Journal to a Muse

A well-meaning white person discovers her shadow while promoting knitting!

Before the holidays, I signed up to be a table sitter for the Dallas Hand Knitters Guild at NBC 5's HealthFit Expo. If I hadn't already signed up, I probably wouldn't have even known it was happening. Obviously other people had heard about it because the Convention Center was pretty crowded. (There was a particularly long line of folks waiting for an autograph from Cowboy's tight end Jason Witten. I was mostly relieved all those people weren't waiting for a restroom.)
When I arrived, I was greeted by a motley crew of happy knitters.

MJ specializes in knitting and beading.
She brought this amazing beaded purse as well as amulet necklaces, a sweater, an afghan and knit bed cover. She also had two pairs of needles and two skeins of practice yarn, which was appreciated and well used!


Then there was R. I didn't recognize her from guild meetings. I thought I would have because she wearing in a head scarf. She introduced me to her daughter, future son-in-law and niece.

Also at the table was C, a diminutive African American girl. I asked if she was with R in the scarf. "No. My sister had to go to Saturday School, and I didn't want to stay home alone all day, and the library doesn't open until later, so I came here." And she knew how to knit.

I could have talked with C all day. She was full of self-awareness, life experience, wisdom, poise and curiosity. Turns out she's a 9th grader at Townview Center; plans to be a forensic pathologist and has already dissected a fetal pig, taken Alg II, Geometry and is now taking AP English and preAP Calculus.

Then there was E and her guide dog A. E asked which yarns to combine... It was hard for me to believe she would just take R's or my recommendation. But it turns out she has been blind since birth, and figures anybody has a better chance of choosing "attractive" color ways than she does.

I fell in love with her dog. (This is a stand-in photo, but A looked almost identical!!) She headed right under our table and barely moved, though she did startle a passerby by wagging her tail, which ruffled the table skirt!!

In spite of being there to encourage knitting, I mostly talked! Got exactly 2 rows knit.






So about that SHADOW.

Last week on a program called "Think" on my local NPR station, there was an informative, non-threatening, non-blaming discussion of the errors that "well-meaning white people" make when it comes to race.
The book in question is titled
Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide (by Barbara Trepagnier).
I'm not sure that I actually SAID anything that would be construed as racist, bigoted or discourteous. But the assumptions were there based on superficial observations that had no evidentiary underpinnings.

I am very grateful to have had the media's negative portrayal of young, black Americans completely scrambled. I was unaware that I had "bought" those attitudes and over-generalized. I had believed I was tolerant, skeptical and rational about all individuals. Apparently NOT if they were in a head scarf. (I don't know what my assumptions were about R, just that I was surprised she was part of DHKG.)

I gave up lots of racist beliefs (promoted accidentally by family and more deliberately by society) when I attended one of the first integrated-by-bussing schools in California. I recognized and changed more prejudiced thinking decades later when I trained as a social worker.

But obviously, I'm not "done" yet. I'm still working on seeing reality, individuals and specific.

Are you?