Conditioning

People have two basic influences on the way they see the world: intuitional and conditional. On one hand we have been trying to decode how humans actually intuit the world around them, and this can be seen in the form of the bond between a parent and their child, or the will for self preservation. The other way a person builds their view of the world is conditioning. This is a charged word that is usually only used to describe salivating dogs, and mice in mazes. In actuality it means so much more than that. Anything not encoded in your DNA is conditioning: your home environment, the schools you go to, and even the climate you live in all contribute to how you see the world. When it comes to race, conditioning is much like socialization. Humans are naturally social creatures and in order to navigate our world we have created social systems. Whether race is born through tribalism or geographical luck the concept has been conditioned into the identities of everyone on the planet.

For me my conditioning is fairly typical for a upper-middle class girl with my interests, until you add the fact that I am black. Growing up in private schools, and in places like Wellesley, MA and East Providence, places where 85% of the population is white, my experiences have primarily consisted of white people. From the confusion I felt after going to a friend’s Seder dinner and realizing I was in fact not Jewish to navigating as the only black kid in my middle-school-grade I have always had to live not just as a person, but as a black person.

In the middle of fifth grade I was the only one left. As I signed the card and posed for the group pictures I didn’t realize what was happening. My classmate with a silent “N” in her name was going to live with her extended family in a country skinnier than the state I lived in. I was alone because until I went to Putney I would be the only black person in my grade. At the time this meant very little to me. I knew everything: what was and was not racist, the entire history of American slavery, and even everything about the complicated world of “black hair.” I was an unaware token student who was “white on the inside” and didn’t listen to rap. In some ways this was a facade, but as I look back on it I realize it was simply how I was conditioned. I was conditioned through my surroundings, and I wasn’t the “wrong type of black” I just was. Now that I am no longer alone I feel in some ways more lonely. Not quite part of one side or another I just am.

With my new realizations I have been able to answer the question: “Is that racist?” more holistically. But in order to get to that place I had to go through the very formative experience of middle school. When I was in sixth grade I had U.S. history. This included learning about slavery, and because I went to a progressive private school our teacher gave us an accurate portrayal of it. We read out loud from books as my class played a game of who will have to say “nigger” out loud. I would look around after it was read as people avoided eye contact with me and pushed through the material. As my encounters with answering for my race have changed so has the way I’ve dealt with them. I am now able to answer questions and confront prejudiced actions and remarks as a self aware black girl, not as a the “white on the inside” and doesn’t listen to rap girl.

With my new reflective identity I am able to see the reason behind the questions and actions: conditioning. As of now there is not racist or bigoted gene, it is purely a creation of societies. Because of this I can, in some ways, understand why I have to answer for my race. This is because the conditioning I have that is an ever-present feeling of my race is not in white people. They instead need to experience race through others. This leads to the questions, but what leads to the bigotry and racism? That is something not only I would like to know, but something the world needs to know.