A Promise to My Niece

Dear Laila Rae,

I love you. I did not know how to start this letter so I will start with with my love for you. I love you more than I have ever loved another human. You are the first human I loved before I knew you. When your mother told me she was pregnant my eyes pricked with tears of joy and I felt my heart expand with a new love for you. I did not know your name or gender. In fact the sonogram picture indicated there was a good chance you would be an alien. But I loved you so much. Even today I cannot describe the feeling except to say that in that moment I knew I loved you more than I had ever loved anyone. It was a bit of a relief actually, to finally know I might not be hopelessly selfish, because up until that day I always loved myself first.

I’ll admit, I was hoping your mom would have a boy. We are a family of females and there was a part of me that wanted a little Palmer boy. Then I found out your gender, and your mom wanted to name you after me so I decided having a girl would be alright. If you shared my name you were bound for awesomeness. But really, I was excited at the possibility of being apart of the life of another strong, independent, and fierce Palmer girl. Us Palmer girls, we are pretty incredible. We are stubborn, bossy, determined, and nasty women.

This brings me to why I am writing you this letter. I am writing you this letter because I failed you. White women failed you. White Christians failed you. White privileged people failed you. I am all of these things. Laila, we elected a man into office who is against so much of what I believe in, he is the antithesis of what I dream for you. I don’t know what to tell you. When I woke up the morning after he was elected I felt relief in your tender age of two. I thought, at least we don’t have to explain this to you. But that feels dishonest because he will affect your future and I absolutely have the responsibility to explain this to you because I failed you.

This letter is part apology, part an explanation for what I think happened, and part a promise for what I will do in the future to ensure I do not fail you again. My apology is pretty simple. I am sorry I allowed my privilege to blind me. I was one of those people who said no way can Trump win the Republican nomination. Then I started to feel fear but was still pretty confident that there was no way Trump could win the presidency. Then election night I sat watching the numbers come in and felt shocked. I was stunned that this could happen in my democracy. I went through so many emotions. I was horrified, angry, sad, and hysterical. Eva Dog thought I lost my mind. Laila, I have always believed that I was a pretty strong advocate and ally for those in need. In my self-righteous quests for justice I forgot about some marginalized communities, which is inexcusable because I live in one of those communities. I forgot about poor white people.

It was my white, economic privilege that allowed me to disregard this population, and for that I am sorry. I have not listened to their pain, concerns and fears. I have done nothing to be a peacemaker in these communities so I have to accept responsibility for why they voted for Donald Trump. Laila, even though I voted for Hillary Clinton, and was so excited at the prospect that many of your formative years would be under a female president, I still have to accept responsibility for the presidency we were given. From my position of economic and educational privilege I decided whose and what needs were more important and ignored some of the struggles in my own community.

Laila, I am not trying to excuse the actions of anyone. I am horrified that white people were able to hold their noses and cover their eyes and endorse Donald Trump. They knew what he is and ignored it in favor of their own comfort. They are fully responsible for hatred and blatant acts of aggression engulfing children and adults of color, those in the LGBTQ community, those in the Muslim communities. White privilege is a very real thing. It is something I have struggled with for many years. I have accepted my own white privilege and have been working to make sure I am an ally for people of color, but there are a lot of white people who resent the term white privilege and I understand why.

You have spend a lot of time on the Eastern Shore and you probably think it is a weird place. People have funny accents and drive large, noisy trucks that smell horrible. You have been to our beaches and seen the large mansions that dot the coast. You have also driven through small farm towns where people live in much smaller, and sometimes rundown houses. Worcester county is a strange place, Laila. It is a very rich county in an even richer state. But the majority of the people who live here don’t have very much money. All the wealth and fancy houses are owned by a small fraction of the population. Most of the people, both white and of color, work really hard.

Right now, I am going to try to explain the white people to you. They live paycheck to paycheck, many right on the poverty line. These people are the butt of jokes, but receive no sympathy because of their whiteness. They don’t want to hear about their white privilege when they work sunup to sundown and do not have economic freedom. They have to believe that if people work hard enough they will succeed. This idea is central to their self-worth, because as others like to point out, they have white privilege. Which they do; I’m not denying that. But to them, the message of white privilege also says, if they are not succeeding, it is their own fault. They had no institutional racism standing in their way. If they are not succeeding they are the lazy ones, the unintelligent ones, the lesser citizen. So they deny white privilege. I don’t want to oversimplify anything, and the situation is much more complicated, but this is one dynamic that self-righteous, white privileged activists like to ignore (just to clarify that’s me). Donald Trump spoke for these people. He told them their lack of success is not their fault. People felt like Donald Trump gave them a voice so they voted for him.

Another dynamic is race. I would be lying to you if I did not tell you this election is a white backlash against eight years of a black president. It is a whitelash against the Black Lives Matter movement, immigration fears and Islamophobia. Donald Trump did not create the racism in our society but he allowed it a voice. He told people their fears, albeit irrational and unfounded, were justified. In this justification he gave people the freedom to publicly vocalize their racism, and now they feel justified in following their words with acts of racism. I am scared for you and I am scared for your brother.

You will grow up in a strange world, Laila. It is difficult for me to understand what your struggle will be because you are white and you are also black. It will be difficult for you to understand these two very different histories that make up a large part of who you are and who you will become. You do not look entirely white, and you do not look entirely black. You have a hue to your skin and a tight curls. Right now it is an afro. You are also incredibly beautiful. You have been told this a lot, and will continue to hear it for many years. Physically, you are very appealing. I struggle with this because I want you confidence to come from your existence; I want you to be proud of your appearance but I never want you defined by it. So right now I am trying to teach you to tell people your beauty is genetic and unattainable. Which is true.

I’m getting sidetracked, which is easy for me to do because there are so many things I want to tell you, teach you, and learn from you. You will be raised by a white mother and have the influence of your white aunts. You currently live in a gentrified neighborhood and will be offered economic privileges. You will not fit into a niche and while that will be difficult I know it will make you a nasty woman I will be proud to call my niece.

I will make a promise to you. I will continue to work as a peacemaker. I will be more diligent and I will put my own comfort aside for the rights of my brothers and sisters of color. I will sacrifice my own white privilege and economic privilege in favor of a just world. I will also listen to the needs of those I have previously cast aside. I will not allow myself to feel helpless because I am still in control. I still live in a democracy and I still have a voice. Sometimes I have quieted my voice in favor of making other comfortable. I have been in situations where I avoided making comments or having conversations to not “rock the boat.” Laila, I promise you I will do that no longer. Many people will call me obnoxious. I might lose some friends but I will gain others. But I will do this all from a place of love. I will love my neighbor and I will love my enemy. I don’t want you to grow up in a hateful world, and I will do all I can in the next few years to hopefully repair it as much as possible before you get much older. But even if I fail, I want you to remember how much you are loved, and I want you to love the world. Even the white, privileged, Christians that failed you.

Right now there are people out there defacing prayer rooms, taunting gay and transgender teenagers, threatening Muslim families, and boys grabbing girls vaginas. In spite of this hatred, I want you to remember, people are more that the worst thing they have ever done. Don’t get me wrong, these people need to be held accountable, and their actions need to be condemned and stopped, but they too are redeemable. In order to be real peacemakers we need to listen to all sides, not just the side we think is justified. I made that mistake and now we have Donald Trump as president. Unfortunately for me, it is up to white people to fix this. I read a blog and the author, John Pavlovitz said this:

“Oppressed people aren’t obliged to make nice with their oppressors.

The bullied don’t owe anything to the bullies.

Victims don’t have to make their assailants feel better.

Young children of color aren’t responsible to educate racist children—or their parents.”

So, again I promise you, Laila. I will try to fix this.

Love,

Aunt Whitney Rae