"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."Martin Luther King, Jr.
I grew up never thinking much about race. I didn't have to. I lived in a very homogeneous community. We had only a very few kids in school of color. I never had any negative thoughts about race, but few thoughts on the subject all together.
I stayed that way until I got to the University of Alabama in January of 1992.
I didn't have a roommate planned, and was going to live in a dorm. After a week of panicking because I didn't have a roommate (You had to pay for a single room if you didn't have a roommate. I didn't have the money. Talk about stress.) I got a sweet little knock on my door one morning. I opened it to find a most beautiful, petite little African American girl. She looked at me, so shyly, and said, "Do you need a roommate?"
I laughed and almost tackled her. I yelled, "YES!!!!" and she moved her stuff right in. Whew, extreme disaster adverted.
So I started letting everyone back home know I had finally gotten a roommate, and when I told them she was black, it was like, "......... oh." It wasn't the first thing I told them. Just things that came out in conversation. But the reactions were all the same.
Huh? Oh well. I was too tired, stressed and overwhelmed to give it much thought. She was sweet, and pretty quiet. The room we shared was, I believe, about 8 feet by 20 feet. Tiny.
Slowly, because I am slow, I noticed that was the only white girl on my whole hall. Hmm. Had that been the only change in my life, it would have been significant, but I had just been transported away from home for the first time in my life, leaving family, friends and a boyfriend in a new city with no car, no job, no money and a huge class load. This is before email, and cell phones, so although I was only an hour and a half away from home, it felt like worlds away.
Anyway, Stephanie soon began to gently tell me that the girls on the hall didn't really like me. "Oh. Really? Why?" I had no idea.
"Well, it's because you're white."
"Because I'm what?"
"Not black."
"Oh. Huh."
Especially Kim, who was our next door neighbor. She was from Mississippi, and her brother had been beaten nearly to death by a group of white guys. Try undoing those preconceived ideas. Wow.
So, I was introduced to racism. I guess I was too naive, or oblivious, to have thought about it before then.
I remember sitting on my bed, reading the student newspaper, and there, in black and white, in the editorial section, were the words "sand n_____g" in reference to an Egyptian student. I just wanted to cry. Or throw up. What in the world?
Bits and pieces of the world started clicking into focus in a way I had never seen them before. I saw the way Kim looked at me. The way she avoided me. Stephanie pointed out how people looked at her and me as we went places together. I started to notice it.
Eventually Stephanie told me how she had also felt nervous having a white roommate. Her friends and family had worried about it. Her friends would call and see how it was going, living with me.
She told me about the stereotypes about white people. How we smelled like dogs when we got wet. (WHAT???) She said the girls on the hall were warming up to me, but they just weren't totally ready to be friends. It was all hard.
This was the year that Geraldo got hit in the nose with the chair by the skinhead. We were actually watching that when it happened. I was embarrassed by all that. Sorrowful.
I was learning what it was like to be judged by your skin color, and prejudged without ever uttering a word, or doing a thing.
I think of that when I lock my door when seeing a certain type of young man. Or other little things I do that judge.
Finally, one night, Stephanie and I were watching the Miss USA pageant on television. A couple of the girls came by the room, and started watching a bit. Steph and I were laughing and giggling and joking. The other girls joined in, little bit by little bit. It was the first time I felt like I fit in, just a bit. As they were leaving, one said, "You're okay, for a white girl." I took it as a compliment.
Winter finally turned into spring, and one warm evening, we were studying with the window open. I heard a noise-a man's voice, coming over what sounded like a loud speaker outside the window. Stephanie grinned and motioned me over. Windows opened all over our dorm, and in the dorm across the street. A guy had pulled his car up in front of our dorm, and turned the volume on his stereo way up. I looked at Stephanie and asked, "Who is that?"
With a smile, she said, "That's Martin Luther King, Jr."
We all sat in the windows, listening to his words. It was silent in those windows, a miracle in itself. We listened to the "I Have a Dream Speech" given on August 28, 1963, in Washington D.C. Everything froze in time, as I listened to his words. I had spent a scant 3 months in a world far from the one I grew up in. This man, and his people, had lived it for generations.
"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
I felt the weight of my ignorance of this vast challenge to the human race. I was ashamed of how little I knew, first hand, of the world I lived in.
"I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
I wanted to make it all right. I didn't want to live in a world where racism existed. I suddenly felt like I saw it all, in a very different light.
All because of a young man and his car stereo.
We listened to the whole speech, and I just sat there, still.
That was a pivotal day for me. I'm not at all equating one small semester with generations of persecution. It was just a wake up call for me.
I recall times when I stared discrimination in the face since my days at Alabama, and it felt different. I think God let me live those days as a way to soften my heart. To give me perspective. To allow me to know what it's like to be judged based on something you have no control over.
So today, as I do on this day each year, and other days as well, I check my heart. Is it pure towards all the races that our God created? Will I be able to look Him in the face one day, and say with all honesty, with a pure heart, that I treated all His creation equally? Can I thank Him honestly for creating us with beautiful diversity?
I struggle with how to raise my children with diversity. I struggle with how to be diverse myself. And with my fatigue of the day settling in, I just want to snuggle down under the covers and tell myself that it's all okay.
But it's not. There are things about our world that are not okay. Not Biblical. Not right. And I feel as a child of the God that created all living things, I have a responsibility to try to make something right.
And hopefully it won't cost me my life, like it did Martin Luther King, Jr.
I lost track of Stephanie over the years. I wish I could thank her for teaching me a most valuable lesson. How do you thank someone for that, really? I thank God, though.
