Sometimes I'm Racist

Discovered how racist I am while at work today. While tagging books a slim, bright red book with yellowing pages fell off the truck and into my lap. I looked down, surprised, and the book spoke to me. It said, 'this year you write your novel.' Curious, I looked more closely and discovered the author. A one Walter Mosley. I thought, 'who is this Walter Mosley, and what makes him qualified to tell me how to write a novel?' So I researched him, and just by typing in his name to my library's catalogue I was already discovering new insights into my psyche.

I assumed he was white.

Based entirely on the title of the book, and his name. That is how my head works.

When I'm reading, I always assume all the characters are white. Unless I know otherwise from the beginning I assume every author I'm reading is white.

Does this happen to other people?

One of his books is called Cinnamon Kiss, another Bad Boy Brawly Brown, and I saw those titles come up first and I immediately thought to myself, 'oh that can't be right, his name must be similar to a black author and the system just threw them both together.'

So not only did I assume that Walter Mosley was white, I also assumed these titles were specifically black titles, somehow aimed at the black reading populace.

What happens in life that results in a white person automatically assuming everyone else of even moderate success is white as well? Do people of other races assume characters in books are the same race as them or have we tarnished their spirit to the point where they also assume everyone is white?

Race equality is still an ongoing struggle.

Even writing this I'm not sure if I'm being racist or not. I probably could have referred to Mosley as African-American. That could have been a start, I suppose, but doesn't that still keep our races separate? By saying that, am I still only showing how naive about race I still am? Can I, as a white female, really comment on how difficult it must be for others?

I feel like- I know that I need real answers and solutions to these questions and problems, but I don't know where to begin, or how. It feels like something is off in my brain, something that makes me think the race I come from and claim as my own is somehow superior to any other. That doesn't seem healthy to me. That sounds like a mental disorder. Like an imbalance of chemicals.

I want to have a proper balance of chemicals. I want to assume that a writer is a writer, a person is a person. I want to assume that we're all the same underneath. I don't know how to make my brain do that.