I’m Tired of Trying to Understand You. How About if You Try to Understand Me?

I get it. A majority of white Americans have no life experience with being oppressed, discriminated against, isolated or feared by groups of people who believe egregious lies about them. Societies, churches, courts, elections and communities have favored and revered them simply because they are white. They receive special status, benefit of the doubt, ease to move about and leniency even when their bad or illegal actions would deem otherwise. White Americans are unfettered and undeterred. If our institutions don’t make it obvious that they are to be distinguished, there is always the word of God. For whites, it is their God given right to rule America.

I try to understand this point of view but it’s a real head scratcher. It doesn’t comport with what I know about democracy, however flawed it may be. It doesn’t take into account the annihilation of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans; two abominations of Christian beliefs. If I try to make logical sense it sounds like this: The whites had to destroy or exploit non-whites to elevate themselves and fulfill their destiny. So much destruction is the origin story for whites? And that is justified somehow because it is pre-ordained? That doesn’t pass the most rudimentary common-sense test.

So, let’s try this in reverse. How about if white Americans try to understand my reality? Imagine your grandparents fled societies, churches, courts, elections and communities that killed them for the crime of being Jewish. Sure, they were white. Just the wrong kind. Some of my family survived and made it to America but they still weren’t free from oppression and isolation. Funny accents, university quotas, poverty and schoolyard fights let my family know they were not acceptable or equal to real Americans. Christians believed we had horns and were the root of societal ills.

Put yourself in my shoes just a generation and a half after my ancestors arrived in America. I was called names, told I killed Jesus and that my family was weird. I was confused and unsure where it was safe to be. In America! When I entered college, I didn’t have any rights to make decisions about my own body. Then a Planned Parenthood clinic sprung up and I was able to get birth control but no abortions if it failed. By the time my birth control did fail years later, abortion was legal. Thankfully.

There was no recourse for all the sexual harassment I experienced from high school well into my professional career. Men’s rights and status were more important than women, so all incidents were weighted in their favor. Ditto promotions and salaries.

If there was a modicum of protection as a heterosexual woman, that was out the window when I came out. All the taken for granted advantages of marriage were out of my reach until the courts finally changed that.

My life experiences put me outside of the mainstream of Christian, straight, male where great privilege and status is granted. Any rights I have now were hard fought. First by my ancestors to survive genocide and later by an opening in America to become more just. All of that has been eroding for decades and is now in jeopardy. My marriage could be annulled, my granddaughters’ bodies will not be protected, my grandson’s diabetes healthcare is at risk.

And for what? So that white people can continue their reign over all of us, especially those of us that don’t fit into their elite corps? Does it feel morally comfortable for you to perpetuate oppression and human destruction? Doesn’t your religion teach you about compassion and loving all of God’s creations? Don’t you see the harm you are doing to people like me? Don’t you care about that pain?

That’s what is so hard for me to understand. I fundamentally believe in the goodness of humanity even though my own family history is tainted by devastating evil. If the suffering of others and the denigration of all those who are different doesn’t give you pause, then I fear we are lost altogether. This country won’t survive as long as there are people and institutions that prioritize tyranny over democracy.

Put yourself in my shoes. My family came to these shores to be free from fear of death. Don’t you have some belief system or life experience that allows you to see there is enough to go around? If I gain some rights, it doesn’t take away yours. If I gain some status, it doesn’t take away yours. If I gain some acceptability, it doesn’t take away yours. It is not an either-or, zero sum proposition. The more white Americans loosen their grip, the more we all win. The more we get closer to realizing America’s potential.