I was nine years
old the first time I rode a bus. It was 1955 in Texas. We had traveled by car to
Texas from Ohio for my Dad’s work. When he went off with the car for the day,
my mom decided we would take the bus to the zoo. As my mom carried my baby sister in her arms and struggled to get money out to pay the bus
driver, she told me to take my younger sister and find a place for us to sit. I
spied a bench seat at the back of the bus that would hold us all. As soon as my
sister and I sat down, my thrill in finding a spot quickly disappeared. The
people around us resolutely stared out the window, people in the front turned
and glared, and my mom didn’t sit with us! I was mortified but had no idea what
I had done.[1]
When we got off the bus, I expected my mom to tell me what I had done wrong,
but she was silent.
About
10 years ago, my daughter and I went to South Africa with a group of
sociologists for a People to People program. One afternoon, an unplanned
opportunity arose to visit with a woman who somebody knew. Along with a few of
our traveling companions, we went by bus to the outskirts of the city, met the
woman, and took a stroll with her through her township, saying hello and,
following her lead, chatting here and there with children and adults who were
out and about. Upon my return to the states, I gave a presentation about
my experiences in South Africa. One of my white university colleagues who
is a world traveler was horrified at my mention of this informal afternoon. She
ended her monologue of fears and dangers with a stern rebuke: “Do not get off
the bus.”
These
two experiences came to mind as the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville
and its aftermath exploded. Getting on and off the bus that day in Texas
introduced me to the power of the unspoken, the unquestioned, and the
unchallenged and how feelings of shame and ignorance are entangled in learning
“one’s place,” even when that place is one of privilege. Getting off the bus in
a South African township meant facing the persistence of deep inequalities and
suffering in spite of the end of apartheid, hearing the hopes and visions of
people as they imagined what was possible, and struggling with understanding my
role.
What can I learn from these past experiences? One lesson is
to acknowledge that as a white person, I have a privileged seat on the bus
where racial segregation and hatred persist despite efforts to eradicate them.
A second lesson is that as a white person with privilege, I
have often sat in my seat without noticing or questioning where others are
seated. I can choose from moment to moment to speak about, question, and
challenge racist violence and hatred around me or I can insulate myself from
it. This choice is white privilege.
A third lesson is that just as riding in an air-conditioned
bus was not the way to experience South Africa, staying on the bus-no matter where I sit-is not the
way to understand and challenge racism and violence in the United States. I’ve
got to get off the bus to understand the deep inequalities that
continue to plague our country, to listen to the hopes and visions of people
who cannot choose to opt out of racial oppression, and to figure out my role in
confronting racism and creating social justice.
[1] It
wasn’t until 1956 that the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on buses
was unconstitutional.
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