OK, was the woman at the store yesterday being rude because of race or not?
This question hasn't come up often for me, as my children rock, and we are just leaving the cute baby age where no one says ANYTHING, except, isn't the baby beautiful, AND I couldn't be whiter if I tried. So, why would I think of race first? In fact, on a plane to Oklahoma with baby man, 5 plus years ago, some sweet passenger said, he looks just like you. I screamed in my head, JUST LIKE ME IF I WERE GUATEMALAN, right!
But, almost 6 is going through a phase of contrariness and surprise hyperactivity (we call it spazzy) perhaps as an attempt to get attention after the arrival of his dear baby sister, maybe due to too much apple juice. So, here we were at the check out counter of the store he didnt want to go to and he was helping put groceries on the conveyor belt and he started tossing the food up there, a bit wildly and the check out clerk came down on him like a load of bricks. Was it because he was brown? HOW DO YOU KNOW?
Of course, I start mentally checking us out. How do we appear? We were all in our dog clothes from walking the dog and I looked at him and he had some extra smile from some miscellaneous food or beverage and is badly in need of a haircut, even perhaps a meeting with a hair-brush, and there I am in my Target Tie Dye, the baby carrier, with Miss Thing, who is BLACK and my dog clothes, so not our white table cloth best, but....if he were white, he would just have that summertime unkempt look, so Martha's Vinyard, CA style...we were just walking the dog, right?
I have read as a family of color you need to watch what you wear more. I do believe it is true.
She back pedaled, and as he was being spazzy, I didn't intervene. (Was that a MISTAKE?) We talked about it in the car and I said it had made me really mad that she told him to behave, as he was my child, but I also said he needed to think about behaving in public some. (After the conveyor belt incident, he went to tease the baby, probably in an attempt to be cure, and bit her foot...the baby cried. PERFECT timing, my kind, generous, excellent son.) I, at the time, decided that the natural consequence of the first situation was that he have to listen to her opinions on the matter, but I worry that I may need to protect him more. The natural consequence of the small nibble was to decamp and get OUT of the store.
Until I did the double take about what we looked like, I didnt even THINK of RACE. Why? Because I am white, why would race be important? But, there was something in the quickness of her snap. OK, maybe she is a snappy person at the end of her shift, but, he is just 5....and gorgeous (not that I am biased or anything), and my kid. So what if he is a bit sloppy after a dog walk, right?
Why is it always at the grocery store? Wall-Mart, Safeway, filling in your brand here....
The bummer is that there is no way to tell, was it because of race or not, but to be brown in this world (with a black sister) and have people treat you decently is not always easy. We are beginning to learn that together, but ultimately, it will be his job.
I don't want him unprepared. I don't know if I can prepare him.
3 comments:
Catherine, I read last year of a shooting in NYC, maybe Long Island, a day laborer, originally from Guatemala, with a wife and three children, who was shot because he was mistaken for a migrant worker in a Long Island Village that is fed up with migrant workers (for whatever reason). I thought about my son. I was horrified. Could this happen to him or something less extreme? A boy raised by white parents, an American citizen, who will, no doubt, go to college, etc. Our daughter is not dark; she is light. The first comment out of a coworkers mouth was, upon seeing her photo, "is she mixed?" Does it matter? Is this how my crazy mixed up family will appear?
crazy, aint it? It's good to try and be the positive person in the audience, but boy, I am often figuring out what happened after it happens. I need to know how to protect as much as I can, and how to help them to stand up for themselves.
Hello, I'm very much with you on a lot of things you wrote about- but I've had a minute to really think this over here. If your son was being a bit wild and tossing food onto the conveyor belt, he was only damaging your/his items- not hers. I suppose, in a far stretch, it could have been that she was "protecting" the machinery because she loves the company she works for so much that she allows herself to be cranky and crabby to a little boy whose mom is the customer. That would, in fact, be rather ironic reasoning. Honestly, it sounds to me like she was the one with the problem all the way around and she's probably a grouch who only wishes she had a life as exciting! The good news is that your son's joy for life wasn't diminished by her criticism- therefore, he won! :) Even if it was racially motivated, which it very well could have been, his smile probably stung more than anything wise words you could have responded with. I love it!
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