I think that my understanding of my racial identity has been a process that will continue throughout my life as I learn more about other people’s experiences and different theoretical perspectives on racial politics. When I was little, I think that I knew at a very basic level that I was a white person, and that race and racism affected other people historically. As a child, my parents would often read to me, and I think that this was one of my very first experiences with conceptualizing race. Through reading historical fiction and books about Black people throughout history, I gained a very simplistic understanding of historic anti-Blackness and racism.
It took a longer time to understand how my racial identity had political and material consequences today. I grew up in a very white city and school system downriver, so I had relatively little opportunity to learn about how people of different races experienced life by hearing them speak for themselves. While we would occasionally discuss racism and the history of non-white people in school, it was certainly never made the priority I think it should have been. Eventually, I could access the internet and other forms of scholarship that allowed me to better understanding of what it meant to be white, finally learning concepts like white privilege.
As I went into high school, I became much more active in seeking out what it meant to be white in terms of a responsibility to change the white supremacists systems that we live within inside the United States. By reading about things like critical race theory and the history/agenda of white supremacy within the United States, I think I started to gain a more clear understanding of my privilege and positionality as a white woman in the United States. I started to very intentionally look at events, issues, and concepts with an understanding of race. I would go beyond my experiences and seek out the perspectives of people who I knew were much more marginalized than I was and therefore had a much clearer understanding of the issues that face the United States and the global community.
Another big factor in my understanding of race growing up was the fact that my dad taught high school in Detroit for his entire career. My dad is a white man who teaches a majority Black class, so it is imperative that we talk about race and racism. My dad and I would often talk about, and still often talk about, how being mindful of the dynamics of race in the United States is imperative to properly teach and respect your students. I have very specific memories of my dad talking about the challenges his students faced because of anti-Blackness that I would never have to face because I was white and in a majority white school district. It was glaringly obvious how race intersected with schooling when I would hear how my dad’s students had to walk through metal detectors everyday going into school, had to go through trainings on how to try to minimize the potential harm they may face in police interactions, and how white teachers in the district could be, at best, completely ignorant to the importance of race in their student’s life.
