Let's Talk About Race, Baby; : Let's Talk About You & Me

Oh yeah, I'm still going there.

I'm not done thinking yet.

And it's still not going to be comfortable.

Start here. NPR.

Yes. You have to.

Yes. It's listening.

A whole 6.5 minutes of your life.

And yes, you will have to listen actively and think.

Now, go do it, because my daughter and all the other little black kids out there in America are worth it.

Right now it seems, there are a couple of kinds of racism happening.

We still have the in your face lynching ropes and supremacy groups and idiots tossing around the n word.

We also have something subtle and almost invisible. Not to mention all the stuff on the sliding scale between those two.

A discrimination that is learned by omission, not out of evil intentions.

I was in high school in the 80's. Small town in the Mid-West. Not diverse. I can count on one hand the number of black kids I saw in those halls in my 4 years. I can still tell you their names. There were only a few, we all knew their names.

I wonder how that felt for them. We all knew their names. There was no escape, no chance to blend in on a bad outfit day or a moody teenage day.

Us and them.

I wasn't raised in a home where we spoke with racist language. I wasn't raised in a particularly judgemental home in terms of race. I don't remember us being particularly anything. I was an 80's high school girl. I remember lip gloss and jelly shoes and pegged pants.

We watched The Cosby Show. I had Michael Jackson albums.

We watched The Cosby Show without knowing any better.

I wasn't friends with any of those kids in my 4 years.

I wasn't mean. I didn't call them names or talk behind their backs. We were in classes and extracurricular activities together.

But I wasn't friendly to them either. I didn't make eye contact. I didn't say hi.

We weren't friends.

I was a little afraid, intimidated.

I'm not sure I knew or realized it then, but I was.

Somehow there was just this unspoken rule that you didn't mix with them. It went both ways, they didn't mix with us. We all knew the silent rules.

Them and us.

This is where we get honest and real. Either you lie or you're better than  me.

There aren't many of us white people with black friends. There are fewer still with black besties.

Even those of us with our mixed up families, white parents and many shades of brown kids, we have white adult friends.

We still don't mix with each other.

We get together to let our black kids play with each other, to give them time to hang out with other kids that look like them, but it's different, and we all know it.

It's almost like we don't know how to intermingle.

I will easily and often strike up a conversation with a stranger in the grocery store or some waiting area, but only with a white person.

Be honest, when that cart walking toward you in the grocery aisle has a black woman pushing it, you don't make eye contact or smile, but if it's a white lady you do.

That white woman sitting in the waiting room of the dental office or therapist or doctor is someone you'll share 5 minutes of small talk with, but that black woman, you'll stare at a 12 year old magazine or delete email off your phone or do anything but start up that conversation. Even when you are both sitting there with a black child on your lap.

Maybe this isn't you. Maybe you are better than me and don't behave this way. I hope for all of us that you are better than me.

I do behave this way. I always have.

It's a similar feeling I had when I became a new Christian and I thought it had to be all about surrounding yourself with fellow believers as a sort of weird protection. Then later I got angry and wanted  needed, to be out of the Christian bubble and back in the world, for sanity and for doing what God actually asked of me; to love everyone.

And I never gave it a second thought until last Saturday when I watched a little gaggle of 6-8 year old girls try to play basketball in the church gym.

I was ticked off to tears over what I saw.

I drove home crying over my daughter and the following thoughts of "what have I done to this child by adopting her"?

I talked. I blogged. I argued. I thought.

I watched some more.

I caught some current media stories.

I thought long and hard again, about myself.

I don't run around bashing blacks or calling anyone the n word or lumping in judgement on fashion or music or food, but hot damn I'm living just as racist a life by privilege and omission as if I were.

And maybe that's all my point is. That I'm looking in the mirror and seeing that I need to be somebody else.

Maybe it was just noticing that the little girls were doing what was modeled to them by their parents, none of us brought up to be racist. None of us intentionally widening the divide.

But none of us shrinking it either.

In a way, with our affluent white lives, we don't have to change anything. We almost never have to mingle or be around each other unless we choose it.

Us and them. Them and us.

Maybe it's that the singular word racist doesn't come close to covering the experiences that are included in it.

All of a sudden though, my life, my heart, in included in that single word.

So go ahead now, fill up the comments, tell me how wrong and misguided I am. Tell me my experiences are imagined or unique. Tell me you don't unconsciously behave the way I do and never gave it a second thought.

Black Girl, White Mom: Part 2

So my last post, I stomped my mama bear paw and pointed my finger and wondered out loud.

Was it possible, just merely possible, that I watched my daughter experience racism?

I wondered, with doubt, given "our day and age" the "setting and circumstance."

I wondered because frankly I don't want to believe this is what I saw.

I don't want to believe that happened.

The weekend continued with much discussion and thought, as I expected it would.

I've had lots of comments both public and private.

The more that people say to me, with completely pure intentions, let it go, you probably misunderstood the situation, the less able I am to stop replaying it.

I do truly know all the different variations on kids will be kids and mean girls and bullying and so on. I really do.  I grew up the weird kid. The super short kid. The kid with glasses. The kid with the dental head gear. I had kids pick on me for things I didn't even think of.

I know that my kid can often be a big old pain in the butt and people don't want to be around her.

In the vein of kids will be kids, I know that sometimes kids do just ignore other kids for no other reason than they can.

My family moved around a lot when I was in school. Just the luck of the draw. Navigating social waters could be tricky.

I know what it's like to be shunned and ignored.

My first week of high school in a small town, I was the new kid.  I moved into the tiny city the summer between 8th grade and high school.

That first week, not a single student spoke to me.

Not. One. Word.

Why?

As far as I can tell, it was because I was the new kid.

Things happen. To all of us.

I wonder though, if the blog responses, your responses, had been different if I had laid out my feelings and my daughters experience and never ever shared that she was the only black child on  her team.

I wonder if your responses would have been different if I had never used words like racism.

Part of what's getting to me and making me think, no, I'm not wrong, I saw what I saw and what I saw was my daughter experiencing racism, is how many of you are saying to me, you probably saw something else.

Why does it ruffle feathers so much?

Another piece of the puzzle, that is sort of cementing the issue for me, is the oblivious consent by omission from the other parents present.

These are still little kids we're talking about. These are little girls, still at the ages where we as moms are still really jumping in, hands on, trying to coach and teach our kids the ins and outs of making and keeping good girl friends. This is the age where we are still helping our kids make introductions to each other and help them make small talk and find things in common.

And yes, before you ask it, I did, on the very first day, go with my girl and help her make those introductions. We tried hard to make the small talk and start the connections. I know they don't happen instantly. I never expected her to play on this team and make a lifetime best friend.

I did hope though, for some smiles and small talk for her.

What I saw this weekend though, struck me as something that is bigger and stretches further than my girl being shunned by a few other girls.

I noticed that I was the only parent noticing.

None of the other parents saw what I saw.

I saw my girl walk over to the after game area. She was one of the first ones there, because she was walking alone. She picked a spot to sit, right in the middle!

Way to go, Little Miss. Stick yourself back in, even if they have given you the cold shoulder for an hour. She put her water bottle on the table in front of her chair. Then she got up to come hug me. She went back to her spot to find no chair left for her.

It happens.

Kids do stuff.

But there were moms in chairs sitting by their girls. They looked like tired moms, even if they were 20 years my junior, with this little 7 year old princess being their oldest. I'm sure they never gave a second thought to the one little girl without a chair.

That is part of what bugs me. They didn't give her a second thought. Why?

Not one offered up a chair to my girl.

She didn't complain or ask. She just stood through the coach talk time. No big deal really. It doesn't take long.

She didn't ask or complain when everyone was handed a snack and she was skipped over until the girl passing out the snack noticed there was one left in the bag. The girl handing out the snacks was sitting next to where my girl was standing, and she didn't start passing out treats with herself. She finished up with herself. Then noticed.

Mountain out of a molehill, you say to me.

Probably.

Kids just being kids.

Could be.

Maybe she is too shy or too much.

That could be it.

It probably isn't what you're thinking it is.

It can't be what you are so boldly and rudely saying it might be.

Not among all these affluent, well educated, Christian, team playing, well meaning, genuinely good natured and well intentioned pale people.

I wonder, no, I need to know what it is that makes my black daughter invisible in a sea of pink people.

And I need to learn in a hurry how to be her mama because I suddenly see so very clearly that I can't just go about mothering her the way I would if she were pink like me.

Being a mom is being a mom, right?

That's what you're thinking right?

I always thought so, right up until the moment I realized my daughter was invisible.

White Mama, Black Daughter; Fierce or Invisible

Good or bad for all of you, I process the events of my life pen to paper here in this space.

This one might be long and winding, jumbled and brutal. I'm pretty certain it won't be for the faint of heart.

My daughter is 7 and I am just beginning to fully realize the extent of what it will be, to be her mama for life.

I am being forced to see things in the world that I always thought I saw but never really did.

I am being forced to become a fierce woman.

I have experiences now, with my daughter, that other people don't believe actually happen, because "that doesn't happen in America anymore," because "people aren't like that anymore."

I witness things with my own eyes that I literally can't believe are actually happening. I can't believe they are happening and happening to my daughter because of the above sentences. I have believed those phrases for most of my life.

When I start asking around to friends and listen to their responses to what I tell them I think I might have seen or experienced or lived, their answers almost force me to believe I never should have doubted my experience in the first place. They simply give me the kinder, gentler, more appropriately Christian-ized version of "that kind of thing really doesn't happen." It's code for "you're being paranoid".

So, either I'm crazy-which is possible and I'm investigating that just to make sure I'm not cracking up in the mind-or, what I think I'm experiencing is actually what is really happening right before my eyes to my daughter.

I'm not typically the sports parent in our pair here at home. I don't do a lot of the practices or games and if I do get the tap for that, I am a drop off and come back sort of parent. I like to trust in the coaches and kids and other parents that they will be kind and reasonable and all of that. I like to let the kids have small doses of "safe" spaces to test out their independence.

Today was the first time I had parent duty at my daughter's basketball game.

In our church.

In a Christian sports organization.

Come as you are.

This is the place I am being forced to learn to be a fierce woman.

If those big brown eyes hadn't been locking with mine all through the game I would have walked out, locked myself in a bathroom and bawled my eyes out.

Instead, I blinked. I bit my tongue. I gave her the thumbs up.

I gave her smiles and eye contact.

To me, she is not invisible.

I confirmed that she is real and does exist and was in fact part of that team and playing well.

By the end of the game and the end of the coach's post game wrap up and the end of the snack passing out, I wanted to stand on a table and scream at those little porcelain princesses and their prissy mama's and all the other stereotype groups of people I suddenly saw all around me.

I didn't.

I took my baby by the hand and walked away from the group with her. I knelt down on the floor and looked at her face.

This is supposed to be fun. It should have been a happy, excited face. It was sad and quiet and looking at the floor, not at me.

I asked her a question, "Do any of the girls on your team ever talk to you?"

She just kept on looking at the floor and shook her head, acting like she was in trouble or had done something wrong.

I asked more questions. She kept acting like she had done something wrong.

"Do you ever get to sit with any of them on the bench or do you always sit by yourself?"
"Do they always squeeze 2 girls to a chair so they don't have to sit next to you?"
"Do they always turn their back to you and put their heads together like that whispering and not including you?"
"Do any of the coaches ever notice you are the only girl watching the game from the bench?"
"Does the coach always stand in front of you, so you can't see the game?"

She just quietly put on her pants and coat, picked up her snack and water bottle and asked if we could go.

In the truck she said once in a while one of them will smile at her and sometimes they let her sit with them. She explained all this to me with that hopeful voice that left me wondering if she was trying to convince herself or me that it wasn't so hard.

I asked her if maybe today was just an off day on the bench. Then she remembered, one of the girls did talk to her today.

The little girl told her she couldn't have two friends.

My baby asked me if I wanted half her cookie because it might make me feel better.

How fitting to look over my shoulder in the rear view mirror and see her snapping a heart in half.

Half a broken heart cookie doesn't fix this hurt, because I wanted to believe it wasn't real.

All my life, until now, I have believed in some way or another, because I didn't live it, that it wasn't really real.

My little girl is invisible to her team.

She's not WNBA material at 7, but her skills are at least as good as any other girl on that team.

My daughter isn't invisible.

My daughter is black.

But they may as well be the very same thing.

This is the thing that is driving me to become her very fierce mama.

When I asked around about my experience this morning, my moments of did I really just see this very subtle "acceptable" racism, I got three answers.

1. Yup, I've seen the very same thing happen to her at a different time and setting.
2. Yes, I see it. It's real and it's sad.
3. Well, she has a "big" personality and that can drive people away...

That combination made it solid for me.

Yeah, my girl does have a huge personality, and she will unleash it on you, but only if you are one of the few that she trusts. For the rest of the world, she is shy, quiet, polite, well mannered, kind, patient, all the things you would want your child to grow to become, and yet, it doesn't serve her well. In some weird sick twist it makes her even more invisible.

My girl isn't invisible.

My girl is black.

Being black isn't her fault. It should not be her punishment.

But it will be.

Driving home today I realized, it doesn't matter how good she is on the court. She can match the white girls, skill for skill, but they can't see her or respect her or befriend her.

No wonder black women become a force to reckon with as adults.

My girl will have to have skills, at anything, that are double or triple her white female peers to even begin to be noticed at an equal level.

For her entire life, she is going to always have to work harder and be better. Not just the "women have to work harder than a man to get the same notice or praise or prize as a man", but as a black woman she is going to have to pour out an effort that is so far beyond that, I am speechless thinking about it.

I would never begin to claim that I understood what it is to live life as a black woman. Over my life, I've respected them in a way, kept my distance to be sure, feared them definitely.

All of a sudden though, I see them differently.

Hell, I'm struck by the fact that in our present day world, where "that sort of thing doesn't still happen" I am fully aware and recognizing that until now, I have always thought of it as us and them.

Where I used to see something I couldn't identify or didn't want to identify, I now see a fierce strength. I see warriors. I see survivors.

I can honestly say I now see something in a black woman that I can respect more than I can say.

I have a few white women friends that have adopted black daughters.

They are fierce women, a force to be reckoned with.

Not one of them is going to let their daughter grow up being invisible to anyone.

I'm not going to let her grow up being invisible either.

She is black.

She is amazing and beautiful and fierce.

And those little porcelain princesses, well, they're a dime a dozen and they are the one's missing out. If they could see beyond her brown skin, they could befriend an incredible little survivor.

I doubt the tears I shed today over my "invisible" black daughter are the last ones on our journey to being fierce, but they are the last ones to come with the sense of shock over the level of acceptable racism and bullying.

Or maybe, none of this is really real. Maybe it's just kids being kids. Maybe it's a hypersensitive paranoid mama with a mixed race family fishing for a reason for the treatment her child received. Maybe she asked for it or had it coming. Maybe she deserved it or brought it on herself.