Sojourner of Truth
2021 update: Yes, Allies- You Can Honor Black History Month, But You Still Have to Do The Work
When my now 20 year old daughter was 4 and attending a Pre-K/K program I was inspired to write an article about her excitement learning that she was part African American during Black History Month. In 2015, after the shooting in Ferguson, I reposted that article from my old blog here on Medium, with some more current reflections in honor of Black History Month. In the years that have passed, I have thought many times about taking it down, in fact I absolutely cringe every single time I read it. So why don’t I?
I don’t remove the article because it SHOULD be cringe worthy, in the same way that a few years ago none of us cringed when we saw Industry panels with only men, or only white people. Cringe inducing moments are at the apex of change. So bring it on: without my occasional re-read of that article, I might not be as vigilant as I should in interrogating myself about what I might be doing to contribute to implicit bias and systemic racism.
Warning: this sort of self-reflection isn’t pretty but it is, progress. Here are some tough lessons I learned about myself since I wrote that article:
- You can have black children, by blood or by the bond of adoption, but that does not mean you have even a sliver of understanding about the black experience in America. Even living that experience through your children by proxy is not the same. You are also not the best person to teach your child about that piece of their heritage, that is an oral history that must be passed from the mouths of those who own the stories.
- You should not be embarrassed if you are thankful your children “pass” as white because you don’t want them to experience the pain of racism. You should however, be deeply ashamed that we live in a country where ANY child has to pass for anything other than exactly who they are — unique, special and equal or that ANY child will experience pain or violence because of the color of their skin- but shame gets us nowhere unless it sparks action.
- Even if you grew up poor, if you grew up poor and white, you still had a better experience and likely many more opportunities than if you grew up as a poor person of color.
- When you are in a room with only white people, and someone makes a joke or racist comment feeling safe in a room of only white people to do so (and believe me they will) you don’t get to stay quiet
- You don’t get to judge, rationalize, debate the merit of, or co-opt movements and hashtags that are not your own.
It is very humbling to discover through time and experience lessons like these. At the same time, I am also learning lessons about what I should be doing instead like stop assuming, and start listening. After that, amplify. After that, create space for people of color to tell their stories in first person.
We can, and should, link arms in protest against injustice when we see it- but we should also act where we work and where we live. Not accepting the status quo of disparities for people of color in healthcare or algorithm bias in data is where I am showing up today. I am grateful that I get to continue to grow and learn as a human. Thanks for meeting me where I am.
*****
2015 update
Almost ten years now I wrote this essay. I have held it near and dear for a long time because I knew that someday, there would be a right time to share it with others. My heart tells me that now is the right time, and The 80/20 is the right place. A big reason for my launch of the 80/20 was to create a judgement-free zone for our journey in this life. Also, I wanted to create a sanctuary to share my writings about the stories that shape our experience.
When the incident in Ferguson happened, I found myself sick to my stomach with the state of our world. For African Americans and other people of color and for those who wear the color blue. How did we get here?
Recently there was a post that deeply touched me called “Dear White Mom” and it was one of the first things I have read with some actionable solutions. Honestly though, after reading it my first real thought was, “Thank God my mixed-race children don’t look black”.
I will be the first to admit that my ideas, theories, and assumptions about racism, privilege and the right things to do or say to stomp out the hate on all sides has evolved over time. And by evolved, I mean while there seems like so many right answers and so many absolute truths, there are also so many wrong answers that I simply don’t know where to start.
I was feeling particularly tried by this, and then I picked up this old essay, and it eased my heart a bit. There is an old saying “out of the mouths of babes” that expresses how truth needs to come sometimes from an innocent messenger.
I named this in honor of Sojourner Truth and in honor of my (not so little anymore) daughter Rae who on this day was my very own innocent messenger, my Sojourner of Truth. I hope it gives you a glimmer of hope in the darkness too.
**** original piece
This afternoon begins like most afternoons in my home. I’m sitting with my legs curled up on the daybed, surrounded by papers and the clutter of whatever salty snack I was munching, laptop precariously balancing on my knees and our overly needy mini dachshund curled up behind my back. Spencer is already home from school, he’s playing video games, the requisite approved 30-minute break before he has to begin his homework.
“Spence, go down and get your sister,” I yell across the room today, as I do most everyday around 3:50, so I can feverishly continue the barrage of emails and proposals before the next conference call.
When Rae comes in she says, “Hi Mama!” in just the way that makes me smile, the lingering babyhood in the voice of my “Big Girl in Kindergarten.”
I get a quick snuggle and ask, admittedly not as engaged as I would like to be, how school was today as I continue to click away at the keyboard, my eyes losing contact with her saucer sized puppy dog browns. Rae, however, rarely accepts less than 100% of my attention when she wants it, conference calls with clients be damned! And this is one of those moments. “Mama,” she repeats to make sure she has my full attention. “Do you know what we are learning about in school?”
“Nope, what?” I say still not looking up, expecting the answer to be something innocuous and quickly dismissible like shapes, or time and money, or the letter “B”.
“Well,” she replies, a very confidential look coming to her face as if she is about to spill the secret of the universe, “We are learning about African Americans.”
She pauses to let this sink in, but when she does not get an immediate response (I’m reading an email), she adds, “Mom, did you know Oprah is African American?”
She drags out “Am-er-ic-can” for emphasis between African and American so I can absorb the full impact of what she is saying.
I look up, amused, “Yes!” I tell her, “She sure is!”
Like so many other times in the course of our parenting we can miss these teachable moments, and I am about to blunder big. Luckily Rae is not done and something in me tells me to stop, look at my daughter, or the moment is going to slip away. I lock onto her gaze, encouraging more.
“And” Rachael continues now that she has my attention, “So is Mohammed Ali and the Piano Guy, you know?”
So I search my memory for who the Piano Guy could be… so many amazing Black musicians, but all I can come up with is Louis Armstrong so I say, “Oh do you mean Louis Armstrong?”
A bit disappointed in me Rachael says, “No Mama he is the trumpet guy, you know, and also we learned about this guy who did lots of like, things,” her hands contorting around in explanation, “with peanuts.”
After the correction on the piano guy, I was not about to guess about “the peanut guy” I decided that I should take another route and so I answered, “Mmm huh, and Michael Jordan, and Condoleeza Rice, who works for the President, and Malcolm X.”
Rachael considers these options and nods her head slowly a bit, some recognition coming around Condi Rice I think, but still a bit perplexed. To avoid having to discuss who Malcolm X is in detail at this busy point in my workday, I decided to throw in one more thing for good measure, “Rae baby, did you know you are African American too?”
As if I had just illuminated life’s greatest secret, Rachael’s eyes grew even bigger and she said slowly, as if she might not have heard me correctly the first time, “You mean I am African American?” Her mouth hung open with surprise then slowly broke into a beaming smile of pride.
Now, I was the one confused. Since birth I had practically rammed my children’s multicultural heritage down their throats, often to combat the fact that they both look so, well, *white*, even at times resorting to reminding them they were “black on the inside” (not my proudest moment I can now admit). Alarmed, I shouted down the hall again, “Spencer? Do you know you are African American?”
“Of course” he yelled back annoyed that I interrupted his video game with such an obvious question.
Armed with this confirmation that my parenting was indeed successful, I decide to get to the bottom of why my daughter somehow did not understand his fact about herself. “Rae-chee, what do you think Daddy is?”
This was an easy question and she put one hand on her hip and looked at me with a face that said, “how dumb do you think I am?” as she answered, “Um, Black.” (duh, mom)
I knew I was boiling it down a little too much with what I was about to say, but my daughter’s identity was at stake. So I said, “Rachael, black is the same thing as African American. And you are also Native American, that is Indian, and some people call that Red and European American, that is White.”
Again, as if I had just parted the Red Sea, my daughter looked at me in amazement. Remembering something I read in the homework folder the other day about bringing pictures of African Americans to school I casually said “Rachael, would you like to bring that picture of Daddy and Uncle Pat to School to share with your friends tomorrow?”
“Oh yes, that would be a lovely idea Mama!” she said giving me a huge embrace. As she dashed out to the kitchen for a snack now satisfied, she turned back to me and said, “Mom, should I bring a picture of Grandpa too?”
I should have expected this, it was one of those family jokes that my father was more “ethnic” looking (Italian, Middle-Eastern, Native American maybe?) than my ex-husband, and in the summer could get as dark skinned or even darker.
“No honey, Grandpa is other kinds of brown like Swiss Italian. Grandpa is not African American.” She shrugged in acceptance and went about her afternoon.
I found it hard to focus on work after that. You see, I had recently initiated a huge email discourse with my mom and some of the members of the School Board at my son’s tiny Christian private school about doing something to honor Black History month. At the time the school was mostly white, Spencer and one of our ministers being the exception, I thought it was important to bring it up.
What followed was mostly responses in kind to the idea of doing something. Then there were those who just avoided the emails altogether, most likely I assumed to stay out of the “politics” with folks we all saw around school and church.
But the most surprising, was my mother’s response, which was very negative on the whole topic. She used phrases about Black History month being “special treatment”. To which I immediately lashed back with, “Isn’t that what Hitler told the Jews they were going to do when he sent them to the gas chamber?”
Now despite her ignorant sounding comment, I can honestly say we were raised without an ounce of racial bias in our blood. To my mom, this was about the bigger issue of today’s overblown political correctness and what should ideally be true (all races should be celebrated) vs. what actually is (most school curriculum is still very Eurocentric).
I married someone with African American heritage, one of my sisters someone from Honduras, one of my brothers someone who is half Japanese. We grew up “outhouse poor” as I like to call it, no pun intended, we truly had an outhouse some of my growing up. Based on this what I learned early on was that the real dividing factor in this country is class, not race. Blue, as in blue-collar, was the color of all my father’s friends down at the local watering hole after work, not white or black.
Not to say that the impact of slavery, followed by years of inequality mean nothing. To the contrary, some could argue the racism of the past feeds into the classism of today and the cycle then continuously circulates, keeping the poor, poor and the minority poor with even less. Despite efforts to address racism and equal the playing field for all Americans.
After a series of email debates with my mother about Black History month as a premise:
(Me) lobbing things like, “Why is it ok to have parades and drink green beer for the Irish every March, but Black History Month is somehow African Americans seeking special recognition?”
(My Mom) Countering with arguments such as “I am really tired of people Always talking about diversity- did you know that diversity comes from the Latin root divertire, or to divert, i.e.,. exclude? Why don’t we just include everyone and celebrate the variety instead?”
Our battle of semantics and principles continued for a few more emails before we settled into our mutual respect for the other’s perspective.
The day after I sent that last email, Rachael came home and announced, “Mama! The kids in my class were so glad that I am African American!” and indeed she was beaming.
Of course, later that evening she asked me to braid her hair and went screaming from the room in tears when I could neither braid her fine flat hair against her head like her classmates, or figure out a way to get the little bead she found somewhere among her treasures, to stay in her hair. I thought back to my childhood, sitting in music class in a Pittsburgh Public School as ten and twenty little brown fingers combed through my hair while we sat in our double rowed semi-circle on the floor singing songs like BINGO. I loved the relaxing feeling of my classmates gently styling my hair and felt proud when they whispered things like:
“Girl your hair is so soft”.
But there was also an uncomfortable feeling of noticing for the first time that you are different than others. Rachael, who was also in a predominantly black school in a relatively affluent black area in the suburbs of DC, was probably also going through this. In contrast to me, instead of my feeling shame that I was different in maybe in a “good way” she was feeling sad because she wanted to emulate the other children in her class. After all, who does not want to be “the same” as everyone else at that age?
In many ways, this is comforting. I hope that she will find the way to embrace the part of herself that is African American though she will outwardly always appear to be “white”. As her mom, someone who knows that racism is still far from behind us, I sometimes secretly say a prayer of gratitude. While my children may deal with all sorts of taunts and teases over the course of their growing up, thankfully and because of their white skin, they may never have to feel the pain a racial slur can inflict.
In this thought, I become a bit pensive, and sad for the lack of progress we have made. I wander into the kitchen to make myself a cup of Earl Grey and there, lying on the table in the kitchen is a picture Rachael drew at school that day.
It is a simple sketch drawn on white construction paper in black crayon of a smiling woman with hair squiggling up from her head. Above this picture, written in the painstaking pen of a kindergartner, she has written “Sojourner Truth” in all capital letters, and below the picture, “I Wish you were A Life” (Alive).
Maybe we have made some progress, after all.
Tags: children, Ferguson, Hope, Police, race, racism, white privilege
Originally published at www.t8020.com.
