the surrounding neighborhoods, like Long Branch and Red Bank at least, and I definitely watched TV shows and movies with Black characters.
Either way, I was not nearly as aware of the Black experience as I should have been. If my parents were aware of the fact that we lived in a white neighborhood, they did not take any extra measures to make sure that I, as a child, understood that there were not only white people on Earth. When I think about my childhood now, the fact that I was only exposed to one way of life, the white heteronormative experience, is so problematic. Thinking about raising my own future children, I would never raise them in a space where they were only able to view the dominant narrative — a white bubble persay. But it makes sense why my parents would raise me in Monmouth Beach.
To give a blanket statement — it’s a “good” neighborhood. “Good” meaning white. “Good” meaning my only interaction with the police as a child was through DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) and when they would pull over to tell me to wear a helmet when riding my bike. “Good” meaning I had a nice education with majority white teachers. My parents definitely did not stop to think about what a “good” neighborhood meant. “Good,” meaning white and wealthy, is a metric of success for society. They would disagree and say that they did not conform to those standards, that they didn’t process that information, that they wanted to live in a beach town with a fine school system. But the reality of my childhood is that I knew nothing about Black people, I knew nothing about Africa, and I did not learn anything about Black history in school.
June 6th 2020 — Trenton NJ
I had this whole realization last night, looking at a map of the world, that Africa is so so large and I know virtually nothing about the people that live there, the culture, their government, African history, or modern day African society. What I do know about Africa consists of minimal knowledge about Apartheid, Rwanda, Nelson Mandela, the African Safari, and Ancient Egypt. What I know about modern day Africa is the devastation of the Ebola crisis, that Cape Town is rich, and that there are lots of refugees. Even laying that information out on the page, I realize I only learned about injustice in Africa, about tragedies involving Black bodies, and about the negative aspects like genocide. My child-level knowledge of Africa is problematic to say the least.
I was never given a deep understanding or even basic knowledge of everyday life in Africa, but I definitely have a decent understanding of everyday life in Europe. Maybe this was given to me through life experience, but even so, our history books teach us far more about European countries and culture than other continents that exist. This can not only be indicative of my experience. I dare you to look at a world map and think about what you truly know about Africa. Think about what you actually learned in elementary, middle, and high school about Africa.
Now think about Black history in America. What I learned about slaves is that white people stole Black people from the shores of Africa, that slavery was really bad, and that Abraham Lincoln ended it. What I learned about slavery, about the Civil Rights Movement, about Jim Crow, was sugar coated. Black history and America’s racist history was packaged in a way to make it seem like racism was behind us and that we had grown as a country out of those ideals.
My point: open your eyes to your own childhood experience and how you grew up learning from the get-go a sense of otherness. The lack of education about Black history and Africa itself creates implicit bias before a child can even understand what the word bias means. As a white woman in America I recognize that I come from a place of privilege and that I will never understand what it is like to be Black in America.
June 12th 2020 — Wall NJ
These past few weeks since the murder of George Floyd have been a very pivotal moment in American consciousness as a whole and for the worlds understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement. It's time to expose the fact that we don’t learn from Black scholars, that so many of us grew up not learning about the Black experience, that history books are written from the white point of view, and that white supremacy is still a major issue in this country. The system was built to ignore Black voices and silence those that spoke out against inequality. While the protests all around the world are a reaction to the murder of George Floyd and continue in his honor, Black Lives Matter is about tackling systemic, institutionalized racism within the US and police brutality/ the police system as a whole. The movement is about every Black person in America — uplifting their voices, understanding their experience, and checking one’s privilege at the door. So yes, all 4 of the police officers who contributed to the modern day lynching of George Floyd have been arrested, but their actions stem from 400+ years of genocide happening in the Black Community.
We weren’t taught the truth about racism in America. We were taught to ignore inequality because white people profit off of white privilege. We have to educate ourselves on white privilege, white complacency, systemic racism, the prison industrial complex, and the true history of the police in America. We have to read Black authors, listen to Black voices, watch the Black movies and TV shows — overall learn about Black life not just injustice against the Black community.
The fight, the movement, this revolution, is never over. Black Lives Matter is not a trend or something that can be processed and comprehended in a few weeks worth of knowledge. Unlearning your own implicit and racial bias is a lifelong journey and more than a lifetime of educating yourself. We all need to wake up. Challenge your own experience, your own upbringing, and your own privilege. If it has taken 19 years for me to begin to understand this information, it is going to take at least 19 more to unpack and learn the truth for myself. Maybe you were raised differently than me and experienced a different childhood. That's so great for you, but I guarantee your education was just as sugar coated as mine and that both of our understandings of American history are still vastly inaccurate. These conversations can be extremely uncomfortable but racism isn’t uncomfortable unless you are racist. Black history, Black voices, Black experiences, Black stories, Black lives matter.
Thank you for reading and taking the time to consider these issues. These are difficult things to talk about and put into words. Keep fighting, keep learning, keep challenging.
Also here is an Anti-Racist Resource Document complied by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein. It has podcasts, books, videos, articles, and other resources.
Here is an extensive spreadsheet called “Fantasy World Master List of Resources on How To Dismantly Systemic Racism” credit to the creator Patia.
all my love always,
isabelle