Growing Pains

The ugliness within

When I was 16, I attended a youth leadership camp. Kids who were considered leaders in their high schools were sent from all over Minnesota to a camp in Western Wisconsin for a 10 day crash course in team-building, diversity and cultural awareness, and community service. There were 5 of us sent from my high school (one was a counselor) but we were all split into separate teams once we arrived at camp.

I’m sure you’ve gathered this if you’ve been reading this column for any length of time, but I feel the need to state that I had a fairly sheltered, homogenous upbringing. I come from a small town in North Minnesota. In the mid-90s, we had very few people of color in the community. I didn’t have any kind of significant interaction with the Ojibwe community who live not very far to the west of us, there was an Ethiopian family in town, and there were a couple of classmates of Asian descent. Otherwise, my worldview was lily-white. In addition, I was blissfully unaware of class, economics, poverty, and politics.

I was one of 3 white kids (and one white counselor) in my group at camp. One of the white kids was a 17-year-old girl who had a toddler at home, and spoke of hoping her boyfriend brought a friend along to drive her home so they could “bump uglies” in the backseat. I was taken aback momentarily (more by the open sexuality than being in the racial minority) but quickly adjusted. It turned out, the camp designed our entry this way.

For the first 12 hours of our camp experience, we were alone in the wilderness with only our group members. We needed to cover distance, while also working together to complete team challenges presented by our counselors. I have never bonded so quickly with a group of people in my life, nor have I since. By the time we laid out tarps on the ground so that we could sleep under the stars, I trusted each team member implicitly. I already loved them.

It was almost disappointing when we arrived at camp the next day and joined the rest of the population. I wanted more time with my new friends. However, I fell equally hard for the girls in my assigned cabin. I also began a chaste little romance with one of my team members — a Lakota boy from Minneapolis — which added a flavor of excitement to every day.

Each night at dinner, a different cultural group would present food and stories about their culture. Asian, Latino, African-American, and Native American nights were educational, delicious, and fun. When it came time for the European Americans to meet and plan our night, we got a little bit stuck. We felt boring, disconnected, and lacking in connection to our heritage. It was uncomfortable. We finally decided to embrace that feeling, and introduced ourselves to the wider group by naming the amalgam of countries from which our forbears hailed. (I have no recollection of what we ate for dinner — it was probably hot dogs.)

As it happened, the dinner conundrum was the tip of the iceberg of the discomfiting awareness of my whiteness that this camp would present to me. Decades later, I am still unpacking my experience there, and the waves of embarrassment and shame that hit me at odd times tell me that I’m still learning lessons from it.

For the last weekend of camp, we were split up into new groups, based on our preferences for community service projects. I joined the project that would be performing a show at area nursing homes (shocker, I know). I was happy when I found out that Tony (my best buddy from my original team) and Premal (a counselor that I had attended another camp with a couple of years before) were both on the same project. We all moved into a new cabin together and started planning the show.

This is the part that is uncomfortable for me to talk about. As the planning began, my voice was loud. I was a musical theater kid, I had always been encouraged to speak up, and I didn’t know anything about centering the voices of others. I connected with our leader — an older white guy, a total hippy who played guitar and was delighted to find out I could sing. We started talking about skits and clowns and songs we could all sing, but things stalled out as we moved into the evening and we got tired. I remember I was going off about something that wasn’t working when all of a sudden I heard a hissed, “Fuckin’ white girl,” from the other end of the table. It was one of two Latinas, both of whom I was intimidated by already. I didn’t know why she was mad at me, only that I had never been called out like that before. I started shaking and ran outside, crying.

In the days and months following this incident, I told this story to demonstrate that I “understood the effects of racism,” because “it happened to me, too.” I am not sure how I was never confronted about how incredibly ignorant and just wrong I was, but here we are.

It is also not lost on me that 1) my friends Tony and Premal — both brown-skinned humans — chased after me as I fled, offering comfort and solace, and 2) that girl got a stern talking-to from the white guy leader. That young woman got in trouble for her frustration over not being able to have her voice heard over the obnoxious, know-it-all, sheltered and naive white girl. The white girl who thought she was the victim. Folks, telling you this makes me cringe.

Before you start getting the feeling that I need to ease up on myself, I will say that I wasn’t entirely an idiot. I wanted to learn, and those 10 days at camp had me asking more questions about society and conditioning than I had ever known existed. I entered the next school year demanding that we change our school mascot (we were the Grand Rapids Indians) and spearheading the planning for a Diversity Week. I did not, however, recognize my privilege until years later.

I am choosing to tell this story right now because something terrible has happened in our country. A majority of our fellow citizens of the United States of America have exposed themselves. We are not a country that cares about the least of us. We are not a country that values women. We are not a country that agrees with Jesus’s plea to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” We are a country who cares more about the price of eggs and gas then about the health and safety of the people in our communities. We are a country that revels in our ignorance and hatred. We are a country divided, and yes we’ve been here before but that makes it worse.

But. Oh yes, there is a but. We will all learn in the coming years what a mistake has been made. We will all live the horror and pain of it. And we will change. I can’t know in what ways the changes will manifest, in the same way I can’t predict the actions of the man who will soon be sitting in the high seat of power in our country. I can’t shake the feeling that some of us are in mortal danger from others of us. I do know that I’m willing to stand in between.

Thanks for reading.

Love, Susie