We Are All Losing the Race

Race has always been a very important and prominent issue for me and so I have decided to take a little time to talk
on some of the issues that I see so many of my friends and even people I don’t know all across the country and globe
face and struggle with everyday. This is of course a very touchy and sensitive topic for most people but I think a huge
reason of how we got to where we are today is because we haven’t had some of the really needed and difficult conversations
and dialogue, mostly with and among the white community.

Recently, I got the opportunity to listen to Dr. Michael Eric Dyson at Seattle U’s Mission Day where he was the keynote speaker. The topic was “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the Heart of Jesuit Education". It was incredibly eye opening to hear the way he was able to articulate ideas that can seem often abstract and, almost always, incredibly uncomfortable. Really, what the message to a room full of predominantly white people was: We have GOT to check ourselves. Every. Single. Day.

He made this point that really stuck with me and he said it in a way I had never heard and it was: in this country especially,
whiteness is invisible. We don’t have to explain our whiteness or justify anything we do because our whiteness is unspokenly
explained for us that lessens and often diminishes any type of burden we would otherwise experience having any
other skin color. The society that we currently live in has made it so easy to be comfortable being just the way I am
at the cost of countless other people having to carry the burden of experiencing moments each and every day where
they do not feel comfortable or safe in the very same country that is just as much theirs as it is mine.

I think that personally I had a really unique chance to be raised in a community and go to schools where I was not always
the majority. I got the amazing privilege to get to learn about and be immersed in on a daily basis so many different
cultures of my friends, classmates and teammates from all over the world. I was almost hindered and even ignorant
at times to the fact that not everyone lived like that. Not everyone was so comfortable being around people that weren’t
like them. I was so used to so much diversity that I honestly didn’t really think about how diverse of a community I
was in. I lived in this little, incredibly unrealistic bubble of acceptance where everyone seemed to feel welcome and
accepted being themselves (or at least from my perspective- classic white person move of me). It wasn’t really until I
got to college, which was the whitest place I’ve ever been, until I realized just how much of a bubble I had been in.
Going to college was the first time I truly visually got to see my unearned privilege of feeling comfortable and accepted
regardless of where I was. Everywhere I would look, everyone else looked like me. It was weird and new but at the
end of the day, I would always be accepted.

The reality of my ‘normal’ had just been flipped. Where I would once show up to a high school class or practice where
you could count the white people in the room on one hand, I was now the one who would have to bring out a hand to
count the non-white people in the room. I think the hardest thing of coming to terms with that transition was that the
people in the room the were not white would never be able to forget that fact and there was really no way I could help
them with that. They would always know that they were in the minority. They would have a level of discomfort that they
would have to overcome on a daily basis to even be present in the very same classroom that me and all of my white
peers could walk into without even thinking twice about anything to do with race. While all I had to think about was
the content of the class we were in; asking questions when I wanted about whatever I wanted, my peers of color had
to constantly second guess themselves. Is the question they want to ask going to spark tension? Is this the right time
to ask this question? These white people are only looking at this from one side (probably the white side) of the story.
Should I even attempt to bring up the other side?

These are boundaries, again unearned that are a burden put on people of color in order for white people to continue
to feel comfortable.

I’ve been reflecting a lot about Dr. Dyson’s messages and am, like many of us, trying to navigate this tumultuous
dynamic of doing what I can with the power and unearned advantage that has been given to me through being born
white. I’ve had people and friends throughout my life tell me, “Yeah but Zoe you’re not really white, you don’t act white”.
I’ve often thought about what people mean and intend when they say that to me and I think it’s more of an acknowledgement
of the 10+ years that I spent being comfortable and used to not associating my skin color with a position of power.
My upbringing has allowed me to remove, or at least reduce the weapon of comparison. There is no need to compare
different cultures to white culture. They’re not the same, that’s the point! Instead of fearing things that are new or different,
I try to embrace that I am a guest. I’m here to listen and learn.

One way I see it as going to an ice cream shop knowing that you love vanilla (that’s white people). You know you love
it but you see this other flavor that you’ve never seen. You don’t know it, it may be the best ice cream you’ve ever tasted it may taste terrible. You order it. The whole time you’re eating it you’re talking about how much you wish you got vanilla. You’re telling the ice cream itself that vanilla is better and this kind sucks! You finish the ice cream and realize that the whole time you had it, you were so wrapped up talking about how much better vanilla is that you don’t even really remember what the new flavor tasted like. Instead of opening up your mind and taste buds to something new, you put up walls of assumption and judgement that the history of our society has built and handed to white people to put up and miss the chance to learn about something completely new. We have got to try the other ice creams and guess what, vanilla will always be there, it’s not going anywhere.

To my white friends, family and peers: We have got to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable. My challenge to myself and to anyone who chose to read this far would be to put yourself in a situation that makes you uncomfortable once a day. Go learn about something you don’t know about. Talk to someone you wouldn’t normally talk to. Because unbeknownst to so many of us, we make other people feel uncomfortable everyday so why are we so special to get to skip that? We as white people have been given the, again unearned, necessity to assume. We assume people are ‘too lazy to get a job so they’re just homeless’ or ‘they’re too lazy to go to college’ or really any sort of fact that you make up about someone you see without speaking a single word to them. These assumptions are validated through institutionalized barriers resulting in systems continuing to not be equitable across the innumerable races that make up the UNITED States of America.

In conclusion, I am white. I am white and I am not perfect and I need to do better. I need to do better with the unearned
privileges given to me through generations of my white ancestors building this cushion allowing me to not have to worry
about basic things such as general acceptance and even just downright feeling safe. I need to hold the white part of
my community accountable. Judgement and prejudice is simply unacceptable. If someone says something towards
people of color that makes me uncomfortable or that I know is wrong especially if these hurtful things are being said exclusively among white people. That is not okay. I need to step up and say something because the truth of the matter is, I can say something and still maintain those
basic things every human should be given of feeling safe and accepted while the people that are given the burden do
not have the same. I need to use what has been given to me to give to other people.

If anything I hope this post can start a conversation. Whether that conversation be with me, other people, or yourself.
I encourage you to look at your level of comfort ask yourself, did I just order vanilla ice cream again for the millionth
time?