Elenamary

A white female friend of mine emailed me and asked me about Obama and his church affiliation and how she was bothered by his church.

Quite honstly, I think that the more you mention someone’s color, the more we are driving a wedge. It bothers me when people even mention it, because it doesn’t matter. If you really want to move on from racism, my opinion is that you forget about color and just deal with the person. I guess that is what is so unusual to me about the site and the church. I don’t recall the catholic sites or jewish sites talking about the white values and the white way.

I was angry at first. How could my friend be so ignorant? So obtuse.

I told her we had the Greek Orthodox church, the Russian Orthodox Church. That I go to catholic mass in Spanish, a mass dedicated to the helping of Latinos. And my church runs the Latino Center of Hope.
I used to go to a German Lutheran Church that came into being to protect German cultures and beliefs.
And that our mutual friend wanted to attend a Polish Lutheran Church but can’t find one in Columbus.

We can’t disregard race, ethnicity, gender. While Obama won in Iowa , we should recognize that Iowa has a 2% African-American population and that 27% of the prison population in Iowa is African-American. We have to recognize that we need to support disenfranchised groups. This is why we unite as feminists in the womens movement, not because we are trying to drive a wedge but because we are trying to support each other in an unfair and imbalanced society…the same can be said for my church.

I thought I had made a good argument but she responded to my rebuttal with “I’m not saying you should disregard your roots, I’m just saying I don’t care what color you are.”

How can you not care? How can she not, as my friend, recognize that color is important in this society and that effects my life every day, even if she doesn’t care? I care what color you are because I recognize that it effects your personal experience. I care what gender you are, what country you are from, what languages you speak, because it effects your personal experience. Doesn’t she know that it is white privilege that allows her not to care about race, that allows her to not have to deal with it? How can my friend be so ignorant? I emailed another friend asking for advice on how to deal with the ignorance. And she responded, among other things, that my friend will never care until she decides to care and that it doesn’t sound like she wants to care.

I don’t really know how to convince someone that race matters. Or that I sting from within when my friend, a person I love, says she doesn’t care what color I am, and ignores a part of who I am. The best way to articulate why it is wrong to just ignore race as the problem, that I have seen yet, is from my friend who I went to for advice, and she put it in this light:

Ignoring race is like saying - you know, I don’t think we should mention money. Poor people will just be more marginalized if we mention that they don’t have money. Let’s just ignore it and focus on individual people- but not their circumstances.