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Often, when I write about ‘race,’ I frame the word in quotation marks or italics to highlight it. I want the reader to pause and reflect on its complex meanings, rather than gloss over it or pass it by as though it were inconsequential. I want to engage the reader in meaning-making, in thinking deeply about it. I want the reader to read between the lines and look for unspoken, implied meanings.

“Race.” The word is powerful and scary. In most social settings, people dance around it, kick it into a corner or under a rug – anything rather than confront it in a direct way. Many presume this to be the polite thing to do because ‘race’ is the source of so much agony, pain, fear, misunderstanding and unexpressed shame; it’s easier to pretend to ignore it. The problem is that when ‘race’ is in the room, it’s in the room. Even when we pretend it is invisible, it can be the source of discord or tension or the thick silence that separates people.

I remember an old song entitled “Isn’t it Lonely Together?” It is about a married couple, suffocating because of the silences that envelop them. I think the silenced dialogue about ‘race’ is suffocating us. Our refusal to talk openly and honestly about ‘race’ keeps us marking time, like wind-up toys that move in circles until they stop or fall helplessly on their sides. Not only are we afraid to talk about ‘race,’ we are also unwilling to listen – really listen – to each other, and open ourselves to being transformed by someone else’s perspective on what ‘race’ is or means, based on life experience that is different from our own. Sadly, most of us are socialized to think and behave this way.

Socialization begins in infancy, and continues throughout our lives. It is a lens to see the world, and a guide for how to navigate our way through it. Racial socialization is another complex layer, teaching us how to live in our racialized skin no matter what color it is.

Last year, during a workshop on race, after being divided into small racially mixed groups, we were asked to think about and discuss our first awareness of race. One of the white participants shared the following story about her early experience of race as a pre-teen. There was a deep, nagging pain behind her eyes as she told her story, which I have paraphrased below.

Wendell’s Story

I was born and grew up in the suburban Midwest, and was from a very affluent family. Race was never discussed, because it didn’t have to be. The town was virtually all white, with one exception. A black man named Wendell lived in the town. I never met Wendell, but he was the only Wendell in the town. No one ever said his last name, maybe no one knew it; he was just Wendell. Everyone knew him because he was a handyman who did odd jobs and carpentry throughout the community. Wendell was respectful and polite, and as far as I could tell, he lived on the periphery of the town’s life, and was nearly invisible. On the occasions I did see him, he seemed to move through the town quiet as can be, head tucked down toward his chest. Although he was a tall willowy man, it seemed like he was trying to make himself smaller, take up less space. He didn’t bother anyone, and they didn’t bother him.

One day, a man in the town decided to honor Wendell by naming his black dog Wendell. This became a source of amusement for the dog’s owner and others in the town. Soon after, others followed that man’s lead, and eventually every black dog in the town was named Wendell. Thereafter, when the name Wendell was called aloud, it was difficult to know if it was for the man or a dog.

Among other things, this experience and history is an example of how not just one child, but an entire town was socialized to think about ‘race.’ Although dehumanizing Wendell became a town sport over the course of years, perhaps even decades, there is no way to know the long-term impact this had on individuals – especially children and young people – as they moved through their lives, entered professions, moved to other places and started families of their own. There is also no way to know whether this painfully slow symbolic lynching of the town’s only black man was ever addressed at social gatherings or in the town’s schools. There is no way to know whether some of the participating townspeople were leaders who were expected to model moral behavior.

Research about white racial socialization patterns suggests that it is not inconceivable that a discussion that linked Wendell to race and racism never came up in formal ways. But this does not mean what was happening to Wendell had no emotional impact on some of those who witnessed or perpetrated the public emasculation. My colleague who shared this story indicated that then, as now, the memory of Wendell caused her sadness, confusion and shame – consistent with other research on white racial socialization.

In her research, diversity educator Ali Michael used her own story about how she was socialized to think about race, and it is very revealing. She writes about the emotional impact of being white, living and growing up in an all-white community in a country constructed around racial divisions, among people who spent their lives trying to erase race. Although it was a long and difficult process, she learned that you can’t erase ‘race’ or racism by pretending they don’t exist. In What White Children Need to Know About RaceMichael writes:

Growing up in the suburban Midwest, I never talked about race with my family. We were white, all of our neighbors were white… As a result, in later years, I developed a deep sense of shame whenever I talked about race… I realized that this shame came from the silence about race in my childhood… I learned to feel embarrassed whenever it came up. And so even when I wanted to participate in the conversation, I had to contend with deep feelings of shame and inadequacy first. (Michael and Bartoli 2014)

Michael’s story is instructive, in how she was socialized to think about and respond to race. It reconfirms how complex the issue of ‘race’ is, and why ignoring it feeds the status quo which ensures that there will be distance and sticky silences between the ‘races’ unless we are willing to engage in what Lisa Delpit calls a “special kind of listening… that requires not only open eyes and ears, but open hearts and minds.” According to Delpit, “To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment… it means turning yourself inside out, giving up your own sense of who you are, and being willing to see yourself in the unflattering light of another’s angry gaze. It is not easy, but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue.”

Dr. Holmes is Professor Emerita in the School of Education at Quinnipiac University. 
To contact Dr. Holmes directly: GloriaGraves.Holmes@quinnipiac.edu
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