A couple of weeks ago, I attended a peaceful rally in support of BLM and I sent my extended family a photo of my grandson and me holding our signs. My brother responded with, "Here's my sign" and attached a picture of a handwritten paper that said, "End White Guilt." Part of my motivation for taking this course is I've realized how steeped in racist and white privileged culture my whole life has been. I'm tired of dealing (or more correctly, not dealing) with racist comments and attitudes from my family members. While recognizing and responding to systemic racism can be motivating, I think I strayed into toxic White guilt when responding to my brother. I immediately texted back with an anti-racist rant, which then led into a back and forth text war with him. He brought up all kinds of ugly, like saying George Floyd had a felonious past so clearly the cops had a reason for their treatment of him (UGH!!!!) and that reverse discrimination is a thing, etc. I'm trying to figure out if I need to just accept that he's not going to change, or whether I should try to engage with him without pushing his emotional buttons. Hard to say - since we know each other so well, we both know how to get under each other's skin.
I've always thought of myself as not being prejudiced, not being a racist, going all the way back to my childhood. I am a white Jewish man from a privileged background, but was fortunate to have been brought up by very liberal parents who were in fact civil rights activists back in the 60's. One time my father spotted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in an airport and went up to him to introduce himself..... I was there too and so my parents and I all got to shake hands with MLK when I was 11 yrs. old (back in 1965), what an honor it was! I will never forget it... he was tall and had a warm smile, when I looked up at him as I shook his hand I knew I was in the presence of a truly great man. That's quite a legacy I tell myself, but of course it really has nothing to do with whether I am today non or anti-racist, I was just lucky enough to have met the man in person! It surely was a memorable experience though. I remember the day they announced on the news that he had been shot and killed, we all cried, what an awful day, what a huge loss. I have often wondered what our society might have been like today if he had not been killed and had stayed on as the great civil rights leader he was.
Later in life I had a lot of friends; I had black, white and Latino friends in high school, college and grad school. I married a woman who was Puerto Rican and we had two children together. I now have 2 sons who are "1/2 Puerto Rican" and 2 grandsons who are "1/4 Puerto Rican". OK so to be honest I have to admit I have at times thought of myself as "the exception", (i.e. white exceptionalism). Having been brought up by my liberal civil rights activist parents and later me marrying a person of color, I sometimes have felt like "I'm exempt, I get a free pass, I'm one of the good guys", or "I'm not prejudice or racist, never was and never will be!" etc. So it is very difficult to now confront myself with what is now called white exceptionalism. I will have to keep an open mind and become more objective and aware of this phenomenon within myself. Onwards and upwards!