LizaWasHere

If you ever click on the posts at the bottom of those BlogHer ads that run in the right hand side of this blog, you may have noticed that they’ve started featuring a member post and talking about it on the BlogHer site.

This week, the featured BlogHer post of the week is about race and friendship. There’s also been a bit of drama on the topic around some of the feminist and mommyblogosphere of late.

I’ve given a lot of thought to that topic over the years, but I haven’t written much about it here. In fact, the only posts I can find are related to my high school reunion and some of my reading material.  Clearly my posting about race lags way behind my thinking about it.

Here’s what Miss Britt said that provoked this post:

The last thing I want is to insulate myself or my kids from the diversity that this country – and the world as a whole – has to offer. There is real danger that grows from that kind of ignorance. And yet, I don’t want to begin befriending people because of the color of their skin and the cultural learning experience that they can provide to my family.

“Hello, yes, you there. You look ethnic. What are you doing for Sunday dinner? Me and my socially tolerant and diverse family would like to invite you over.”

Somehow I doubt that is what Kelly was suggesting.

But what’s the answer?

No. Seriously. This is the shit I think about. If we run the risk of not seeing color simply because there isn’t any color in our lives to see, is the solution to seek out opportunities to “diversify”? And if we do, doesn’t that type of ulterior motive sully both the seeker and the sought?

At the risk of opening a shitcan of worms, Oh Great Blogosphere, discuss.

Britt has cogently identified the overanalytical dilemma of the white liberal.

I don’t have a magical “right answer” but I have some experience, and I have some success and some failure in this area. And while like many white people in the US, I’m not entirely comfortable talking about race, I’m also not so uncomfortable talking about race that I have to avoid it altogether.

So.

In a broad sense, I think that context is the most important piece of the question of how we build lives that are inclusive and diverse.

In other words, if you want a life that includes people from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, classes, etc, you have to put yourself in places where you will naturally meet people who are different from you.

This is kind of like how losing weight takes exercising more and eating less. Obvious, and yet not easy.

Most people in the US live in fairly homogeneous communities, go to homogeneous churches or other worship facilities, spend our recreational time in homogeneous spaces, etc. In fact, I think most of us become somewhat uneasy if we find ourselves “out of place” — in the distinct minority — in many of those places.

In some cities, the work world is a little bit more integrated. Atlanta surprised me with how diverse the professional world was, although even my former employer, diverse as it was, had racial clustering in some positions and departments. The legal department was far more white than the call center, for example. In Washington DC, support staff for organizations were often African American, while professional staff were more likely to be white.

But mostly, I think the only way to achieve diversity is to seek it out. And in the case of our children, to foist it on them.

And that seeking has to be from the heart, not as Britt so amusing described, like trying to get a Yahtzee by having friends from each category. Or “friends” as it seems like it would be if the only basis for the friendship were the cultural enrichment/liberal street cred you can provide to me by being my token ______ friend. Or having me as your token lesbian friend.

In a lot of ways, I was incredibly lucky as a kid and teenager. My parents actively worked to create a diverse circle of friends, and to put my sister and me in contexts where we would naturally meet people who were different from us.

In school, that worked amazingly well.

At church, it was a lot more awkward and uncomfortable. The church we went to was probably 60% African American, and uber-liberal on every political-religious issue you can think name. But it was also a mixture of classes, and the majority of the white church families were middle to upper middle class, while the majority of the African American families were working class or poor. There were exceptions, in both cases, but I’m giving you a fair description of how it felt.

So that’s what I think works.

I also think it only works if you actively maintain it.

I am still friends with a surprising number of people who I knew in high school. But of the 20 or 30 people I hung around with the most in high school, maybe half a dozen were biracial or African American. And of the dozen or so I’m still in touch with regularly, and NOT just via facebook, 3 are biracial. And two of them are siblings.

I’ve had occassional email contact with 2 others, but one is currently living in Monrovia and I didn’t even know it until I looked her up on the State Bar Association website, so I don’t think I get to claim a serious ongoing friendship in those cases.

All friendships take maintenance, yes. But I think that maintenance needs to be more conscious if you have an authentic desire for a diverse experience of life.

I’m going to rat myself out about my most educational failure on this front, and then declare this post done. But it also speaks to this consciousness issue.

Early in my career, I worked for a non profit organization in Washington DC, which focused on Internet constitutional law issues. I often sat in big coalition meetings and made little marginal notes about the number of women and people of color in the room. (Usually about 10-15% women, and maybe a person of color. Seldom 2.)

My organization was asked by Senator Daschle’s office to recommend several candidates for the Children’s Online Protection Act Commission. I was the liason to his office. We went back and forth with some of the people we knew wanted the appointment, discussing the politics of this interest group, that corporation, etc, and eventually made a recommendation of 3 people.

They were all older, white guys. Typical of the industry. But EVEN the LIBRARIAN we recommended was an older white guy!

After the whole thing was over, Daschle’s office called back. They told us that they had followed our recommendations, but that they were extremely disappointed in us for sending such a homogeneous list, and that if we ever had the opportunity to do something like that again, we had better do better.

And they were right.

I ***immediately*** could think of women who we could have recommended, who worked in similar positions (perhaps less senior) in the same corporations as the men we recommended. And God help me if we couldn’t have found female librarians who were up to the job.

Yes, we would have had to work a little bit harder to find people of color. But I know we could have done it.

Just because the first people who came to mind for these positions were a certain demographic does not mean that those were the only qualified or the best qualified people.

And you can bet that I’ve never forgotten that experience. In fact, my embarassment over my own role in helping to fill that commission has helped keep me mindful about diversity and outreach in later public events.

And it has me very appreciative of the work groups like BlogHer do, to make sure that they are inclusive well beyond any kind of token level.

What do you think? Can we ever build an effortlessly diverse community or life? If you “don’t see color” are you accepting of everyone or blind to the impact race has on our lives?