Molly McGrath Tierney

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.