Some big-deal blogger said lately, and I paraphrase, if you don't know what to say about race, defer to a guest-writing colleague or friend who does. I don't have someone like that in my life right now.
#
My roommate in college was from Nicaragua. She studied in an East German school growing up. Her heritage was indigenous, Spanish, Afro-Nicaraguan, and Irish.
One night we were eating dinner at the cafeteria and her then-boyfriend, a son of Jamaican parents who had grown up in Bolivia, came in upset. He'd been pulled over by the local police of the white southern town of 10,000 effectively for being black. There was not another reason.
Though we were good friends at the time, they are the closest friends I've had who were black people in America. They both still live in the U.S., but their experience is unique from African Americans because they grew up in Latin countries.
#
At my two-week Mennonite Central Committee orientation seven years ago, we used a tool ranking different aspects of family of origin. Points were assigned for race, education, and land ownership among others. The outcome gave some sense of inherited privilege. On both sides of my family were immigrants who became landowners through the Homestead Acts around the turn of the 20th century. Fifty years before back through time immemorial, that land was inhabited by nomadic tribes and bison. (And to be fair, I have old-American ancestors who fought some for the north and some for the south in the Civil War). So in this MCC tool, I had a very high score, being of western European descent, having had all four grandparents at least attend college, my families owning land. It was the first time I was exposed to the idea of white privilege.
#
Yesterday I was reading back through a series of Facebook messages with one of my Afghan colleagues, N. He lives in Kandahar, the heart of Pashtunistan. That is, the geographic area where the major concentration of Pashtuns live. Looking at a map, you would note an international border running through the middle of Pashtunistan, half Afghanistan, half Pakistan, as imagined by one Sir Mortimer Durand in 1893.
Pashtuns are not a majority in Afghanistan, but they comprise the largest ethnic population. On your ID card, you can be "Afghan" (Pashtun) or you can be Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, etc. They hold the majority of federal government positions. Pashto and Dari are the national languages, but Pashto is used more formally.
N had been at the periphery of a debate with our other colleague G, who lived in Kabul. Apparently G was advocating the word for "university" be changed from the Pashto "Pohantoon" to the Iranian "Danishga." N was frustrated that G would care about it at all. Instead of engaging in a Facebook fight, N told G to "'get a job...' Was I too harsh?"
It was precious to me that I was consulted at all. I was a bit amused by my reply, from two years ago, trying to write understandably for a second-language English speaker,
I don't know enough say if you were too harsh because I don't fully understand the passions of people sharing a country but not necessarily a language and the one who is more often in power....I do remember taking a training that discussed issues for minority people in the USA. I thought, "These problems are not real problems," such as getting pulled over in your car by the police without a reason. But then the facilitator said, "You think they are not problems because your life goes easily. You don't get pulled over in your car by the police unless you drive too fast, but black people do very often for no reason. Some things are broken, but not for you." Even though I cannot understand everyone's experience as if it was my own, I try to appreciate that some people have more difficult lives because the systems are not built to favor them.
I don't know if my writing was meaningful to N or not. Our next correspondence was a YouTube of a British guy doing 60 character voices in five minutes.
#
My experience is fairly limited in the U.S., besides what systems have worked for me in places with few minorities. I lived in a diverse urban setting in Vancouver, Canada, one summer, 14 years ago. Other nation's problems come into greater focus, but isn't that always the way?
I continue to read good blogs and essays and articles that my mostly-white, mostly college-educated friends link to on Facebook. Fox News is frequently on mute on my in-laws' television. Fox has black correspondents, but that's hardly having one's finger on the pulse.
###
One of the most helpful things I've read lately was a dialogue between two Christian colleagues from Saint Louis, one white and one black: A Conversation About Ferguson (Luke Bobo and Greg Pitchford), found in this Critique PDF.
#
My roommate in college was from Nicaragua. She studied in an East German school growing up. Her heritage was indigenous, Spanish, Afro-Nicaraguan, and Irish.
One night we were eating dinner at the cafeteria and her then-boyfriend, a son of Jamaican parents who had grown up in Bolivia, came in upset. He'd been pulled over by the local police of the white southern town of 10,000 effectively for being black. There was not another reason.
Though we were good friends at the time, they are the closest friends I've had who were black people in America. They both still live in the U.S., but their experience is unique from African Americans because they grew up in Latin countries.
#
At my two-week Mennonite Central Committee orientation seven years ago, we used a tool ranking different aspects of family of origin. Points were assigned for race, education, and land ownership among others. The outcome gave some sense of inherited privilege. On both sides of my family were immigrants who became landowners through the Homestead Acts around the turn of the 20th century. Fifty years before back through time immemorial, that land was inhabited by nomadic tribes and bison. (And to be fair, I have old-American ancestors who fought some for the north and some for the south in the Civil War). So in this MCC tool, I had a very high score, being of western European descent, having had all four grandparents at least attend college, my families owning land. It was the first time I was exposed to the idea of white privilege.
#
Yesterday I was reading back through a series of Facebook messages with one of my Afghan colleagues, N. He lives in Kandahar, the heart of Pashtunistan. That is, the geographic area where the major concentration of Pashtuns live. Looking at a map, you would note an international border running through the middle of Pashtunistan, half Afghanistan, half Pakistan, as imagined by one Sir Mortimer Durand in 1893.
Pashtuns are not a majority in Afghanistan, but they comprise the largest ethnic population. On your ID card, you can be "Afghan" (Pashtun) or you can be Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, etc. They hold the majority of federal government positions. Pashto and Dari are the national languages, but Pashto is used more formally.
N had been at the periphery of a debate with our other colleague G, who lived in Kabul. Apparently G was advocating the word for "university" be changed from the Pashto "Pohantoon" to the Iranian "Danishga." N was frustrated that G would care about it at all. Instead of engaging in a Facebook fight, N told G to "'get a job...' Was I too harsh?"
It was precious to me that I was consulted at all. I was a bit amused by my reply, from two years ago, trying to write understandably for a second-language English speaker,
I don't know enough say if you were too harsh because I don't fully understand the passions of people sharing a country but not necessarily a language and the one who is more often in power....I do remember taking a training that discussed issues for minority people in the USA. I thought, "These problems are not real problems," such as getting pulled over in your car by the police without a reason. But then the facilitator said, "You think they are not problems because your life goes easily. You don't get pulled over in your car by the police unless you drive too fast, but black people do very often for no reason. Some things are broken, but not for you." Even though I cannot understand everyone's experience as if it was my own, I try to appreciate that some people have more difficult lives because the systems are not built to favor them.
I don't know if my writing was meaningful to N or not. Our next correspondence was a YouTube of a British guy doing 60 character voices in five minutes.
#
My experience is fairly limited in the U.S., besides what systems have worked for me in places with few minorities. I lived in a diverse urban setting in Vancouver, Canada, one summer, 14 years ago. Other nation's problems come into greater focus, but isn't that always the way?
I continue to read good blogs and essays and articles that my mostly-white, mostly college-educated friends link to on Facebook. Fox News is frequently on mute on my in-laws' television. Fox has black correspondents, but that's hardly having one's finger on the pulse.
###
One of the most helpful things I've read lately was a dialogue between two Christian colleagues from Saint Louis, one white and one black: A Conversation About Ferguson (Luke Bobo and Greg Pitchford), found in this Critique PDF.
No comments:
Post a Comment