My Racist Childhood
By Liz Chausse
I have been able to think of nothing but racism and politics for weeks now. Like so many people, I’m filled with anger and sadness every day because of what’s going on in our country. Anger about the corruption in politics and sadness about the cruelty of racism. The way racism is embossed onto the fabric of American life, and that when you protest, you are called un-American.
I was raised in a 99.99% white town in a white county in a virtually all white state. Every single person I saw in my immediate world was white. Every kid, every teacher, every policeman, every store clerk, every farmer, everyone. So white was all I knew. I can count on one hand the number of non-white kids who made their way through town in the 70s and 80s. And upon arriving at school, they would summarily be given predictably racist nicknames that would stick until they eventually moved away. You see, ours was not a colorful melting pot of people and ideas from around the world, but more of a fondue pot brimming with bland, unseasoned, creamy whiteness.
When you are surrounded by such a homogeneous population, you have nothing to compare to. As far as you know, everything about your life and culture is perfect because it’s just like everyone else around you. You see your world reflected on the TV. You have nobody to challenge your views. Nobody to correct your use of racial slurs. When there is nobody around to be offended, you don’t get the message that those words are wrong and hurtful. You are never the minority. You cannot possibly begin to understand real racial conflict because it’s just an abstract idea for you, something you might hear about on the news. You can’t see with your own eyes real discrimination because it’s not happening in your town. Having no people of color in my world meant nobody questioned the biased news stories on TV, or challenged the racist stereotypes I’d absorbed. When you have no diversity of people, you have no diversity of ideas, and no diversity of knowledge.
The racism I grew up with was so smooth and unobtrusive, you didn’t even know it was there. It was a part of your childhood like summers at the swimming pool and going to the county fair. It permeated your mind, settled in your subconscious, and lived there like mold in the corners of a wet bathroom. It thrived, undetected, affecting your mindset, your energy, until something happened to arouse you to its presence. What that arousal is and when it comes is different for everyone. And sadly, for many, far too many, that awakening will never come. And it generally doesn’t happen overnight.
Becoming woke, shedding the layers of implicit bias that had grown one on top of the other throughout childhood, took awareness and humility. It required a change of mindset. It meant really coming to terms with the ideas of my once white-washed world and unpacking the baggage of racism and patriarchy.
It’s been many years since I realized my biases and began to flush them out. To undermine and obliterate them. To deconstruct them and take them to the dump. It truly is an ongoing process. Not because my heart isn’t filled with love, but because America writ large is not filled with love. Because we are still bombarded every day with misinformation in the media, prejudice in the government, bias in many institutions, and bigotry on our streets.
But we’re getting there. We are in the midst of a revolution. A revolution 400 years in the making. A revolution that will make the 1960s pale in comparison. This time is different. This time EVERYONE is getting involved. This time youth are connected and mobilized and armed with cell phones. We can all document the truth in the street.
Liz Chausse is a local chef and food writer.
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