*Trigger Warning* this post contains mature
situations that may trigger some people/survivors of assault or abuse.
I don’t make a regular habit of addressing issues, but lately the news and
social media keep hammering me with things that hit me hard emotionally, and I
really have something to say. I’ve never written about these things, so this is all a bit raw.
When I was a kid, set your way back machine for 1989, I was a little bit more
than a handful. My Dad left my life when I was five, and my mom worked full
time and went to school, and me? Well, I went a little wild – left to my own
devices. I was an avid maker of mix-tapes and reader of comic books. I was a 7th
grader with a bus pass, and we lived in Tucson at the time, and the city was my
playground. It was an over-all miserable time in my life, but I can look back
on the bright spots of it fondly. Candy and Baseball cards from the Circle-K
and used comics from Bookman’s – where I spent way too many afternoons reading
books and magazines that I’d never pay for – it was before the days of the
internet, and I read whatever I could, wherever I could.
The meat of this little tale though, has to do with my education. I lived in a
low rent apartment complex and attended a school that both served to teach me
more than the lessons that generally come wrapped in school books. I had lived
in Southern Illinois, and Western Kentucky, before moving to Arizona, and I had
dealt with a different sort of public school education before relocating to the
South West. I was thoroughly unprepared, sheltered a bit maybe, for the Spanish
language barrier. I was also completely unprepared for being hated for the
color of my skin.
I was chased from the bus stop at my school, and in
my neighborhood, more than a few times by angry children my age or older in
groups, sometimes being pelted with rocks, other times being hit with worse things.
White was not a thing to be. Evidently neither was
Asian-American or African-American. I had some Latino friends, but by and large,
I found that most of the native Spanish speaking children had their own groups,
cliques, and clubs, and the other races – the minorities – were seen as
un-people.
I had never had a very racially diverse group of
friends before in my life and suddenly my social circle was a melting pot. From
African-America and Asian-American to Indian and Native American, we all shared
a similar disdain from a majority populace that spoke a language we didn’t and
that a majority of wanted to marginalize us at best or, in the worst cases,
wanted to harm us for who we were.
I was hated in those situations, for nothing more
than being present and being white.
That didn’t last, for me. It was an isolated
incident in my life. It was a time and place that is filed away in my mind,
that I can look back on and remember, but it isn’t my day to day experience
anymore. Why? Because I learned different behaviors, to avoid those situations?
Yes. Because I eventually moved away from there? Yes. Because kids grow up? Yes,
that too.
But, I feel that living it was a positive
experience for me. I had a time in my life when being white wasn’t a positive
thing. Other people with other skin colors don’t get to have a limited exposure
to this kind of treatment, and then get to “get away from it”. It’s their
lives. It’s real. It’s every day. And it’s total bullsh*t.
I’ve seen far too many people talking about “white privilege” as a creation of
minority groups. They talk about it like it’s some kind of fiction that people
of other skin colors made up to somehow victimize white people. Guess what? That’s
bullsh*t, too.
Fast forward a year, and there was another lesson
for me. Something I never wanted to learn, but something life was going to
teach me. I was a more rebellious and more difficult to deal with child. I was
depressed in school, acting out at home, loud and obnoxious to those who cared
about me, and lost in a world of books to hide from all others my age that I
was too afraid to talk to. I was coming apart at the seams.
My mother, God love her, headed the advice of a
pastor and had me sent to a Baptist boarding school. All of the students were
going home for Christmas break. The only two left in the dorms were 8th
grade me, and a popular, awesome, senior football player who told me of the
wonders of the video game system in his room. He told me I should join him and
play some games. We were going to be friends. My social stock was going to be
on the rise, after break, and I got to play video games, too. Life was really
looking up.
Once in his room he suggested, as I was playing,
that we sit, and then lay on his bed. Then he said I should take off my shirt
and he’d give me a back rub. I thought that was odd, but he was a big popular
athlete guy, and I was a pudgy little 8th grader who was always alone
with my books. Who was I to argue? Right?
Some crying and screaming and attempts to kick him off later, all the while
with him telling me “Just let it happen. You’ll enjoy it.” He finally got sick
of my fighting and just punched me again and again until I was spent and simply
laid still and took what he wanted to do to me. I was numb. It hurt, and I was
crying, but my mind just turned off. I stared at the word Nintendo until that
was all I knew in the world – all I could wrap my mind around.
I was black and blue and bloody when it was over
and he shoved me out of the room, telling me I needed to get a shower, and that
if I told anyone my “ass was grass”. He had nothing to worry about. I wasn’t
going to tell anyone. I was too embarrassed, and hated myself too much for
letting that happen – for not being strong enough or smart enough to stop it or
prevent it. I wasn’t telling anyone. What he gave me in that room that day was
a lifetime of anger, and self—loathing, and misery. I did eventually ‘let it
happen’. I didn’t ever ‘enjoy it’.
(I’ve never written about this before and it never even
occurred to me, until writing this down, that after this I completely stopped
playing video games, and to this day still don’t have an interest in playing
them.)
Where I live now, where I’m at in my life, as a
thirty—something adult and father of three, is a completely different reality. I’m
not afraid. I’m not a victim. I don’t have to deal with suspicion of my actions,
or my motives, or my very presence, based solely on the fact that my skin in
pale. I am a man, so I don’t have deal with the fear that women have to deal
with every day, of becoming a victim of male-on-female violence simply for
being born a gender that society has allowed (for far too long) to be
mistreated. I am heterosexual, so I don’t have to worry about being the victim
of a hate crime simply for expressing myself or my love for another person.
These are privileges I enjoy, even if I didn’t ask for them, simply by being a
straight white man. The thing is, these aren’t privileges. They are basic human
rights – to live, and to love, and to exist without fear. That’s common sense,
or at least I believe it should be. The hour has grown far too late, for us not
to understand this, and not to eradicate the prejudices that promote racism,
sexism, homophobia, and a scads of social injustices that people try to
shelter, hide, obscure, and yet still promote through their daily life.
I’m not a fan of labels, personally. I never have been. I don’t see any other
way to deal with this kind of bigotry though, other than to call it what it is,
and by not being afraid to call it out when we see it – to not accept it. Call
it what you will – racism, rape culture, gender inequality, homophobia, hate,
lack of human compassion. It has to be called out, it has to shamed, and it has
to be clearly and plainly shown that it is not acceptable. Not here. Not now.
Not ever.
-Dennis Sharpe
