Curious, white-bread girl with few models.
Stephenie Swindle,
Brattleboro, VT
I may say the wrong thing or ask the questions that every privileged person asks, but I still want to understand and be able to talk about race.
Miles, Duke, Ella. Music conquers race.
Ernie Hills,
Sacramento, CA.
“As a young musician growing up in a white bread and mayonnaise world, I revered the recordings of black jazz musicians. This, more than anything else, is responsible for erasing the lingering racial animosity that was part of my family’s unspoken legacy.
Thanks for being with us today!”
Ashamed by white bread and atrocities.
Devin Day
Washington, DC
As a straight, white, twenty-something man, I am imminently aware of my privileges, given randomly due to my genetic make-up alone. But with a full heart and an excess of empathy growing up, it always bothered me when people around me were discriminated against or treated differently just because of something as arbitrary and silly as skin color–let us always remember that race is socially constructed.
Still, race can be a link to culture and heritage and family, a symbol of togetherness and unity, and as a “white bread” American with little clue about most of my ancestors–I’ve been told I have English, French, Swedish, and some Irish in me–I feel shame that most of my ethnic history is at best one of complicity in Native American genocide, slavery, colonialism and oppression of non-whites and non-males; and at worst one of active hatred, intolerance, and violence towards others. I hope beyond hope that my ancestors did not participate in these horrific atrocities, and even more that my family tried to do something about it. Ask yourself this: if you lived in the era of slavery, or during the wanton theft of Native American lands, or before women could vote or work outside the home, or in the era of segregation or apartheid, or before gays could be married, what would you do? How would you act? Would you be complicit in the hatred and discrimination of a whole group of human beings, or would you do something about it?
