Color-Blinded

This is the most uncomfortable topic I’ve written about.

Here’s the thing, I grew up in a small farm town in Kentucky, of the 1300 kids in my school, there were like 3 black kids, and I was friends with them.

I wasn’t naïve enough to ignore that there were some people in my town and in my school who were outwardly racist – white people who hated the black families for nothing other than the color of their skin. But it didn’t make sense to me.

I moved to the “big city” of Cincinnati two months after graduating high school and my black friend ratio went way up. It’s not like I intentionally sought out to make my friend pool more colorful, it’s just that there are a lot more black people in Cincinnati than small-town Kentucky, period.

Every one of my black friends and I have more in common than we do not. Our skin may fall on opposite sides of the shade spectrum, but our beliefs, our values, our passions, our missions are aligned. I surround myself with people who are like-minded – on purpose. There is nothing of substance that differentiates my black friends from any of my white friends. (I do naturally talk more soulfully around them – I don’t know if they’ve ever noticed – and I love it.)

A few years ago, some weird things started to happen in our country and for the first time in my life, I started thinking about the colors of our skin. Although we are a more racially diverse society than ever before – think of how many more biracial couples, families, children, there are than in the 1980s when I was growing up – America’s racial tensions have increased not subsided.

I am told how my black friends feel about me by the media. And they are told how to feel about me.

I catch myself wanting to filter what I say and topics I bring up around them. Will I offend them? I start thinking about all the ways we are different, instead of all those things we have in common. And I hate that those things cross my mind. ABSOLUTELY nothing between us has changed, we have not changed. I can still talk with them about whatever I want, because we are friends, and that’s all that matters.

Earlier this week, riots began in Ferguson, MO again. I flew to Atlanta on Tuesday for work. Atlanta is a predominantly black city, in a lot of areas. And a lot of those areas are predominantly in poverty. I’m a small white girl wearing “fancy” clothes and driving a nice-looking rental car.

As I got in my rental and began to pull out of the garage, I wondered if the black woman working the booth was going to be sour to me this week, with everything going on. I wondered if she was thinking that I was thinking that I was better than her. I felt the need to come right out and say, “I have lots of black friends”, to justify the color of my own skin.

She was just as nice as ever. And I was relieved.

Next, I went through the drive thru for lunch and I could tell the girl on the other end of the speaker was black. So I knew she could tell I was white. And I wondered if she secretly hated me because of that.

She was the most pleasant KFC window-worker I’ve ever met, and when she handed me my friend chicken and mashed potatoes, she wished me a “good day” so genuinely I actually felt it.

Since then, the girl that checked me into my room was black, and the pool worker who tipped me off to the fact I had secret admirers watching me through the glass, and the woman who brought me my dinner tonight…. They were all black. They were all wonderful people and delightfully friendly. And none of them hated me because I was white. It’s like they didn’t even know they were supposed to.

Here’s what I hate: the fact that those questions even go through my mind. The fact that skin color is something I think about so much more often now, than when I was walking the school halls with the only three black kids. I hate that I feel myself stereotyping, and making assumptions. Rather than being color-blind, I’m color-blinded.

Have you ever felt like this?

And it’s not because we, as a people, as a country, have changed in the last 10 years, it’s not like we suddenly got more racist. (You could reason we have gotten less-racist – we do have a black president.)  But because the media has told us we are more racially divided than ever. Because there are people who entice that division and push the gap wider. And because, like Pastor Chuck Mingo said from stage at Crossroads’ “Night of Hope” two weeks ago (the day the DuBose case was finalized; and there was a palpable anxiety in the city wondering if Cincinnati would erupt into riots), “we have an enemy who’s behind all of that who loves nothing more than to see people divided.” And isolated. And self-conscious. And alone.

People aren’t rioting and looting and attacking each other because of something the media said (I get that), but because they’re angry and confused.  And those seeds of anger and confusion were planted, and nurtured and grown to full-stature by that enemy.

I love that I go to this church that is leading the charge to racial reconciliation, first, in our city then our country. I love that they get it. I love that they talk about the only color that matters is the color red, the color of Jesus’s blood that was shed to save and to reconcile each and every one of us – white, black, Hispanic, Asian – ALL of us. I love that there is literally a rainbow of an army of people in that church who are locking arms and working together to break down these stigmas and barriers. Who are re-writing that message that’s being sent out by the media. And I love that I get to be a part of that.

I am ready to see through people’s skin again, like when I was younger and less tainted by the lies of the enemy of this world. I’m through with those creeping thoughts and questions in the back of my mind.

But, this isn’t a clean-cut entry with a nice little “finished” bow on it. This is something that’s still very real and present in my life and something I’m still working on and working through. But, it’s something I needed to get out. To say it out loud. To face it head-on. So, with the help of ALL my friends, I can move past it.

Thanks for working through this with me.