Walker and discovering our own part in racism

I must comment of Joyce Walker's peice, "Textural Textuality: a personal exploration of critical race theory."

I found myself navigating through the "interwebs" of this text like a splunker exploring further and further into the cave...without a map to get back to the fork in the road of which I had decided to diverge. Maybe this is what Borges meant to discuss when he wrote "Garden of the forking path."

In any case, I do think that the text that I was able to navigate speaks clearly of our postmodern connectitivity and separation from and to others. But something even more strange occured while reading this text that I need to address.

While reading Dr. Walker's personal experiences of encounters of racism in her own life...I began to think about my own upbringing. I too was from a small town (in the South which may or may not contribute any complexties to my experiences) where we prided ourselves on the concept of community. However, I first learned about racism about three months after I began middle school. Then in the seventh grade, I began noticing that the white girls that were "going with" African American boys were teased a lot. This disturbed me because I was developing a crush on one of the drummers in band class. When I asked my aunt (a teacher at the middle school I attended) if she would disown me or not like me if I dated an African American her response left me very confused. Afterall, she and her sister both were considered very liberal thinkers in our town, and they always harped on me about how we should never judge anyone too quickly...they lectured me for hours on the ills of racism in our society and the destructive nature of it. She told me, in the midst of curling her hair that morning, that she would allow me to date someone outside of my race, but she would worry about me and feel sorry for me...the way she saw it, relationships were hard enough without adding the outside pressure society places on interracial relationships. I often think of how I have distanced myself from African American male friends once I thought they held romantic interests in me, and wondered if I too were contributing to racist attitudes by adopting the same viewpoints of my family.

But then, as I was contemplating all this, I heard a knock on the door...which is strange since no one ever just shows up at my place. But I decided to answer it and came face to face with a young African American male. He explained that he was a Norfolk State student and was applying for a scholarship and needed to collect signatures and get people to sign up for subscriptions to books or magazines. But in his introduction, he stated that one of the requirements of the scholarship was to get the signature and also to get the person buying the subscription to fill out a quick survey stating that they were not frightened by him...he even lifted his sweater slightly to show that he was wearing a crisp white shirt and tie. Naturally, I felt bad saying no to this young man, but I'm a college student as well and have limited funds...but I started thinking about it after he left. Why had he gone out of his way to assure me that he was not dangerous and why did he want to get documentation that I did not feel intimidated by him? And what scholarship program would want their recieptients to document, "Hey, this person was not afraid of me when I talked to them." I mean, I can understand if we were in GA or AL in 1890 this being a concern...but why would people be afraid to open their door to a young African American in dress pants and a cardigan in 2008? What type of message does that say about race issues in America?