5 Reasons Why I’m Side-Eyeing ‘Underground Airlines’

It is the present. But I think a lot of people are afraid to write about the present, directly, because if you get the details wrong, or you don’t have the proof to back up your suspicions, you can be sued for defamation and libel and that sort of thing. Science fiction is less risky. Fictional companies can’t sue in the real world, even if they’re only fictional in so far as some superficial details like the name and the place being changed. Well, maybe they could, but first they’d have to prove that they actually were the fictional company in question, and who’d want to admit to that?

Being a white person in this day an age… it’s hard to be authentic, because it’s not really something you’re aware of. Being white that is. Not until you get separated from the herd, metaphorically speaking, from the expectations that other white people expect you to live up to — being strong, healthy, successful, having an expected aversion to certain neighborhoods, having the typical political beliefs, not the ones Democrats and Republicans are always arguing about, but the ones both sides take for granted. But even when you get separated, you still don’t feel it too much. There’s always people wanting to welcome you back to the herd, bring you back in, even if they keep you more on the fringe of it than before. Even when you’re outside, you never really feel what it’s like to be black, or native american, or whatever. You can get a closer look. Interact with other people, people with different experiences, try to expand your empathy to include them too. But not matter how hard you try to feel empathy, there’s always that gap there. That gap between watching and listening and actually experiencing for yourself.

Just because being authentic is hard is no excuse not to try of course. I suppose my story starts the same as everyone else. A baby, completely oblivious to race. Babies aren’t born prejudiced after all — privileged, yes — but all the racial stereotypes and whatnot, the expectations, the self-righteousness, the senses of superiority, however subtle they might manifest — that’s all learned afterwards, generally picked up from older generations. But I guess like most white children, I was permitted to hang on to that obliviousness much longer than I suppose others are.

I went to integrated schools as a child. Not necessarily well-integrated. Not in the sense of actually being proportionately balanced. Not that I had any awareness at the time of what would’ve been proportionate. But I had the opportunity to meet children of a variety of races, and it felt so normal to me that even when it was explained in history class about how people had to actually fight to end segregation, it seemed like something that must’ve happened a long long time ago. The dates didn’t register. Not that I was good with dates anyway. I really didn’t think about the races of my classmates much outside of those history lessons, unless they brought it up themselves.

My high school, though it had representatives of a wide variety of peoples, was predominantly white and asian, so when people did bring up racial justice issues, it was usually from asian perspectives. Which didn’t really prepare me for meeting more black, hispanic, and native american people later in life, because, well, asians have different experiences.

I remember once, I got lost on my way home. Got directions to a different road by the same name. Wound up in completely the wrong neighborhood. I remembered feeling curious about the place. It was different from other neighborhoods I’d been in before. The two things that struck me as the most obvious were the children outside playing, and the clothes hanging outside on clotheslines. The children — fairly young children, in some cases — gave me a sense of safety. If it wasn’t a safe neighborhood, children wouldn’t be allowed to play outside. And the clothes seemed to be part of a theme of poverty. Apparently people couldn’t afford driers. The townhouses seemed run down too. Poorly maintained. I wondered what else they were missing besides driers. I didn’t stay there long. It was obvious to people that I did not fit in there. I got help finding my way home. No one tried to hurt me, though from the lectures I got when I did get back home you’d think I’d been saved from the jaws of death. How if I kept wandering off like that I’d end up in drugs or prostitution or dead in a ditch somewhere. It only occurred to me afterwards — and not right away, it took me awhile to process it — that what everyone was making such a big fuss over is that I’d been wandering in a predominantly black neighborhood. That what was expected of me was to be afraid by virtue of the color of the neighborhood, rather than reassured by the presence of children playing outside. Not that they could tell me so in so many words. They couldn’t, because, then they’d have to admit to not being color blind, and to them color blind meant not racist. But it felt, hollow, like all that talk about individuality and opportunity was something that far more people paid lip service too than there were people who actually believed in it.

Though my high school was predominantly white/asian, with a speckling of other peoples, there were Hispanic folk living in the area and my first job had a hispanic manager. A number of my coworkers were also hispanic. In fact, apparently a number of them lived right next door, sharing the rental house between them. One of them asked me once if there were a lot of hispanic people at my high school. I thought about it and could only think of a few. Which struck me as odd, when I actually thought about it. Before, if you’d asked me about why my high school was predominantly white/asian, I’d probably have assumed that it was simply because there were a lot of white/asian people around. Not because I’d actually looked at demographics, but because I’d never really thought about it. But he was right. His high school wasn’t far away and apparently there were a lot of hispanic people there. And apparently the quality of education there wasn’t near as good. That much made sense; my high school was a sort of magnet high school, the sort you have to test and essay and teacher recommendation your way into. But what didn’t make sense is why there weren’t more hispanics there with me. I guess I understand better now. Most of the hispanics in the area probably somehow weren’t getting the same educational opportunities early on, and so they didn’t test as well. But back then it was just an unexplained anomaly to me. Something that didn’t feel quite right, but I couldn’t explain why it didn’t feel quite right.

When I got older I moved to the Southwest. And there were a lot of hispanics and native americans there. The undercurrents of racial prejudice were a lot stronger there. Closer to the surface. Easier to see. Apt to pop out. But even with all that there was still the, “At least we’re not in Arizona. Things are much worse in Arizona.” People got mad about the racist laws over in Arizona. And Columbus Day felt like the saddest holiday ever there. No one celebrated it. People wouldn’t have even acknowledge it was a holiday were it not for the fact that federal employees were required to take the day off because it was a federal holiday. Never in my life have I seen people so resentful about taking a day off from work. Private businesses stayed open. And it was all for good reason. Considering the aftermath of Columbus’ journey, what happened to the native americans, if Columbus day is to be remembered, it should be as a day of mourning, not a day of celebration. I heard it was worse in Denver Colorado, that there Columbus Day was a day of riots not just mourning, but that St. Patrick’s Day in Denver was the opposite, a day when everyone was Irish, no matter what they looked like. Not that I was ever actually in Denver — that’s just what I heard.

There weren’t all that many more black people in that part of the country than in the communities that grew up in, but it was there that some of the few black people I did meet first started talking to me about their experiences with being black. First, my sales partner in one job I held for awhile. It was a lot to take in, though he didn’t throw it at me all at once. But in sales you can see that sort of thing a lot more clearly. My sales partner goes in, fails to make his pitch. I go in, less experienced, making it the way he taught me, and succeed. He was black, and he explained that hispanic business owners would tend to relate to him more, but that white ones would tend to relate to me more. He never said outright that they were racist. Well, not unless they actually did say something overt, but that was rare, for the most part, the business owners we talked to were professional. But it seemed… sad. Sad that people could harbor prejudice in their subconscious and not even be aware of it. Of course, I suppose it’s possible that I give some of them too much credit, that it actually wasn’t subconscious, but, that would just be even sadder.

It was also there in the south west that I started becoming physically disabled. Falling ill and not getting better, first suddenly, but, after the initial onset, just gradually worse over time. And, other black people starting talking to me too… trying to reach out. With empathy. To try to make me feel less alone. To explain to me that what they went through as black people all their lives was similar in some ways to what I was starting to go through as a disabled person. Not the same, just similar. Similar enough to give us something to talk about. I know a lot of white people feel like they’re being guilt-tripped other people try to approach them about white privilege, and that’s why some get all upset and start acting out as if their hurt feelings are somehow worse than all the injustice in the world, today and it the past, but it didn’t feel that way at all to me. It didn’t feel like that to me. It felt like people reaching out with empathy, to help, and with patience to correct some of the prejudices and lack of awareness of how to be polite that had contaminated my mind. Not that I didn’t feel guilty at all, not on a personal level so much as just the awareness of how contaminated our culture, our economy, so many little things are with violence in the past, violence in the present. Chocolate. Coffee. Those are two I was aware of even when I was younger. Slavery in other parts of the world. Actual chattel slavery. Couldn’t understand how people could stomach to buy chocolate and coffee that wasn’t at least fair trade certified or something. I mean, how could someone proclaim their pride in their country and our emancipation proclamation, how at some point in the past we finally decided to prohibit something that decent people never would have done in the first place, and then go and buy a product where that violence is simply outsourced elsewhere, to another part of the world. I’ve asked people about it, too. I mean, there’s, “I didn’t know”, and that’s one thing, but then when it’s the same person I’ve talked about it to before, and they’re still buying the same chocolate or the same coffee, well, they can’t claim that they still don’t know at some point. And the excuses people come up with. “It’s not my fault. It’s the company’s fault.” “I’m too poor to afford fair trade certified.” “It’s the government’s responsibility to make sure the chocolate is slave free.” “Don’t you know its the slave that makes the chocolate taste good?” “Well, slaves have to eat too. How will they be able to afford to eat if I don’t buy this chocolate?” So many excuses. Such new heights of ridiculousness. But the violence isn’t just offshore. It’s still here too. I can see that now. Maybe not all of it, probably far from all of it, but, a glimpse here and there. It took me awhile. It’s less obvious now. It’s changed. It’s more hidden. But it’s not just in the Ivory Coast and places like that. It’s still here too.

Another thing in the southwest I become more aware of was environmental issues… since my illness was caused by pollution, it was rather inevitable. Apparently a lot of native americans are concerned about the environment too. People of all races, really, in that part of the world. You often hear from the right wing, the complaint that environmentalists care more about animals than people. And maybe that’s true of some. But people live in the environment too. Water pollution, air pollution, contamination of the soil, these things harm people. Apparently there’s a long history of native americans being harmed not just directly, via massacres and the like, but by harming their environment, slathering the buffalo some tribes depended on, en masse, mining and drilling all kinds of natural resources out of their land and leaving them to live with the pollution. Different peoples experience racism differently, of course, but for a lot of native americans, it seems so far as I can tell that environmental issues and racial oppression issues are linked.

Later in my life I spoke to a Holocaust survivor. Listened to his story. How he survived. How so many around him did not. The horrible conditions. The disease. He was Jewish, and he told his story from that perspective, but, in an effort to relate better I think, he also mentioned that disabled people were killed too… he said that the Nazis were so racist, that they were even racist against their own race… Germans who failed to meet their idea of perfect German health and superiority.

And even after having talked to so many people, so many good, kind, empathetic people, I honestly still don’t know what it feels like to be black, or to be native american, or to be hispanic, or to be jewish. But you deserve better than a world where some police officers shoot unarmed black people and get away with it. You deserve a lot better.

I’m not sure where Winters book fits into all that. You understand better, I’m sure. And thank you for explaining your feelings.