As I sat in the chair getting my hair done Saturday morning, there was another client waiting to be serviced and she spoke about the Mike Brown murder. I heard about it, but at that point hadn't taken the time to educate myself on his death. (I've been taking a break with researching the murders of Black men since Trayvon Martin, because it really took a toll on me. I didn't want to be angry anymore, so I had to give myself space.) This woman spoke about her 12-year-old son saying he wanted his ears pierced and she told him no "because you will be viewed as a thug" when his appropriately childish response was "but Jacob (his White friend) has his ears pierced" this woman had to explain to her son that Jacob is different than he is. I imagine the confusion I would create for my child telling him they are as good (if not better) than anyone else, but then having to also say "but others will not view you that way". This confusing dichotomy is even difficult for me to understand, so how can I help a child with understanding that?
Mostly when I think about having a child, I fear having/raising a Black man, but I am also fearful of raising a Black woman. I've thought to myself that I would love to have a brown-skinned almond-esque daughter with thick, curly hair like her mother, however I have this sick thought of "but what if she grows up and hates her skin complexion, maybe I should want her to be light-skinned," to aleviate any added stress. I can't even happily, innocently dream about what my future child would look like without considering the consequences for her appearance. What type of world (country) am I living in where women can't even dream about raising a "princess" without thinking about the imaginary monsters who no longer hide in her bed, but are walking the streets in plain clothes blending in with everyone else.
White Racial Identity Development
If you read about WRID you will understand the way my brain was moving in and out of thoughts and processing while in the midst of this hour long convo described below. You can read this quick one-pager here. You can also pick up Dr. Janet Helm's book, A Race is a Nice Thing to Have: A Guide to Being a White Person or Understanding the White Persons in Your Life.
Yesterday I met with a young white woman (info needed for the story) to talk about volunteering for an organization. I had no idea I was walking into what I did. I thought I was going to give a little input about how the homeless can be helped in my community, then that's it. It felt more like an interview, so I was a bit turned off, plus I felt like she was prying into my life and testing my passion for the homeless. So she threw out a statistic about the percentage of homeless people who are Black and in my mind I'm like "check! The awareness is there". Then she begins to speak about her first time witnessing racism and it was when she was 21, working at a restaurant, her manager was sexually harrassing an undocumented worker. She helped this worker out by writing a letter to corporate and assured her that it would remain anonymous. With this young woman's help, the manager was fired and the worker was able to keep her job. Beautiful, right? So then she tells a story about another experience when she went to vote in Ohio, she received an email stating her polling location had been changed, her thinking nothing of it, she went to the new location. While there, she witnessed Blacks who arrived at the location being told "your location has been changed, you must go (here)" and often times they're house was only 2 blocks from where they stood and the new location was 20 minutes away and they had no car, according to the storyteller. "I became so angry I didn't know what to do, so I bought a one-way ticket to Mexico and stayed there for a year" because she just wanted to get away because she was so fed up. Now of course, I didn't say this while there, but I wrestled with it in my brain "how nice to have enough money (and privilege) to leave your country of origin and go live elsewhere for a year because you're sick of your current reality, I wish I had that privilege". One other instance in my convo with this woman as she was testing my passion, she asked about an instance in which I had to stand against an injustice or something like that. I politely told her that "in my everyday life, there's not much I could do" and she gave me the "no that's not true, everything can be fought, she's clearly confused" look. I then gently explained that at times certain instances can be fought, but others it can not and gave her an example. I say "gently explained" because I wasn't in a situation to burst this young White girl's bubble of fighting for equality in the middle of Starbucks. What I would have said if I could was "At times I get extremely tired of fighting and there's nothing worse than running out fuel. It takes a lot of eneergy to remain angry for a long time, and I know because I was angry for 2 solid years about Trayvon Martin, it's not healthy. As a Black woman, I have to discern what's healthy for me to carry and what I have to let go, but you wouldn't understand that because you're fighting a battle that's not your own and I wouldn't expect you to know that. So when you say fight an injustice, I fight every day, it's not boiled down to these critically significant events by which you can say "oh wow! I can't believe that happened to you" it's more of the microaggressions that activate by Black consciousness."
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