Why Has It Taken Me So Long To Commit to the Fight Against Racism?

Could it be selfish, self-centered, spineless self-protection?

The Beating

When I was five, I ran to the house next door to see why all the neighborhood kids were gathering on the lawn. Eight or nine kids, all a couple of years older than me, were forming a semi-circle around something I could not yet see. There was an electricity about the moment, a nervous excitement in the air, and I was drawn toward what clearly was some sort of impromptu performance.

And that’s when I saw my next-door neighbor and friend, a girl of seven, wriggle out of her mother’s arms, and run off, screaming and crying. Her mother chased after and caught her easily, and then, while calling my friend horrible names, dragged the little girl to a chair set up on the lawn and trapped her in a hold across her lap. The mother ripped off the girl’s pants and underpants and smacked her with force, over and over, while shouting that this would teach her not to talk back to her mother.

While continuing to whomp on the little girl, the mother looked out to the kids, now seated and laughing nervously as they watched, and told them all to count with her. And this despicable mother yelled out “one” and smacked the already red bottom of her screaming and crying child and looked to the kids as she raised her hand again and they all shouted “two,” along with her, and “three” and “four” up until I don’t know what number, because by then, I was long gone.

Other people’s pain

From as early as I can remember, I’ve been a sponge when it comes to other people’s feelings. If my mother fought with her mother over the phone, adrenaline coursed through my system until I ran to the bathroom to vomit. If my sister or brother fell off their bikes and skinned their knees, I cried and limped and cried some more. If my father came home from work and ate his dinner silently, I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. In the moment, I’d become the other and feel their pain. I did not do it intentionally, but I suppose in my warped, completely ineffectual way, I felt as though I was easing their burden by taking on some of their pain as my own.

But even somebody skilled at taking on other people’s pain has a breaking point. When I watched my friend’s mother, that child’s protector, beat and humiliate her child, the emotional pain was more than I could bear. It was outside of my understanding because I came from a safe environment; neither of my parents would or could ever treat me with that sort of cruelty. The only thing I could think to do was to run from the horror, crawl into my mother’s arms and distract myself long enough to push it out of my mind.

The pain of our ancestors

My first best friend‘s mother was an Austrian Jew who as a young child was airlifted to America, where she was adopted, while her family of origin died at the hands of the Nazi-run government. My second best friend was the child of a Hungarian Jew who survived a concentration camp and after the war, emigrated to America. My own family came to this country to escape cruel treatment by the leaders of their countries of birth.

Growing up Jewish in a Jewish community of families that came to America to escape the horrors of Russian pogroms and Nazi genocide, I learned early about how it was possible (yet unbelievable) that groups of humans recklessly could and would torture and kill other groups of humans.

With each story I was told, I absorbed the pains of all these ancestors until I couldn’t take it anymore, and then I pushed it away. Somewhere along the way, I learned that if I intellectualized what had happened, I could change my experience of the horrors of history. Things don’t impact us as much if we think of them as something we read about in a book, instead of as a reality which was actually lived by the parents and grandparents of people we love.

You are what you do consistently

I love to read and I feel as though I gain so much through the mental experience of other people’s stories. However, I discovered at a young age that if I heard about a story secondhand, through a book or a film or a storyteller, I could experience it without absorbing the pain of the characters’ unpleasant experiences.

Throughout my lifetime, I’ve read a lot about the slave trade and the Confederacy and Jim Crow. While reading, I’ve cried for the people inside the binding of the book, but once I closed the book, I was able to separate my emotions from those I’d felt while I was reading. It was a simple defense mechanism that grew out of my need to stop feeling that out of control pain that those in horrific situations feel (and I was built to absorb as if it were my own.) I could feel deep empathy and compassion while I experienced the story, but I could also close the book, and with that, separate myself from the situation that caused the pain.

The Beating: take two

My ability to distance myself from many of the painful experiences of black Americans changed when I watched the video of the Rodney King beating by police in 1991. It reminded me, at least subconsciously, of my next-door neighbor beating her daughter in the early 1970s. I could see it happening in real-time and could not shake the feeling of it even after the video was over.

This was not somebody framing a story for me about what it is like to suffer as a person of color. It was footage that could not be denied. The police officers beat this man as he lay on the ground. Each kick jabbed me as if I were the man on the ground. And then, after the acquittal of the officers and King’s troubled tone as he asked “why can't we all just get along?” I cried because I felt his pain so deeply, I wanted to know the answer as much as he did.

So why, if I felt the pain and recognized the horror that lies behind it, didn’t I start taking action to fight racism then? I can only imagine that is was a mixture of things: for one, I didn’t have the tools, I didn’t know what I could do that would be of value; and two, which is probably the more important of the reasons, I knew that every time I watched the video, every time I listened to the news, every time I engaged in conversation about the beating, my body filled with fear and pain and a desire to flee. I had enough going on in my personal life that needed TLC that I didn’t have the desire to put myself in a situation where my pain would be greater than it already was.

The Beating: take three and four and five and six and ten thousand

It would seem that the more videos of police brutality I saw, the less pain I would feel when I watched them. Repetition leads us into comfort, usually. But in the case of videos of police officers hurting or killing anybody, each time, I absorbed the pain equally and couldn’t let it go. The reality left me feeling sick and tired and helpless and hopeless.

And each time, I had a lot on my life plate, outside of the brutal crime. I had a growing family. I had dying loved ones. I had disasters that left me feeling lost and afraid. The last thing I needed was to let myself focus my attention on the pain these videos led me to absorb. So, as I’d learned during the Rodney King ordeal, if I didn’t want to feel more pain than I already felt, the kind of pain that threatened to break me into a million little pieces, I could avoid watching or talking about the current death of a person of color by the police. And so, I did just that: I took in the story, felt the pain, then closed the metaphorical book and returned to my normal, everyday life, as best I could.

Nothing can be created or destroyed

It was when I watched the full tape of George Floyd’s murder that something changed in me. It was like my insides had been waiting for an opportunity to release all of the horrors I’d pushed down so deep I thought I’d never find them.

I didn’t need to find them because they found me. The officer’s foot on Floyd’s neck, Floyd’s crying out to his mother, Floyd’s begging for mercy each triggered memories of past stories I’d read or seen footage of, triggered memories of past horrors I’ve observed, triggered my memory of that first time I saw somebody victimized by somebody who was supposed to be their protector, the neighbor’s public display of the cruel, violent power she held over her child.

And I started to wonder about what happened to that little girl after that day. Flashes came back of my parents privately discussing what had happened, of her mother not letting her come out to play because she had misbehaved, of the crying and screaming that sometimes could be heard when standing near that house. Eventually, long after we moved away, the father recognized or was told or finally had the balls to take control over what was happening under his nose. The little girl’s parents lost custody of her and her aunt and uncle took her, now a teenager, under their care.

My little friend finally was freed from her chains, but only because of the actions of others, of people who had power within the system. Even with those actions, it took a long time for her to finally be freed.

Old dog, new tricks

I may have taken far too long to get here and I may be older than your average first-time freedom fighter and I may not have it figured out exactly what my roles will be in the fight for racial justice in our country, but I am here, now, learning and doing and trying to make a positive impact on our culture.

I am stronger than I was in years past, which makes it a little easier to manage the heartbreak I feel when I learn about other people’s pain. But more importantly, I have come to realize that my own pain, whether it is brought on by my life situation or by the absorption from others, is not enough to stop me from using my power as a white person within a system that benefits white people over others to participate in the effort to help fix what is broken and make life better for people of color in our country and the world.