Blog

I generally don’t admit to shopping in Walmart, but I was on a hunt for some recently elusive items only Walmart seems to have. As I scanned the shelves in the paper goods aisle, a fellow shopper took my cart and started to walk away.  I heard a woman say, with a certain urgency,

“That’s not our cart, that’s not our cart.”

The urgency in her voice caught my attention, and I turned and saw my cart leaving the aisle assisted by a young boy.

“You can take my groceries, but you’ll have to pay for them,” I said.

Then it occurred to me the child was black, and what I said could sound accusatory because he might not know that my middle name is ‘defuse the situation with cheer.’

 It was two days after George Floyd was killed.

His father graciously apologized, bowed his head, and raised his hands as we do sometimes as we apologize. And he apologized again. And again. I glanced around and realized this was family: husband, wife, and a couple of children. The children watched. Being a teacher, I always notice an audience of children and check for attentiveness. The oldest was wide-eyed, intensely watching his dad.

“No problem,” I said, “I’ve done it myself. I walked off with a woman’s cart once and her handbag was in it! I had it quite a few aisles before I heard an announcement over the PA asking for the cart to be returned. I was so embarrassed, and that woman was really irritated with me.”

The wife chuckled a bit and we went on our way, but as I turned down the next aisle it struck me hard how different the outcome might have been for that boy if HE had mistakenly walked off with the woman’s cart, handbag and all.

When I first heard the term white privilege, I was offended and countered that I was not racist. It took months for me to realize the term isn’t related to white supremacy and I suspect many white people might think they are being accused of being a white supremacist when they hear the term white privilege.  I do not condone white supremacy, but I do unwittingly experience white privilege.

When I don’t hear from my son for a day or two, I pray he is not sick or had a car accident, but when my black friend doesn’t hear from her son, she prays he wasn’t arrested or worse. That’s white privilege. I don’t automatically think my son was arrested and abused or killed in the process.

When a black man of my acquaintance drives home from work he is careful to take the long way home to avoid a neighborhood where a man of color would ‘stand out.’ I am NEVER afraid I would arouse suspicion by my presence. That’s not something I asked for, it’s just something that comes to me by virtue of my birth in a world where people of color continue to dig out of mistreatment.

 I am not racist, but I know now that is not enough.

I need to be Anti-racist: aware of veiled racist statements people make and pointing them out, examining my own knee jerk thoughts and bringing them captive. I dare say we are not even aware of some of the things we think or act on without thinking. We all have assumptions we carry with us that we view the world through.

 Some are seem truly innocent but are wrong.

Some are hurtful.

Some are truly vile.

As I left work one St Patrick’s day, a colleague said with all sincerity that she assumed I would come to work the next day with a hangover or not at all. With my heart pounding, my heart breaking, I explained that not all Irish are drunks, that in fact I am a ‘tea-totaler’ and that the real story of Patrick and the hard times the Irish lived through has been clouded by plastic hats and green beer.

When I told my friend, who is black, about that incident and my angst, she said simply, “Yep. I have that feeling you had, but every day.”

 We all need to remember that scriptural warning that the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure—and ask God to root out thoughts that have grown deeply, to help each other by pointing them out, and admitting there is a better way of thinking. Some of our neighbors are still waiting to be loved as we love ourselves.