After 500 years of silence, it’s time to talk

By Melanie Ford

Zenith City Weekly

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During an elementary school field trip to a museum in Chicago, I bought my favorite candy bar at a vending machine, an Almond Joy.

Even though I couldn’t have been more than ten years old, I remember the excitement of using my own money and not having to ask Mom’s permission.

I bit into it and savored the moment. What I saw, however, ruined my private joy—the coconut wasn’t white. It was red, maybe brown. I threw it away, repulsed, thinking I was going to get sick.

I was suddenly uncomfortable, fearful. Our class shared a room in the museum with classes of black children. I’d never been to school with black kids.

Somehow, I thought, the vending machine must have been filled with candy for them, not me. Or maybe one of them was trying to poison the white kid.

Where did those feelings come from? I wasn’t raised that way. Perhaps the memory has stayed with me all my life because I’ve harbored guilt about my reaction to a candy bar.

I recently attended the annual White Privilege Conference in Minneapolis. Its mission is "to empower and equip individuals to work for equity and justice through self and social transformation."

There were protesters outside with signs: Got guilt? I don’t know…but so what if I do?

The concept of White privilege asserts that racism exists because the beliefs of the men who created the U.S. are so woven into the fabric of our society that changes to the law alone will not eliminate it.

In school, we didn’t learn about the laws that allowed only White people to accumulate wealth, achieve education, and enjoy good health.

The U.S. and our institutions (education, justice, health, housing, etc.) were legally formed by and for White people. Our "founding fathers" did not view anyone but White men as worthy of rights.

For four centuries, Native Americans were regarded as savages with no human rights. Until the Civil War, African Americans were defined as property, bought and sold or passed down to the next generation of White families.

Until 1952, naturalization law, by which a foreign–born becomes a U.S. citizen, required a person be White to apply. Asians and Latinos/Hispanics were allowed into the country for cheap labor, but not citizenship.

Courts decided who was White, even though race is a made–up concept, based on physical traits and skin color, with no evidence in biology or genetics.

The Homestead Acts, by which the government granted land titles, were closed to non–Whites. Indigenous people were moved from their homes to accommodate this development. Later, their families were separated, the children placed in boarding schools to "kill the Indian in him and save the man."

Policy enacted in the 1930s stated Blacks could not receive mortgages through the Federal Housing Administration. Tax policy favored business in the suburbs—areas usually closed to Black families.

After the civil rights movement, overt racism became illegal, but it went underground.

Records (e.g., law enforcement, schools, social services, etc.) keep people of color isolated, underemployed, and overrepresented in dependency systems.

Financial and real estate policies create disparity in home ownership. Practices in education widen the gap between high school graduates.

The criminal justice system creates a hugely disproportionate number of persons of color arrested, detained, or incarcerated.

I’ve never shared that story before, about the school field trip and the Almond Joy bar. Maybe I didn’t want to expose myself to a dialogue that might reveal unintended racism.

But once we understand that feelings similar to mine at the museum are the result of a social environment created over 500 years of U.S. history, we can start to become an anti–racist community.

White people have the responsibility to develop true empathy for persons of color and open communication with other Whites as well as people of color. Only then can we resolve racial conflicts on a personal and institutional level, unify our nation, and create a shared destiny.

The health of our community and our nation is dependent on these conversations.

Melanie Ford is a lawyer in Duluth. She is on the Board of Directors of Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, Inc. and a community representative on the steering committee of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. Both groups work to eliminate racism and the disparate impact of political, social, and governmental policies on people of color.

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