“There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.”
-President Barack Obama speaking on the Trayvon Martin case
Here’s my confession: I have absolutely locked my car doors when an African American man walked passed. And also when a white guy walked past. And also when a shady lady walked past. Mostly I just drive with my doors locked so I never have to intentionally lock them when somebody walks past. I also lock the front door at my house because when I didn’t, the little neighbor boy would let himself in. Turns out, I’m not a terribly trusting person especially when it comes to strangers passing by or even just the neighbor boy. I’m nervous when any man gets on an elevator with me and we find ourselves alone. The truth is, I clutch my purse nervously when walking through the church parking lot and I can’t even see anybody else around. In some ways I think this is the birthright that comes with being a woman in our society.
I’m not a person who lives in fear, but I do seek to keep myself safe and protect my kids. I am vigilant. As a woman and a mother I am constantly evaluating the safety of a situation and making judgements about the best response. I pay attention to the area of town we’re in, what time of day it is, how people are dressed, and if other families are present. I conduct myself differently based on the environment I’m in and I can admit that often means making snap judgements.
I know there has been some sadness or even outrage about the idea that black families have to sit down with their sons to talk to them about how to seem unthreatening, or how to respond to the police. It just doesn’t seem fair. This idea that people lock their doors when you walk past is used to describe how people assume the worst. While I’m busy locking my car doors, I’ve also had my own sadness realizing that my white privilege won’t protect my black son or my Native American son from being stereotyped. Some day my beautiful brown boys will grow up into brown men and people will stop using words like “cute” and “precocious” to describe them. And maybe I don’t know what I need to know to raise them safely.
When I first heard about the Trayvon Martin situation, I cried. The details were sketchy at that point in the case, but in my mind I couldn’t separate the image of a black teenager being shot because of what seemed to be a misunderstanding with the image of the black boy who was swinging on the swing set in our backyard. My son was so carefree and knew nothing of the judgements he may face and precautions he may need to take for his safety. I was deeply rattled.
I contacted a mentor of mine (and if my son had a godparent it would be this man) who is a black man with an imposing presence. He’s very tall and used to play football. He also loves Jesus deeply and has devoted his life to ministry. He is my go-to man with questions about transracial parenting and in this moment I needed his input. I asked him if I was capable of raising this child well. I asked him if there were things Josh needed to know that I wouldn’t know to tell him. I asked him how I could talk to my son about protecting himself without making him feel like a victim. His answers were profound to me.
He talked to me about how my experience as a woman is relatable to my son’s experience as an African American man. He will need to learn to read situations. He will need to learn what to wear in different environments. He will need to know how to carry himself. He will need to avoid certain areas at certain times. Just the kind of issues I have had to learn to deal with myself to be safe.
Specifically, my friend told me about how if he shows up at someone’s house unexpectedly he makes sure when they open the door he is smiling. He realizes that he can be perceived as threatening, so he gets right to the point in as friendly a way as possible. My friend said that just as I don’t feel I’m a victim because I have to carry myself differently to be safe as a woman, he doesn’t feel victimized by having to behave in a certain manner to be safe as a black man.
I’m sad that I’ll have to teach my son the realities of prejudice when he so thoroughly knows that not only can white people and black people get along, but they can be family to each other. I hate that I’ll have to talk to him about how to carry himself so that he stays safe. But while we’re having that conversation, I’ll also have to sit my daughter down and talk to her about how to carry herself. I’ll talk to her about staying out of certain areas at certain times of night. I’ll even talk to her about why she should lock her car doors.
I long for heaven. That will be the place where we won’t have to have fears and won’t be identified by just our physical characteristics. I long for a world where we won’t have to deal with racism or violence towards women. We won’t have to teach our kids to behave defensively. But we’re not there yet. So we teach our kids how to be safe, but we also teach them how to be compassionate. How to help those in danger. How to not take advantage of those weaker than they are. How to get to know people who challenge them and challenge their assumptions about the world. And with each generation our kids are learning what we all have in common. The transracial adoption that would have been unthinkable to our grandparents has become the fact of our family tree.
“And let me just leave you with a final thought that, as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. It doesn’t mean we’re in a post-racial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated. But when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I seem them interact, they’re better than we are — they’re better than we were — on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.
And so we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues. And those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids these days, I think, have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did; and that along this long, difficult journey, we’re becoming a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.”
-President Barack Obama
4 Comments
Leave a reply →