Vacuum OFF: Racism, a Black Woman’s Perspective
by Angela Terrell
~ ~ ~
I’d like to introduce you to writer Angela Terrell. She is a friend and previous student of mine and I asked her to share her unique insights and perspective about racism. Angela is 32 years old and was born and raised in K.C. MO.. She received an A.A. degree from Penn Valley and will be working on a Creative Writing degree from U.M.K.C.. Angela was in my first grade class 26 years ago. ~Laddie Morse
~ ~ ~
Many of us know the sordid details of a bloody and traumatic U.S. history, including that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, so I don’t need to rehash them. Instead, I will touch on personal experiences, learning to deal with the shaping of hate and prejudice.
I’m sure just about every child has been sat down and given the talk about how dangerous the world can be. However, it’s almost a guarantee that this talk will be taken a step further if you’re black. It’s not so much of the “world” that is dangerous; it’s more so a specific race, the white race.
Black parents, namely mother’s, who have to prepare their children for the onslaught of prejudice and racist mentality of some whites, and next to that, the police. We are equipped with these tools and rules early on to keep us alive and out of trouble. I received that talk myself as a child for my own well-being.
Here’s the thing, as a child, I was curious about how things worked and why they worked as they did. So, the first time I encountered a white person in the flesh, it was mind-boggling. I remember staring up at this person as if he were some mysterious entity I had to figure out. This man was a former elementary school teacher named Ladner Morse, or as I called him and still refer to him as, Mr. Morse.
With him being the first white person I interacted with, which may not sound like a big deal, he could have been the first white person I judged in a negative light. It could have set-up barriers between he and I and his whole group of people even if it’s illogical.
I remember family members and random Joe’s and Jane’s warning me to automatically distrust whites because they were out to “get” me because of the color of my skin. I hadn’t felt that way toward Mr. Morse, he never came off as a threat to me.
I can say what I perceived with my child’s eye at Bancroft Elementary School, is that there was a division of cultures or ideology. There were clear differences between blacks and whites, behavioral or otherwise and I think it had more to do with history or how each individual had been raised.
Cultural or ideological differences were vocalized and demonstrated whether it was implicit or not, by each group that seemed to hold the same belief. For instance, when I wanted to try something different, I was discouraged with fear and a widely held ideal that black people don’t so certain things. This is what spilled from the mouths of black people onto me. However, with white people, they preached freedom, possibilities and little to no restrictions.
I associated anything negative with blacks and positivity with whites. That was my mental state as a little girl based on what I saw, heard or was taught and in a way this social construct of race and what we associate it with forces one to choose sides in a subtle, sinister and unconscious way.
As I grew into my teens my perception of white people changed. I realized that not all white people were nice and understanding like my former teacher was. I couldn’t understand why some whites attacked black people simply for their skin color. What did color have to do with someone’s character? It’s far easier to judge the exterior than put in the work to find and know the worth of the interior.
I disagree with anyone who says they don’t see color. We have color all around us and yet people state that they don’t see color? We all see color, to see it is natural. It’s not that black people are asking whites or anyone else not to see our skin color, but to look past that and get to know us on an individual basis.
I share all this to say: racism begins in tiny increments and it seems harmless at first. We are lazy in our thinking and careless with our words and we wonder how from generation to generation certain beliefs get passed on. Sometimes we create our own circumstances and demise by planting rotten seeds (thoughts) and this is what we’re seeing today.
Someone somewhere planted the seed of fear and that turned into hatred. Now, it’s all of our problems because we are a human family. What hurts one, hurts us all, and it’s beyond me why many of us haven’t recognized that yet.
Do you remember September 11th? What were you doing then?
I’ll tell you where I was when 9/11 happened: I was in Geometry class waiting for the teacher to begin the lesson. Instead, we saw her in tears trying to gather her words. When she calmed down, she tried to prepare us before she turned on the television. She asked us did we know what was going on that day, and we replied we didn’t. She turned on the television and that’s when the newsreel kept playing planes crashing into the twin towers. We thought it was some movie but she assured us it was not. When it finally sunk in, we all stared at her and I could imagine what she was thinking.
Our teacher was an Arab woman and she felt the need to explain to us that her people weren’t like that. Many of us didn’t know the difference between Arabs and Muslims; we looked at them as one in the same. She shouldn’t have had to explain the actions of those who look or sound like her in order to justify who she was, or which side she was on.
Let’s look at what we do to one another on our own soil! Before we condemn and point the finger at anyone else for his or her wrong doings, let’s condemn ourselves; let’s point the finger back on us. Let’s fix us from the inside out.
No matter what you believe, everything starts at home, on our personal plot of land. Are we really doing our jobs to the best of our ability when it comes to shaping the minds of the youth?
Those of us who’ve been blessed to have good parents and healthy guidance are taking up the task of changing our surroundings. I count myself as one of those people.
I’m not trying to save the world, but I have made a difference in the people around me. Every morning that I wake up and leave the house, I make a conscious decision to put me on display, not my race. I can’t make up for every negative stereotype attributed to my race nor do I expect white people to take up that ancestral fight. They can’t erase what’s happened.
What I do expect is acknowledgement that said things happened for said reasons so, let’s find a way to move on from that.
What is also important for me to give voice to, is that if I hadn’t met Ladner Morse when I did early on, I wouldn’t have had him to look back on when the next white person attacked me with racism. To this day I’m very grateful to him for being a transparent human being first and a teacher second. Just like him, I’ve met amazing professors who just happen to be white. They’ve been open-minded and more importantly they listened and I felt, and still feel, very comfortable talking to them about anything. So, firsts are always important and Ladner Morse should be proud of his character.
I don’t fight for race, I fight for what’s right and anytime I hear someone running down a group of people or an individual, I address it. I use moments like those as teaching tools to diffuse and educate to clear up any skewed misconceptions any student may have with a particular group of people.
In the end, it’s all about communication, patience, love… and dialing down the fear. Fear can be a healthy thing but, the goal is to find out why we’re so afraid and deal with it.
When we take initiative, we find out we’re more similar than different. Everything begins with a thought and then we speak it into existence. We get good back… and we get the bad as well. We need to mind our mouths and man our thoughts.
On a final note, communication, patience and love work in tandem, you can’t have one without the other and this definitely is something that has broken down. Don’t forget we are all individuals who just so happen to make up a group, a culture and finally a society. We should all ask ourselves what kind of society we want to become, because what we have sure isn’t working.
~ ~ ~