Less than a year ago, back in The Before Times, Rachelle and I were lying in bed watching TV.

The HBO show Watchmen was on, and the central plotline involved the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. The most vital, prosperous community in Black America was attacked– via land and air– by angry, resentful whites. An estimated thirty-six blocks of this district was razed, up to 300 Blacks were killed, and another 6,000 interned for days.

Neither Rachlle nor I had ever heard of this.

In fact, I was so astonished by our shared ignorance that I presumed the Tulsa Massacre was a fictional event built to serve the story we were watching, rather than something that actually took place. It was beyond my imagination that we would not have been taught something so central to our history.

Just.
Couldn’t.
Happen.

And as you very likely know, I’m white.

But I’m not one of those whites.
I’m not a racist.
Nope…

I’m not one of those Deplorables we all sneered at on social media. And I imagined the type of “white” I inhabited was very different from the type of “white” all the bad people inhabited. I was an obvious ally, I thought.

It’s always amazing to me how white people can use the expression “white person” or “ white privilege” in a way that always seems to exempt them from the group they’re referring to. The continual references seem equal parts contrition and gratitude, but it is also a signal of need. A desire for approval, to be reassured that this symbolic gesture of self-awareness was sufficient. But it wasn’t self-awareness, it was more like a nervous tic or autistic spasm, and like all who are born into white privilege, we lived both comfortably and uncomfortably within it.

Anyway, my ignorance of The Tulsa Massacre, and my astonishment at my ignorance, is probably a really good example of systemic racism. Invisible and unknown. Marked by absence more than presence. Path lines that just vanish or were never allowed to start. And me, and by extension the majority community, having no fucking idea.

Anyway, I think I could go on a long time trying to work this out, but suffice it to say, this is a starting point. And as has been said before, I am learning more as the statues come down than when I lived in their midst.