Feeling way too white

Talking with my black neighbors can be agonizingly awkward.

from the July 13, 2007 edition

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Moreover, and more to the point, there are black folks where I live, and I can't say that I know them any better than I do those in Austin. At parties or school functions, we chat and trade news; occasionally, we reference comedian Chris Rock or presidential candidate Barack Obama.

And at that very moment, that Chris Rock/Barack Obama moment, I become painfully, agonizingly, white. Beset by white liberal discomfort and mortified that I might appear to be trying too hard, I quickly change the subject, to something not identifiably black – teachers or taxes.

I wish I could ask the questions I would pose to anyone from a culture that is foreign to me. What do you think of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? Does the church's place in your community make it hard for atheists? What does white society – what do I – get wrong about you every day? I would ask these things of a German or a Pakistani. But I've never even asked my cousin.

We're not integrated. We're strangers.

What America needs is neither Supreme Court-sanctioned race-blindness, nor the Pollyanna "conversation on race," cited as a countermeasure when celebrities spout racist insults or Fox News mistakes black members of Congress. What it needs is to acknowledge the sheer distance between the races, and to make a real effort to bridge it.

I do not doubt that old-school racism remains a defining characteristic of American life, but I believe the kind of soft racism of which I'm guilty is part of the problem. So sure that my very whiteness puts me on a wrong foot, I won't admit our differences. So afraid of looking the fool, I learn nothing.

I hope that when my children read this 20 years from now, they'll marvel at my backwardness. That their experience in a truly integrated school system in which cultural diversity is a value both taught and lived will mean that my mental walls don't survive to their generation.

In the meantime, I believe I should try to get over myself.

• Emily L. Hauser is a freelance writer.

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