GO TO: Sonoma County Free Press Home Page | Columns | Features

Last Revised: Aug. 1994

SO I GREW TWO VOICES

Self-Imposed Segregation

by MARY MOORE

Sometimes it's just plain embarrassing to be one of the white folks!!! Thankfully I got over my last vestiges of white liberal guilt years and years ago but I do have to admit to reoccuring twinges of embarrassment. When we moved to Sonoma county in 1974 from Los Angeles I had lived and worked in the black community for almost a decade so it was a real culture shock for me just as it was for Latina & African American friends who also made the exodus north.

Over the years I've written several columns on the subject of race, usually when something dumb has happened right here in Sonoma county that shouldn't have. I remember back in 1980 when Womens Party for Survival was being formed and I attended a planning meeting to bring Helen Caldicott here for a talk. I wanted to get endorsements from various women in the community (including women of color) for the flyer and was told there weren't any up here!! Oh really!?

I remember having to explain over and over why alliances with the Native American community were so important to the anti nuclear movement and having my words fall on deaf ears. I remember helping to form the Martin Luther King Birthday celebration coalition (before it became a state holiday) and lobbying acquaintances to come to our first event at Community Baptist Church who felt that this was taking time and energy away from the "real work"!!! I know I alienated more than a couple of white folks along the way as I encountered and responded to statements such as "There are no Black activists in Sonoma county" or "How come no Blacks ever get involved in the 'Peace Movement'"?

In 1984 I remember Michael Harris and I going as representatives of the Rainbow Coalition to the Peace Center to ask them to change their name to the Peace & Justice Center. While it wasn't the biggest fight we've ever undertaken there was some resistance which fortunately was overcome. There shouldn't have been any!!! As recently as last year I had it out with a well known elder in the hemp movement who called someone a "Nigger" when he didn't like his style and I was amazed that many of my white friends didn't feel it was a big deal (or at least THEY weren't going to get involved.)

Same thing happened when Kwazi lived here and was the ongoing target for months of Bruce Anderson's vicious public racism. Very few folks spoke out. I guess that would have been taking away from the "real work"!! I remember how it felt when encountering grapes at activist events and the blank looks from so called progressives that didn't have a clue about the U.F.W. boycott!! I know people were offended when some of us spoke out on the SPIRITUAL GENOCIDE against Native Americans running rampant through the Sonoma county New Age Movement and "progressive" circles. The latest incident in that venue took place in July in my hometown of Occidental when a friend of mine, a woman of color who has more than earned her strong passionate feelings on this subject, encountered some white "Haitian" dancing at a local event and looking around at the sea of white faces that she intuited would not understand her distress, left in utter hurt and frustration. My feeble attempt to be an ally to her after the event was met by defensiveness by some of the white folks present who didn't understand what the big deal was and weren't particularly interested in finding out or working it out. (Please see "Touch of Black", a poem written by a local white women who was also present at this event.)

I don't bring up these examples from the past and the present to just beat a dead horse because this horse is unfortunately far from dead. I bring them up now as I have in the past because if our white activist community will not take the time and energy to reflect on and change it's own self imposed segregation then its stated aim of being part of a mass movement for change simply won't happen!!

I hear alot of talk from peace and environmental circles complaining that these movements remain white but I don't hear a willingness to understand why! I hear complaints that people of color are not interested in environmental and peace issues but nothing could be further from the truth. People of color are in the forefront of these movements by virtue of the toxics being dumped in their communities as well as white mainstream indifference toward those communities.

It is NOT about being P.C. It is about overcoming white ignorance and insensitivety and denial from people you would expect to know better. There are alot of "liberals" in our area who are by choice insulated, timid and worst of all, indifferent. See, it isn't the sheets and hoods kind of racism that we encounter in Sonoma County's white activist community. It's deadly indifference and lack of exposure to thoughts and feelings outside their own circles of other white folks. Asking some white folks to look at racism is like asking them to look at air!! They just don't see it and when it is pointed out to them by those who DO see (and feel) it, the response is often that the pointee is just imagining something that doesn't exist.

Instead of listening to painful feedback some folks tend to get defensive. Really listening would mean letting down the defenses and making the commitment in time and energy to finding out why such different world perceptions exists.

These are some of the things going through my mind as I watch the fallout from O.J. and Nicole as it's playing out in the feminist community. There is no doubt that this situation has brought spousal abuse to the table where it should have been decades ago. But as I see single issue, white Feminists picketing O.J.'s hearing I think of Emmit Till and other scapegoats from the past and I hope my sisters have not forgotten that the BEAST consists of sex, race and class attitudes, all of which are in the mix together and need to be fought in a holistic manner, not dealt with as separate issues.

Just as men need to be allies and listen to the women around them, white folks need to be allies and listen to what is being told to them by people of color. That means getting out where the information is and paying attention, not getting all defensive. As my friend Lorayne Martinez recently put it on Mama O'Shea's show, "To all my white brothers and sisters I want to say just one thing, LISTEN, PLEASE JUST LISTEN!!"

GO TO: Sonoma County Free Press Home Page | Columns | Features