I Want To Be A Good Guy by Joan Beal

I want to be a good guy.  I want to think of myself as a good guy.  I want to not be racist.   For almost 50 years I have marched, protested, gone to trainings, paid my ACLU dues, taught in Black students in schools with high poverty levels, alongside Black teachers, volunteered, etc. etc.  Surely I am not a white supremacist and have earned my non-racist good guy certificate.

Well, it’s taken me those same 50 years to realize that just isn’t going to happen. It may have helped me to know the racial history of our country, the accomplishments and  the struggles of African Americans today, the news, and the facts and figures that are the evidence of racism, but the personal struggle comes in understanding the privilege of whiteness,  a power that I may not want to admit, but resides in me, just as surely as it does in the more overtly racist marchers in Charlottesville.

Two years ago or so, before the recent problems in the UUA, I spoke to Bernice in the parking lot here.  She and Ann had just come back from a General Assembly and she told me about a young woman, along with several other young people who had stood up at General Assembly  and said that the UUA needed to do something about racism in its own house…that they did not feel safe in their churches.

WHAT! I thought…in this religion that I love, that has helped to define who I am, that I came to because of its emphasis on justice!  Surely we had paid our dues.  Actually, I became quite heated in my disagreement…maybe individual churches needed to deal with their problems, but the UUA had been working hard on this issue….Journey to Wholeness program, new hiring statistics, blah blah blah.  The speakers must have been overly sensitive or overly dramatic!  ”They” should concentrate their efforts on the “real” racism that still exists in this country.

I have come to realize,  though I don’t always see it clearly (the problem with white privilege and structural racism) that there are many ways to marginalize voices, to keep people in their place, to not really listen, to distance ourselves from the problem, micro aggressions that we can’t easily see,  that are easy to dismiss.   They are not lynchings or using the n word, but along with the overt economic and social policies that have maintained racism, they prop up the same structures… “Overly sensitive, overly dramatic, not quite the right skill set for the team, not quite the right fit for the job, too divisive”.  You have heard them, and I’ve said some of them.   Sometimes I still miss the point… don’t get how people of color can feel cut off or excluded, unheard or hurt. I’m uncomfortable admitting this about myself.   But I am beginning to know I need to listen, with an open mind, without trying to wedge myself into the good progressive role, to be willing to sometimes be uncomfortably clueless, and get beyond my own defensiveness to try and be an ally.   It is a life’s work with no graduation for me at the end…only hope that I will have a very small part in sharing a struggle in which we all have a part.