This Disease Called Racism Infects Us All

The woman, whom I’d just met, was telling me a story. It didn’t come easily.

“When it comes to race,” said the fidgeting, middle-aged white woman, “I’ve always tried to do the right thing.”

She had for years contributed to civil rights groups, railed against those who made racist jokes and raised her children to despise racism. Even in her work, she helped disadvantaged African Americans.

So her reaction upon visiting the offices of a successful black business puzzled her. The receptionists were polite; the offices immaculate. The place had a buzz - the prosperous purr that emanates from money being made.

But somehow, she felt uncomfortable. “Then I realized I didn’t think it was supposed to be this way. Black people weren’t supposed to be doing this well.

“And I realized that I was racist.”

Omigod - she’d actually said the “R” word. Owned up to it, even. Suddenly I was fidgeting.

Not because of her story - who doesn’t harbor hidden stereotypes? But because in years of discussing racism, I’ve met few folks willing to admit feeling it.

The racist is always the other guy. The man in the photo with the sheet over his head, the woman waving the swastika. Racists are the ones who join hate groups or spit ugly epithets. It’s them - down South, across town, in Congress or even next door.

It certainly isn’t us.

But life has taught me two basic truths:

However mature we are, most people remain children inside - craving love and gratitude for our strengths; terrified that our flaws will be revealed.

And virtually everybody’s a racist.

Racism, like so much else in America, is different for whites than for blacks - but we all are infected. Even as a child, I saw proof everywhere.

In the newspaper in my largely black Midwestern hometown, in which “Negroes” - my family, teachers, doctors and clergy - were invisible unless they played sports or committed crimes. On TV, where seeing any black person was so rare as to cause my neighbors to gather and gawk. In my own neighborhood, where we routinely dismissed fellow African Americans as too dark, nappy-haired or wide-nosed to be smart or beautiful.

Over the years, I got slapped with the proof so often that I learned to see it coming.

But not always: As in 1990, when I learned that our white 4-year-old neighbor - the kid who was my younger son’s best friend, who heroworshiped my older son and who adored me - announced to a teacher, “I don’t like black people.” Reminded about us, he explained, “But they aren’t black.”

How could we be? We were his trusted friends. Black people were scary, dangerous - and different.

If a loving child whom I knew to be raised by parents dedicated to equality could absorb that and deny what his own eyes told him, then racism must be everywhere - in our water, air, the soil on which we step. Enough to become part of us.

So although a few rare souls are untainted by racism, most Americans share this common and contagious malady. We know it, even though many of us refuse to admit it.

Denial, as they say, ain’t just a river in Egypt.

But perhaps our common problem could become a common strength. Knowing that we were raised on racism as surely as on Gerber’s and the Pledge of Allegiance, we can remove some of its stigma. Acknowledging our shared illness, we can treat it, as we would any disease.

Admitting that we are a nation in recovery, we can give each other a break.

“A break” does not mean accepting racism for a second. It means giving some room to those who clumsily reveal what most Americans harbor. Room for them to be human, to make the prejudiced remark or to feel what that woman felt at the office - without personally repudiating them. Even as we repudiate their acts.

For whites, that requires acknowledging the “secret” everyone knows - you have some racist feelings. It means challenging those feelings, then changing the behavior that flows from them. Owning up to the commonness - and wrongness - of white racism would give both groups a shot at absolution.

For blacks, it means facing our own hidden prejudices. Prejudice against whites, surely. But also against other blacks, since we have internalized the contempt many whites have for us, as the black-on-black murder rates sadly suggest. It means giving up our hypocritical “Ah-hah!” each time a white person stumbles. It means untying the knots that keep many of us from loving our black selves. And that, even as we fight racism’s cruelty, we should acknowledge that most whites caught the contagion as kids. Just like us.

Getting over it is everyone’s grown-up responsibility. So is giving one another a break. Neither will be easy.

But bobbing around in that Egyptian river is no fun, either.

xxxx