1. My child asked another if she was Korean or Chinese, because, as he said “I didn’t want to assume.”
2. He asked if you could tell someone’s race from their bones. (Specifically, would people be racist if we were all skeletons?).
3. He ‘called me’ on my gender biased commentary (When I suggested something might make him ‘scream like a girl’ he wondered why that would be more like a girl).
4. When a kid at camp said “you all look funny because your heads are big” he asked me if that was racist since the child had based his opinion on how the kids looked.
5. He’s pointing out TV ads “I have to see” because they are really good, or even really bad, in how they represent people and products.

Granted, there’s a lot to learn to understand the depths and nuances of the concepts, but our children do listen, and do parrot back what we model and teach them.  He’s taking concepts and examples we’ve seen and discussed together (on the news, TV, Internet, books, movies, etc.), and using them as a lens to view and understand the world around him.

My dad used to joke and warn me about my child growing up and being smarter than me.  But that’s what I’m hoping for.

My Career as an Ambassador

Coming back from a student exchange trip to Mexico at 15, I knew I wanted to be an Ambassador to a Spanish speaking country.  According to eDiplomat, responsibilities include “(Promoting) friendly relations between the host country and the home country,” and “(Developing) commercial, economic, cultural, and scientific relations between the host country and the home country.”  As an ambassador, I can build a diverse circle of friends for our family, or discuss with my child different practices in different cultures.  News articles, movies, cartoons, and school assignments can all inspire compare and contrast conversations between different cultures and practices. 

My Career in the Movies

As an actor, I can perfect the art of ‘playing the role’ of someone else, to step into someone else’s shoes and imagine and empathize with what life might be like for a child in Iraq, a new immigrant to the US, a CEO, or a family living in another neighborhood in our own City.  Ah, and the luxury of being a director.  Don’t like how I said something the first time…can you say “TAKE 2!”  How about Take 98?  “Sweetie, remember when we talked about X the other day, I’ve thought about it a little more, and what I really think is…

My Career as a Teacher

This one was not an aspiration back in the day, but a mid-life crisis looks to the future as well.  Education consultant Billie Mayo of Educational Equity in St. Louis leads professional workshops across the country, designed to promote “Understanding racism (and other isms) as forms of institutionalized oppression; developing racial consciousness; learning to listen with a willingness to be influenced by those that are different from us.”  Hey, that sounds like what I want to do!*

What do you want to be when you grow up?

*Thanks, Ms. Mayo, for sharing these resources that help provide language for conversations about race:  You Can’t Teach What You Don’t Know, Gary Howard; Why Do All the Black Kids Sit Together in the Cafeteria and Can We Talk about Race?, Beverly Daniel Tatum; Talking Race in the Classroom, Jane Bolgatz; Every Day Anti Racism:  Getting real about Race in the Classroom, a collection of essays by Mica Pollock who also wrote Color Mute;  The Dreamkeepers, Gloria Ladson Billings.

FADE IN:

FRONT DOOR OF HOME   OUTSIDE ON PORCH         MORNING

MOM pushes DILLON outside and turns to lock door behind them.  Dillon pauses, runs down stairs to climb snow pile next to sidewalk, opposite direction from garage.

MOM

                        “Come on, Dillon, the bell’s going to ring in 7 minutes.”

DILLON

                          “Look how tall I am mommy!”

MOM

                          “That’s great, Dillon.  Can we please walk to the car?”

Mom walks down driveway toward garage.  Dillon jumps off snow mound and follows.  He makes it about 15 feet before turning around, stops and stares up at neighbor’s drainpipe.  Mom gets all the way to garage door, unlocks it, looks up to see that Dillon is no longer behind her.  She opens garage, then turns to look at Dillon

MOM

                          ”Hurry up, Dillon, we’re late.  Six minutes to bell.  Come on, let’s go, get in the car.”

DILLON

                          “Look, Mommy.”

Dillon points up, mom follows finger to see bird nest cradled in the crook of the drainpipe.

MOM

                          “That’s wonderful, Dillon.  I can’t wait to look at it with you when we have more time.”

Mom opens car door for Dillon.  Dillon skips toward car, stopping again after only about 20 feet.

DILLON

                         “Ooh, mommy, come here.  What kind of foot prints are these?  I think it’s a bunny.”

MOM exhales loudly, spontaneously combusts.

As mentioned before, Dillon and mom have taken this same 100 foot walk at least 1,700 times in the past five years.  Mom is positive she knows every inch of it.  There is nothing new for her to see and learn.  Dillon, on the other hand is receptive to, even expects to find something new.  He arrives to this walk with no assumptions or pre-conceived ideas as to what he might find.

The parallel to intercultural communications is palpable.  Think of the wonder and amazement we might find if we approached each person we met with an open mind to discovery.   Who do you think you know well, and what can you ask them to learn something new?  What ideas do you bring with you when you meet new people based on their race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation?  What happens when you open yourself up to the possibility of surprise?

Since that day I’ve been nagged by an urgent need for a better explanation-saying something is “bad” or “off-limits” to a child seems like a sure-fire way to tempt him or her to use it, if nothing else just to test you.

Luckily, I had a little ‘divine’ intervention.  My preview last week about the upcoming N-word entry was pinged by a site, theunitedvoices.com.  That site led to a link to banthenword.org, and from there a link titled N-word defined, which led to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia and an article entitled “Nigger and Caricatures.”

The article initially reminded me of Eddie Murphy’s preacher character in the movie Coming to America, with its seemingly lascivious and liberal use of the N word and others like it in supposedly very matter of fact historical descriptions. While I was uncomfortable reading the article, I realized that it did give me the context to revisit the conversation with my child.

As a second grader, he knows about Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, slavery and the civil war.  In 7 year old terms, he can understand that ‘nigger’ was a word used by mean slave owners to make slaves feel bad, and that he would never want people to think he had the heart of a slave owner, nor would he want to say something that would make someone feel so awful about themselves. 

“Do you understand?” I asked, thinking my work was done.  “Just one question,” he responded.  “Why does it still matter when there’s no slavery?”  “That’s a great question, L, my generation hasn’t done such a great job, but maybe by the time you grow up racism will have ended and it won’t matter,” I answered with great hope for the future.  Until I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, “Oh my goodness, did he ask that because of white privilege?” 

And so my work continues.  As the Jim Crow Museum states in their values, “Some people claim that race relations are worsened by discussing them.  We disagree.  Rather, we agree with the Reverend Martin Luther King’s assertion that “time is neutral.”  Social problems cannot solve themselves.  We confront racism-publicly, continually, and relentlessly.”  I would only add, “In public and in the home.”

*While Huckleberry Finn has appeared on many a ‘banned-book’ list over the years, according to the Huck Finn teacher’s guide on pbs.org, “Although state NAACP organizations have supported various protests against the book, the NAACP national headquarters’ current position paper states:  ”You don’t ban Mark Twain-you explain Mark Twain! To study an idea is not necessarily to endorse the idea. Mark Twain’s satirical novel, Huckleberry Finn, accurately portrays a time in history-the nineteenth century-and one of its evils, slavery.”