Nancy taught me her term, thought virus, when she described the unique groove of her childhood. She grew up under two opposing influences. As the only White girl in an elite track club she thrived. Family and school chums were White, and some of them spoke offensively against Blacks.
I asked her what she thought back then. “I don’t know if I was that deep of a thinker as a kid,” she laughed. It was about having fun with her Black buddies, and wondering why some grownups thought that was a big deal.
Now a widow with two grown children, Nancy looks back on her long career as a public health nurse and a social activist. She feels privileged to have always had a mixture of races in her adult friendships. We are still a segregated society she says, where “most people stay in their lane.”
Nancy’s privileged viewpoint does not make her smug. “I grew up with some amount of racism in my family. Unfortunately, it impinged on me as well,” she says. “Like everyone else we all have our implicit biases. They get in there like thought viruses. We have to get to awareness that we are not immune to them.”
Nancy is that rare White adult who moves with ease inside a Black world, while still recognizing the virus in herself. I’m left with one question: Can a grownup learn what she’s known all along?
Be First to Comment