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Category: Race
I am white. Over the course of my 30 year career I have spent most of my time in the company of black people. Some years I was the only white person I saw every day. This was not by intention. More just the happenstance of a career in urban child welfare. I don’t recall ever feeling uncomfortable, unwelcome or afraid. I made life-long friends — the go-to kind who are at the top of the call list when I need help in the middle of the night.
This experience got me to telling myself that, on the spectrum of white-ness, I am a more than average race conscious person. As I stepped into leadership roles in social services, I did so in a race conscious way. I built racially diverse teams of world class individuals — teams I would have put up against any team in the country. I redistributed the power I had to the families we served — putting them in the position of decision-maker about their own lives. I drew my weapons and did vicious battle with institutional racism every time it had the gall to rear its ugly head.
And then: Delilah. As I grooved into being Her mom I came to understand that my experience of race up to then, while heart-felt and sincere, was informed but…intellectual at best.
And then an itty bitty person who calls me ‘mom’ took me to a primal place I did not know existed. On her behalf, I house a bottomless depth of rage at the gaping racial wound in our country and I double-dog-dared it to make itself known in her life. At every interaction with the world I rule out race as an issue issue before I lay my weapons down.
About the time George Floyd was murdered my daughter graduated from elementary school. In replacement of rite-of-passage activities, her principal put together a slide show involving pictures of kids from the lower school. A member of my extended family saw the production and asked if Delilah had been in it. You see, this family member said, its hard to tell black children apart.
I confess I have been stunned since then. If a member of her own family cannot see her as anything other than undifferentiated in a wash of color, what will the police see? They will see exactly what they saw when they pulled George Floyd from his car. And then they will act. I am now terrorized but this question: how the hell am I supposed to keep my kid alive?
The challenge of preparing my child to be Black in America is the right one. But it separates us in a way that scares me for her. I am, first and foremost, her mom. That means She and I are bound up irrevocably. It is what She needs. I am now also the white woman teaching her about being Black in America. That causes us to separate. While I can give her the lesson, I cannot join her for the journey.
She is alone in this in our house. We both are.
Labor Day weekend and it is unbearably hot in Baltimore. Being the last weekend the pool would be open, we drag ourselves out early so as to ensure we get lounge chairs in the shade. I watch as the object of my complete devotion – my 9-year-old daughter – dives repeatedly into the deep end. She soars in the air, arcs, moves with grace and confidence through the water, touches the bottom and pushes off to the surface. I am overwhelmed with some feeling I can’t name, ‘love’ being far too weak a word to capture it.
As early as 4 years old, we knew she was a water baby. She experimented with it incessantly as a preschooler. On trips to the ocean she stood at the shoreline singing and dancing and engaging the sea as if it were a sentient being with whom she shared a special language.
Then came the pool. The pool to which we belong dates back to 1959 and is among the first integrated pools in Baltimore. I am very proud to be members of an organization with this kind of legacy. I think the joy of a swimming in a pool alongside all manner of people will provide my daughter a life lesson that will serve her well.
Like most community pools, ours has a phenomenon to ensure safety: the dreaded “deep water” test. This is a quiz of sorts that children have to pass in order to gain the privilege of enjoying the entire pool – the deep water and the diving board. Typically, this test involves swimming a lap without touching the side and then treading water for 60 seconds. Those who pass get a bright rubber anklet that cues the lifeguards as to the child’s level of water access.
My child failed this test the first time she took it. And the second. And the third. She stepped up fully eight times, over weeks, before she succeeded. I left her to it, watching her persevere and believing it was best for her long-term sense of self to do this on her own. I also felt sure it was the best thing for pool safety in general. When she passed it was worthy of our celebration that evening. We are family who believes that things that come easy are nice, but hard-fought wins are the stuff of life.
That was years ago. This day I am enjoying a lazy morning in the shade watching my daughter frolic in the water.
Then a mother comes with her blond-haired white son, who looks to be about six years old, to attempt his first deep water test. The first thing I notice is that the mom gest into the water with her son without any objection from the lifeguard. This strikes me as odd because the deep-water tests presumes that the child is wanting to be in the pool without a parent by their side. The whole point is that the kid has to be able to keep himself safe in water over his head on his own. Next, the mother swims with the child on his lap, encouraging him and continually saying “no, don’t hold on to me”. He is barely maintaining his little head above water in his final 20 yards. Once he finishes his lap, he sits on the side of the pool for a while, resting and gathering his strength for the task of treading water. This also strikes me as unusual, since the point of treading is that they do it after the lap when they are tired. Finally, he begins to tread. Reaching for his mother, she persists in telling him to let go. He manages to last the requisite time.
As he dons his new anklet, I realized that lifeguard would neverhave given my child a pass if she had shown that level of ability.
The rules of engagement – in this instance the threshold for access to deep water – sound like they are universal. But in reality, my dark skinned, dreadlocked child is held to a different standard than white children. When she misses the mark, the world presumes the problem is her – that she is misbehaving, or not paying attention or simply not good enough. She had to work eight times as hard to get the level of access so easily awarded to that little white boy. When the mark was hard for him, the world assumed something was wrong with themark. And then they moved it.
The kids all race off for popsicles either way. And I get a glimpse behind the veil as to how, every day, we create a world where our children grow up to believe that some people are just better than others.
Molly Tierney is an adoptive parent who lives in Baltimore, MD.
April 2016
A friend (white, educated, kind and fabulous) came for dinner last night. She was timid (albeit brave) in raising the concern she has: upon hearing “Black Lives Matter” she thought there might now be a norm where it is not ok for her to say “All Lives Matter”. I shared with her my sense that she might be taking the first phrase too literally. What those behind it might mean to say is that black lives have not mattered nearly so much as white lives over the course of the history of our country and that its time that they do matter. I offered the standard set of evidence often provided in these conversations: overrepresentation in public systems like prison, foster care,and special education by people of color, the growing sets of data that glaringly suggests opportunity is doled out based on race and zip code, the demographic fact that the quality of housing and educational opportunities falls along racial lines, the array of systems that are structured to protect wealth and power for white people.
After my predictable comments came the predictable response from my friend: “but I didn’t do any of that. Its not my fault.” I assured her she was correct and added that it was also no less true that the beneficiaries of white privilege have an awesome responsibility to disrupt the current set up.
I awoke with the sense that I had not gained any ground with my friend. It occurred to me that “Black Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter” are misleading insofar as they suggest that the two comments are in the same conversation. “All Lives Matter” is clearly the voice of white privilege. It comes from “I”. Its the very “I” that blinds those of us with white privilege to its origins and pathways. This “I” suggests that my success was available to everyone and “I”, by myself, just did what “I’” needed to do. Others who did not enjoy the same outcomes just made other choices. This furthermore confirms that “I” have no connection to, impact on, responsibility for any others who might not have faired so well. When it is suggested that I do, the “I” retreats further into itself as a protective and defensive measure, only subconsciously aware that straying from the “I” success story is a risky proposition.
“Black Lives Matter” conversely, comes from “we”. It suggests “we” are interdependent and all in this together and that some of us doing well while others are struggling is an ill fated path that is doing damage to all of us. For some this path has been perilous. The moral outrage that this could go on for so long without notice and corrective action is now aptly placed in public arena.
I think the “I” of All Lives Matter is inadvertently taking over the “we” of Black Lives Matter in conversation. When both show up at the same time, All overshadows Black, pushing the Black Lives Matter conversation away as if to say “we get it and now its ok”. The responsibility for splitting this two conversations rests with the “I” of White Privilege. It will mean brutal self reflection on the benefits the “I” has enjoyed even if it means pangs of guilt for having done so well for so long just by luck of the parents to whom we are born. It will require the courage to admit we rest in avoidance to avoid our fear that giving up the current structure might negatively affect me. It will mean sitting on your hands and listening deeply to substance of the Black Lives Matters conversation.
Allowing All to overtake the Black conversation smacks of a modern method White Privilege use to divert a challenging conversation about race — one our country desperately needs to have. Disaggregating All and Black into the two very separate conversations might just get us started.
