We Are Not LikeThem

 Book club discussion question: Riley tells Jen "It's a privilege to never think about race." 

How has privilege affected you life? How has the absence of privilege affected your life?  Discuss an event where you recognized that privileges affected the outcome. 

White privilege is a fairly new term. Maybe black families used the term for many years. 

A 2014 study found that three our of four white people have no nonwhite friends. Are you surprised by this statistic? How does where you grew up affect the friends you make into adulthood?

No the statistic does not surprise me. 

If you grew up in Jim Crow south or fly Confederate flags in 2022, chances are you would not find many black/white friendships. If you grew up in what I used to call "lily white Pocono Mountains" or nearby KKK territory, it is doubtful that you would have black/white friendships. 

I do know a man who grew up racist due to the absence of blacks in his California neighborhood. He changed when he joined the Marines and got to know blacks/browns on a personal level. I would not say they were friends so much as combat buddies. In later years he was considered an honorary Puerto Rican, due to his sister-in-law marrying into a close knit Puerto Rican family. Even though he divorced he still maintains a long-distance relationship with the many Puerto Rican/Americans he associated with for many years. A few of them are black skinned!

I grew up in a northern integrated school. I did not have many close friends. In 7th grade a girl befriended me. Linda, Faye and Me was a story I wrote somewhere. The 3 homeroom class outcasts. We were not allowed to wear stockings, or makeup and wore undershirts not bras. I was quite shy. Every friend I have had in life, befriended me. Like Linda. She died shortly after COVID and I am sad that I never thought to ask her why she liked me.

I can relate to Jenn in that we three never talked about race. Well, Faye would share Chinese customs to us. In high school Linda was College Prep, I was Office Practice and we only waved when we passed in hallways. Years passed and Linda worked with my Mother. Linda still in or near our hometown, me in a different state. We corresponded by letters. Later, e-mails. Later still on Facebook.Way adult we now discussed race. Linda was never my "black friend," she was just Linda.

I liked her because she wrote me notes, made me laugh and showed me how to "paint" my fingernails with pencil. She gave me her phone number. When I called it was answered by one of those prayer phone lines. We laughed the next day and she confessed she did not have a telephone. She, her sister and mother lived in "the projects." She gave me her grandmother's phone number. She lived in an apartment upstairs, and Linda often spent time there. 

We not only did not talk about race we did not talk about our parents. What happened to her father/ Where did her mother work? My mom was SAHM at that time. My father was a Mason Contractor who owned his own business or worked with Union jobs when he did not have any of his own. I do not think we talked about boys or other preteen/teen subjects. She never came to my house. I would not have been allowed to take the bus to go to visit her.

Ironically she married a brother of one of my co-workers. He and I were sort of work friends. He did a pencil sketch of me. He was trying to teach me a super fast dance that I never mastered. I think we bonded due to both of us having a brother who was arrested, names in local newspaper and many siblings. Linda and her husband divorced. I think he wanted children and she could not get pregnant.