Dear Mimi,
The other day, I read the New York Times’ article, “A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning.” You, Jimmy Galligan, your respective families, and the Leesburg community have been in my thoughts and heart.
I found myself immediately concerned for your safety -- concerns that were validated when I learned you’ve received threats of physical violence. And I’m concerned for Jimmy’s safety, too, as racist vitriol targeting him — “mongrel” and “spiteful mutant,” for example — has flooded the internet.
As I think back to my own life 20+ years ago, I am reminded of the trepidation, excitement, hopes, and dreams that were wrapped up in the transition from high school to college. I can only imagine the emotional upheaval and devastation of suddenly having to change course. I might feel angry, shocked, guilty, wrongfully targeted, self-deprecating, and unfairly punished. I might not have pursued my ultimate passion for racial justice. I might have thrown up my hands and said, “It’s not worth it. I can’t risk making another mistake. The cost is too high.”
You see, like many kids, I learned that mistakes were bad and sometimes carried emotionally and physically painful consequences. I learned my voice didn’t matter if an adult didn’t want to hear it. (I attribute this both to my age and my gender.) Some mistakes were openly ridiculed by peers or laughed at quietly, so I retreated into silence. I stopped raising my hand in class. This was self-protective. Other times, I was defensive, which was self-protective, too.
I internalized these messages and learned to berate myself. Mistakes, I thought, were a reflection of my self-worth. Forgiving myself was nearly impossible.
No one taught me that mistakes are necessary. That mistakes are some of our most important teachers. That perfection is a toxic illusion. That having a mistake brought to my attention was a gift, albeit sometimes a painful one: a gift of learning, growth, and opportunity for healing and building deeper, more authentic relationships.
Interwoven with everything I learned about mistakes was racism. My family, teachers, and other community members were incredibly well-meaning. They intentionally taught me kindness. They intentionally taught me that it was wrong to say hurtful things and that it was important to treat people equally and fairly.
Yet they unintentionally handed me glass after glass of white supremacy Kool-Aid every day of my life. By this I do not mean they fed me KKK rhetoric. Rather, I am referring to the collection of individual, institutional, and cultural messages that support the false notion that white people are inherently superior to people of color. Thus, white people are more deserving of being given the benefit of the doubt. White people are the only ones who should be seen as individuals rather than representatives of their entire racial group. White people are smarter, more beautiful, more trustworthy, and more capable. If a white person attends a particular college or university, they are qualified and worked hard to be there. White people are safe. White people are Americans.
No one ever told me these things outright. After all, how can someone be a kind, good human if they are racist: if they think, say, or do things that reinforce a system that privileges them at everyone else’s expense? But white supremacy Kool-Aid is invisible. It stays in our bodies and courses through our veins. It infects our minds, actions, and speech. It compels us to pass a glass to those younger than us and to our peers. It is shared and ingested unconsciously. It can only be repelled and expelled consciously.
In my youth, no one taught me to be critical of neighbors decrying the deterioration of my almost entirely white neighborhood when a family of color moved in. Nor did anyone teach me to challenge or think critically about: the entirely Eurocentric curriculum I received from kindergarten through twelfth grade; the stereotypical Native American costumes white students wore at pep rallies; the fact that all the teachers were white; the fact that none of the Black and Latinx students bussed in from a neighboring city — a program offensively called “Project Concern” — were in my honors and AP classes nor that they were disproportionately disciplined. I’m sure that, like recent reports have revealed about your former school district, any complaints of racial epithets were minimized and swept under the rug.
In my ninth grade English class, we were divided into small groups and assigned short passages from our required reading: To Kill A Mockingbird. We were asked to practice the dialogue and perform it for the class. I was one of the witnesses in the trial. My lines included the n-word. I felt a visceral resistance to saying the word. I remember feeling like I had to muster up the courage to speak it aloud. And I did. I’m sure it caused pain. I wish I could take it back.
With the exception of Corduroy, all of the human characters in the books I read at home and at school were white. It wasn’t until tenth grade, when I was assigned books by Richard Wright, that an author of color and characters of color were a part of my formal education. Almost all of the shows and movies I watched had all-white casts. The models in commercials and ads were white. So were the dolls in toy aisles. If people who looked like me were represented everywhere and people of color were never included (or only included in limited, one-dimensional, or stereotypical ways), how could I not unconsciously intuit that “white” means “better”?
As a New Englander, I learned that racism was only something that existed in “the backwards South.” I’m willing to bet most of my family, neighbors, and teachers didn’t know about the explicitly racist real estate and housing policies that made my community entirely white in the first place. I’m certain they didn’t know about the African Americans who were enslaved in my town prior to 1865.
So when I arrived at college, I felt intimidated by some of my Black teachers because they felt unfamiliar to me. I clutched my purse a little closer when I passed men with skin darker than mine. I noticed how well my Asian American classmates spoke English. I was surprised to learn Native Americans lived outside reservations. I felt more comfortable when I was mostly surrounded by other white people. And to be honest, I still experience some of these same things. Unlearning racism is a lifelong endeavor, especially when we have spent our entire lives drinking the white supremacy Kool-Aid. I am a good person. The white supremacy Kool-aid also made me a racist person.
You drank the Kool-aid, too. You inhaled the particles that evaporated. It’s partly why you sent the three-second video in the first place. It’s why you didn’t understand the gravity of the n-word. It’s why you didn’t know that when non-Black folks utter the word, it’s an act of violence. (I have Black friends and colleagues who believe it is an act of violence even when uttered by Black folks.) It’s why it wasn’t enough for your parents to teach you kindness and to not use mean words. Their good intentions didn’t stand a chance against the Kool-aid. My parents’ good intentions didn’t either. After all, they drank it, too. As I said above, it’s shared and ingested unconsciously. It can only be repelled and expelled consciously.
Neither of us created the racism upon which our country was founded. We didn’t ask to grow up largely separated from people who represent the global majority. We didn’t ask to learn racism. We never ordered the Kool-aid. No one even gave us the choice.
Maybe if your school district had taken action in response to ongoing reports of racism or had done anything proactive to address racism, Jimmy wouldn’t have felt compelled to make your video public. Maybe if his voice (and countless others’ voices) had been respected and heard by the adults with the power to do something, anything, he wouldn’t have felt as if he needed to spotlight your error in order to get people to simply acknowledge reality.
As my friend, Monique, said to me recently, “We didn’t build the house, but we have to live in it.” To me, this means that until we’re honest about what we’ve internalized, until we can accept that we can be good people who are racist sometimes, and until we can acknowledge how learning racism has robbed us of pieces of our own humanity, we cannot make meaningful change.
After all, ending racism is in your best interest and in mine. If we could live in a society in which hard work guaranteed limitless success for all and everyone could easily interact with one another — a society free from divisions — imagine all the possibilities! What could we learn? What could we understand? How could we grow? How could our sense of self-worth be maximized? Whom could we love? What additional richness could we have in our lives? What new experiences could we have? What paths would we choose? What economic safety nets could we rely on if racist tropes (like “welfare queens” and “anchor babies”) weren’t used to justify cuts to life-saving programs?
So now I return to painful gifts: the gifts of learning, growth, and opportunities for healing and building deeper, more authentic relationships. How will you use your painful gift? How can you use your experience to help others avoid the same mistake and harm? How can you harness all your anger and frustration to make positive changes in the schools and in the community-at-large? What can you do in collaboration with people of color? With other white people? How can you use social media — the same forum that upended your life — to affect change? How many other people who’ve thrown their hands up in defeat — “I can’t risk another mistake...the cost is too high” — or who’ve crumpled under the weight of their guilt can you inspire to re-engage? To forgive themselves? What human-to-human connections do you need to repair or cultivate more intentionally? And what kind of self-care and ongoing support — including from white people engaged in racial justice work — will you need to persevere?
We’re all in this together.
Warmest regards,
Sarah