Wash me away
On my big feelings and the problem with white culture
I remember when I first learned about racism. I was in 2nd grade and my friend Benjamin left school halfway through the year. Benjamin was a very tall boy. Our school had banned Red Rover because he fell on concrete once while breaking through someone’s arms. When he left, I asked Mom if he left because we were all mad at him for getting Red Rover banned. She explained to me that his older siblings had gotten tired of being the only kids of color in their classes. I had never noticed this before, but she was right, Benjamin’s family was the only black family in our school. I had to ask her to elaborate on why that would bother them.
This was my first year at this particular school, and the first of many odd lessons that it taught me over the course of my time there. I remember growing up being told that black people were “loud.” It was a very confusing statement to me. I had been around plenty of black kids at my last school and they spoke the same volume as me. Surely an entire group of people can’t all be loud talkers, there have to be shy people? It wasn’t until college that I understood what people had been attempting to communicate.
In Summer of 2013 I took Race & Relations, a sociology course taught by a Ugandan professor. She was horrible at running the online interface but the book she had chosen was enthralling. I remember being shocked when we were assigned the section on “white culture.” I had been white my whole life and I was 100% sure that we did not have any culture. I wasn’t surprised when I discovered that the section on white culture wasn’t longer than 3 paragraphs. The textbook referred to “white culture” as “a culture of ‘under rug swept.’” I had never read a more accurate statement. Being brought up in the South I had been taught that three things were unacceptable to discuss: sex, money, and politics. These three things are to never be discussed, however I had noticed that there were actually a lot of things we weren’t supposed to discuss. We weren’t supposed to discuss health issues, we weren’t supposed to discuss periods or pregnancies, we weren’t supposed to discuss death, drinks, or drugs (prescription or otherwise). There were so many things we couldn’t talk about without making someone turn up their nose in disappointment, and we definitely didn’t express depression, sadness, or anger.
The textbook opened my eyes to the truth of my whiteness. Whiteness is keeping everything hidden. This realization led to the birth of my understanding of what it meant when people would call a particular group of people “loud,” they meant expressive. White people, and maybe just specifically white Southerners, don’t like when people are expressive. We don’t want to hear about your problems, or needs. We need everything to be neat, and tidy, and boxed up. This has never worked out well for me. I have always had big emotions. I remember once as a 3rd grader getting up in front of the class, hysterical, and turning off the CD player. I had attended my first funeral that year and learned that Amazing Grace was played traditionally at funerals. I couldn’t stand to hear it after losing my grandfather. My mother was notified that I had disrupted the class.
In elementary school, I used to rub the skin off my thighs through my slacks while sitting in the principal’s office to stay calm. In high school, I would come home and collapse into my floor in tears after every social engagement, overwhelmed with all my emotions of the evening. I remember thinking that I was losing my mind. The other humans never appeared overwhelmed with emotion. Hell, I almost never even saw them with emotions at all. Everyone else appeared so collected and neat, and here I was, drinking at 14, posting lyrics to my LiveJournal because I didn’t know how else to be heard. Smoking cigarettes and speeding because the chance of dying in a car accident was far more dignified than the way people reacted when I expressed that I was in pain.
I find that this is still true in my society. If what I’m expressing isn’t pretty, delicate, or delightful, there is always a negative repercussion. Blocked. Banned. Ignored. Shunned. I have lost so many friends for being open and transparent. I don’t keep secrets, and I’m not afraid to be open about my needs, however I am always ashamed. My whiteness never forgives me that. Every time I type a secret, react on impulse, or love another human, I feel ashamed. Today I feel ashamed because I was upset last night and I went out to the bar. I text all the humans that I reach out to when I’m falling down. None of them came through. I wasn’t surprised. I set myself up for these kind of situations. You see, having always had big emotions and being taught that they are bad, I pick people who are very non-reactive. I gravitate towards people who I think won’t be hurt when I’m mad or rude or angry. I like people who don’t seem affected when I’m sad, or hyper. It seems safe to me, until I’m alone in a bar at 1 am and all I want is to go home but I know that I won’t do it unless someone helps me.
So that’s what I’m left with, a false sense of safety, and shame. I came home tonight and laid on my sofa playing mobile Scrabble and hating myself for having big, angry feelings. I got in the tub and tried to wash my shame off.
always surv;ve
