Karen Polis,
Long Beach, CA
I am a 59-year-old white woman who grew up in a well-to-do suburb of Washington, DC. I wasn’t aware of the racist conditioning I grew up with until I became a Los Angeles Public Defender in 1990. I have since had numerous jobs in the criminal justice system, all of which dealt with the needs of the Black community. I after the 2016 election, I went back to school full-time at Howard university. I got a Masters of Social Work. I chose Howard so that I could work on issues of race. I am now a licensed independent clinical social worker. I am practicing law as a Los Angeles Public Defender again, and providing teletherapy for a handful of Black clients in the Washington, DC public health system. I have never told a Black person that racist thoughts pop into my head every day. They are thoughts that stem from TV, commercials, attitudes, the news, etc. growing up in the 60s and 70s. Fortunately, I race was a neutral issue in my household. Still, the conditioning was very strong. When the racist thoughts pop into my head, I swat them away, sometimes 10 times in a minute. They are thoughts of judgment, lesser than, distrust. Are used to go through the process of looking at the thought, questioning it, immediately, concluding that that is not my value or feelings about the Black community. Today the process is much quicker. By repeatedly confronting the racist thoughts, my mind now nimbly swats them away. I’ve had this conversation with white people. I say that the difference between me and a member of the KKK is that I don’t believe my thoughts while they do. The more time I spend with Black people, the less the thoughts pop up I cannot control the thought coming into my mind, but I can control the thought that comes after that. I do not like these thoughts. They are extraordinarily uncomfortable. I don’t feel white guilt about having the thoughts because I understand that it comes from conditioning, not me. I also have thoughts about body size that stem from my conditioning as a competitive gymnast in the 70s. That said, the racist thoughts interfere with my peace. They feel bad. They feel angry and judgmental and demeaning and condescending. I feel yicky when I feel that way. Some people may feel empowered or strong when feeling superior. But it drains my peace when I feel judgmental. Being pelted with racist thoughts from within me feels like a lesser degree of hearing racist thoughts from other people. I’ve slowed down, my thinking enough that I can watch the thought come up, swat it away, new thought, back hand it, over and over again. It’s like playing tennis at Wimbledon where are the racist thoughts are lobbed against me from my subconscious brain, and returned to the server by my conscious brain. Only I’m not playing another person, but an infatigible ball machine fueled by 400 years of racist thinking. My family came to this country from Greece 100 years ago. Yet I have been conditioned by 400 years of American racism. At the Howard School of Social Work, we focused on the Black Perspective and were consciously challenged to look at our hidden feelings (e.g.: populations we would have trouble serving). I have taken that task to heart. I have four hour long conversations with an African-American friend of mine, who is a lawyer and a sneaker geek. We talk about issues of race and the world in a unique way. We have both bought microphones to start a podcast that we’ve been talking about for years. Our conversations talk about our varied experiences that always land us back in the middle. I am saving a copy of this in hopes that I will have the courage to share it with her in one of our talks. I am not there today. How do I tell a dear friend that tiny racist voices blather in my ear when we talk (sometimes)? Does it matter that I tune the voices out? That I don’t listen to them? Or is the point that my brain generates the racist thoughts at all? Hey, maybe she has racist thoughts about me when we talk? Wouldn’t that be grand. Now that would be an interesting conversation. How 2 friends silence the involuntary racist thoughts about one another and our communities, and more importantly, talk openly about it. Thank you for this opening. Best of luck with the project! KP
