RANDOM THOUGHT - (Skin)tone it down

My family is mixed race, and I grew up in a sea of white, so I'm accustomed to treating white people on a case-by-case basis as to whether I like a person's personality and character.  I've never generalized or thought of one white person as a credit or discredit to their entire race.  My uncle drilled that into me.  I'll let my cousin hit on that in a bit.

And then there's my cousin.  She told me about this "cute guy at work" and said he was her complexion, her "favorite color".  The moment it came out of her mouth, I saw the look on her face and we both knew something had changed in her.  Something unsettling.  She explained it along the following lines:

"It's been a very long time since I stopped worrying about whether my skin color was socially acceptable, and now this.  To hear myself say my own skin is my favorite color means I'm more aware of my brown-ness.  So what if white people find their own skin color not just good, but preferential?  Does that alone make a white person racist or bigoted?  Knowing that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania has white supremacist supporters means all of a sudden, I can't trust random strangers with white skin like I used to.  I hear 'white devils' in my head and it scares me and it makes me angry.  I haven't had rocks thrown at me for being an unwanted black in a white neighborhood since my teens!

"It makes me mad because the voice is persistent and insistent, like shouting in a whisper that I'm in danger in their presence.  My place in society is insecure.  It makes me mad because it shouts louder than the memory of my dad telling me over and over that the Civil Rights Movement would have been dead in the water without support from white people.  It makes me mad because I still trust and love the white people I've always known, loved and trusted, and why shouldn't I?  They haven't changed.  How could I even bring this up with them?

"I'm 57% European, and 38% Sub-Saharan African, so can I afford to pick sides in race riots?  Skin color is no indicator of character or income level or education level or virtue or vice.  But America may be boiling up.  This is backlash for a Black man to make it to the White House, but I never thought it would infect the way I think, the way I see skin color.  It's making me paranoid.  Will that redneck in the pick up truck threaten my safety?  I used to know that rednecks aren't all racist.  Live in the south long enough and you even know that the Confederate Flag doesn't necessarily mean racism abides in the house behind it.  It takes discernment.  Discernment, not complacency.

"Even saying that the cute guy was my favorite color doesn't even mean that I won't consider dating white guys or darker guys again.  I could meditate on this, and I'm hoping I'll come to see that the only thing that changed inside me was I came to find myself my own favorite person and nothing more.  Me first, not me only.  I just wish the race paranoia would cipher itself out."

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Mackenzie

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