reflecting

Lately, I have been asking myself about race. Funny, the whole idea of “a conversation about race”, back when Barack Obama brought it up, didn’t ring any bells for me. I was so into Hillary, the first woman to become president that, I paid little to no attention to what Barack Obama was saying.

Now I am looking around at my life, and I realized I don’t have any black friends. I have known friends of friends, but no one that I would consider “my friend.” I even mentioned this to one of my girlfriends and she laughed, she thought I was being funny. I was being serious.

I raised my children without knowledge of the term “black.” When they were young, we were living in California and they went to a very diverse pre-school. All different shades of brown, tan, ivory, they were just whoever they were, no color label. No problem. No issue. We were sheltered.

It wasn’t until we live in Texas, that we realized there was still a lot of racism out there. We actually heard the “n” word at a party; it was so foreign to us, so ugly. My husband and I talked about what we heard that very same night. We were very shocked and really just totally stunned. We decided if we didn’t speak out against racism when we heard it, then we were just as guilty as the person spewing hatred.

Since then I have, and still do, speak out. At this point however, I would like to know more about racism on a deeper more personal level. I hope to better understand someday. And by understand, I mean, like, when you talk to a friend and over time you just tell it the way it is. You don’t try to prove anything, or try to be perfect, or politically correct, just the real deal. You talk it over together, and eventually you both understand each other. That is what I am missing in my conversations. I am guessing I am not alone.