After growing up in the Midwest, Kathryn purposefully sought out new experiences with race in other countries, only to find that humans share the same hopes, dreams, and fears all around the world.
After growing up in the Midwest, Kathryn purposefully sought out new experiences with race in other countries, only to find that humans share the same hopes, dreams, and fears all around the world.
I'm going to talk about my feelings now, please don't misconstrue my feelings as the spokesperson for my race, right. And so I think a lot of white people are reluctant to talk about our feelings of race, because we literally do not want to offend in any way. And yet we don't know how not to.
DB Crema:This is United States of Race, personal stories of how our earliest memories determine a lifetime of relationships. Each episode features one guest sharing their experiences with race, listen, without prejudice to their real, uninhibited stories, because by sharing when we first learned we are all different, we find the common thread that shows us how much we are all the same. I'm your host DB Crema. After growing up in the Midwest, Kathryn purposefully sought out new experiences with race in other countries, only to find that humans share the same hopes, dreams and fears all around the world. What was your first experience with race?
Kate:Yeah, I would like to talk about the first time I ever saw a black person.
DB Crema:Hmm, um,
Kate:Because I grew up in a very small town in the Midwest that had, as far as I know, this black gentleman was the only black person in our town for many years. And he drove the bus for our school. So the very first time I ever saw a black person in real life was the very first day of school in first grade, when I got on the bus. And this very kind man greeted me. And he was a beloved member of our community, he was always smiling, always full of life, always kind. Um, and as a child, I remember seeing his light, like more than seeing his color. I understand the whole, like, you know, I don't see color, I do see other people's colors. But I have always seen people's lights too. So rather than their color. But yeah, he was just always so kind and generous and loving to all the children. And he truly did love children. And I remember as I got older, realizing, you know, because when you first meet somebody, and even as a young person, your interaction with the person is sort of that one on one interaction, right? But then as you expand your knowledge of social constructs, you start to begin to notice how other people treat that person as well. Right. So as I aged, I began to notice that not everyone thought of this man as the shining light that I did. And people would tease him a lot. And we called him black Bob, that is what we called him. His name was Bob, but we called him black Bob to his face. To his face,
DB Crema:As if you needed to distinguish him from the other black people.
Kate:Right, I guess yeah. And so, now as an adult, like, knowing what that must have felt like in his heart to be referred to that way, it hurts me that I did it to him, you know. And it's, and it's something that I've had to resolve guilt around. Because I loved this man. I thought he was amazing. And I never did anything personally to the man. I just feel responsible for my society, you know. And I have carried guilt around it for years. So yeah.
DB Crema:That's pretty heavy.
Kate:Yeah.
DB Crema:So how do you think it is that black Bob ended up in your small Midwest town as the only black person?
Kate:I don't know. Actually, to this day, I have no idea why. And to my knowledge, you know, I am seeing him from a child's brain. So I don't, to my knowledge, he wasn't married. He was a single man who worked for the school system. He drove the bus. He also helped at meals, you know, in the cafeterias. And he, you know, was an essential part of our school. But I think of him as nothing but that. You know how like when your kids say, does the teacher sleep at school mom? You know, like, that is my... I have no knowledge of the man as an adult, so...
DB Crema:He's a living breathing human being outside of school
Kate:He magically appeared in my town to drive my bus and teach me about the very first black person that I ever knew.
DB Crema:You talked about how you started to notice the behavior of other people and how they treated Bob,. Did that change, did that color your view of him? How do you recall that affecting your view of things and your behavior?
Kate:Well, two things. I think it, you know, you said, did it color my view of him? Which is an interesting question, but it, what I immediately thought of was how it colored my view of them, of my friends, of people who I considered to be, you know, wonderful, amazing humans, treating another human in a way that I felt was completely wrong. But also, it created this vulnerability in my eyes of him. You know, like, I all the sudden realized, oh, this man has to deal with these people and the enduring kindness that he had. I mean, I did not know his situation. But it seems to me that if he had wanted to choose an easier path, he could have easily moved to a different town, you know, where he was more accepted, I guess you could say. But it wasn't as if people didn't accept him. They just always treated him as the other.
DB Crema:Mm hmm. How is it that as a child, as a young child, you, seeing people's behavior, made you question them rather than the person that they were... Like, you didn't just kind of join on the bandwagon? Like, where? Where's that come from?
Kate:Um, I think it comes from my soul, honestly. My soul is very old. And I just, instinctively in my heart, I knew that that wasn't the way that we're supposed to treat each other. It's just not, you know, so.
DB Crema:Did you, in your family, did you guys ever talk about or have conversations about race, as part of your upbringing or in the household?
Kate:Yeah, my father was very racist. Actually, openly and overtly racist. And, as a child, he had experienced... My grandfather, my dad's father, ran a gas station slash car dealership, right outside of a very large Native American reservation. And the Native Americans would come off of the reservation, and siphon gas in the middle of the night, out of the pumps. So, this is like before they had the lock pumps, right. And so they, in order to do that, you have to suck on the gasoline. So they would suck out gasoline. And just hearing that makes me so terribly sad. But to him, it was... he didn't see it that way. He only saw it as they were stealing from his father.
DB Crema:Hmm.
Kate:And then he was also in the army during the Korean War. My father was. There was a very big separation between white soldiers and black soldiers. And they did not associate with each other. My father hated black soldiers, hated the men that he served with. And it just blew my mind. Again, and again, every time he would talk about it, I just felt like it was so wrong. Somehow that was not the way it should be.
DB Crema:That's fascinating. Especially, because I imagined what you're talking about is inclusive of when you were very young, and that, you know, most most people were a product of their upbringing. But you felt and you could see that that was wrong. And you...
Kate:Yes! Yeah, I don't recall a time ever in my life. And he was my father. I mean, like, you just assume that, that I may have at one point, blindly believed my father's beliefs, but I never felt that way. Ever. So, you know, we're not all products, I guess of society. Thank goodness. Some of us live on the outskirts, right. And so what I find interesting now, I think of the times that I have placed myself in Bob's position in order to experience what it must have felt like to be him. Because, I put myself in Panama, I put myself in the Caribbean, surrounded by people who were not my color, in places where I have, at times, been the only white person.
DB Crema:So you're talking about later in life and you intentionally put yourself in situations where you are the outsider, you are the other and you are the only white person. Like, that's curious.
Kate:Yeah, I, you know, I did intententionally. I mean, when I signed up for the Peace Corps, and... Peace Corps is probably my next, you know, real, sustained encounter with black people. And so joining the Peace Corps, I knew I would be the outsider.
DB Crema:Hmmhmm.
Kate:And I was really looking forward to it. I really wanted to experience what it felt like to enter another person's culture, and explore what their world was like, right? I have always wanted to explore other people's worlds, I want a varied perspective of life. I have always sought that. And then of course, you know, the reality is that, you know, they don't accept you at first. They don't just welcome you with open arms. And then you learn that too, right? And you learn why, you know, why you don't get accepted?
DB Crema:My first thought is, isn't that a bit privileged to say like, Oh, I want to understand you and your life by showing up in Peace Corps and living in the same village?
Kate:100% 100%. Of course, it was. Yeah, it was total privilege. I was a naive, little girl. You know, who had grown up with so much privilege. And, yeah, it was very altruistic of me to imagine that I, you know, would just magically... and I never had any qualms of like, Oh, I'm going to go in and fix their problems. You know, I think some people who join Peace Corps are like, well, I will fix them, I will help them. But I had no notion of doing that. I just wanted the experience. And, you know, I ended up, I hope, helping them do a couple of technical things, because we do some technical things.
DB Crema:So you went for with experience, what did you find?
Kate:Um, I found that fear lives everywhere. You know, I just, I had an ideal life scenario in my head, right? Like, when I joined. And then it was this whole overcoming the notion that these people have this idyllic life, you know. Like, how wonderful that you live every day in nature, you know. Just like the notion that, like, their life was somehow, like more idyllic than the rat race of the United States and all of the baloney that we put ourselves through. And they don't have that, but at the same time, they don't feel like they have an ideal life. And that was what really struck me. I was like, wow, you know, they wanted my life, my terrible debt ridden, you know, rat race that I was trying to escape from, they wanted that. And it was, yeah, that was eye opening for me. Yeah.
DB Crema:And even though you came from a rural farming part of America, you must have known firsthand the slog that it is to be in farming, and that it's not some idyllic, you know, vision of you know, Instagram influencer with flowers in the hair, frolicking through the fields and a white flowy dress and like milking the pygmy goats, and, you know, whatever.
Kate:Right.
DB Crema:You know that, but yet, you expected these other communities to have that and to live that?
Kate:I did. Yeah. Which is so strange. Now that I think about it. Yeah. Because I should have realized that you know, all of life can be seen as a struggle or a gift, right? We are all different. And we all experience everything on a different level. Because we have this avatar suit. You know, I picked short, white, you know, person with a crazy, significant last name, to grow up in a rural setting. And somebody else chose something else. I will never feel the way that they do. And the solution is to be understood, for who you are, and celebrated for who you are, right?
DB Crema:So you mentioned your significant last name.
Kate:Yes.
DB Crema:Tell us about that.
Kate:So my last name is Lincoln. I am a descendant of Abraham Lincoln. You know, he wasn't my grandfather, but he is, in my very near branches of my family tree. My father and my brother, because they are male, have been named in books about Lincoln's ancestors. You know, we have books that contain our family history. Yeah, down to their names. We are not included, because I'm a female. So there's another... there's another topic that we could tackle. But yes, I am a descendant of Abraham Lincoln. And it carries all of the weight of that specific name with me. Yeah, but being a Lincoln, in our society has afforded me privileges beyond just being a white person, I believe. And there's a certain forgiveness, you know, automatic. If my name is Lincoln, then I somehow embody the idyllic scenario of what he stood for, right? Like, I almost cannot be a racist. I almost cannot be, you know, ignorant about things. You know, I'm seen as being super intelligent, and super, you know, fair and well spoken, etc. So then I...
DB Crema:Standing up for what is right.
Kate:Yeah. And I've tried to live my life that way. And I think it's, you know, it has helped me in some ways to try to live up to my name in that way. But then, in other ways it's almost like, it's an expectation that I obviously didn't ask for, but was given. And then it's an expectation as well, that I did not see my father, nor, you know, other family members of mine, living up to.
DB Crema:Hmm.
Kate:So.
DB Crema:Hmm. So have you ever used it kind of as your, this is probably the worst way to put it, as your get out of jail card or your trump card?
Kate:Oh, I was going to say. Did you say that word?
DB Crema:Right. Right. But, it's like I can't be... No one can question my ethics and my worldview, because I'm a descendant of Lincoln. Have you ever felt that or use that, you know, as your...
Kate:Um, I have felt other people's assumptions about that.
DB Crema:Hmm. Basically, your last name makes you immune from offending people.
Kate:I don't know if it makes me immune, because it has also gone the other way where I've been challenged. So you know, oh, well, you know, I am expected to know a lot more about racism and black history, because my name is Lincoln. I have been put in to, you know, scenarios where as soon as someone finds out, my name is Lincoln, they start, you know, challenging my core beliefs, or even just like asking me historical things that I'm just like, I don't know, guy. Like, so I actually felt like I was obligated to know so many things about Abraham Lincoln in order to answer these questions when I was challenged, which I thought was unfair, at times.
DB Crema:You're not prepared to speak on behalf of Abraham Lincoln and the entire Lincoln family tree.
Kate:Oh, what?!
DB Crema:Hogwash. But I mean, in that sense, speaking on behalf of the entire Lincoln family tree, I mean, there's a lot of criticism of Abraham Lincoln as well. And not overlooking the work that he did in abolition, but questioning the hypocrisy of kind of contributing to the very thing that he was working to abolish.
Kate:Or even just doing it as political positioning, right, rather than for a truly altruistic... Was he truly altruistic? I mean, are we ever going to answer that question? I mean, there's so many sides of both sides of that that can be argued until you know, the day I die for sure. So, um, you know, why did circumstances around his individual being happen the way that they happened? I don't know. But his soul must have at some level agreed that it would play this contribution. And I think whatever you feel about Lincoln is the way that... is your truth about him, right? Like either you think he did these things as a political, you know, tactician or you think he did them for truly altruistic reasons. And I think they're both right, honestly.
DB Crema:Mm hmm. That's the complexity of human beings. How does it make you feel to be a Lincoln?
Kate:I feel very proud to be a Lincoln, actually. I have always felt very proud to be a Lincoln even though he was an anomaly of our family. But I have always felt, yeah, very proud to be his ancestor.
DB Crema:Thanks for listening to United States of Race. This podcast was produced by me, DB Crema. Our artwork is designed by Aly Creative, and our recordings are done via SquadCast FM. With everything being remote these days, SquadCast delivers studio quality remote recording for all your podcast needs. If you love great storytelling, you can follow United States of Race on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and show us some love by rating and writing a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. You can also share this podcast with your friends and anyone who believes in the power of building connection through sharing personal stories. And you can follow us on Instagram at unitedstatesofrace. And as always, if you, Yes, you have a compelling story to share and would like to be featured in an upcoming episode, send us a message at unitedstatesofrace@gmail.com. Until next time.