Because race is different. Racism is different. It’s fraught, and it’s hard to discuss, and so as a result we often don’t.
Then I read a news story about an African American nurse in Flint, Michigan. She had worked in labor and delivery for over twenty years, and then one day a baby’s dad asked to see her supervisor. He requested that this nurse, and those who looked like her, not touch his infant. He turned out to be a white supremacist. The supervisor put the patient request in the file, and a bunch of African American personnel sued for discrimination and won. But it got me thinking, and I began to weave a story.
I knew that I wanted to write from the point of view of a Black nurse, a skinhead father, and a public defender—a woman who, like me, and like many of my readers, was a well-intentioned white lady who would never consider herself to be a racist. Suddenly I knew that I could, and would, finish this novel. Unlike my first, aborted foray, I wasn’t writing it to tell people of color what their own lives were like. I was writing to my own community—white people—who can very easily point to a neo-Nazi skinhead and say he’s a racist…but who can’t recognize racism in themselves.
Truth be told, I might as well have been describing myself not so long ago. I am often told by readers how much they’ve learned from my books—but when I write a novel, I learn a lot as well. This time, though, I was learning about myself. I was exploring my past, my upbringing, my biases, and I was discovering that I was not as blameless and progressive as I had imagined.
Most of us think the word racism is synonymous with the word prejudice. But racism is more than just discrimination based on skin color. It’s also about who has institutional power. Just as racism creates disadvantages for people of color that make success harder to achieve, it also gives advantages to white people that make success easier to achieve. It’s hard to see those advantages, much less own up to them. And that, I realized, was why I had to write this book. When it comes to social justice, the role of the white ally is not to be a savior or a fixer. Instead, the role of the ally is to find other white people and talk to make them see that many of the benefits they’ve enjoyed in life are direct results of the fact that someone else did not have the same benefits.
I began my research by sitting down with women of color. Although I knew that peppering people of color with questions is not the best way to educate oneself, I hoped to invite these women into a process, and in return they gave me a gift: they shared their experiences of what it really feels like to be Black. I remain so grateful to these women—not just for tolerating my ignorance but for being willing to teach me. Then I had the pleasure of talking to Beverly Daniel Tatum, former president of Spelman College and a renowned racial educator. I read books by Dr. Tatum, Debby Irving, Michelle Alexander, and David Shipler. I enrolled in a social justice workshop called Undoing Racism, and left in tears every night, as I began to peel back the veneer of who I thought I was from who I truly am.
Then I met with two former skinheads, to develop a vocabulary of hate for my white supremacist character. My daughter, Sammy, was the one who found Tim Zaal—a former skinhead who had Skyped with her class in high school. Years ago, Tim beat up and left a gay man for dead. After getting out of the movement, he started to work at the Simon Wiesenthal Center talking about hate crimes and realized one day that the man he had nearly killed worked there, too. There were apologies and forgiveness, and now they are friends who talk about their unique experience to groups every week. He also is happily married now, to a Jewish woman. Frankie Meeink, another former skinhead, works with the Anti-Defamation League. Although he once recruited for hate crews in Philly, he now runs Harmony Through Hockey—a program to promote racial diversity among kids.