Today I was thinking about last week. Last week, as we were leaving my daughter’s dance class, a lady I had never met was leaving the salon next door. She got into her car, and as she was pulling away, she glowered at my husband and me as we walked hand in hand with our preschooler to our car. She could have been glowering because my hair needed work, or because it was getting cooler and we weren’t wearing jackets…or she could have just been looking at us but thinking about something else entirely. But I was pretty sure that sour look was directed at us. It reminded me…
I was watching a video about white privilege. In it, a woman was describing a situation in which her boss was taking credit for something she did, apparently because she was black. Then I remembered years ago, when my mom was working. She described exactly the same situation to me, except that in her eyes, it had very little to do with her – it was about how her boss was a jerk in a position of authority. Their perceptions were so different, maybe because of past experiences, maybe due to what they had been taught to expect. Hearing the differences in their perceptions startled me…enough to keep me awake that night. I wondered: what I should teach my beautiful, talented, creative, intelligent yet bubbly, little girl about how the world sees her? And about how she should see the world?
When we go out with our daughter, I get looks. Mostly they are kind ones, like when people catch your eye and then smile at you. To be honest, these looks offended me in the past. I would think, “What? Do you think it’s hard for me to love her because of her color? Is it really that big of a deal to you? Does she seem anything but loveable? My child is adorable!” The thing is, I was making assumptions. It occurred to me one day, as I was driving home from Walmart, fuming over all the friendly looks, that I was assigning racism where it might not exist. In fact, those people didn’t know me, but they all knew that my black child did not come from my body. So, maybe what they were smiling about wasn’t a white woman raising a black child, but someone who was clearly a foster or adoptive parent loving and raising another person’s child. Maybe it had nothing to do with color. My perception was coloring (I know, sorry!) the actual event. So sometimes I wonder…I wonder about racism, about white privilege, and about the black versus white debate. I’m sure everyone is right, just as I am sure we are all wrong. I don’t want my daughter to grow up in a world where she is not valued for who she is, but I also don’t want her to grow up assuming the worst about the people around her.
I admit, I have been sheltered. As a child growing up in an all-white town, I knew about racism, but it didn’t touch me until the one black family that moved into town was harassed until they moved out. I remember being so ashamed that I lived in a town where people would do something like that. Even then, I thought that sort of behavior was history, not something that I would read on the front page of the newspaper that I delivered. And yet now, over 35 years later, we live together in the same neighborhoods, wave at each other every day, and then turn on the news to hear about how we all hate each other. Unfortunately, I recognized the same ugliness inside of me when I assumed that people are racists without ever exchanging words. Somehow, I must teach her that there will be ugliness in her world, without planting its seed within her.
The other day my husband and I went to see a stand-up comedian. On a serious note, he said the thing that he loved most about Atlanta was that here the people, black and white, were friends. No one was looking for a pat on the back because they were hanging out with someone from another race. That’s what I always believed the reality should be. That is the reality I want for my daughter.