I just want to say that I've really appreciated your posts about this.
I'm white, and work at a library in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. And there are the days I feel less clueless than I was last year-- and there are the days when I feel like I have only begun to chip at my cluelessness. There was the day I grinned for an hour because someone called me "sister library lady," and there were the days when I hear people call me a racist because I tell the teenagers at the computer to be quiet, or because I don't tell the teenagers at the computer to be quiet. And there are the days I catch myself thinking something racist. There are the days when I feel fiercely proud of this neighborhood and this library and the work I do, and there are the days when I feel ashamed of the local government because they took so long to do anything about our tiny little unfunded shoebox of a library, while they built big beautiful libraries in the white neighborhoods.
And mostly what this means is that I fall on my face more than I did when I didn't have to think about race, and I do it more publicly. No gold stars-- just work.
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I'm white, and work at a library in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. And there are the days I feel less clueless than I was last year-- and there are the days when I feel like I have only begun to chip at my cluelessness. There was the day I grinned for an hour because someone called me "sister library lady," and there were the days when I hear people call me a racist because I tell the teenagers at the computer to be quiet, or because I don't tell the teenagers at the computer to be quiet. And there are the days I catch myself thinking something racist. There are the days when I feel fiercely proud of this neighborhood and this library and the work I do, and there are the days when I feel ashamed of the local government because they took so long to do anything about our tiny little unfunded shoebox of a library, while they built big beautiful libraries in the white neighborhoods.
And mostly what this means is that I fall on my face more than I did when I didn't have to think about race, and I do it more publicly. No gold stars-- just work.