Entry #12

This series was originally published on my socials in 2021. My beliefs and opinions have changed in some ways since then, but these words are still meaningful and relevant to who I am and what I believe today.

If you haven’t read my dad’s story in the last entry, it might help to start there.

A few years before I read my dad’s essay, I was a faux grad student at ACU. By “faux” I mean I had one semester of soccer eligibility left after I graduated with my undergrad and needed to be a full time student to play. So I logged 9 hours towards a Masters in Liberal Arts (which seems to be a Masters in Essentially Nothing—a MEN degree?).

I basically just looked through the list of classes and picked three that sounded interesting.

I chose: Anthropology Something or Other (a sociology class that studied other cultures), Practicing Spiritual Disciplines (with all the future preachers and therapists), and African American Literature.

I chose the last class because the professor was one of the most popular professors on campus and I’d never had him. He was a black professor that led singing in chapel once a week and every student would say, “YOU HAVE TO TAKE ONE OF HIS CLASSES.”

For my MEN degree? Sold.

It was a class with 5 or 6 Masters of English students and me sitting around a table discussing literature once a week. I *think* I was the only female in the room, but I’ve had three concussions since then. I was in way over my head. They used lots of words I didn’t know.

It ended up being my favorite college class I ever took even if I did feel patronized by my classmates sometimes (like the time I had a friend in class proof my final paper and he responded, “That’s ACTUALLY pretty good.” Um, thanks?). It was deserved. After all, I was a faux grad student.

We spent the semester reading Langston Hughes’ poetry, Toni Morrison, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, and several more. One book a week. I was launched into story after heartbreaking story that felt so far away from my reality but actually wasn’t.

When I read my dad’s essay for the first time I remember thinking, ONE GENERATION AGO.

This was true ONE GENERATION AGO.

ONE GENERATION AGO, my mom and dad went to elementary school at an all-white school. ONE GENERATION AGO black children were publicly shamed by grown white men. ONE GENERATION AGO black and Hispanic students weren’t considered worthy of new jerseys or textbooks or equipment.

That’s why I’m so baffled by the argument now that systemic racism doesn’t exist. At the VERY LEAST, the effects of it are alive and well.

Schools that are predominantly black today, schools still reeling from one generation ago, still don't have what they need. Those students are still growing up having to work harder with less tools, and we're still saying, "That's just life."

Don't you see? This is what they mean by "systemic." They mean, "We haven't recovered from ONE GENERATION AGO. Things still aren't equal. Help."

For my final in that class, twelve years ago, I wrote a ten-page research paper on the emasculation of the black man in modern society. I read dozens of books written by black men that detailed the ways black men have historically been stripped of their masculinity, how they’ve tried to take it back (in healthy and unhealthy ways) and how they’ve been punished for it (justly and unjustly). And the consequences of it for their entire families.

I saw the system. I saw how it actively worked against a group of people. And at the time, it didn’t seem like something anyone would or could ever debate. I would have been shocked if someone had challenged that idea. It didn't seem political. It was just ... true. Of course it was true. Separate but equal JUST HAPPENED.

That paper changed me. That class changed me. It changed the way I saw the world.

If you don’t believe in white privilege, hear me say this respectfully and humbly: you’re not listening.

Read the books. Watch the documentaries. Ask your friends of color to tell you their truth and then BELIEVE THEM.

My dad went to an all-white school 55 years ago. These aren’t stories from our distant past. They are still here, the consequences of them are still here, haunting us now. And not acknowledging it continues to draw a not-so-invisible line between us.