Invisibilty: The Cloak of the White

"He strapped the rifle to his back and, still holding the statue head, leaped out from the grove.  As he sprinted across the field again, the Americans across the creek gave covering fire.  But their attempt at protection didn't matter.  It came on him again.  True and real. Invisibility.  He could've walked over there with an ice cream cone like it was Sunday morning after church.  Nothing would touch him. He could see better, hear better, smell better.  There was no noise, no pain, no fear.  He felt the rush of fresh Tuscan morning air on his face, heard every bush, every tree, every rock, which seemed to speak to him, shake his hand, saying, Hello, Sam Train.  Good morning, Sam Train.  We love you, Sam Train.  What can we do to help you out today, Mr. Sam Train?

This, he thought as he leaped over rocks and gullies, is what it must feel like to be white."

The first time I read this passage, taken from James McBride's novel, Miracle at St. Anna (pp 27-28), I was stopped dead in my tracks--or, at least, would have been were I walking.  I was actually sitting comfortably in a cozy chair at a coffee shop, so I was stopped dead in my chair.  Or, to be wholly true to the reality of the scene, I was stopped dead in all aspects of my thinking and feeling.  I sat motionless.  I sensed nothing around me.  I felt utterly stunned, stilled, and silenced in thought and speech.  There was nothing in my mind but those words and an awakening.  I cannot ever know what it is to walk in the skin, mind, and psyche of a person of color, yet in those moments when I was stopped dead in the tracks of this white woman's daily life, I had an awaking.  I gained a completely new understanding of what it was to be white and what it was to be not white.

I am fairly well-read when it comes to racism, including the history, our current context, white perspectives, non-white perspectives, overt racism, covert racism, institutionalized racism, cultural hegemony, white privilege, internalized inferiority, and internalized superiority. Yet all this knowledge was suddenly brought into a painfully bright light through the words of this passage and I saw and felt in a profoundly real way what racism meant for those who live under its shadow.  And yes, O Yes, the shadow of racism still reaches all across America, the world, and over our (white folks) own hearts.  This is what it is to be white: Invisible.  As a person with skin lacking in melanin, a person whose history has happened to be on the side of might due to the chance of my birth, I have the opportunity to be invisible if I so choose.  I can blend in, go unnoticed, fly beneath the radar, or to put it in today's vernacular, shop without being followed, drive without being pulled over, enter any neighborhood without being questioned, and be given the benefit of any doubt at all times. Apparently, the only time I'm not invisible, is when I'm hailing a taxi.

Can I possibly understand what it is to not be invisible?  To have the tone of my skin draw attention, skepticism, criticism, and pre-judgement at all moments?  Even among my own people, to have the level of my skin tone--dark or light--to invoke meaning about who I am.  In a world where so many people cry out to be noticed, I imagine that many of my non-white brothers and sisters may dream of simply being overlooked.  Overlooked, that is, on the basis of first glance, and truly noticed for the impression they make simply as a human being.