Barak Obama has reached out and grabbed the "third rail" of U.S. race relations with both hands and he's feeling the heat. He gave a beautiful speech in response to questions about his association with Jeremiah Wright. Then he stepped in political doo-doo by saying that his Grandmother was a "typical white person" in that she has internalized some racial stereotypes. White folks are now all in a dither about this statement, wondering aloud whether Obama believes that all whites are racist.
Well. Here we go. I'll grant that Barak Obama made a political gaffe with the "typical" comment, but I think he spoke more truthfully than many of us white people (especially white liberals) would like to admit.
I invite my white friends and family to consider these examples from my own life and see if they don't resonate a little -- maybe a lot. Maybe you'll be uncomfortable, but until we start admitting that we are infected by assumptions of white superiority, we are not going be able to recognize where we need to get better. Being hampered by stereotypes is not the same as being racist, but it can lead us in that direction if we don't take a good hard look at it and question our assumptions and reactions.
Scenario #1
I am standing in line at a McDonald's one day several years ago -- before I had children of my own. A little black boy of about 4 or 5 is using his finger to pretend to shoot various targets in the restaurant while waiting in line ahead of me. I am disturbed by this behavior. After a few moments, I realize that my reaction is contingent on his race. If the boy were white or Asian, I wouldn't be disturbed at all. I might be disapproving (remember this is pre-kids!) but I wouldn't be *disturbed*. I would interpret his finger shooting in light of an internal image of rowdy little boy-hood and nothing more. I am ashamed of myself, but there it is -- a racist thought that I didn't even recognized as such at first. Without conscious thought, I am interpreting the boy's behavior in light of an internal image of black teen gangsters, even though there is nothing "ghetto" about the kid -- he's wearing normal clothes and accompanied by an average looking middle-class parent. I remember this incident sometimes when my own little 5 year old brown boy is playing rough and rowdy in public.
Scenario #2
When it becomes clear, near the end of college, that I might end up married to Firmin, I begin to dream of our future together. I have grown up happily in small-towns, so my default image of family life is small-town life. It hits me suddenly, like a ton of bricks: if I marry him, I will probably never live in a small town. If we do, questions of our safety and the psychological impact on our children will have to be considered. I can't believe I never really *got* this before -- if you are black in America, you cannot freely live wherever you want. All options are not open to you, at least not without considerable downsides. The implications go beyond the niceties of low population and big lawns. It affects your career opportunities, educational options for your children and more. My world both shrinks and expands in that instant. For the first time in my life, I am on the other side of race privilege. I hadn't even known I was on a side before this. Crazy, huh?
Scenario #3
I'm walking down the street and I see a fast food bag full of trash come flying out the window of a passing car. The people in the car are black. I take note of that.
Typical.
Thanks to Jennifer at Faking It for the inspiration to blog about this topic.
Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Woman
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I received my membership card from the Philadelphia Museum of Art today.
The front of it has an excerpt from a painting by Wassily Kandinsky, Circles
in ...
2 years ago
9 comments:
I have examples like yours, too. But here's one I've been sitting with for a few months:
I have three kids. The two older are white; the baby is black. As I've looked at children's film and literature in the last seven years, I've been amazed at how far it's come in representing diversity since I was a kid: books in which the characters are illustrated as black but in which the story is not about race; hardly a movie at all in which all the characters are white, and so on.
Enter little black baby. And suddenly I'm troubled by how limited and conditional all that progress is. Why are the black and brown people so often the friends of the main character? Why is it always 3-4 white kids, one black kid, one brown kid? Why do you never see one white as part of a group of brown kids? Why are so very many books about black kids "message" books about race and urban poverty? Why are so few families portrayed as mixed-race> (Babybug magazine is actually one terrific exception to this--their human families come in all types.)
It's not that I didn't notice this stuff before--I'm a very attentive and savvy consumer of literature. And I cared about it, too. I just notice that I care about it a lot more now that it's hitting closer to home.
[Also: wow, you and Firmin have been together since college?]
Stephanie, what a brave and beautiful post. I, of course, have plenty of examples of my own. We all like to think we don't have them. But we all do. All of us. The thing about those feelings is I think they die a bit, in the light. I am so emotional (in a good, positive, hopeful way) about the fact that this discussion is being brought into the light.
Thank you for these words.
Hi Stephanie,
I very much enjoyed this post. Gave me lots to think about. Scenario #1 really struck close to home. I have been the mother to a black son now for 22 months. He is obsessed with guns and cars. He often says when he grows up, the first things he will buy are a gun and a car. While I know his fascination with "playing war" or "cops and robbers" is no different from my two white sons, I often catch myself wanting to "tone" him down a bit. I do worry about what goes through other people's minds (and perhaps my own) when they see him, a black boy, weilding a "toy gun" even when that gun has been merely fashioned out of legos, or toast, or sticks, or what have you. I have never had this worry for my white sons. For my black son, I feel like he has a finer line to walk, that there can be no ambiguity to his actions with respect to guns. I worry that as he gets older and is away from us more and more that he may not be afforded the same benefit of the doubt as my white sons in a given situation. That both saddens and scares me.
I hope that makes sense. I think there was a better way to say that, but my brain hasn't quite kicked into gear this morning.
Kimberly
Hmmm...tough. I'm sure I've had my share of racial thoughts in some way. I've gotten used to SO MANY different types of people, different ethnicities, etc. I work in a teaching hospital, we have a ton of people come here that aren't even US citizens. I did question why when there was some sort of "attack" or "planned attack" (gosh, I can't remember now) in some other country by doctors that were not from that country. "Are we safe?" But, I don't live my life by "what ifs".
On your scenarios... #1, I would be "disturbed" (as you said) no matter what color the child. But, not in a fearful manner. If a parent doesn't care that their child is pretending their hand or any other object is a gun, that is the parent teaching or not teaching their own child. No matter the color. And these boys I think are just born to play that way. We don't have toy guns or anything like it in our house. My 3YO will make *anything* into a gun. WHY?? We've never taught that. So, we try our best. Don't do that in public, don't point at people, etc.
#3...I have seen my share of whites throwing trash out windows, it's wrong no matter what color/race. Like I said, it's what people are taught.
I live in a small town. Growing up we may have had one or two black kids in our entire school system. Even now there are not a lot around here, there are more, but not a ton. My girl does have a black boy in her class, he was also on her soccer team. We think nothing of it, he is not treated any different. I am sort of bothered by your comments in #2 that you feel you can't live in a small town being part of a black family. Why? I don't think it matters where you live. But, you DO know, you know exactly how things could be different for your family. Maybe I'm missing something there. I think you should be able to live where you want. But, maybe that's what you think too.. you just feel that you still can't because there are people with racial issues still out there. Feel free to move to my small town and be my neighbor.. I'd love to have you as a next door neighbor! ;)
Oh, oh, oh! I just spent an *hour* composing a response to all of you and lost it when I was trying to preview it. Waaa! I really want to respond to your wonderful comments, but I don't know when I'll get to it again. Please check back in a couple of days...
SIGH
Stephanie
Yikes. If I saw a child pretending to shoot people, I'd be concerned about that kid, no matter what the color of the skin was.
I am not, racially speaking, "white" so I don't know what to say to some stuff.
***However*** I will add that, yes, people can live wherever they want to, but I think parents have a special duty to be aware if the hometown would be racist/prejudiced against one's children. An adult can handle prejudice a little better than a child. You and Firmin might do all right in dealing with the prejudice of a small town, but it'd be terrible to subject children, in their formative years, to such racism. I speak from experience.
Growing up, I was the only Latina (and my brother the only Latino) in a very small town. It hurt me in deep and terrible ways for a long time. I was too young and little to deal gracefully with such hatred.
I think that living in a diverse place, such as where we live now, is enormously more enriching than living in a tiny town that only sees one way of doing things. (Not all small towns are like this, but mine was.)
Now, in this racially mixed city, my children see the richness and beauty of the Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Mexican cultures. They do notice that people are different ... but not in a judgemental way. They simply notice that this people or that people dress this way or that way for special occasions. (For example, at Easter, the Vietnamese community members wear these gorgeous outfits that are very different from what another group might wear.) My kids see that the people dress differently and find it interesting. They see the differences just as you'd look in a garden and see that the flowers look different but are still all equally beautiful.
As Jennifer said, this was brave and beautiful. I do think, sadly, that racism is alive and well--so alive and well that it's somewhat ingrained in our thoughts so that we find ourselves, as you pointed out, making value judgments from time to time based on stereotypes we somehow have internalized.
It's sad to me that the historically black college where I teach is poor, and struggling for money, when down the street the (very white) all women's school prospers. It's sad to me that my school fits a "niche" student body--poor black kids who have escaped a life on the streets and found their way into college. It saddens me that so many of them were given up in elementary school and middle school, and then gave up on themselves in high school because they finally believed what so many people were telling them--that they weren't any good, and that they would fail.
It's about time we not only worked to change what's wrong "externally" with how we view race in this country, but what's wrong internally as well.
Great post, Stephanie.
I am also in an interracial marriage and it has been a real learning experience. Many years ago, for some reason I considered what it would be like if when I looked in the mirror I saw an african american face and when I looked down at my hands they were brown. I was surprised to realize that my gut reaction to the idea was negative. I had to check myself. It was an interesting thought experiment.
What amazes me, though is how insistent a lot of white people are that there is no real racism at work anymore. Just as you never know what's going on in someone else's home, you can not presume to know what someone else's experience as they move through life is. Simply because you do not see racism doesn't in the least mean it doesn't exist. I had a girlfriend a few years back who is African American and she told me that she had been surprised to see how much harder things were for her husband due to race than they were for her. If she as an African American woman wasn't even entirely aware of what African American men went through, it seems to me to be absurd to think that our observations of white people regarding the experiences of the African Americans around us are a good measuring stick.
Anyhow, just thought I would share.
Thoughtful post. You have such a tender heart. I think we've all experienced the receiving/giving end of prejudice at some point, on some level; whether based on heritage, religion, socio-economic, etc.
I am a mother of interacial children and a happy participant in an interacial marriage living in a fairly small town. It has given me opportunity to view my own thinking in a different light as well as make me more aware of prevalent attitudes around me. There is prejudice. Most often not blatant; little things that bespeak larger ideas. I don't believe a lot of prejudice is deliberate (though I also sadly acknowledge some is).
We are all raised in an atmosphere of stereotypes and bias to some degree which we often accept without much more thought than we give to breathing simply because we have nothing to contradict it.
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