An Awkward Discovery
I am a racist. I discovered this fact after taking an online test that was emailed around the office one slow afternoon, in which the subject plays a simple matching game designed by social scientists at Harvard's Project Implicit. A number of positive words are supposed to be paired with certain faces, while negative words are paired with other faces. Test takers are timed to see whether they are faster matching light-skinned faces with good words and dark-skinned faces with bad ones or vice versa. Two minutes later, and voila! The data suggested that I had a slight preference for white people.
At the time that I took the test, I had just begun work as a paralegal for the Racial Justice Program of the American Civil Liberties Union, which, frankly, is an awkward place for a young racist to find herself. It was cold comfort that many of my colleagues had taken the test with similar results; I was white, and for the most part, they were not. On the other hand, it didn't seem that hard to hide my little secret. After all, I spent my days helping defend the rights of people of color.
And there was a lot of defending to do. In the courtroom, on the highway, in planes and trains and shopping malls and jail cells, in every state in America, people were being treated unfairly because of the color of their skin. In the workplace, in the voting booth, in schools. In schools particularly, Black and Latino and Native American students were overwhelmingly marginalized, hidden in plain sight in classrooms without a single white face, disciplined and even arrested at disproportionately high rates, simply not getting the education they deserve.
During my last days at the ACLU, I got the chance to work on their amicus brief in the Seattle and Louisville school desegregation cases which would eventually be handed down several months ago. In some ways, the cases felt like a breath of fresh air: although I use the term "defending" to describe our work, most of the time, especially in schools cases, we were really on the offense, struggling to carve out some small refuge from inequality and injustice. Here, the school districts had already taken affirmative steps to give all their children a diverse, inclusive, equal education, and we just had to help them keep doing it.
On the other hand, in the legal world being on the defense always seemed to involve arguments crafted like five layers of safety net beneath a tightrope: diversity is important and beneficial for all children, but even if it turns out not to be, it is important for the achievement of minority children, and even if that's not true, local community choice and control should be protected, and in case that isn't persuasive...
There are many excellent reasons for schools to be inclusive and diverse, but lining them up as one failsafe after another to be ripped through by the court for procedural and formalistic reasons that most people don't even know exist made them seem weak or faulty. Although it's not an argument that would hold up in court, most Americans know in our hearts that kids of different races belong in school together, and that a longer bus ride across town for a few kids is a small price to pay for that. Unfair to a handful of white students? Fifty years after the integration of Little Rock High School, it is overwhelmingly black children who have been doing most of the bus-riding and other types of grueling and sometimes dangerous work of desegregation. It's high time for white folks to step up and share in the burden.
The fact is, protecting integrated schools is the best way to take a stand against all the other inequities I saw every day in my work. Discomfort and lack of familiarity with people of different races cause as many of the improper arrests, poor provision of services, wrongful convictions, and mistaken assumptions as intentional discrimination. Where separation and isolation exist, there is no doubt in my mind that prejudice, fear, hostility and injustice will follow. Even in those with the best of intentions, the most progressive of politics, and the finest of educations, lack of exposure takes its insidious toll.
I know this first hand. My test results of several years ago disturbed me so much not because they were a surprise, but because deep down, I had always suspected as much. Eighteen years spent in the company of people of one race only; thirteen of those in school sitting beside all white classmates, white teachers, white coaches, white teammates, white playmates and prom dates and first loves -- it all literally colors your world. Still, denial can be a powerful thing. As schools across the country open for the new year, it might be tempting to shrug off this summer's rulings rather than admitting the truth: that it is impossible for a person of any ethnicity to escape a segregated education unscathed. Instead, she inherits an unshakable narrowness and walks through our diverse world -- however covertly -- a racist. It is a term which I use with equal parts condemnation and regret. Because, in the end, I am one too.
Posted September 8, 2007 | 09:15 PM (EST)