There was this moment on DU about 8 years that removed all my beliefs that liberals were not racist

[TygrBright]

15. For me it wasn't DU, but my first job.

I'd been raised to believe "we aren't racist" because I grew up in a liberal family in Minnesota, that deplored all that nasty Southern lynching and dog-attacking and cross-burning stuff. You know, "real" racism. And as the only white girl on an all-black dorm floor in my first year in college, I'd gotten to know a lot of black women, too. And I certainly didn't regard them as inferior in any way-- hell, most of them were better than me at some thing, and some were better than me at most things!

So, liberal, northern, well-intentioned, I was by default "not racist," right?

My first real job in St. Paul, I worked alongside a black colleague who'd grown up in the South, been active in SNCC, moved to the Twin Cities just a few years ago.

I am still grateful to him for the uncomfortable mirror he held up to me, my upbringing, my community, etc. It's damn' difficult to "see" your own racism, and impossible to start the life-long process of overcoming that conditioning, if you don't see it.

One thing Eddie told me that really stuck with me: "I was more comfortable in the South because the racists there knew they were racist and never pretended otherwise. They had a fundamental honesty about being racist. Northern liberals lie to themselves, me, and everyone in their own ignorance of the nature of racism."

And anyone on DU who thinks that because this is a "liberal" message board site, there's little or no racism here (#NotAllDUers, "bad apples!" blahblahblah) is in that same boat of denial.

It ain't a river in Egypt.

wearily,
Bright