I just watched this video on That Black Girl Site and wanted to share it with you. In the video, a mother records her daughter retelling a story that happened to her on the school playground; some white girls ran away from her and told her they fear her because she’s black. Marley, the black girl, is incredulous, and explains that the white girls’ parents must have taught them to stay away from black people.
Marley shouldn’t have to wonder about things like that, but obviously she and other children of color do. It’s certainly possible that her classmates’ parents explicitly taught them to fear black people. I think it’s more likely her classmates have already absorbed the many implicitly racist messages all around them: on television, in their school lessons, at family gatherings, etc.
Akilah (the mom) says it’s important (and unavoidable) for parents of color to talk with their kids about racism but I wish white parents were doing the same thing. Do the white girls’ parents know about this incident? Would they brush it off? Tell their kids never to mention – or think about – race again?
Have you ever had to have this conversation with your kids? Did your parents ever discuss race and/or racism with you when you were a child? Did they prepare you for or explain the racism you faced?
My mother’s parents (first generation Italian Americans) were pretty racist (except for the “colored” folks they actually knew). In fact, they grew up in a part of Yonkers that was 1/2 black 1/2 Italian and had found memories, but they wouldn’t hesitate to drop the n-word in front of us. I remember once I was on a trip with them (late ’70s) and there was an interracial couple at our motel and my grandmother was horrified. I asked what was wrong with it. Her: “Would YOU marry a black man?!” Me: “If I loved him, yes.” I must have been nine. She was shocked. I don’t really remember my parents discussing race with me, but they must have. They never used racial slurs in my presence. And I would never have even thought to say one. My uncle’s pretty racist, too. They must have spoken to me about it after family gatherings when I was too young to remember. I’ve also been a feminist since I was little. I don’t know exactly how my parents conveyed these values – it must have been pretty subtle, but they are there. Hmm, now that I think about it, it would be a good question to ask my parents. Thanks SarahMC!
My experience pretty much mirrors La Chica Lucy’s except that I also grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood, and my family were Scots-Irish rednecks. We left Michigan and the family when I was ten to move out west (Idaho).
Years later in my 20s when I went back for a wedding, I pulled my mom aside and said, “Were they always this racist? Did I not notice because we were around it all the time, or has it gotten worse?”
My mom said that it had both gotten worse, and that as kids we just hadn’t paid attention, apart from my folks telling us after each visit that those were words we didn’t use.
But holy shit, hearing my genteel, wouldn’t say shit if she had a mouthful of it grandmother refer to a couple of kids as “sand n***ers” blew me the hell away. Holy carp.
My folks discussed it plenty when I was a child, and still do. It’s not good. The difference is that now I can flee.
My parents were pretty damned good about drilling into my head that any kind of prejudice based on race/religion was unacceptable. My best friend as a kid (who I just reconnected with, thanks Facebook) was biracial and I didn’t even realize it even though I knew both her parents until I was about six. I was more concerned with the fact her dad was 30 years older than her mom.
I grew up right on the cusp of Harlem, and so if I went ten blocks north of my apartment to grab some McDonald’s I was one of the only white kids ordering a Big Mac. Thank God neither of my parents ever said, “don’t go into that neighborhood.” My dad, in particular, was really sensitive about making sure his kids were aware of how racism is perpetuated, I’m sure in part because of the shit his own parents got for being a white/Native American couple in good ol’ liberal 1940s South Dakota.
My fathers family isn’t racist. He grew up with plenty of blacks, that lived on the island. He said that the black people they knew also where not racist since everyone was the same: starving and worried.
Mom on the other hand was taught from day one to marry into “lighter fine featured” families. I was never taught to shun anyone but to keep a healthy respect for everyone since they come with all kinds of ideas. White or black. On that same token both my parents have a passionate hate for ANY group who does not better their race. They hate black
people who love and broadcast music that demeans woman, any color. They hate women who make themselves low and crude and cheap, any color. They hate people who value greed and corruption, any color. I was taught to keep away from them, any color. Other than that of I am
with a black/Asian/white/whatever they just want me to be happy and not to loose myself in that persons being and beliefs.
I never knew my paternal grandparents, and have no idea what their attitudes were. My mother’s told me stories about her dad being uncomfortable with interracial dating, and saying some rather unflattering things about them ‘Eye-talians’ (her parents were Norwegian-Canadian) but as far as I know he wasn’t too bad apart from that. I guess that’s bad enough though.
When I was young I was pretty much unaware that there was such a thing as racism, since my parents treated everyone equally regardless of their race/gender/sexual orientation. It was never an issue.
When we got old enough to understand, though, they started to discuss it, and they taught us that bigoted behaviour’s never acceptable. I’m grateful that they weren’t afraid to talk about it, and that they taught us to speak out against all kinds of discrimination.
Well I’m originally from Chicago (which is OUTRAGEOUSLY racist, in my experience and in, you know, history) but when we moved to Texas when I was a kid we lived in a really diverse neighborhood. (The second- or third-most diverse in DFW, depending on what year of my childhood we’re talking about. The rankings didn’t change, we moved from the 3d- to the 2d-most at one point.) And while at first my mom retained some of the casual racism of her siblings (and especially parents) up North, as time went on she made a bunch of friends, &c. &c. Now she is the proud mother-in-law to one black man and grandmother to 1 8/9ths black men. Tale as old as time.
So when I was in 6th grade, my best friend Jessica*, the lives-on-your-block best friend, won 2d place in some kind of footrace in our school’s Field Day (did y’all have those? Doesn’t matter). I myself am not built for speed, so I was really impressed and asked her how it felt, and she said, “Well, basically I won first place.”
Me: “Hmmm?”
Jessica: “Well, Candace* is black, and black people have an extra muscle in their legs, so it’s not really fair. So I got first place for all the not-black kids.”
Me; “Wow I never knew that!”
And because I did then — as I do know — luuurve trivia, later that afternoon, as I was recounting my day to my mom while she made dinner, I asked her if she knew that, and if so, why didn’t she ever tell me? My mom was kind of half-assing her part of this conversation, so she’s all “Wait, what? You have a girl in your class with an extra leg?” And then we had a long talk where she basically told me that I shouldn’t go to Jessica’s house anymore, she should come to ours, b/c Jessica’s parents are nutjobbers racist and we are not, and that’s not true and it’s the kind of thing that people who believe they deserve to always be better than black people make up when they lose to a black person and so on and so forth.
But the most charmingest of all was when she was like, “We aren’t racists, we’re not Southerners.” Even though she became Not Racist by moving to the South and we have asshole cousins in Illinois who think it’s awesome to joke about joining the KKK.
Oh well, it’s progress!
*Names have not been changed, because well, why should I?
I grew up in a very ethnically diverse community, so there was maybe less of a sense of fear or strangeness, since we were all mixed up together from an early age.
But yes, MamaSharper definitely discussed racism with me and my sister when necessary–a friend’s experience, seeing it depicted in the media or talking about historical events–and it was always clear that any display of bigotry (racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc) would not be tolerated. This was not the case with all my friends, and when I’d hear their parents make a racist or xenophobic remark, I would often get offended and let them know it. This did not always end well–not many parents want to be lectured about racism by an indignant 10 year old.
I grew up in a Little Big City in Texas, and because we were poor we lived in a neighborhood that was mostly poor white old people and Mexican families.
I don’t remember talking about race much, my best friend in elementary school was a (very fast runner) and a black girl, and we played with a lot of the neighborhood kids and were never told anything about their races.
The stories that I remember my family telling were all about racism being wrong but also about racial relations as something we all have to navigate the best way we can – like my mom telling us she wouldn’t go swim in the pool when she was a kid because they wouldn’t let a friend of hers swim with her, or my grandmother saying she was very careful about calling Brazil nuts Brazil nuts and her black friend telling her that they call them “n- toes”, and both of them falling out laughing.
I hope that my daughter will post about what she remembers, but I know we tried to make our kids aware of bigotry in our community and in the society and the world at large. I grew up in an upper-middle class suburb in which we Jews were the exotic minority. When I grew up I moved into the city and I’ve never looked back. Whenever I go to visit my mom, who still lives in the ‘burbs, I get a little bit of a feeling of claustrophobia, which is funny since I had a happy childhood and adolescence there. But what I didn’t have was a daily immersion in a diverse community, and we were committed to seeing that our kids did get that. They have a comfort level with people of all kinds that I will never have.
When our kids were growing up, we watched the news every night while we had dinner and talked over our days, so they were politically aware from an early age. Being in an urban public school system showed them the consequences of racism on a daily basis. We are also actively Jewish, and that necessitates (at least for us) awareness of injustice in society. If there’s one thing I loathe, it’s a Jewish bigot.
When I was really young, my mom’s family spewed a lot of racist stuff. Thankfully we moved far away when I was still young and impressionable. Although my mom never talked directly to us about racism, there was more diversity in our new town, we learned about racism in school, and my favorite elementary school teacher was a black woman who I adored. I pretty much came to my own conclusion that the things I’d heard from my mom’s family were bullshit.
Marley’s story reminded me of something that my friend, who has kids, told me. Four little girls at a b-day party were organizing a game that depended on there being a villain. One of the girls told the only child of color that she had to be the bad guy because she had “dark skin.” Ugh!!!
My whole family is racist. My sister and I are trying to combat this, but it’s pretty much an impossible fight. My father once surprised me by saying that anyone who has a problem with interracial couples is crazy, because there are so many asshole white men that just finding a man who won’t beat his wife is enough to be happy about regardless of skin color, and nowadays racism doesn’t really exist any more so it doesn’t matter. But then I once saw him shout at a van full of women wearing hijabs who cut him off while driving “Go home and ride a camel” or something, and I was so horrified (and like 14) and started yelling at him. He’s the type of person who will then go on to tell you that he’s not racist because, sure he uses the word nigger, but he knows that there are black niggers, and white niggers, and color of the skin doesn’t matter as much as arbitrary social signifiers. I mean that last bit is my interpretation of his racist value system, but still.
My parents suck. But they did this hilarious thing, which was to send me to Sunday school after church every week, and buy me a whole bunch of books about Jesus and all the saints. And I have a serious imagination, so these books really spoke to me, and sunday school really worked. I was the type of kid who D.A.R.E. was made for; after taking it I never did drugs, and after going to Sunday school I really internalized all the ruled they told us. But since I stopped going right before confirmation (by which I mean I got kicked out for arguing with the teacher about abortion and calling a rape apologist evil) I only got the whole “be nice to people” part of Catholicism, and all the saints-lives I read were like, “She dedicated her life to helping poor people!” and “She cut off all her hair because caring about what you look like is vain and it’s better to want to be ugly!” and “Jesus was really in to being nice to prostitutes and also thought people who wanted to have lots of money were hell-bound!” Unfortunately for them I took away from this that I should be a feminist socialist liberal who treated everyone with respect and who despised racism and bigotry of any kind. And I never got into the whole going-to-church, being-conservative part of sunday school.
I have one uncle who is horribly, sickeningly racist. He once made a joke about assassinating the president, and also once joked about Martin Luther King Jr getting lynched (for real). I mean, when that happened I thought I was going to pass out, I really couldn’t breath. I wouldn’t associate with him at all, but he has a 14 year old daughter who shows much promise. She’s very smart, and plays the guitar and drums, and I’ve taken her to two Ani DiFranco concerts, and I’m really trying to get through to her in term of being not a horrible evil asshole like her family. Also her parents both do horrible things like call her fat and teasing her about her weight, while forcing her to have a second helping of deep fried bologna for dinner. And I’m worried that she’s going to develop an eating disorder. I worry that if I just blow up at her father, I’ll alienate her and her whole family and they won’t let her hang out with me alone, which is when I do all my stealth ideological training with her. But let me tell you, there just is not a way of responding to jokes about Martin Luther King Jr. getting lynched without either alienating the racist ass who spoke or acquiescing and staying quiet, which would basically ruin my whole plan of subverting her parents’ bad influence on her by not pointing out that it’s racist. Which, actually, I pointed out that it was racist and my uncle was like, “No it isn’t.” Seriously.
I just don’t know how to talk to her about it effectively, though. I mostly keep giving her books and music that influenced me, and try to get her to think about all this. But it’s hard to talk to a kid about it. I’m worried that she’s going to tell her parents that I said that some of the shit they do is racist, and they’ll stop letting me see her.
But christ almighty those people are fucking toxic.
@Tall-In-Heels
You must be joking. “Had to be the bad guy because she had dark skin?” I really don’t understand! We have so many people turning their skin into leather in the hopes of getting darker but we are still shitting on the colors of our communities?
And the fact you said a CHILD said this is tragic.
@Tall-in-Heels
Hmmm . . . I wonder where that kid got that idea. *cough* tv *cough* movies
I’m sure MM and my dad talked to us about racism although I don’t remember any specific stories/incidences (MM, care to share?). But I don’t remember ever thinking that society wasn’t still racist, as evidenced by the fact that the number of white kids in the gifted program in 3rd grade was roughly equal to the number of black kids…and then it slowly changed over time until in high school skin color was a much, MUCH better signifier of who was in AP classes than intelligence was. My elementary school was in a low-income area and had a black principal and that man worked miracles in terms of getting everyone invested in their schooling and having a safe and positive school experience. Unfortunately, he was unique in the district as far as I can tell.
The post made me think of this: http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989/page/1
@bellacoker and Ocean-Breeze:
Those kids, if I’m remembering correctly, were around 5 or 6, so it just goes to show you how early this crap sinks in. Hearing that story was one of those “duh!” wake up calls from my own white privilege. It goes without saying that if I ever have kids I will do my utmost to teach them not to be racist. But it didn’t truly hit me until then how parents with children of color have to do so much more. They have to prepare their children to withstand treatment like what Marley and the little girl in my story received, and worse. Some parents have to tell their children that their teachers or future employers may make negative assumptions about their intelligence, police may assume the worst and treat them rougher, shopkeepers might watch them more closely, etc. – all because of the color of their skin. I’d always thought about it from the kids’ perspective, but never from the parents’. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking either way.
I grew up as the daughter of a white, progressive pastor in a small town with a history of Klan activity. As such, I didn’t get an education so much as a survival guide.
It went something like this:
“Racism is evil. Racists are bad and the things they believe in make no sense. However, you must *never* make fun of the KKK in public, no matter how little sense they make or how silly their name sounds. Also, your Daisy counselor? She won’t be coming back next year; she moved her family* out of the state.”
*The only black family I was aware of, though until that point I hadn’t thought of them as such.
The depressing part is, the conversation took place in Maryland, circa 1995.
While we did talk about racism, it was always framed in terms of blacks and whites. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how many other minorities were subject to the same kind of discrimination. Longer still before I realized how prevalent issues like Islamophobia are, even in my own educated, fairly progressive family.
When my mother felt my brother and I were old enough to understand such concepts, she taught us about the racism of white people against Asians. What was unfortunate is that she and my father exhibited racist views about black people, and drilled into us that black people dislike Asians, or recounted anecdotes that continued to expose their racism. It’s a lesson that I explicitly rejected, only because I was old enough to see the flaws in their logic and work things out on my own. Had I been younger, I probably would have accepted those views at face value.
I’ve never told anyone this story because looking back I am so ashamed. My best friend in kindergarten and first grade was black and she invited me to her bday party. Awesome! So of course I went and I was the only white person there. At that age, I was also pretty timid and in general scared of adults and strangers. Everyone was really nice and welcoming, making me a bbq lunch and talking to me, but after about 30 minutes I started crying and wouldn’t stop. I remember feeling so stressed out and just uncomfortable for NO KNOWN REASON. I couldn’t think of why I was upset when people asked me what was wrong, so I would just say I wanted my mom. I left the party early, probably to everyone’s relief! I’m sure they were wondering what my problem was… Anyway, looking back at it now I honestly think that since I was always around white people and the occasional black or minority, I was overwhelmed and uncomfortable to suddenly be in a situation as the only white person. And being so young, I didn’t understand how to vocalize my discomfort or even pinpoint the issue. I don’t think I necessarily felt that I was in danger or scared of anyone there (except for one guy on the sofa who was really tall and big and I was intimidated.) Was I simply scared because the situation seemed foreign? Was I honestly scared of them or felt threatened? I can’t recall that emotion, but maybe that was it. Anyway, when I was about 10 I started realizing how messed up my reaction was. My parents are not racist at all though my grandparents on both sides are. I never heard the n-word or any other slurs unless it was on TV when I was older. I’m still mystified. I am trying to convince myself that I was simply young and socially awkward!
I think “how do we talk to kids about this?” is an incredibly important question, because there’s so much about racism that isn’t consciously expressed, but which kids pick up on nevertheless. I grew up in the Deep South, with parents who are Well-Meaning White People. They abhor open racism, and get upset with our extended family members (yes, plural) who use the n-word. They have Black, Asian, and Arab co-workers, and make an effort to demonstrate their acceptance of them, and when I was growing up, they were kind to all of my friends, regardless of race.
But here’s the thing: all of that surface stuff is just the beginning. I also have vivid memories of my mother locking the car doors whenever we would drive through predominantly black neighborhoods, and I can still feel the tension in her and my dad’s way of moving when we would pass black folks on the street. I still remember my dad’s face when he found out that my first boyfriend was half-Pakistani, and even today–while they would be horrified by open anti-black racism–they regularly make reductive and generalizing remarks about Arab men they know. Moreover, my father–again, attempting to be accepting–makes a habit of making Orientalist remarks to my Lebanese-American husband (“You know, people from your part of the world just THINK DIFFERENTLY from us. Not that that’s a bad thing!”)
So I think it’s incredibly important, and super complicated. Because when we’re talking about entrenched racism of the sort that makes kids scared of other kids on the playground–or, Feminizzle, the kind that makes you afraid to be the only white kid at a birthday party–that goes WAY beyond just SAYING “Racism is bad, don’t say the n-word, everyone is equal.” My parents told me all those things. They also behaved in ways that were deeply, subconsciously racist, and which I internalized (not only from them, from a variety of other cultural sources as well, which we could also talk about). And that internalization is something I struggle against daily, because despite the fact that I’m aware of racist habits within myself, and despite the fact that I study Critical Race Theory as an academic discipline, I still have moments in which I find myself experiencing the racist anxiety/panic I witnessed in my parents when I pass a man of color on the street at night. I cognitively register this as wrong, and I try to counter it (by stopping myself in the moment, by talking about it with students, by trying to make others aware of the subtle ways in which many of us Well-Meaning Whites participate in such habits)–but it’s a process.
I don’t have kids, and I don’t know if I ever will–but I think it’s worth thinking about how to talk to kids (especially white kids, whose racial privilege often means that they don’t get much explicit instruction on subtle forms of racism) about race and privilege in a way that goes beyond “Don’t say that, and be nice to people who don’t look like you.”
When I was a teenager, I had a friend who’s dog was clearly racist. I’m fairly confident the family didn’t explicitly instruct the dog to dislike black people, but I’m pretty sure the dog didn’t figure that out on it’s own either. I don’t think you need to teach anyone explicitly to be racist, they’ll pick it up from you if you behave that way implicitly.
I never sat down with my son and lectured him about racism, but I talked about it in his presence plenty of times. A lot of the racism I encounter is in code. For example, people will claim a school is “better” when they have more white kids, when it’s objectively not. Then they’ll make up a reason why the school is better and an excuse about what’s wrong with the other school in order to transfer their kids to one with the white majority. It’s really hard to call out this form of racism because you can’t get anyone to admit to it. However, my husband and I have dissected and interpreted all these things “the neighbors say” at the dinner table and we’ll even point out each other’s racism when it crops up now and then. Our son has picked up a little bit from the culture (and probably a bit from us), but 90% of the time he knows better.
So, in my book club, all the women are white, except me, who is multi-racial (but I mostly pass, and since I was raised by my white mom and stepdad, don’t even think of it as passing). However, two of the other women have multi-racial kids. So, we were talking about this, and all the other women were reluctant to talk to their (6 and 7 year old) kids about racism, because it hurts us to intrude on a kid’s innocence. And I remember being so frustrated with these white women with non-white kids for thinking that their kids didn’t already know about racism. Do they really think their dark-skinned son with the ethnic name hasn’t already experienced racism?
One of my earliest school memories is of the class bully telling me that it was wrong to change the words of Christmas carols, and if Jewish kids like me didn’t want to be exposed to Christmas stuff, we should go to private school (he wasn’t that articulate – we were seven and he was dumb). And he just said it so meanly and so viciously that I went home and wept, begging my mom to tell me why he hated me. My mom talked to me about how he was learning this stuff from his parents and it wasn’t really his fault, and it didn’t really have anything to do with me . . . Then she convinced my stepdad not to go demand the school punish him because it wouldn’t help.
My father is 1/4 black and 1/2 Asian, which gives my sister and I a look that she calls “generic exotic.” 90% of the time, people assume I’m white (which is how I think of myself). But for about 10% of people, who are already racist, they tend to assume I belong to whatever minority they disliked the most. So in Indiana in the 80s when there was huge concern about manufacturing jobs, racists assumed I was Chinese. Spending summers with my dad in Florida, the assholes at the 7-11 made it clear that a Mexican kid like me should let them cut in front of me in line without daring complaint. Post 9-11, I suddenly looked suspiciously Arabic when I called the cops on someone abusing their dog in the park.
There’s also the benevolent racism. As a kid, I can’t count how many adults would ask, “Where are you from?” and when I answered Indiana immediately follow it up with, “No, I mean where were you born?” At that, I would give my best eye-roll and tell them Florida. The more clueless would then ask where my parents were from. They were well-meaning, but they made it very clear that anyone with darker skin and black eyes was clearly not as American as they were.
Sorry I wrote a novel, but my mostly-white except when facing overt racists with preconceptions childhood has affected me pretty deeply.
Brian, in fairness to the dog, a dog who has been abused will usually react strongly to the physical type of the abuser. My dog can be vicious with big tall white men because that’s who hurt her before we got her. Maybe the dog was picking up on the family’s racism, but it’s equally likely that it had an unhappy puppyhood and was blaming all dark-skinned people for one or two who hurt it. Which is, I suppose, how some racism starts in people too.
My dad is actively bigoted, and my mom is passively so. My dad’s version of racism is this completely ridiculous but also quite popular form in which he dislikes the group but likes the individuals. For example, black people are lazy and all waiting to collect welfare, but Tiger Woods is “a great American.” (Yes, even now — OMG do not get me started.) My dad’s good friend at work is a huge black man, though, so even when I was very young, I was never afraid of them like some commenters have been, simply because I knew “Mr. Tree” (short for Roundtree) was friendly. He always liked to see me when I came to visit my dad at work, and I knew my dad liked him. I guess he is “one of the good ones.” The double standard is what gets me, and I know I have always thought it was weird, even when I was a little kid…I don’t know, though. Now that I think about it, I can remember my dad being annoyed with Mr. Tree around ’92 for being a Clinton fan. I guess black people are A-OK with my dad as long as they agree with him.
Another interesting thing is the fact that my dad is extremely, EXTREMELY sympathetic to Jews. He is horrified at the notion of holocaust deniers. He has been explicit my whole life about how we should not discriminate against them. I wonder why the Jews get Most Favored Nation status…the only thing I have come up with is the fact that my dad grew up in the inner city (=lots of black people) in central PA farm country (=very few Jews) so he doesn’t have a specific reason to dislike them? I don’t know.
The other intriguing thing is that my dad intensely dislikes gays, and yet he was personally hurt when Adam Lambert did not win American Idol. I was explaining to him that some Christian groups had launched an Internet campaign to support the other guy (who was married — to a woman), and he was appalled, just APPALLED, that someone would fail to vote for the best singer just because he is gay! Moments like this make me think, “Oh Dad…sooooo close!”
Some other commenters have said that these thoughts get absorbed passively, and I think that can be true, but it depends on the person. Ay younger brother came out worse than my dad (he is actively anti-Semitic for some unknown damn reason), and I am physically nauseated by racism. We grew up in the same house and are only a year apart in age. Why the difference? I really don’t know. I wish we could figure it out and bottle it.
Apology not accepted, Av0gadro! Very insightful comment, especially the part about how racists will perceive you as whatever race they hate.
Those book club women are delusional. Ignoring and/or denying bigotry doesn’t keep kids innocent; it makes them confused/frustrated.
everybody so far, thanks for sharing, some of the memories would have difficult to recount.
growing up, I think I was lucky to have a mum that was very caring, and a dad that wasn’t home very often. I remember my mum maintained a kind of “open house”, and there would be kids from the neighbourhood, school friends, church friends, a lot of kids, of different skin colours/family ethnic,racial backgrounds hanging out at our house.
One memory I have when I was about 6, and this affected a couple of my younger sisters and I, was that a friend told us that she and her sisters were not allowed to come over to our house to play. I asked why, and she said it’s because your mum allows “dirty” kids over.
I told my mum what happened, and that night at dinner we had a table discussion about racism (my mum used that word), and discussed how some people, wrongly, will not judge someone by their inside/actions.
We made a family decision that we wouldn’t go to that family’s house. And my mum spoke with that friend’s parents about why we were no longer going over there to play.
My mother hates “those fucking Indians” (she means Native Americans), and thinks all brown people think and talk the same, regardless of their country or persunality. It’s pretty enraging. Obviously I do have racist tendencies; we live in a racist culture. I try to recognize it and combat it (sort of). For example, I’m more scared of black men than I am of white men, even though a black man has never openly hurt me (unlike white men). What I’m saying is I’m trying to hate all men equally now. And respect all womin equally. Unless they’re like Anne Coulter or whatever.
I finally brought this post up in a conversation to my mother and I was told the following story which I hadn’t shared due to embarassement:
Apparently I was about three years old and at the age where you can teeter around on your own two feet, still require assistance, and have some trouble speaking.
We went to a store and up till this time mom had kept me in a stroller or left me with grandma for babysitting purposes. The stroller she had was the old school kind that faces the parent. My family lived in a low income housing area and everyone in our apartment building I was either related to or they where Hispanic.
Mom says she decided to let me walk with her in the store for the first time and that I was thrilled and would frequently try to run ahead of her whenever we stopped for anything. On one of those moments that I ran ahead of her she started calling me back (we didn’t speak English) and I ran smack into a pair of legs.
Mom says I looked up and a very tall black man bent down over me to lift me up and I started BAWLING. Mother said the gentleman was very kind about the whole situation while my mom tried to thank him and apologize for my behavior in broken English. All while trying to shut me up, and I refused to stop staring and crying.
I have no idea if I cried because he was tall and a stranger, or honestly because I had never seen a black person before. I had forgotten that story and it still makes me turn beet red with the thoughts of both of their feelings, mom and the mans.
Av0gadro- I’ve met quite a few people through the years who I have wanted to ask what their racial make up is simply because I’m a nosy curious person. I have yet to find a polite way to ask that question though, so I tend to just write it off as “none of my business” and figure if I get to know the person well enough for them to tell me then that’s how it will be. I will say that is one thing my mom taught me- If you can’t think of a polite way to ask a personal question it’s probably none of your damn business.
As a middle-class, liberal white woman with a very young baby I’ve been wondering about this more and more. I was raised in a very small town in the mid-west; while I feel my parents did a pretty good job with while they had, the location made it hard. They taught my sister and me that it’s wrong to discriminate against people based on their race, and would point out when people around be would say racist things and explain why what the person had said was a bad thing.
But I grew up in a place that was literally 98% Caucasian, so there was no chance to see people of different races interacting in every day life. Since there were only two or three black families, and two or three Indian families in town, it was normal for the kids to date anyone they wanted (because white was pretty much the only choice!), and they all fell into the “I know these people so they’re ok” category for most of the town.
We now live in a major metropolitan area with lots of different races represented, in our immediate neighborhood as well, and I’m hoping that gives us more opportunities to teach our son about racism but I just worry I’m going to screw it up. I wish I could find a good book or something on how to talk to your kids about race when you’re white.
fuzzyoctopus,
I know the blog Love isn’t enough discusses anti-racist parenting.
The e-book How To Be An Anti-Racist Parent by Carmen Van Kerckhove might be of particular interest (the link takes you to a page that includes a PDF of the book)!
I found this discussion very interesting. I can not remember a time either of my parents talked to me about racism, but I do remember receiving books about myths and legends from different cultures and hearing my Dad talk with respect about the Aboriginal Elders he consulted with for his job. I grew up in a small country town where 99% of the population was white, of european decent, and mostly likely with Italian ancestors. I went to high school with some people who didn’t fit that norm, and they were very much the minority. Still, when I moved to the capital city for university, I was confused and suprised that people were … so horrible. I still don’t understand it, why do people think that their racist views make any sense? They don’t. I know I am probably full to the brim of white privelege, but I guess all I can do is keep learning about people who are not like me, keep an open mind, and try to teach any future children to do the same.
I grew up in a very white community, the child of white parents. The only conversation I remember us having about race before I hit middle school was when I was very, very young. Maybe three or four.
We were watching the Alfonso Cuarón remake of “The Little Princess”. In it, the main character is sent to an American boarding school after having grown up in British-colonized India. She’s curious about the school’s only maid, a young black girl named Becky. (I’m paraphrasing the following dialogue, for the record.)
“Who’s that?” she asks of another, younger student.
“That’s Becky. She can’t talk to us, because she has dark skin,” answers her friend.
“So?” our heroine retorts.
An uncertain pause. “Isn’t that supposed to mean something?” her friend asks.
“Well, is it?” I asked my father.
“Of course not. She’s just a person with dark skin,” My father told me.
That’s not really an accurate answer, but it’s an appropriate one for a young white kid who didn’t even understand the conversation, who had no context whatsoever for colonialism, slavery, race riots, ad infinitum. It closed the book for me until I was old enough to start asking questions that I could actually understand. It definitely wasn’t the last conversation my parents had about race with me. But it was the first one, and it had a pretty strong impact. It placed people of different races as absolutely equal in my mind in terms of the dignity and respect they deserve, which I think is about the best starting point one can hope for.
My white mother marched on Selma and Montgomery. She attended Dr. King’s speech in D.C. She fought long and hard to end segregation and discrimination both locally and nationally. She drove me into the “black” neighborhood to attend school when segregation of schools was still being fought out in the courts in our area. She believed that no person, man or woman, of any color was any better or any worse than any other person; that all should be judged by their character, but not by the color of their skin or the class into which they were born.
This year, my son attended school for the first grade. In his class are Black children, Native American children, Asian children, Hispanic children…children of all colors and religions. They studied Martin Luther King, and he came home and asked why he was so important…because to his 7 year old mind, there is no difference between him and all the other kids in his class…which is such a wonderful thing.
We watched the “I have a dream” speech together, and I could pause it and show him his grandmother. We looked at her pictures from Bloody Sunday, and the pictures of her handing her baby (me) to her mother as she joined the march from Selma to Montgomery alongside Dr. King and the other 25,000 brave souls who believed in freedom for all people.
My mother took me, as a small child, to see the “colored” fountains, and the lunch counters where her friends could not eat, of the courtrooms where her friends could not vote or hope for justice, or marry, if they had this misfortune to love outside of their proscribed boundaries.
I’ve shown my son the remnants of our past. I’ve told him how Dr. King was murdered, and while hate won that day, it lost the war.
And I’ve told him, that as long as we remember the struggle, we will never forget the price paid by those who won the battle.
Fear someone because they’re Black? Not in my house. Never in my house.
Thank you for highlighting Marley’s experience on your site. I’m her mom, and her father and I agree with you that ALL parents should be having this sort of conversation with their children, not just parents of color.
I’m happy to see that you are aware of the skewed perspectives of people of color in media, and this is why trying to raise children who “don’t even see color” is not an option. Instead, my belief is that the focus, as parents, is to instill in our children that all people are special and come with their own particular brands of sunshine. As a minority group, (though this may sound odd) some of us WANT our children to see color, because they can see that they are not less than any one else, as they are often made to feel, and that they are similar to their friends—white and otherwise—in more ways than they are different.
We opted not to bring this to the school’s attention, because Marley is in kindergarten, and we did not want to have her labeled by staff and students alike during her first year in grade school. She asked us not to tell her teacher, and we honored that.
If this happens again, then we will request a conference, because then, it has become a pattern.