Dear Pat,
You have come back into my life and I am grateful. You see, we are sisters, born the same year, in South Carolina; but I was born white and you black. That basically meant we would never know each other.
But it is more personal than just being white. It is being white me, Jean, having my personal history growing up sometimes with blinders and sometimes worlds going on around me…white and colored, a “but wasn’t it just the way it was”…“not a reflection of anything bad”.
I wonder, what was there to see that I couldn’t allow or was not supposed to see? I know now that the system that was working for us white people was built in large part on abuse and oppression of black people, and that would include my black ‘sister’ and her family and ancestors. Whatever I could have done to notice more, question more, speak up more, I didn’t.
But now what can I do? I am noticing and listening more for the signs of continued injustice, and I will speak up. I will support you, Pat, in your courageous desire to make things more right than wrong.
Jean McLendon is my friend.
I met her in Colorado when I was studying at Satir Systems, a premiere training program for family therapists. She was our leader. I liked her almost immediately. She is whip smart, charismatic, a talented teacher, trainer, and therapist and one of the most ethical people I know.
After our experience in Colorado, we worked together at the Satir Institute in North Carolina. We were drawn to each other partly because we grew up in the same state within six months of each other. We recognized each other’s talent. And we worked well together.
The people at the Institute were wonderful, committed, and generous people and it was 99% white.
In time I came to believe that the cultural experience that shaped my life and identity as a black woman was something that my goodhearted white colleagues - including Jean - could not understand. And I knew that I could not join them without telling the truth about my experience as a black American.
I have been an activist since I was a teenager. My life’s work is to interrupt the ugliness of racism and the idea of a human hierarchy that informs it. White supremacy, I believe, is an ideology that separates us and encourages our fear of each other. At the Institute, we had not yet learned how to cross the racial differences that influenced our lives as black and white people. And I had not yet developed the emotional muscle necessary to manage the stress of “otherness”. So, I chose to leave.
Now, Jean and I have found our way back to each other and our friendship. We are older and perhaps wiser. I sense we have come to know how important friendship is to both of us. And that it is not something to be easily discounted. It is worth fighting for, worth facing the pain of awareness.
We have agreed to take on a question to understand how racism shaped us: “What did we come to know and what did we not know”? And we have agreed to share what we are learning with anyone who wishes to sit with us.
Lutricia (Pat) Callair