I Was Wrong — Liberty Wealth

In my work around money, I have learned to feel uncomfortable. I have learned to talk about a subject openly that people find fraught and difficult. I have learned to ask questions and to dig deeper. It’s rewarding and purposeful work, and I love every conversation that I have.

I often refer to money as the last taboo and I have said publicly that I think people find it easier to talk about sex and religion and race than they do about money.

I was wrong.

The last few weeks have been a massive jolt for me, as I am sure they have been for you. We are not comfortable talking about race. Not at all.

I was raised to be tolerant, and kind. There was no hatred. I was taught that all people are equal. You are most likely of the same demographic. If you were brought up in Middle England, or the equivalent in another country, there probably weren’t many black people in your childhood. I remember one. One black kid in my community, and he was adopted by white parents.

You, like I, probably didn’t talk about race as a child. It wasn’t a comfortable conversation for our parents, whose grand-parents were born in a century when people were still enslaved. The terminology was stressful and fraught, and there was the fear that you would get called out.

As an adult, up until a few weeks ago, I suppose I would have said I was ‘colour-blind’ – that is, I was of the mind that because all humans on this planet are born equal we shouldn’t see colour. I would have said that my children who are being raised in a far more diverse community than I had as a child, are also ‘colour-blind’.

How wrong I was. How privileged.

I have since learned that kids aren’t colour-blind. Research shows that by 3 months of age, babies are already more comfortable with adults who have the same skin colour as their parents. It’s part of our evolution – we want to know who is in our tribe, who is ‘safe’. Children notice. And if they don’t hear from us, they will see patterns and make their own assumptions about the world. And those assumptions might not be what we hope.

I have recently learned that the concept of colour-blind is totally counterproductive. There’s nothing wrong with seeing race. As Mellody Hobson says, ‘if you don’t see race, you don’t see me.’

As white people, and white parents, ‘colour-blindness’ is an easy way out of an uncomfortable truth, and an uncomfortable conversation. It’s how we let ourselves off the hook. It’s how we avoid talking about it. Mellody describes it as a ‘learned behaviour where we pretend we don’t notice race.’

Black people don’t have that option. You as a black person, particularly a black parent, don’t have the option of not talking about it. You can’t choose to opt in and opt out of it. That’s my privilege. If we white people don’t discuss race with our children then we are not telling the truth and we are not empowering them.

I didn’t understand privilege, because I now realise that privilege is about having advantages you don’t understand. The best explanation of this that I have seen comes from Peggy McIntosh. She writes:

“I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.”

In her essay, she goes on to identify some (fifty) of the daily effects of white privilege in her life. “As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.”

I list a few:

· I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

· I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

· I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

· I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

· I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

· I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.

· If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

· I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

· I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

To combat racisim we don’t just have to combat individual acts of meanness. None of you readers have been a part of that. What we have to do is work to change the invisible systems that confer advantages on white people, whilst not benefiting people of colour.

All action has to start with awareness and acknowledgement. And it’s going to be awkward and uncomfortable, and we are probably not going to get it all right. But as Mellody says, let’s be ‘colour-brave’ and not ‘colour-blind.’ That’s our first step to doing better.

Here are the some of the resources I have read/listened to over the past few weeks:

Here is an excellent podcast focused on how to talk to your kids about race. If you are finding it hard to start the conversation because you feel that kids are so innocent, they don’t know that race exists, you don’t want to draw attention to something that they don’t see, you want them to live in a world where everyone is the same and you shouldn’t or oughtn’t disturb that Utopian point of view, then this one is for you.

5 things you need to stop saying if you really care about fighting racism. Of course you care! Sometimes, with the best of intentions, we say the wrong things. Here’s what to say instead.

Maintaining professionalism in the age of black death is….a lot. “Please, be mindful, your black employees are dealing with a lot.”

The emotional impact of watching white people wake up to racism in real-time. “It feels like we are watching the collective belated awakening of white people to racism – as though, somehow, it has only just occurred to them to do something about it.”

What I said when my white friend asked for my black opinion on white privilege.

Mellody Hobson’s TED talk: Color-blind or Color-Brave? Mellody is the CEO of Ariel Investments.

How big is the racial wealth gap? It’s big, really big.

It could have been me. A fellow financial planner talks about getting stopped by the cops.

Georgie

georgie@libertywealth.ky