There is no denying that the subject of race is in the air. Black Lives Matter. Police-community relations. Racial tension. Race is now at the center of both public and private discourse. Robert Greer shares his poignant first-person reflections on the meaning of race in our lives.
Robert Greer comes to us from Fall River Massachusetts. He works in New Bedford with children on the spectrum for autism.
When it comes to hard truths and speaking about them, it is better to stay true rather than going along for a ride filled with half-truths and echoing feel-good words for the benefit of others.
This belief has become part of my soul as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement. All too often I have been in social settings, among friends and acquaintances, when the issue of racism has come up, but in a cropped down way – like a picture reduced to only one object, person or event. The chronology and context are lost, the connecting dots are erased, and the picture becomes a distortion or a lie.
Recently, I visited a friend I had not seen since the onset of the pandemic. It was a beautiful night, a spacious yard set up with food, drinks, and, yes, social distancing. Thankfully, we were able to catch up.
An acquaintance brought up racism and Black Lives Matter. “The world is f’d up, we’re all humans and it shouldn’t matter,” he said. “I have nothing to do with all that racism stuff in the past” and “My white privilege has been taken away,” he continued.
It was dizzying and hard for me to know where to start with my replies. I told this acquaintance he was preaching to the choir and no amount of “it shouldn’t matter” can take away from the fact that it does matter, that my experiences, the reality I live, in this shade of skin, are not washed away with statements like “we’re all human.” I gave him examples of the racism I’ve faced throughout my life; he replied with “well some people are stupid and ignorant.” I told him that, sadly, there are stupid and ignorant people in positions of power.
Before I knew it, I was suddenly the one to blame. I was the racist and it wouldn’t be an issue if people stopped focusing on race. This is a form of denial and projection I’m accustomed to; giving it any oxygen wasn’t an option for me.
The hard truths I live as a Black man can’t be denied and no one can ask me, in overt or covert ways, to turn down the volume or silence those truths for their benefit. Here’s what I believe: Remain faithful to the truths about racism in our world, with no need for fillers or buffers. At the end of the day, all of us need to face ourselves.
