In My Life, I Have Been a Racist
Story by Petula Lee
Art by Hector Gonzalez

To all those affected by a white man's obsessive affectation for greed and hate,

I must first apologize for my lack of culture because I have attempted to steal yours to make up for the one stolen from me by this society.  I am deeply sorry.  With that said I find it discouraging.  This disconnect between people who live in the same city, state and country created by the dividing line of race said to be eliminated from the white middle's mentality during the civil rights movement of the 1960's. Instead of being eliminated, racism has become folded into the fabric of life in suburbia.  It proliferates our community as jokes, racial slurs and blind discrimination in schools and housing.  The saddest part of this problem, this dilemma that is literally killing humanity, is the poor and colored people living and struggling in the city can see the disparity but the white people in suburbia cannot.  There is no connection to reality in a place like the suburban mentality.  Replacing intellect and caring is the need to dominate and control wives and the lives of those less monetarily fortunate.  They cannot see the culture and love of communities different than theirs because differences are not celebrated.

In my life, I have been racist.  Not out of hatred but rather out of a fear of the unknown and because I was taught to think that the people different than me were going to hurt, rape or kill me.  I now know that it is us white people who should be feared.  We are the killers.  Bent on destruction as apposed to creation, we kill everyone and everything to make up for a lack of love and understanding of our own cultures.  Since the beginning of the United States, we white Europeans have killed, diseased or enslaved all the colored people who have come to this country or who were here before us.  Then we place them in ghettos with poor or failing schools and feed them lies about how they can rise above the poverty and succeed.  But life is here for them to fail because we have created and contributed to a system designed for them to end up in jail, on the streets or worse, dead.  We have created a system for failure, even for ourselves.  There is only one way to fix this that I can see:  realize the truth about our actions and then rebuild the country through rebuilding our perceptions about life and community.

I struggle now with conversations to enlighten my family or friends about their racism.  I try to show them that it is about the money they spend, where they shop and what they eat because they don't see the effects of their purchases. They have no idea where the stuff in the malls comes from or that most food is picked or processed by immigrants illegal, or otherwise.  It's sad though, because most of the time they don't care enough to learn why the kids on the east side are in gangs or what life is like on the streets.  They care more about who is who in Hollywood and the next big purchase they are going to make.

For the past year now, I look out from my white body with a head hung in shame at the thought of what and where I came from.  Sometimes, when surrounded by a community who I would not have spoken to a few years before, I can't speak.  The guilt for what my people have done and continue to do eat at my words and the only thing I want to communicate is tears for the years of pain people like my family have caused.

I promise to all that I will not continue this cycle of fear and hate.

My life will be to begin to repair the created wounds.

Signed,
One white girl struggling to break free from her racist suburban pre-existence—petula lee

Click here for another story:

Target of Terror
I Received Death Threats Just Because of My Religion
Story by Jolly Bimbachi