Thank you, Andrea Ayvazian, for your recent column, “Wearing body cams while white” (June 19), in which you proposed that white people wear body cams to monitor their privilege and lost opportunities to stand up against racism.
I have a further suggestion. Let’s also wear “mind cams” by cultivating a disciplined awareness of the racist assumptions and emotions that rise up in our minds as we move through our daily lives.
Recently, thanks to phone cameras, we have seen what happens when white people act on these entrenched, yet often unconscious, beliefs — from the heinous killing of George Floyd to the racist assumptions and entitlement of the “liberal, I’m not a racist” Central Park dogwalker who called the police on a Black bird-watcher.
In San Francisco, a white woman, assuming that no person of color could possibly belong in her upscale neighborhood, harassed a Filipino man who was painting a Black Lives Matter sign in front of his house. Demonstrating how racist assumptions narrow our perceptions and stifle our ability to process information, the woman failed to notice a large Black Lives Matter banner hanging in the front window of the house — a highly visible clue that might have made her stop and think before accusing the home owner of “defacing (somebody else’s) private property.”
When we see these incidents, many of us white people like to reassure ourselves that “of course we would never do that!” But none of us, even those who have spent years trying to challenge racism and understand our roles in perpetuating it, can erase the racist beliefs that we have absorbed — beliefs that have been carefully cultivated and reside within us because we live in a society built on white supremacy.
As I sit here in my comfortable, mostly white neighborhood in Amherst, I have to admit that I get anxious when I have to drive to downtown Springfield or Holyoke and often find excuses not to; when I am on the bike trail and encounter people from different racial and ethnic groups, sometimes I feel wary; when I learn about a Black person elevated to a powerful position, I feel my expectations reshuffling and the words “affirmative action” may float into my mind.
Am I ashamed of these feelings? Of course, I am. However, I mostly feel sad and angry that the tentacles of racist ideology have so deeply penetrated my heart and mind and the soul of our country.
The sad truth is we can never completely eradicate our racist assumptions; they are always lurking in our minds and rise up time and again. In turn, they narrow our perceptions, blind us to truths about ourselves and others, and diminish our desire and capacity to connect and empathize with others.
However, the more we recognize and challenge them, the less power they will have to dominate our minds and potentially drive our actions. So, let’s don our body cams and our mind cams and, as Andrea Ayvazian says, make “the invisible visible” and get to work.
Patricia Ramsey lives in Amherst.