I am so far outside, the Hubble telescope

can’t help me see in. I cannot see through

the dark skin of African-Americans into

 

what it means to be black in America.

I thought I could back in grade school

but I noticed my best friend on the play

 

ground had dark skin and after school

he went to his home and I went to mine

and never the twain met, and in college

 

my senior year room-mate was a black

guy who I counted as my best friend for those

nine months, but I couldn’t get into his skin,

 

and he once asked me to hold my arms

down at my side and he pointed out

how curled, like a gorilla, my fingers were

 

compared to his and so asked without

the question, who was the monkey.

I am a white man of Swedish and

 

Dutch ancestry and in spite of the ups

and downs of life and, to be honest,

there have been some significant

 

downs as well as ups, I still only see

life as a privileged white in America.

It is stamped on my national DNA.

 

I think I am a follower of Jesus and

I try to strive for social justice and to

speak out for those mistreated by

 

the system, but those are acts and we

are talking about being. My being is as

an American something who cannot

 

understand an American something else

because of our very different roots in the

same garden. In my America, my roots

 

always flower; in their America, seen through

my America, their roots mostly result in weeds.

I am a child of a country founded by whites

 

who have had supremacy in the marrow of

their bones from day one till now; I, too,have

inherited that heritage and it, too, goes to the

 

marrow of my bones without my even knowing it

and in spite of my dark-skinned savior Jesus. I

have had it easy; I am racially profiled, too, every-

 

day as a-okay; I choose safe neighborhoods in

coveted areas in which to live; I had no trouble

choosing and achieving the American dream

 

because I am a privileged, white American;

but because I can only see from my side of

life’s story, I can see nothing at all; I am blind

 

and as I said, not even a Hubble telescope

would help. I’m too much of a white American.

I’m sorry, Jesus, my dark-skinned savior.