Val Geisler - it's never too late

I didn’t know what white privilege was until I was in college. I grew up in a predominantly white city and was taught colorblindness as a kid. My parents were doing the best they could with what they had and what they had was “we’re all the same no matter what color our skin is”. But it’s not true.

My freshman year in college in Cincinnati, a cop killed an unarmed black 19-year-old man named Timothy Thomas. Between 1995 and Timothy’s death, 15 black males suspected of crimes had been killed by Cincinnati police during confrontation or while in custody, including 4 since November 2000, while no white suspects were killed in that period. Peaceful protests started in Fountain Square and erupted into riots that went on for 4 nights. A 9pm citywide curfew was finally imposed to stop the riots.

I lived in the dorms on campus, as did my white boyfriend. We read about the curfew, knew several professors who had been at the protests (one of whom had been arrested), and calculated our risks. “It says if we are on our way home we aren’t violating curfew”, we said to ourselves. So my boyfriend and I decided to drive to the grocery store at 8:45pm, knowing full well we’d be heading home after 9. That’s just one level of white privilege, but I was still unaware of that fact.

In the car on 71 headed back from the store, a cop car pulled behind us. Oh shit, we thought. We’re gonna get arrested for being out past curfew. The cop car pulled to the lane next to us and sped up to drive side by side with our car. The two white officers looked over and I, from my passenger seat, made eye contact with the cop riding in their passenger seat. The two cops looked at each other, nodded, and then sped up some more to leave us in their dust.

We didn’t get pulled over because we were white. Two white kids out past a citywide curfew and we were left to our own devices.

This is white privilege.

And it's never too late to realize you have it.

I thought the colorblind approach was the kindest approach but I was wrong. People who look differently from me have wildly different experiences of life, just because of the way they look. We are not all the same.

As a parent I am realizing that the same colorblind approach I was taught has seeped into what I tell our girls. I’ve worked hard over the last year to change that, to teach our kids how good they truly have it. To read to them from books containing stories and pictures of kids who don’t look or live they do. To talk to them about what they hear at school, what they see in the world. To try to unwrap some of my inherent racism while walking them through the messy stuff right along with me.

If you’re unwrapping your own racism while parenting small children, I recommend the 3 in 30 Podcast episodes on racism. While making dinner recently I listened to episode 101: Why and How To Talk To Your Kids About Skin Tone & Race with Dr. Lucretia Berry. There are other episodes on racism on this show (not to mention countless other podcasts) and it’s incredibly helpful to hear another white woman say “hey, I’m nervous to talk about this but let’s do it anyways”.

Additionally, I setup a bookshop.org shop full of diverse books for our kids. It's an affiliate link but 1) profit on these sales go to a black woman-owned bookstore in Chicago and 2) any money I make from these sales will go right back into buying these books for public libraries and schools. I already bought one of each for my kid's elementary school and can't wait to donate more.

This is our work. We have to undo and fight against systemic racism. We can repair our internal brokenness while we repair our city. It’s time to rebuild.

If you're here for my thoughts on email marketing and wondering when I'm going to tell you what to do right now, I have a few ideas for you.

Take care of one another.

-Val

PS: My friend Shenee Howard put it well today and it's worth remembering: "Remember that our struggles are not just about dying at the hands of police but the injustices that happen in our day-to-day life." Do the work. Listen. Learn. Repeat.