Are White Americans Taught to Feel Negatively About Blacks Growing Up?

Thank you for tuning in to Healing Race. Over the course of the next few episodes, you will see our first ever group of guests, 4 Americans, 2 black, 2 white, have their first conversation about race together. They start by sharing how their backgrounds have uniquely shaped their approach to race and why they wanted to take part in a healing race conversation. Merrin then asked the white guests what they learned about black people growing up. Landon and Susan candidly share what they learned and experienced within their communities, schools, colleges, and through moving to new cities. They share how they feel about those experiences looking back, and they also reflect on how their experiences shape their views about black people over time and about the role of race in our country and in their lives. So let's get to that conversation now. Enjoy. Hello, everyone. My name is Marcus. I chose to take part in this because I feel that I bring a unique perspective to the conversation. I'm a police officer. I've been in law enforcement for 10 years. My experience has been somewhat out of the ordinary of what I feel like the general public or my community, black people, would expect to hear. And I hope to give some background, and I hope it brings understanding to the conversation and common ground. So and, Marcus, just before we move on to the next person, kind of on a personal level, what, like, what's the motivation to get involved? Like, why was this important for you to experience? I've never really dove into my feelings or my experiences on a level. As I said before, the conversations that I've had, they have normally been maybe 5, 10 minutes. It's been a reaction to something that's happened on the news or in the country. I've never really just dove into it and unpacked it all. So Awesome. So, hopefully, it brings some understanding. So thanks. Susan, you wanna go for it? Oh, yeah. Okay. So I'm here today because Todd emailed me. I had met him through Graver Angels, and he asked very nicely that I do this, and I was afraid. So I asked a bunch of questions, and he made me feel very comfortable, like I was in good hands. And then I met Andre and same. I really appreciate the structured way you're doing this conversation because I think it can go fraught really quickly if it's not done handled well, and I think you guys are great. My background, I'm 60 years old. I was born and raised in the south. Raised in a suburb pretty much an all-white suburb of Atlanta, so that was a very divided community and probably and it still is in so many ways. So I experienced a lot of things growing up there that kinda shock me now in a way that seemed normal back then. And in hindsight of how much I've learned throughout life, I find quite shocking, and some things quite moving. I shared some of that with Todd and Andre, so a variety of experience. So I moved in LA about 30 years ago, moved to LA about 30 years ago, and experienced the riots and other things out here that you know, all this stuff has sort of shaped me. And being part of Brave Angels, we've had conversation. There, thing is they're not afraid of, difficult conversations. So for them, it's about the political divide, but they also have conversations about race, like, you know, difficult conversations that are done in a in a very constructive way usually. And so that got me reading some books, you know, that we've read a bunch of books on race from both sides of the fence and feel like a lot of it opened my eyes. And I just wanna, I think it's important to talk about difficult things, and I feel safe doing it with you guys. So you for that. Yeah. Appreciate that, Susan. Marin, you're next in my lineup over here. So you wanna Hi, everyone. Marin High School. Let's see. I'm in Chicago. Sorry. Let's say that. Why am I involved? So Andre and I have been best friends for about 26, 27 years now in the community of yes. We we've known each other over half of our lives, and I've realized I've had so many of these conversations, you know, safely with him in the context and confines of our friendship. And, and through having these conversations, I've realized I have stuffed a lot. And I just mean that because similar to Andre and Todd's friendship, I have many friends, who are white. I grew up in an all-white suburban community, in Arlington, Texas, which is, in between Dallas and Fort Worth. But I wasn't having conversations, about race, in my with my classmates in my community. And I would say even within the black community that was usually at my church because, you know, I stood out as being the one who went to the white school and lived on the white side of town. And so through just my friendship with Andre, I've learned a lot about myself. I've explored a lot of my feelings, thoughts, and perspectives, and I've also just felt like sometimes when Andre and I were talking, I was like, it would be great if we had a white person here or an Asian person here or a Jewish person here, you know, to hear their perspective, of what it is that we're saying and what we're experiencing. So I'm really excited to get a chance to do that, with this group of people. Completely trust Andre and Todd, so I know for them to select you that this is gonna be a great conversation. So, happy to be here. Thank you. And, Landon, you wanna round us off? Sure. Landon, and I grew up in Utah and moved to San Diego about 15 years ago. Yeah. What do I bring to the table? What perspectives? I grew up, as a Mormon and then later deconverted from that. I grew up in in an urban poor urban part of Utah, but all my grandparents were rural ranchers, so I grew up partially on their ranch and learned a lot of values from that part of the country. And, yeah, I'm a father of 4 and, husband, and, you know, family's always been, like, the key critical foundation of my life. That's the values that I grew up with. And it still is, but I always have felt this, like, blindside to, you know, the black experience because I just didn't grow up with black people. And I've just I just hear what's in the news constantly. It's just, like, fire hose of information, and I and I feel things. And I wonder, like, is that, am I ignorant? You know? I just don't under I sometimes I just don't understand. You know? And so I would love to be able to have these kind of conversations because, you know, it would be nice to understand from how why, you know, black America feels certain ways, what they feel, and, you know, how can we, try to move together in the United States, you know, as more of an us and less as, less as tribes. So Awesome. What do you all like, how do you how do you take that all in as you hear everybody what everyone had to say? Like, what how does it sit with you? What does it make you think, feel before we launch into kind of your specific questions? I'm curious. Any thoughts? That sounds good. Yeah. It all sounds great. I mean, I will say, appreciated, Landon. A lot of what you said set out to me a lot in terms of, number 1, what I've heard and what I understand about the Mormon church. Mhmm. And, also, number 2, I'm, like, a generation removed from a farming family. Andre knows my family is from a small town in Central Texas called Palo Alto. It was a black yeah. It's a black farming community. It's in my great grandfather, like, honestly, you know, bought the land and was, among the first black men to own land in that area. My family still has land there. And so my dad kind of grew up on the farm and then raised us in the city, and we have all these jokes in the family about, you know, my dad should have raised us on the farm. Yeah. And, you know, especially when I do things like stand on a chair when crickets run by. Yeah. You might feel Oh my god. He's like, oh goodness. She's so skinny. But I do, I love I mean, my family still goes back, there, you know, for the holidays and things like that, because coming together and celebrating that we are, you know, still a black farming family, and that's where a lot of our values come from. Yeah. You know, so I was it relating a lot to what you were saying? Yeah. And I I'm sure you still have really, an affinity for that area too. Right? Like, yes. Absolutely. Lovely. It's like it's like your spiritual reasons. Yeah. Yeah. And I was listening to Marcus being a police officer and thinking, wow. With so much of what I was thinking about prior to this, that adds a whole another level of, wow. I wanna know more. I wanna and, also, there's a thought in the back of my head is part of my nervousness is does someone like me belong in a conversation like this? I don't I mean, because that can be questioned in some circles. Like, you know What leads you to ask that, Susan? I'm very curious about that. What leads you to ask that? I'm a middle-aged white woman that some you know, it's worry about being called a Karen or something. You know? Just I don't know. Just being stressed about that. You know? Do I have anything valid to add here? I you guys have made me feel like I do, but, you know, I'm willing to question whether, you know, my experience can hold as much relevancy as people who have lived and walked in a diff you know, different shoes than I have. It's interesting you say that because as you were introducing yourself, I had the thought whether Susan had had anything she wants to teach or impart to the group. To teach me? Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Anything you would like to teach? Because, like, for example, Meredith shared that we've had many conversations like this, but we've never had, you know please don't be offended about the white girl in our conversations. And so that perspective was missing. And I can't speak for mayor, but maybe I was assuming a lot of things about white women that I just shouldn't assume that I think you all know things that you don't know. Yeah. I I've no you just struck me so off guard with that thing about, do you have a do I have anything to teach? Like, that's so like, wow. I mean, didn't occur to me that I had something to teach coming in here. You do. Or I that I would even put it that way. I mean, I feel like I wanna learn from you guys, but, okay. Well, I feel like I feel like it's been a common theme in a lot of what you all have said. I mean, Meryn talked about it with regard to her relationship, her friendship with Andre. Landon talked about it, missing that experience. Marcus talked about he feels like there's certain things that aren't voiced or expressed within the context of certain conversations about. So I feel like there there's a sense among everybody where that there are missing pieces, right, to the conversation in each of our minds. And how can there not be, right, because we have our own experience. Marin, you, I think your question probably would be a great one to kick it off because of some of what was brought up in the intro around, like, our backgrounds. So do you wanna you had a question you had a question around what we learned about each other growing up. I that's a general way of saying it. You could say it in a more specific way. But can you also just give some when you when you ask your question, can you give some context, like, why you're asking it, what the thoughts and feelings are behind it? Like, why you why you wanna know this would be really Yeah. So in general, you know, my question was kind of, what do you learn about black people, growing up just because, you know, some of the questions and assumptions I made as I shared, I grew up in a very white community, and sometimes some of the questions that were asked me, I grew up in the upper middle class. I'm the daughter of a doctor and a lawyer, and some of the questions that were asked of me, you know, in terms of, oh, you know, you play classical piano? Or, oh, there are black people who live like that? I thought the Cosby Show was fake. Or, oh, you know, things like that. I'm like, what do you learn in in in general about black people? That that's just something and I and I said that list this, like, not only, you know, amongst those who I mean, we are all American, but I've also said the same thing or wondered the same thing of friends of mine who grew up in other countries around the world. Like, when they come to the US, when they immigrate to the US, someone was like, what do you learn about black people? And I've heard slavery and Martin Luther King. Like, those are kind of the two things. But I am interested, in terms of what you have learned about black people, whether it's in your schools or in your homes or communities or churches. And by the way, for each question, because Andre and I did this as well, and we just think it's, you know, hell healthy, fair approach. We'll ask that generally. So we'll ask, you know I would like so first, I'm gonna be let me be explicit. I would like the black participants to also answer. Yeah. Yeah. About and I would say both ways. Like, what did you learn about white people and what did you learn about white people, right? So, but let's start with Marin's question. Landon and Susan, do you wanna take a stab at that? Like, what did you hear about black people growing up through whatever means in the family, in the community, various community institutions through, you know, maybe even through media, whatever ways you saw things that taught you about, that that might have taught you or might have given you some sense of black people? What did you learn? I'm willing to jump in. I you know, having grown up in the south, I, you know, I had racism around me, just quite frankly, just blatant racism. And in what way? How did that manifest itself? Well, the Klan was active there when I was growing up. I mean, just really, like and people would say things, make jokes about black people that were just, you know, super offensive, and it was common. You know? I mean, it was just a very white area where I grew up, and it wasn't there was no sensitivity to that whatsoever. This you know, I grew up near Stone Mountain where there's a big carving of the Confederate heroes on the side of the mountain, and we celebrated that and sang songs around it and sang Dixie and all this stuff. So, you know, and I fully participated, not knowing really the full meaning of what I was doing. It was a source of southern pride. It wasn't thought of as for me, it wasn't thought of as, you know, racist or offensive. And I learned a lot since then, of course, but, but also in the media, you know, just having images in the media that weren't that weren't particularly flattering until, of course, like, things like the Cosby Show came along, and it was kind of eye opening. Yeah. And then going to the black areas of town, in Atlanta, there was quite a difference. I mean, it was a poor area. There was more crime. So, we were kind of taught to stay out of that area. That's and just honestly growing up, that's what it was. Just being completely honest. And what if I can ask a follow-up question. Like, either for yourself and or for, you know, others, you know, peers your peers, when you heard these the kinda open racism, what was it just did it just seem natural? Did it did it like, how did people how did people take that in, I guess, from in your view? In in white circles, which is where I was primarily Yeah. Was it just accepted as, like, true? Was it like, did it take anyone aback and just they just didn't feel comfortable saying it, or was it just not talked about? The whole gambit. The whole gambit. They laughed at the jokes, didn't they? Yeah. People laughed. Some people seemed some people were uncomfortable. Some people laughed. Some people, you know, and it just it just kinda would just go by. Mhmm. You know? So it's like everyone had their own reaction, but they would just, like, let it lie in some sense. Let it lie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not there was no outrage. No nobody would speak up. Generally terrible. Terrible. I mean, you know, you look back and you think, gosh. I was there, and I didn't say anything. And Mhmm. You know, how could I? But that's just honestly, that's Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Did does that, I don't wanna ask all the questions. Do you all how does that when you hear kind of what Susan shared, like, what are your thoughts about it, or what are your questions? Like, what do you wanna know more about? First of all, I appreciate the honesty. I really thought that the answer might have been nothing because sometimes I have made the presumption that when you're in, like, these all-white communities and kind of out of sight, out of mind, you know, sort of thing. Like, these are just people that we don't see, we don't interact with. So unless it's kind of forced, for lack of a better expression, unless it's forced on us by, you know, a black family moving in or, you know, a book in school or something like that. This is just a group of people we don't think about, and we're such the dominant population and dominant culture. We can go through our whole lives and not really think about or know much about or really ever even interact with black people. And so, I say that in a way in which I've learned to presume the best or assume the best about people that any ignorant statements and things like that come more from a place of we just didn't think about it and or, you know, or anything of that sort. There weren't black people around. So we didn't talk about race or think about you know, these are you just weren't there. But, like, Martin Luther King Day, we, like, read I have a dream. Right? You know? And that that was kind of it. So more statements were coming out of just, like, pure ignorance rather than hatred or malice. And Mary and Marcus, how does it when you when you hear that, like, how does it I don't know. How what's your what's your feeling about it? Like, when you hear that that conversation was going to just, like, oh, well, of course, you know, that that exists in parts of the country or like, how do you how do you feel about that? I mean oh, no. Go ahead, Marcus, please. I wanna I wanna go to Marcus. Go ahead. Go ahead. I think it's a mixture. Right? Because part of me feels frustrated because I feel like in today's environment, when black people or whether it's an as an individual or a community bring up concerns about racism, there is, you know, kind of this reaction from my pill of, like, what? We don't talk about or think about race unless you bring it up. And then I'm just like, but if you're talking that way in circles or we're not around, we're not making it up. So that that's a little bit of my initial, I guess, more negative side of the reaction being positively. I'm just so appreciative you were open and honest about it. It's hard to talk about, quite frankly. It's shameful. I mean May I ask a question, Susan, just to clarify? Especially since black people have such a history of servitude in this country, were there many black people employed in your community in service occupations? Yes. So you dealt with them in that capacity? Yes. Yes. I don't I don't have any striking memories of that. When I was very young, we had a maid in our house that helped my mom, and she was black. I don't remember her. I do remember, yes, a lot of service positions for people of color, but I don't remember having much really interaction with them. I don't know why. And you never felt that was odd when you were younger? No. I honestly, searching my memory, I don't remember feeling that way. But you shouldn't feel bad for feeling that way or because it wasn't odd. Because it was the norm. It was the norm. Yeah. You don't know what you don't know. Right. LA when moving to LA has opened my eyes in so many ways. It's such a multicultural place. Boy, I have changed out here, and it's for the better, I hope. But, yeah, it's and I the south isn't the same place it was in the seventies when I was coming of age. It certainly I, you know, I like to think a lot has changed. Mhmm. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe things are still really bad. I don't live there anymore, but I don't know. And, Marcus, how does all this sit with you? Personally, I feel that we have more similarities than we do have differences. I feel as Susan is saying back in the day, and they had a black maid that she didn't interact with. Like, you don't have to feel guilty about that because I feel like, in a sense, we're all ignorant. And that's not to say that we're dumb or less than, but, again, you don't know what you don't know. And whatever your norm is, whatever you're brought up around and whatever your surrounding is in your community, that's what you know. So, like, don't feel bad about it. As far as learning about blackness or black history, I am growing up in school, like, you really didn't learn about it. You learned the superficial things. You learned who Martin Luther King was and who Rosa Parks was, but you didn't dive into, like, the heart and soul of all the black inventors, and you didn't learn about Black Wall Street. And that's a community in Tulsa, Oklahoma that was bombed and burned. Like, you didn't learn those stories. So I'm ignorant in that fact, but it's no fault of my own. It's just because you don't know what you don't know. And so And, specifically, what messaging did you ever receive in your environment around black people? Because I know what I know the messaging I received. As far as what? As far as the people, either individually or as a collective. Like, what were your earliest memories of learning about your own race? Honestly, I really, I don't even know. I don't know. I came I didn't grow up in an all-black community. The part of town that I lived in was majority black. But I grew up in a school system and in a community that was integrated. So I grew up with white people, Mexican people. It wasn't really anything I don't have any recollection of things being divided. So, like, I really don't even know how to answer that question, honestly. And I yeah. And that's great. And, Todd, if I may, I wanna share my experience about, learning about my race. So my background, I was born to teenage parents, and both the parents of my parents or my grandparents lived in a housing project, which still stands today. And, you know, I was eventually when my well, my parents never married, but when my mother became of age, she eventually married. But in those years before her marriage and before siblings came along, we were there living with my grandmother in this housing project. And I just saw my earliest memory of being black is single mothers with fathers who are in and out of the picture. So my earliest message was really sort of, you can't really count on black men to necessarily be around or to support, and black women carry a lot on their shoulders. So my first message is within the race, we were divided. And when it came to us, vis a vis white people, they I won't say our history was so convoluted with them. What I was learning is that it almost was to their advantage for us to have this, this frame this framework, this structure in our race, this all these themes going on in our race. So I come when, you know, my father was alive, we had very candid discussions about race, me and all his children. And one of the biggest themes be leery of white people because from the origin of our, you know, being here in this country all the way to, you know, a lot of black mothers with single you know, who are single parents and fathers not around. That was a there was a continuum. So I kinda grew up with these messages of the women are our strength, and the white people have this sort of nefarious advantage that they want to maintain. And so that's I say all of this to say that's why I'm just keenly wanting to know the black participant's response because those were very distinct messages that I remember receiving from, you know, your earliest memories of, like, 6 7 to prop to adulthood. Then you show up to college and When Andre met me, he said kind of the same thing that many white kids would say to me growing up. He was like, oh, the definition is real. Like, Andre did that to me early in our friendship. Yes. Then he what did he say to you, Mary? Yeah. I'm sure it was just like, no. People really, he said he didn't like the Cosby show because he thought it was fake. He didn't know black people who live that way until he met like me when we were in college. The Cosby show was a lot of my stuff. Out there that it's not just, like, white people who think or asked or had questions around that. That was kind of one of the cores first questions in our, like, friendship. But, of course, I think, like, what? Like, when she said, mama, you know, my mother is a doctor, and my father is a lawyer. And I'm like, well, la dee da for you. She knew it. You don't know about it like that. And then you come to college, and you come to your freshman, your freshman room, and there's a there's me, a white guy, you know, with the bed next to you. And that's and that's a similar moment in my life because it was the first time I ever lived with white people and especially have one in my room. And I'm like, okay. So what is this about? Little did I know I just come, you know, in me with my naive Oh, you know, exquisite. Being like, hey. Sounds good. I will be exquisite. I'm not gonna tell you the messages that I heard about white people because they would be offensive. But I heard very negative things about white people, and so there was some trepidation being in close, proximity to 1. Like, now I have to have this person in my living space for 9 months. I mean, clearly, we're friends today. We made it work, but there were very real feelings. But, like I told Todd, I all I masked it all. You'll never know that I was thinking these things, but they were there. Landon, what, what about you? What was your experience like growing up? What was the messaging that you received around as you learned about the black community? I think it was kind of the prototypical conservative American experience, in that respect. You know, I grew up in a commune it was a pretty poor part of town where I grew up. There was a lot of Hispanics, but, only a few black people that I ever interacted with growing up. And so a lot of my ideals came from reading books, and those books were, they were called power tales. They were like these stories of American history. You know? And there it would be about Jim Thorpe, and it would be about Jackie Robinson and JCPenney and, you know, Abraham Lincoln. So I just ate that stuff up. You know? When I was little, I just read, read, read. And so I it gave me this, impression that our country had gone through you know, I read about the north, south divide and slave versus free states and how that shaped things. And then I read about the civil war, and then, you know, it was all cast in a fairly ennobling light, so that, you know, it was like, yeah, we did this noble thing to beat slavery. And then and then after that, it kind of tailed off because, you know, you heard about Jim Crow, but you never really learned about it because I got now, I look back and it was maybe a little bit too embarrassing for people to really face up to. You know? So I didn't learn about a lot of that. I learned about, you know, desegregation and the civil rights movement, and then, you know, it was equality of opportunity, and it was almost like this you know, we did it. You know? We got equality, and, you know, now we're America together. You know? And so that was this idea that I had in my mind growing up, and I and I was so I was actually proud, you know, of that idea. I was like, wow. This this, proud of the people who tried to bring this about and who sacrificed for it, and it was just not it was not very real world, but it was it was a story. And then I came, and then the other thing, probably the way that I learned most about black people was through rap. You know? Mhmm. So that was a lot of my friends were into rap, and I listened to it, and I was like, well, that's just unhealthy. And so I never had a very high I just had this very I just didn't understand, like, why that was interesting or a good thing to think about and talk about because I just didn't have the story behind why these things were being said. Right? So I remember being distinctly disappointed when I got a little bit older, and went to college, that oh, wow. It's not you mean we we're still, like, it's not resolved at all? It's just, still in fact, he learned about Jim Crow and the, you know, the Tulsa race riots and stuff, and it was a little bit shocking. So, and very disappointing compared to what I previously held in my mind. So, Can I ask a follow-up question to that? Please. Yeah. Yeah. Knowing what I know about the Mormon church, I would love to know if there were any discussion or any learning about black people through that lens given my understanding that we weren't really allowed to either be in the church or have leadership roles in the church till, like, the eighties. Yeah. So that was black people were, allowed to be in the church, except they couldn't hold, the priesthood, meaning that you couldn't have, like, the authority of God, basically. And that was really strange to me. That was, one thing that really stood out to me just because we it was basically the story of the Mormon church was Well, until the 19 1972, you know, the black people could not hold the priesthood, but then God gave us a revelation that they were they were ready. It was kinda like that. You know? And it, it didn't really make a big difference because Mormon communities were almost exclusively white at the time. Mhmm. So it wasn't like a big sticking point, but then former communities started diversifying and more and more people have that has become a sticking point and a source of, you know, difficulty in their faith. It's hard to keep that narrative going when you see that, you know, that we were also racist in our policies and changed our mind. You know? It's kinda hard to say that God was right behind that, you know, the whole time. Right? So Mhmm. So this was a this is something that fuels a lot of people to really question their beliefs in the Mormon church still today, among other things. And it also was really difficult for me, in college and in the years after, as I slowly deconverted. That was one of the points that I could never I just couldn't ever say that that that was, that was gone. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for watching this episode of Healing Race and stay with us for a scene from our next video. If you wanna see more conversations like the one you just watched, please subscribe to our channel, share this video with friends and family, and like and comment on the video below. If you'd like to be a guest on one of our episodes and have an open real conversation about race, email us atguestshealingracehow.com. And if there are topics you think we should cover, we'd love to hear them. So please email your ideas to topicshealingracehow.com. As always, thanks for your support. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you. Now, here's a scene from our next healing race. I've learned, for example, like, white women were just, like, the ideal. They were the ideal in beauty. They were the ideal in femininity. They were, you know, the ideal that, like, every man wanted 1, and that honestly, like, if a black man were good enough, you would know he was good enough because he got a white woman. That, that sort of thing. And so I do remember, you know, being young and, I mean, while I have braids now, I relaxed my hair straight. There were times, like, I remember, like, I would, like, pretend to toss my hair and walk and act like a white woman thinking that that's gonna be boys like me, and things like that. I don't know if y'all ever seen the movie Precious, but there's a part in the movie where she's looking in the mirror and she's daydreaming about being white. I can relate to that, and I cried in the theater because I remember doing that when I was really young. So it was like, you know, and, you know, like, while we were kids, you just remember, like, junior high and high school where there was always, like, homecoming queen and prettiest and all of that, and they were all certain looking white women. I'm sorry. Mary, you hurt my heart when you were talking about being a little girl and thinking that a white girl was, or white woman was the ideal. That just hurts. That was really pains me.