{"id":27741,"date":"2017-08-10T15:04:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T20:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalministries.org\/palermo_perspectives_having_to_think_about_deal_with_race\/"},"modified":"2017-08-10T15:04:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T20:04:58","slug":"palermo_perspectives_having_to_think_about_deal_with_race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalministries.org\/palermo_perspectives_having_to_think_about_deal_with_race\/","title":{"rendered":"Palermo Perspectives: Having to Think about \/ Deal with Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of my Global Ministries placement this summer, I am to share my reflections. So every couple of weeks, I will also send a \u201cPalermo Perspective\u201d to Old First, sort of a report since you all are making my summer service possible.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Italy_-_Caine_Hope4_Aug_2017.jpg\"Last Thursday night, we were waiting to go into a play being performed in an decommissioned church building. One of the young men from Casa Mirti (the program for unaccompanied minor immigrants) had a leading role in the play.<\/p>\n

It was kind of a long, inexplicable wait (something that\u2019s not unknown in Italy! Or maybe I just don\u2019t understand enough Italian to know what\u2019s going on much of the time!)<\/p>\n

But I was hanging outside the church with the young Africans, talking, mostly being silly. I really enjoy my time with them.<\/p>\n

But all of a sudden \u2014 I don\u2019t know how it came up\u2013 Sharif looked at me and said, \u201cWe suffer a lot of racism here.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a surprising revelation. Not because I doubted the truth of what he said. But because I thought racial divides in Palermo were significantly smaller or at least less animated than what I know from the U.S.<\/p>\n

I had heard a young Italian girl, maybe 10 or 11, asking her parents while we walked in the Santa Rosalia parade, the city\u2019s patron saint\u2019s festival, \u201cWhy are there Africans here with us?\u201d Her parents explained they were citizens of Palermo too. The young girl got quite animated and loud while she elaborated on her response of \u201cnot really.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I was naive about racism here. The young men won the trophy in an anti-racism soccer tournament \u2014 there must be racism! Especially because on top of all the endemic racism in European countries, as in European-American countries, Palermo is feeling the pressure of having received a large influx of ethnically-other immigrants lately. Since most of them are folks of color, it\u2019s too easy a mistake to conflate one\u2019s discomfort or target one\u2019s anger about the influx of immigrants with the race of most of the immigrants.<\/p>\n

But only that afternoon had the issue of race ever been mentioned in any conversations with the young men. I was out clothes shopping with Diawara \u2014 the man who was staring in the theater performance we were waiting to see \u2014 and Kareem (they have a small allowance to buy personal items). I was teasing Diawara about being \u201cSignorle Stylistissimo\u201d! And he looked at me, with his hair in mod, mohawkish dreads and said, \u201cYou know, Black men and white men have different styles.\u201d You think? I just laughed.<\/p>\n

It happened again a few days later. I was packed into the church van taking young Nigerian men back to the Camps after worship when I heard a young man in the very back of the van refer to me as \u201cthat white man.\u201d Apt description as I was the only white person at church in Trapani that\u00a0Sunday<\/span>. But more often I\u2019m referred to as \u201cthe American\u201d by people who don\u2019t know or can\u2019t remember my name.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to what Sharif said while we were waiting for the theater. \u201cWe suffer a lot of racism here.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then relayed a story of an old Italian man coming over to him and spitting on him on the street for no reason. I have long worried how difficult it must be for young men (and women) of color, trying to establish themselves as adults, as their own person, to bear the insults and disrespect of racism.
It\u2019s been my concern, at least since I heard Zeke, Elijah and Lionel\u2019s stories in youth group back at Church of the Living Hope in East Harlem.<\/p>\n

I wondered if it was harder for Sharif, having grown up in an all (or almost all?) Black world in Gambia to suddenly encounter racism as a young man in his late teens? And also in a time in his life when immigrating to Italy has thrown everything else in his world into chaos\u2026<\/p>\n

I was reminded of a former parishioner of mine in Brooklyn, Mary. As part of her Master\u2019s program in public service administration, she as doing an internship in post-apartheid South Africa. As an African-American woman in her late thirties, she was excited about experiencing a Black majority for the first time. She was hoping that in South Africa, issues of race wouldn\u2019t take up so much space in her life.<\/p>\n

I teased her that she didn\u2019t have to go so far: Fulton Mall in downtown Brooklyn was an all Black world (in those days, but probably not anymore\u2026)! But I heard her. And pointed out that for most of the other members of our congregation \u2014 that was mostly West Indian (or more correctly folks from the Caribbean Community of nations) \u2014 they had been raised in majority if not all Black environments. At the time, I wondered if that grounding made encountering racism later any easier? Now I wonder if coming upon it later makes it more difficult?<\/p>\n

Many whites think about racism a lot these days. We are Americans, and it\u2019s one of the unfinished issues or unamended, even unrepentant sins of our nation\u2019s history. We think about racism because it\u2019s always in the news. And on our streets, or in our workplaces. We think about it because we care about our nation. And because we care about friends and family who are Black.<\/p>\n

But unlike Sharif or Mary, we don\u2019t have to think about it. For whites, it\u2019s a choice. An issue or concern that doesn\u2019t have to take up so much space in our lives. Or one which we chose when and where and how to give attention or space to.<\/p>\n

White Americans can and often do live in essentially a \u201cwhites only\u201d world. Either by conscious choice or by where they find themselves. By whites only, I\u2019m not just speaking of geographical communities that are deliberately or historically-accidentally segregated, like Montana. I am also thinking of places in our society where Blacks seem to not have access. \u00a0For example, the graduate school of Arts and Sciences ceremony at UPenn last May was one of the most non-black crowds I\u2019ve experienced in Philly.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s rarely a possibility for people of African descent living in North America or Europe to avoid dealing with whites and racism. They have to find their place in and make their way through a world that favors whites. Not because there\u2019s anything in the world that has to find whites favorable, but because that\u2019s racism. Period.<\/p>\n

Sharif also told me that night that he believes the racism he and other Africans have to face here in Palermo is much worse than what Blacks face in the U.S. That startled me too. \u00a0As I explained, I thought that after milennia of foreigners and their influence had been felt in Sicily, there was a greater \u201cmove over and make room\u201d attitude here. But how would I know? How would Sharif know for that matter? I suspect at his age that his viewpoint has more to do with images from Black American music videos and the influence Black culture has in American society and on much of the artistic expressions we export. Anyway, while comparative struggles may be helpful for advancing justice struggles, ranking suffering seems to be less fruitful and more dangerous\u2026<\/p>\n

Diawara, the stylish young man who was in the play, has found his place in a diverse activist and arts community. That offers him support for what he faces. Diawara, from this experience, appreciates Palermo for the opportunities living on a border affords. \u00a0I feel the same way about my neighborhood in Philadelphia, but I wonder if my Black neighbors feel the same about the advent of us whites.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Sharif has any community like that in his life beyond Casa Mirti, the program he\u2019s in where I volunteer. But Sharif is a smart young man and I pray that he will find his way through the complexities and the unfairness before him.<\/p>\n

Not everyone does. For many, racism packs too much punch or takes up too much room in their heads, lives, and worlds\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWe suffer a lot of racism here.\u201d<\/p>\n

A hard fact of life that ought not be \u2014 an experience that we whites can barely glimpse, much less imagine.<\/p>\n

Instead, we \u2014 white people \u2014 choose whether or not we want to take up the issue at all. Or when and were and how\u2026<\/p>\n

I often hear whites disclaim the effects of racism because \u201cI am not my\u00a0 forebearers who treated Black so badly.\u201d Ok. But doesn\u2019t even our failure to engage \u2014 anything less than becoming an active ally \u2014 in the anti-racism efforts our Black neighbors deserve,\u00a0 leave us being part of the problem?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe suffer a lot of racism here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can we, who do not even recognize the choices we are privileged to make, even begin to understand? Or respond?<\/p>\n

Michael Cain is a short-term volunteer with Mediterranean Hope<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of my Global Ministries placement this summer, I am to share my reflections. 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