"If you have a Black friend and you've never discussed racism with them ..."

[wnylib]

28. I have discussed race and racism

with a few Black friends, but in more depth with one particular friend that I was closest with. (Past tense because she passed away a few years ago.)

She was a generation older than me. I first met her when I was a college student. She was on the faculty and was the advisor for the Black student union. A Black student friend introduced us. It was a few years later, when I was working on the same campus, that we became friends.

She had gone to Howard University and we talked about the pros and cons of going to an all Black college. She also had some Native ancestry, and told me one day how glad she was that her Native ancestor had married a Black man and not White. At first it felt like a slap, a put down of my whiteness. But I realized that she was expressing pride in who she was and challenging me to fully recognize it, too.

When she was working on an Underground Railroad project, I told her about a site in my hometown and drove her there to do some research. She invited me to a group at her church that was studying the US constitution. The first week that I went, they were covering the 3/5 clause.

She was active in the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s in her younger years and had known Medgar Evers. As friends, we didn't just discuss race, but when we did, I learned a lot from listening to her.