Caution: White Privilege Ahead

When I was little, my father read Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories to me at bedtime.

My parents emphasized this was a positive and special thing just between my father and I. His parents hadn’t read to him when he was little, and he hadn’t read these stories with my older sister, so it was just between us. My father and I even went to flea markets and antique stores, searching for Uncle Remus books. We ended up with quite a collection, and I still have one of them.

Nights with Uncle Remus, one of the books my father read to me as a child

If you aren’t familiar with the Uncle Remus stories, they are African-American folktales appropriated by journalist and author Joel Chandler Harris. He based the stories on tales he heard from enslaved Black Americans while living on a plantation in Georgia during the Civil War when he was a teenager. The stories were extremely popular from initial publication in 1880 into the twentieth century, but by the time Disney adapted it into Song of the South in 1946, they already had a long history of controversy. By the time my father was reading them to me in the early 1980s, the stories were no longer common, largely due to their racist connotations. (For an excellent analysis of Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories, I recommend The Annotated African American Folktales edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Maria Tatar.)

Joel Chandler Harris Artist: Lucy May Stanton (1875-1931), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Some of my best memories of my father are from him reading me those stories when I was a little girl. They were common as children’s stories when they were popular, and it’s easy to see why. Animal trickster stories based in traditional African stories, the characters of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear fit in next to old original versions of myths, fables, and fairy tales. Uncle Remus is a figure from the tradition of oral storytelling. To me, they were just bedtime stories.

But they are not just bedtime stories.

This is what racism and white privilege can look like—nonchalantly reading stories that depict an idealized and romanticized version of plantation life with a nostalgia for a time when a large number of people were enslaved and treated barbarically. It’s not necessarily an action but a lack of understanding. A lack of acknowledgement of the atrocities inherent in slavery and its ongoing aftereffects. That is privilege—the privilege of ignoring the bits that aren’t nice.

Later when I was in high school, a theater class assignment was to bring in and read a story. What should I bring in but one of the special books? I picked one of my favorite stories and proudly read it to my entire class.

I’m very grateful the teacher approached it as a teaching opportunity. She explained to me many people find the Uncle Remus stories offensive—the first indication I ever had of that perspective. I wish I could recall more of the discussion, but my overwhelming memory is the shock of that discovery.

I was horrified. I had no notion the stories which had formed such a large part of my childhood would offend anyone. My family never discussed race. To them, reading these stories was normal, just like reading a fairy tale.

But it was not normal.

This is how racist ideas can become normalized. Incorporated into our daily lives, they ignore the harm to people of color because it doesn’t directly, obviously impact me as a White person. I don’t have to worry about being pulled over or stopped by police. If I am pulled over, I wouldn’t immediately worry about being shot, killed, or unjustly arrested while many people of color live with that fear. Since it doesn’t impact me directly, it isn’t my problem.

This is what privilege looks like. I have the privilege of not having that thought going through my mind, of not carrying that burden everyday. Moreover, White people can dismiss this lack of action and understanding as not racist because it’s an absence rather than an action, because I haven’t done anything. Yet, racism can be insidious and hard to pin down. It thrives off of the complacency of those who could make a difference.

There was a long time when I didn’t do anything. I wish I could say my experience in high school was a wakeup call and an experience that helped me realize the insidious nature of racism, but I can’t. It wasn’t until I was well into my forties that I began to make those connections.

In the wake of George Floyd’s brutal murder, I listened to colleagues talking about their fears, and for the first time, really heard the experience of living in the US as a person of color, and I experienced a shock of recognition. It was a fear I understood, a very real concern something would happen to them not because of anything they had done, but because they exist.

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I am not a person of color, and I have not experienced racism first hand, but I have experienced the fear of physical injury or death. I know what it’s like to live afraid.

That’s when I realized I was part of the problem. It’s not a small problem. It runs throughout our society and institutions, and that can make it feel insurmountable.

But it is not insurmountable.

We can combat racism by recognizing and acknowledging it, starting with ourselves, but it isn’t easy. It’s very uncomfortable, but it’s important to face uncomfortable ideas. I know I have privilege. I know I’ve contributed to our racist society. I know I’ve caused unintentional harm by both my actions and my silence.

That’s the first step: recognizing racism in all of its many forms. Recognizing where your own privilege comes into play. Recognizing where you’ve caused harm even when you didn’t intend to.

But, understanding your own privilege can be so very difficult because it’s been normalized for you. It’s very hard to see it. Ibram X. Kendi in How to Be an Antiracist described privilege as the water a fish is swimming in. It’s ubiquitous.

On the other hand, it’s really easy to identify privilege in someone else when I’m the one who’s at a disadvantage. It’s very easy to identify the water a fish is swimming in when I’m on dry land.

That’s why the first step is recognizing that privilege, seeing the water.

If the first step is recognizing the problem, the second step is taking action, doing something about the problem.

I’ve been part of the problem, so now I’m trying to be part of the solution.

Storytelling is how I interact with the world, so it’s the best way I have to take action and to atone. Since recognizing privilege is so difficult, I wrote a story about a White character beginning that journey and beginning to reckon with her own privilege and with recognizing racism.

Stories can give us space to work through and understand our own real life experiences in ways nothing else can. Writing Deadly Decaf helped me to do so, but I hope it can also give readers space to do the same, with a thrilling mystery on the side.

I don’t know why my father read the Uncle Remus stories to me, and he passed away several years ago, so I can’t ask him. I can’t go back and change all of the years I ignored and contributed to racism. What I can do is be open and honest about who I am, what I’ve experienced, and what I’ve learned in the hope it can help make a difference.

Because I also know my experiences are still easier than living as a person of color in America.

Receipt for Night with Uncle Remus purchased in 1987 and the inside of the book signed "property of Larry & Betsy Breitenbach" by my father