I was very aware of the moniker "white trash", and vowed to avoid having that name be applied to me. The problem was, we lived in an old farmhouse right next door to the Stubbens. The Stubbens were a large family with a filthy house and yard. They had lots of kids, one of whom was named Martha, who was extremely obese and the subject of ridicule at school as a result. The whole family reeked of a strong bitter odor and there were rumors that they had once eaten a cat cooked over a fire. In short, the house next door to my own was inhabited by the very epitome of so-called "white trash". My siblings and I had an unspoken promise to each other to never share this information (ammunition) with anyone, so no one knew we lived next door to the most ostracized family in the school.
Instead, I tried to associate with the 'good kids'. I wanted, more than anything, to be a good kid, to be praised by the teacher in front of the class, to have my little ego stroked for all to see. In my town, which was a farm town turned suburb, it was the kids who had moved to the town from the city, with money for the latest styles and knowledge of what was cool and upcoming, who were the ones to emulate. But despite all my best attempts to emulate them, I failed miserably, and was habitually seen as one of the poor country kids, on the edge of being considered "white trash". I remember in third grade during recess one time, I had chased a ball out of the playground to the street, where I carefully waited for a car driver to wave to me to get the ball. But returning to the playground, a stern teacher told me and the two other kids that had followed me that we were in trouble. And after recess, had come to our classroom and called the three of us out to the hall to go to the principal's office for what we had done. As I looked at the two other kids with me, one a Black boy and the other a seedy-looking, greasy-haired country white boy, and looked down at my faded jean jacket and dirty pants, I made the horrified inner-assessment that I was one of the "bad kids", despite all my best attempts.
You can note from the last sentence that indeed, I was aware of race to a certain extent -- insomuch as that the Black boys in my class were automatically considered "bad" kids, without having done anything to deserve it. The Black girls in my class were not -- the ones I knew were wealthy, from the city, and had that sophistication and style that I so desperately longed for and lacked. So I associated them with the 'good' -- the wealthy, the stylish, the popular and well-liked students. One of them was nice, and friendly with me despite my perceived lower status in the elementary school hierarchy. So I did not understand when, on the playground one time, I was playing with her and with my best friend, a newly arrived Russian immigrant. Some bigger kids arrived and started teasing us, calling us "The commie, the ni---r and the nerd". At first I wasn't sure which one I was -- all I knew was these were all 'bad' things that they were calling us, and I did not want to be bad.
By the time I reached middle school, I had figured out which of the three slurs referred to me. But I still did not exactly know what kids meant when they used the word ni----r. I kind of understood that it referred to Black kids -- but not to all the Black kids. Certainly it did not refer to the girls with their fancy hair and popularity, the ones I hoped to emulate when I hairsprayed my bangs and tried (and failed) to befriend. No, I concluded, it must only apply to the Black boys - not the ones with the nice hair and clothes that were on the sports teams, either. Only the 'bad' boys who got in fights and smoked and skipped class. No one talked to me about it, or what it meant, or the history of the way this word was used. No one in my family or my family's friends used the word. My only context was in the schoolyard taunts, and the gasp and shudder that it would evoke from some kids and adults when they heard it. The most common use of the word was in a taunt that I heard frequently in both elementary and middle school: "A fight! A fight! A n----r and a white! N---r with the trigger and the white in the right!" The kids who chanted this seemed to get a little thrill, a rush of feeling powerful by the reaction of shock they could evoke with their words. This, I think, is the appeal that white supremacist movements have for certain white youth -- that thrill these kids feel that they are doing something daring, dangerous, forbidden. I doubt that many who get sucked into those cults know much about the history or what it means, they just like feeling powerful and dangerous.
Another childhood memory I have about race relations, which I did not realize was about race until much later, was a time when I was about 8 or 9 and my mom sent me around the neighborhood to hand out invitations to a neighborhood cookout she was organizing. Each envelope had the first and last name of the person to whom I was to deliver it. And all of the adults in my life, other than teachers at school and relatives like Grandma and Grandpa, were people I called by their first name (yes, my parents were hippies....). So when I came to the name of the one Black family in our neighborhood (an adult man and his elderly mother), and I skipped up to the house and handed the invitation to the man, I said, "Hi William! I have an invitation for you and for your mother Stella", I did not at all expect his reaction. I thought he would smile and be happy, but he looked at me so sternly and disapprovingly, I knew I had done something really wrong. But I did not know what -- until he said, "You call her Mrs. Johnson. And me Mr. Johnson!" I felt a knot grow in my stomach, muttered an apology and shuffled back home.
Only years later did I begin to understand why he was so stern with me, and see the scene from his perspective. Here I was, a happy-go-lucky little white girl, skipping up the lane barefoot, oblivious of the history of oppression and bloodshed that surrounded me in my town and my country. The presence of a white child, a white girl, on Black property likely meant terror for the owner of that property -- not because of the child herself, but because of the repercussions. One squeal, one false accusation from the white girl could bring a gang of white men to the house to beat or lynch the Black man. Virtually every lynching that occurred in the US from the end of the Civil War to World War II occurred because of an accusation made by a white woman or girl about a Black man. I, of course, had no idea of the power I held -- that's the invisibility of white privilege -- invisible to the person who holds it, but exceedingly visible to the person at the receiving end.
And in the midst of this invisible tension, I then had the audacity to call not only him, but also his mother, by their first names. It's not just a matter of politeness. Because of the history of slavery, and the relationship between white children and Black adults in this country, it's so much more than that. The scene evokes the hundreds of years during which white children were considered 'owners' of the Black adults in their lives, during which the child's use of that Black adult's first name was a way to ensure they 'knew their place', that they knew and accepted the fact that this small child had the right to boss them around, to tell them what to do, and indeed, to have them beaten, sold away from their family, or even killed, simply by saying the word. This was the reality of our country for so many years, so many generations. So when we talk about 'generational trauma', we have to realize, it's not just the Black descendants of enslaved people who have internalized oppression, it's also the descendants of these white children who grew up learning that they had extreme power over the Black adults around them, and grew to expect that these Black men and women would follow their orders and do their bidding. So when I see videos nowadays like the one from Indiana, where a group of drunk, shirtless white men confront a Black man in a wooded camping area who defies their demand that he leave, and instead asserts his right to be there. Something snaps in these white men, and they are suddenly jumping on the Black man, kneeling on his neck, calling for one of the white men in their group to 'go get a rope', I see in the eyes of the white men in the video this history of oppression. Their shock and indignation that this Black man would not immediately comply with their order is a look they inherited, no doubt, from an ancestor. A white ancestor who made the realization at some point in their childhood that all they needed to do was throw a little tantrum, and a nearby Black adult would be subjected to a massive and violent response by white adults acting to 'defend' the white child.
Every time I see that look in a white man or woman, I see a flash of that slave-owning child -- that "How dare this Black person step out of their place?" look. And I don't mean that each particular white person who invokes this attitude is necessarily the descendant of a slaveowner -- but that this is the culture of our country, passed down through many generations and internalized by so many white people. Many of them are just as oblivious as I was, as an 8-year old child, of the invisible power and control they wield over the people in this country who descended from enslaved Africans. But even though they may not be consciously aware of it, they will invoke it immediately if they feel threatened or defied by a Black person -- and they may not even realize that's what they are doing.
I just want to say also, in defense of Mr. Johnson, for those of you who will say, "Of course there is this history of oppression, but he should not have been so stern with you, you were just a little girl", that I do not think he was completely in control of his reaction. The expression on his face, which I will never forget, was a mix of shame, humiliation, anger and panic. I may not have known the context, but those were emotions I knew well, and recognized. This is what trauma looks like, and how it plays out - it comes to the surface and expresses itself - often involuntarily - even when we don't mean it to. I got the feeling that it was all he could do to keep his emotions in, and that his telling me to call him and his mother Mr. and Mrs. was covering a lot of other stuff inside. And it was not up to him to subject himself to further humiliation by having to explain that context to me. It was up to me to learn and to figure that out, and to realize the role I play and the power I wield in this society - a role I did not ask for, and power I do not want, but which is nevertheless there in the invisible daily dynamics of our interactions with each other across this country. And telling my parents about it would likely have resulted in parental indignation, and them talking to him about it, which would only further humiliate and embarass him and exacerbate the tension of this historical trauma that was being played out in our interaction. Privilege is invisible to those who have it. I will keep repeating this, because we as white people keep forgetting it, and think that if we reach a certain level of 'wokeness', our privilege will somehow disintegrate and we will be seen as on an equal footing as those who live under the yoke of this society's oppression. No, my dear white people, our privilege will not disintegrate until we dismantle the institutions of white supremacy and the unconscious white supremacist attitudes that reside in every white person in this country.
Because the lowest-of-the-low in the class hierarchies that I learned at school (ie. on the playground, where most of the real learning takes place), the so-called 'white trash', are still, in the context of the society we have inherited, considered to be somehow higher in the hierarchy than any Black person. If this is news to you, or you are a white person who comes from a modest background and can't understand how you could be considered to have 'white privilege', here are some places to start unpacking this for yourself:
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh
White Privilege: the Psychic Wage, Mass Incarceration and Class Solidarity by Richard Moser
Lessons from a White Mama of Black Children by Christy Richardson
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
And the latest book by a writer whom I credit (along with Alice Walker and Nikki Giovanni) with providing the eye-opening jolt into racial consciousness that I needed, and lacked, as a white teen in the suburbs:
The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison