A Collegiate Lesson on the Difference of Lived Experiences
Intelligent parents (still) exist, who know about current events of injustice and want to do more than tell their children to turn the channel or stop watching a YouTube/TikTok video. This series of free articles is designed to assist you. It starts with a story I hope your child never tells you.
Her voice cracked with emotion as she received a handful of napkins from me. “You are trying to protect yourself from me, huh?”
With a coolness honed and practiced since the Golden Age of hip hop, I slipped back into my seat, smiled warmly and nodded.
“Yes,” I said in a whisper.
As she wiped her eyes dry and took several breaths to regain control of herself, she looked around the coffeehouse.
“Nobody’s here,” she said.
Technically, she was wrong. To my left, seated against the window-long table was a white male engrossed in his laptop. He appeared college-aged. Behind the counter, in front of me, was a brown-haired white woman cleaning coffee cups.
At the same time, she was correct, no one of authority was inside Case Coffee in Ashland, Oregon. That meant something because 91% of the 22,000 residents (circa 2019) were white-bodied, meaning it is a “sundown” town.
“I’m sorry,” Alicia said. “Do you still feel safe?”
I put my arm up along the back of the booth, leaned back and winked. “There is a reason why I agreed to late afternoon. Business is slow.”
Alicia took a sigh of relief. “So, what do I do now?”
I slowly reached into my backpack and took out a sheet of paper. Before I tell you the answer that I gave her, first, let me tell you what her question was. She set up this meeting with me, which quickly turned into a consultation, three days prior over Facebook Messenger.
“Hi. I know this is awkward because you don’t know me, but I need your help,” she texted.
She was correct on the exchange being awkward. Random communications to a Black man from a white woman, while living in a sundown town, are suspect. “Who sent you?” was the first question which formed in my head.
“Peace. May I ask who you are?” I answered.
“Lol. My name is Alicia.”
“Peace Alicia. Who are you? Lol?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do I know you? Did I meet you at the Unitarian Universalists? At SOU? At the bar?”
“I am a college student. I attend SOU.” *SOU = Southern Oregon University
“Oh, what are you studying?”
“Nursing.”
“Excellent. Do you know Bettema? She is my mentee for the Black Student Union.”
“No. I did not even know SOU had a Black Student Union.”
“Oh, you are white.”
“Yes, I am.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m so sorry for reaching out but I can’t find anyone else to talk to. I found your page on Facebook and you talk about race all of the time. Can we meet because I had a situation happen and I just don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, we can meet. Do you know where Case coffee is across the street from the University?”
“Yes.”
“Can you meet me there tomorrow at 3 pm?”
“Yes, that is in-between classes.”
“Good. See you then.”
The next day, I got to Case 15 minutes early, purchased a coffee and selected a booth with my back to the wall. I was strategic. I picked a seat where I could see the front door and gave me access to the back door. No customers were present.
Alicia was easy to identify. She came cheerfully through the front door, waved at me and reached my seat in a few long paces. “You already bought a coffee. I was going to buy you a coffee.”
“No need,” I said. “Nice to meet you. You are just like I imagined. Where did you grow up?”
“In Medford.”
“Oh, wow. Not far from here. Forgive me for asking this question, but did any students come to school in blackface when you were in high school?”
Alicia’s eyes grew wide. “Yes! How did you know?”
“I am an anti-racism educator. I read the newspaper and keep up with the local rumors.”
“It wasn’t until I got to SOU before I learned how racist Medford is. I didn’t even know blackface was racist.”
I laughed. “I keep hearing this. So, what do you want to talk to me about?”
Alicia’s boyfriend is a Black athlete. This past weekend, they decided to go to the movies. The historic theatre is downtown, where there is little to no parking. The collegiate couple parked two blocks away and walked in.
Afterwards, it was nighttime. Alicia, feeling safe because she was with her man, suggested the two of them race to the vehicle. Her Black boyfriend scoffed at the idea.
“Awww, come on. It will be fun. You’re an athlete,” Alicia said.
“Let’s play this out in our heads, okay. We start racing and you are winning, what does that look like? It looks like a Black man is chasing a white woman. No Jacob and Alicia racing. If I am winning, it looks like a white woman desperately chasing a Black man. Either way, after the neighbors call the cops and the cops shoot me, you are going to be left crying and wondering what just happened,” the boyfriend said.
The shock of what Jacob said hit Alicia like a ton of bricks. She had never thought of herself in racial terms before. He was right. She was a threat to him! Having never processed racial stress before, she started crying.
“Please don’t do that,” Jacob said dryly.
Alicia looked up and down the street and then composed herself. The walk back to the car was awkward. The silence during the ride back to student housing was even more awkward. The walk up the stairs and kiss at the end of the night in front of her dorm door was agonizing. Alicia could not release the grief she felt until she was safely on the other side of the dorm door where only her roommate could see her tears - her white girl tears!
I understood where Jacob was coming from, so, the first thing I wrote on the sheet of paper was, “Get yourself a journal and keep it on you at all times.”
“A journal?” Alicia asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “As you learned, your emotions are dangerous around Jacob. The problems are not your tears. You are human. Crying is human. The problem is how the white people around you will interpret those tears. They will see them the same way they see their daughter’s tears; their mother’s tears; their auntie’s tears; their wife’s tears - and they will respond. That’s what you have to learn to become aware of. You are not an individual personality. You are not Alicia. You are a white woman and that means something.”
For a second time Alicia fought back tears. “That makes me so sad.”
“Why? You have been a white person for, what?, 18 years now.”
“Yes, but it never meant anything. I was just normal. Now, it means I am a monster.”
“You are not a monster. I do not teach blame, shame or guilt. None of that is productive. After a journal, I want you to purchase three books, ‘White Fragility’ by Dr. Robin DiAngelo, ‘My Grandmother’s Hands’ by Resmaa Menakem and ‘The Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ by Paulo Freire. Keep the journal on you so that you have a way to process your emotions without drawing attention to yourself. Think of it as a pensive, like the one Dumbledore uses.”
I slid the paper, filled with my handwriting over to Alicia.
“Thank you so much. Can I pay you something for all of this?”
“Yes. You can pay me by keeping Jacob alive.”
“Damn.”
Thank you for being brave enough to have read this entire story. Please continue demonstrating courage by sharing this story with two other people that you know.
QUESTION: When did you learn that Black, Brown and Indigenous people were having a different experience of “white people” than you were?
Thank you for all your suggestions. If I were able-bodied I would write about what I call “plantation wife syndrome,” the virulent retaliation of White people against White women (and men? idk) like myself who refuse to comply with the White Supremacist “infantilization of White women.”
I capitalize it to make it pop but also because it’s a proper noun—the name of a CULT. 😡
I would have added Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste to your student’s reading list—the audiobook though, to hear the emotion in Wilkerson’s voice.
When I used to teach (anthropology), I would tell people to think of a time they felt injustice done to themselves, to close their eyes and feel it in their body, and then imagine feeling that every day, over and over, 100 times worse. Then expand that feeling to everyone you know and love. Imagine being forced to march along the Trail of Tears or in chains across a continent you didn’t know, your loved ones dying and left behind. And now hone that grief and rage into a blade and strike up. That’s how to create visceral empathy.
Some White people look at me like I’m speaking jibberish; some react with existential rage. And all these people, fyi, are White Democrats. I don’t think I know any Republicans. Except that’s not entirely true—the Democratic Party got flooded with snobs like my family, who didn’t want to get cooties from the “white trash” that took over “their” party.
Maybe your student had kind parents, Tim Walz parents. Maybe her parents weren’t roaring on the front lines of the culture wars in a state like Florida 🙋♀️ or Texas. Not every White person carries the warped epigenetics and intergenerational trauma of people who dehumanize their own children so that those children can dehumanize others.
To me it feels like … a blank space, like parts of them have been excised. A lobotomy. Vacant eyes. Like I’m talking from the other side of a piece of glass, and they can’t hear or see me. I tried and failed—they don’t want to listen.
I’ve felt it since childhood—as the neurodivergent girl who couldn’t stay still while they tried to force me into the box of patriarchal conservative Christianity. ND kids are the most likely to be abused by parents. Girls who reject patriarchy are, too. I found it safer to fight for the social justice of others and to hope it would trickle down to me. 🤷🏼♀️
Those of us on whom the brainwashing didn’t work are left battered and broken from banging our bodies against broken glass, trying to break through, but like the dogs in that study on learned helplessness, we only get shocked for our efforts. “Let go or be dragged”—I got dragged.
And yes, I CRY—because it is still happening! I know it’s dangerous; it’s certainly embarrassing; even EMDR and a round of TMS can’t stop it. I’ve learned to just stay away from people. 😢
I haven’t listened to White Fragility—perhaps I should. But I FEEL the parallels between White Supremacy and domestic violence (I wrote a post). I simply cannot use a compassionate word like “fragile” to describe the entitled narcissistic rage of White people.
It was when I shared the Power & Control Wheel with my family during my divorce that they must have seen themselves in it. Something left them existentially triggered—subconscious allegiance to the caste system I think—and they took my ex’s side and smeared me as “crazy” to everyone we knew in common, even reaching out to my FB friends.
Victorian families locked non-compliant women like me in asylums all the time. Ironically while this was happening my son was reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” and learning about Elizabeth Packard in 10th grade English. 🤦♀️🤷🏼♀️ If Mehmet Oz gives them the green light, they’ll try for real.
Domestic abusers abuse because they feel ENTITLED to the advantages it brings them. Ditto White Supremacists. I refuse to call them fragile. Intellectually I understand Black Americans’ need to frame White performative narcissistic rage as “fragility.” I admire it tbh.
But I think survival skills and strategic thinking require executive functioning that I lack. 😣 I am stubborn and spent half a century poking the bear, envisioning myself as Tank Man. The DNA of ancient Viking and Celt warriors, always vigilant and ready to ignore hunger and thirst to run into battle, might be too strong.
But if you tell me “Sara, put that book on your list once you finish that Michael Arcenaux one you’re currently listening to—I promise you’ll learn something,” I’ll do it.
But please be honest, bc if it enrages me instead, my neck muscles will spasm and squeeze the bone spurs the misogynist medical caste system refuses to help me with into my spine and leave me bed bound. I can’t risk that.
Thank you.
I learned about Black people's experience of whites from you.