That Other Race

Commentary for Minnesota Public Radio
10/13/05

One evening in the spring of 1988 PBS was airing historic footage from the Civil Rights Movement. It was in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. I had seen these scenes on the news when I was growing up in Mississippi—black folks marching down the middle of Main Street in some hot and dusty town in my home state. But this time, as an adult, I saw something I had never seen before. Instead being focused on the marchers, I noticed the white people who lined the streets, throwing rocks, jeering, waving confederate flags.

And then it hit me. This is not black history. This is my history. And I know nothing about it. I know nothing about how it shaped me. These people, white and black, made me who I am, and I am ignorant of half of my own story. It was like a curtain, hiding half of my soul from me, suddenly lifted. That glimmer of my whole self was so great, I broke down in tears. It was the closest I have ever come to having what they call a transformational experience. For the first time I understood that American history and white history are not synonymous; that the American history I was taught was a lie, it was a sin of omission. I realized that every day as a white man, I shape and am shaped by race, but was never taught the words to express it.

There exists an unfinished conversation that is uniquely American, vitally important and tragically overdue. The cost associated with this impasse, calculated on any dimension—economic, physical, psychic, spiritual—is devastatingly and unacceptably high.

It is the unfinished conversation between two races, Black and White, who for four centuries have lived in the same country, under the same flags, in the same cities, breathed the same air, and so often shared the same bloodlines, and yet have remained strangers. And everyone who comes to America, from any country, nation or state, cannot help to be caught up in this hollowness of relationship that pervades our national psyche. As Americans, our relationship to “that other race” is integral to who we are as individuals. We define ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously, in response to this omnipresent “other.”

Yet a disconcerting state of affairs develops when Whites and Blacks sit down to share their stories as it pertains to race. More times than not, they have contradictory accounts about life in America. Call it the Katrina Syndrome or the O.J. Disorder, or the Rodney King Complex. The fact is Blacks and Whites draw shockingly different conclusions about living in the same country. Both leave the conversation feeling misunderstood, angry, hopeless. The variable of race makes the difference.

The truth is African Americans usually have a lot to say about race and how the concept of race has defined their reality. As a friend of mine says, “There is not a day goes by that I am not reminded that I am black.” Race is central to her narrative.

However when Blacks share openly and honestly, Whites more times than not become mute. Why? Most whites don’t even have the words to discuss race. And why should we? Race plays a very small part of the story we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it. We struggle to talk about what it means to be white in America. They say Eskimos can identify 32 types of snow. If they tell you their story, snow will certainly be an integral part of it. We sit and listen in muted amazement as African Americans effortlessly reel off the dynamics of color in this country. They might as well be talking about some alien world.

Black Americans have a story driven by race while their fellow white Americans have a story devoid of race. The simple fact is, both of these accounts cannot be true, considering their histories took place on the same soil, at the same time, shoulder to shoulder. They are mutually exclusive. For us to heal as a nation, we must expand our stories to include each other. And then when we see O.J. or Rodney King or a Katrina victim, we don’t see black people, we see us.