Nothing light for this post...but I've been thinking, more than normal, about racial reconciliation recently. And wishing it was a nice little issue we could box up the solution to and wrap it with a bow. But it's not. And being an educator in the inner-city, as well as living in a neighborhood with one other white person besides Micah and myself, well, it isn't something I can just put on the backburner.
I am not faced with awful situations every day. I don't regularly condemn people different than myself and, minus a few instances my second year teaching, don't really have people take notice of my pasty complexion.
But I was recently talking to a white man from South Africa and he made the comment, "70% of adoptions fail." Which had me thinking because, before Baby Bell, Micah and I planned on adoption. We still continue to plan on adopting (one or both of us are getting "fixed"). And while I have seen adoption adjustment be a struggle, I haven't really seen it "fail."
So that started the race dialogue in my head. It was escalated the other day by something that happened while I was driving. Then I read an article on www.theblackcritic.com, "Am I racist?", that kind of hit home.
Is racism to be expected in each person? How do we combat it? Is it something that we can ever rid ourselves of? Or will we let the various people who fit stereotypes continually feed into our expectation of race?
Here is what I do know, from my observations.
Ignoring race and ethnicity is not in the best interest of the child.
It is not effective to pretend to be something you are not.
Skin color does not equal life experience.
Socio-economic status seems to play an equal role in societal expectations, and a larger role in educational expectations.
I cannot beat myself up for being a white, female teacher in an inner-city school. (and minus about 4 students, my whiteness has had little affect on my influence.)
I don't know what it is to physically be a minority, so I can't empathize.
peace.
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One of the pastors at my home church in Auburn adopted 4 black kids from Haiti. I met them last weekend, and they are amazing kids, and with Auburn being one of the whitest placest around, I wonder how much racism they'll experience growing up there.
Thankfully though they at least seemed genuinely welcomed and loved at church.
Discrimination can come in many colors . . . the color of race, of creed, of financial & societal status, of age, of political preference, of life stages and the list goes on. Is racial discrimination really about color or about what we perceive color to mean?
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