Judy Siegle
I have long taken a lot of guilt trips about my own biases and prejudices. It makes it very awkward for me to “be natural” with others different from me and my lifestyle, because I carry this immense guilt about my personal feelings.
I thought this was okay and just, because my feelings were surfacing at most inappropriate times – reading about the number of children “welfare moms” had with no dad in sight; the crime rates in ghettos; the violent language I personally experienced in attempts to talk to “the others.” How could I, as a good
person, harbor these reservations about my fellow human beings?
So it was with immense relief that I attended and absorbed the message of the Undoing Racism
workshops. I learned, as I never had in any history or political science course in college, that institutional racism facilitates all those feelings I was experiencing.
It’s not just about me, it’s about the way the system has been developed in our country – and of course, other countries, too – that makes my privilege as a white person an obstacle to understanding what it means not
to have that privilege. Surely, part of that instituted response was the desire to help “the others” attain what I had, and at the same time, not understanding how impossible the system made this desire for them.
My childhood was totally Caucasian. I grew up in a small town that was 99% Catholic and naïve about other races. We had the usual prejudices about Jews, who had killed Christ; about Bohemian and Irish farmers not being as worthy farmers compared to us Germans. But we had been shielded from any real contact with the concept of race.
My mother, a good and incredibly hard working poor woman, would say things to me such as “Don’t put money in your mouths. A Nigger might have touched it.” In school, we bought pagan babies in Africa for the missionaries and we got to name those babies we had paid for with our pennies. Nowadays, that is a source of comedy, but it is a real part of my life.
Learning is lifelong. Undoing the feelings and beliefs I grew up with is a long and arduous trail. But beginning it is crucial for us to form a true human family, a real community. The first step, the “ah ha!” step, occurs for us at different times.
But my wish for this community is to help each of us come to terms with that moment, and to go from there to make us into the living examples of the ideals we espouse. I still have a long way to go. I intend to keep at it, though. There is
hope – look at the most recent election. We can do this. I hope you agree.
Judy Siegle is a member of a group, which meets
monthly on the second Thursday of each month at
6:30 p.m. at Chicago Bay Marketplace in Hovland.
She and other group participants will periodically
provide information on Undoing Racism in our community.
To learn more, contact Bob Carter at (218)
387-2111 or via e-mail at drydoc@boreal.org; or
e-mail Bea Sorenson at bbsorens@boreal.org.
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