Ellen Pavlacka's Blog
Building Trust / 11.01.09, 09:28 PM
I was warned coming into this that in city culture you enter in with no respect or trust and have to earn it (as opposed to suburbia where you’re given respect and trust and have the opportunity to keep or lose it).
The older camp kids are starting to trust me now. I’ve won the hearts of the younger ones more easily, but the older ones mean more. Their eyes are more sensitive to the color of my skin, and in their experience white is not a color that normally cares about black. They’ve built a process out of earning trust, and its main component is time. There’s a large aspect of it that is the genuineness of unconditional love and authenticity as well; not viewing them as “trouble,” but just kids, and more importantly, kids that need building up, not tearing down.
Anywho, I’ve proved myself somehow, and it’s just been in this past week that they’ve made an unspoken agreement to let me know because a handful of them have all started trading physical proximity and interest in me for their previous distance and skeptical, dismissive looks that they use as a tool to intimidate most unfamiliar white folk away. (I only say this because I used to be one of those white people.)
Those white people miss out, assuming the body language they just received was the essence of all black kids from the ghetto, allowing stereotypes to rule them and never getting to see the beautiful children behind their masks.
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You wonder, though, whether teaching these kids (and maybe that means exposing them to more white people) not to assume those distrustful, dismissive looks before they get to know someone of a lighter skin color than themselves? It seems an endless cycle. If white people are intimidated away, then it becomes true that the black population DOES go on being misunderstood or judged, but yet no one from either side is getting to know one another because of the mistrust on both sides.
But, I agree, those of us who are white need to take the time to get past those distrustful looks as well.
By Teresa Mansfield / Nov 2, 02:58 PM / #