I have missed writing so much. It is truly how I express deep thoughts and emotions. I have been in graduate school for a year now. I am currently in summer school to stay on track to graduate next May. This class is an elective in the Sociology department - Social Inequality. It is incredible! I am developing a vocabulary and research foundation for the injustices and health disparities I hope to impact through my master's degree in Public Health. We have to write short papers that are meant to reflect on the writings we read and make connections with the material. This one is extra personal so I thought it could double as a blog post. I hope it will impact you deeply and move you recognize inequalities in the social structures around you.
Sincerely,
Lynette
As
I continued to ponder your question of what is my family’s racial project
tonight on my run, I came across the lyrics to one of my favorite songs – “In
That Home” by the Newsboys. The opening stanza is “There was a home in town
where broken kids, the lost and found, would come from miles around just to see
what love was all about – cause momma had a way of making things ok.” I feel such a strong
connection to this song since our home has been this “home in town” for the past six
years to many children, particularly black and brown children.
In
the “Racial Formation in the United States”, Omi and Winant (1986:226) state
that we use race to give us clues about who a person is. People tend to get
uncomfortable when they cannot easily categorize a person racially. “Someone
who is, for example, racially “mixed” or of an ethnic/racial group we are not
familiar with.” This describes our family. We can publicly migrate from a
majority white context at a University function to a majority black context with
our 5th grade girls’ basketball team almost seamlessly. We know how
to get comfortable in either location, but it rarely lacks for at least one
awkward moment. I generally sense when we have "over stayed our
welcome", and we need to return home. I have developed a hyper-awareness to how
people perceive and watch our family. We cause uncomfortable “crisis of racial
meaning” (1986:226) for people around us. I am white and Tyrone is black. He is a professor, which
no one guesses when he says he works at a university. I am taller than he is.
We got married before we had any children and I always feel to need to share
that when I meet new white people. We are Christians, and we are not
Republicans. He never played organized basketball shattering the “all black
people are good at basketball” stereotype. I had a ball in my hands at 18
months, and beat him when we played one-on-one for the first time. (He still
married me.)
Omi
and Winant (1986: 227) also state “our ongoing interpretation of our experience
in racial terms shapes our relations to the institutions and organizations
through which we are embedded in social structure. Thus we expect differences
in skin color, or other racially coded characteristics, to explain social
differences.” Although the percentage of biracial marriages is rising in the
U.S. as evidenced in the “Racial Identities in 2000” article (2002:229), we
still represent a small group in the U.S. This has never been more apparent to
us that in the last 3-5 years. When we first got married in 2001, it felt
trendy and rebellious to be together. The reality of racism in the U.S. while raising our children as they seek to determine their own racial identity has
amplified the challenges we encounter. It is both a struggle and a reward to
walk this journey with our children and the rest of the children we mentor and
welcome into our family. I remember when our son was born, 13 years ago, and we
visited the pediatrician for the first time. We had to fill out all the new
patient paper work and stared at the box for racial identification. There was
no place to accurately identify our sweet baby boy. When I suggested that we
check the “other” box, the pediatrician scolded me ever so gently. To check any
other box would have meant leaving out half of who he was. I do not recall what
we did do that day, but I do remember at some point I started circling both White/Caucasian
and Black/African American on forms. Now I am thankful that we normally find an
option that reflects the biracial ethnicity of our children on forms as discussed
in “Racial Identities in 2000”.
The
“Black Identities” article was so impactful to me. Waters (1999:252) writes the
observation of the Black American male teacher. “I would rather for you to hate
me than to disrespect me, is the attitude I think is coming out from our black
youth today.” This is such a power dynamic to consider if we, as white people,
would not resort to being offended and listen. A few weeks ago, I was with my
son in Wichita, KS for a basketball tournament. He walked to a shopping mall
near our hotel with two of his friends. This is one of the first times he has
done that without his Dad or I with him. He shared with me an observation they
made about a white woman they saw at the mall. They joked with each other about
her perception of “three n-%#-rs” walking around together. Although the woman
did not speak to them nor make any visible displeasing gestures toward them,
they were all too aware of how their presence may be unwanted. We talked
through his experience and thought process. This reminded me of the “holding
the door” scenario in the Waters (1999:253) article. She states, “The cycle of
attack and disrespect from whites, anger and withdrawal from blacks, and
disengagement and blaming behaviors by whites must be broken by changing
whites’ behavior”. I think about the power we have in our privilege and how we
could use it to advance the cause of equality so that young black teenage boys
could one day not have to wonder about how their presence was offending a white
person.
I
opened this paper with a quote from one of my favorite songs. It is my hope
that our home will always be a place of refuge and love for our children and
any child that finds his or her way to us. As the song goes on to say in the
chorus “In that home we knew we were safe to be young enough to dream to find
the faith to believe. And in that home love it had no end. That’s where we
learned to forgive – in that home.” As we continue to figure out how to work
toward racial equality, I pray our home will be a safe place where children of
color encounter this white momma who will listen and work to make things ok.
Works Cited
Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999)
Reynolds Farley, "Racial Identities in 2000: The Response to the Multiple-Race Response Option," in The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals, edited by Joel Perlmann and Mary C. Waters. Copyright 2002 by the Russell Sage Foundation
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formations in the United States, Copyright 1986 by Routledge and copyright 1994 by Michael Omi and Howard Winant.
