I'm so glad to have you here again today. As promised, here's part two of my deepest, darkest secret.
Part one was that I've used cannabis most days for the last 25 years. I quit during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and through a few jobs along the way, but generally speaking, it's been part of my life for a long time.
Part two is harder to talk about. Harder to admit to. Harder for other people to hear. At the end of the last post, I asked if you'd still love me after hearing that first secret. Some of you told me you would. Let me be honest: a lot of people don't. It's hard for people to accept, especially openly, because once someone says "that's okay with me," they start wondering: wait, is it okay for me? For the people I love? For that person I judged harshly, or treated poorly, because of that same thing? Do I still love them? It brings up a lot of questions.
An Interracial Family
Many of you know my husband is Black. Our daughter is Black (American from the 1600s and Nigerian) and white (Polish, German, British, and Scottish). We're an interracial family, married ten years next month, together for years before that.
But if you'd known me as a young person, especially through college, you'd probably have known me as someone with a lot of Black friends, maybe even more Black friends than white ones. I thought of myself as progressive. I liked Black folks, that's who I spent my time with, and I didn't think much more about it than that.
It wasn't until I started building The Hart Habits that I really began looking closely at everything I was carrying, everything I had shame around, everything I still needed to work through. One of those things, coming up both in the wider culture and in my own life as I became a soon-to-be mother to a young Black woman, was racism. Was I racist?
Starting From "I Am Racist"
I've told this story before: the way I started learning about racism in America was to begin with the premise that I am racist, and go looking to find out if that was true. Starting from that premise, not from "I'm probably not," but from "let's assume I am and see what I find."
Here's the deep, dark secret: it didn't take long at all. Within moments of saying, " Okay, I'll just say I'm racist and see what comes up", I knew for certain that I was.
A lot of you would ask more about that, because if you knew me, you wouldn't have thought of me as a racist person. I was the person you'd have described as liking Black people more than white people, and honestly, that was true for a lot of years of my life. I've since landed somewhere more nuanced: humanity is humanity, different cultures carry different strengths and weaknesses, and there's a lot going on underneath all of it.
Redefining What Racism Actually Is
When I said "I'm racist," I expected to find evidence that I wasn't. I grew up in North Idaho, home of the Aryan Nations. I was used to defining racists as the overt ones: the KKK, the skinheads, the ones with the regalia, talking about white pride and white Christian brotherhood and not wanting to be "diluted" by Black or brown blood.
I was around a lot of very overt racism, which made it easy to separate myself from it. Obviously I'm not one of them. I don't hate Black people, I love Black people, I thought.
What I found, over time, is that racism isn't an admission. It's not "I don't like Black people." It's not a confession of feeling negatively about a group based on their race. Racism is an omission.
Racism is redlining policies that kept Black people out of neighborhoods that were growing and succeeding. Racism is when Black Americans make up 13% of the population but average only about 1% of a white American's core social network, per research from the Public Religion Research Institute. Racism is when Black Americans are roughly 13% of the population but around 32% of the sentenced state and federal prison population, per the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics data. That's an omission. It's an omission of the people who should be at the table, consulted, listened to, advised with, on how to actually fix these problems, and instead, they're simply not there.
Racism is air blow dryers in public bathrooms that don't register dark skin, because nobody in the room designing them was Black, or in a position to say, this doesn't work for me. Racism is the school-to-prison pipeline for young Black kids. Racism is suspension and discipline rates 30 to 40 times higher for young Black girls than white or Asian girls.
That's racism. Omission. The omission of people from decision-making and power-holding in our own society. Bigotry and prejudice are their own separate things, and I found plenty of those too, in my own mind, my own heart, my own life, and ultimately in the society around me.
Deep Dark Secret Number Two
I am racist. I'm working actively to be anti-racist. But the only way to actually do that was to start in the mirror first: deal with my own prejudice, my own bias, my own defense mechanisms that would go up to keep me from hearing truths that were hard to hear.
There it is. My deepest, darkest secret. I am racist. I don't want to be anymore. I don't want you to be either.
If you're someone who's thought to yourself, well, I'm definitely not racist, drop a comment and say it out loud, or tell me you'd like to learn more. If you're ready to drop the defenses and see what might be under the surface, in your own mind, your own life, your own sphere of influence, either way, know that I love you, just like I love myself, just like I love my white father, my white brother, my white mom and sisters. We will create a new world together.
Question of the day: What would it take for you to start from the premise that you might be wrong about this, and see what you find?