The Grace of Silence (22 page)

If you were sitting with us in the Red Room that night, you would have heard a collective gasp. Sophia, the college freshman, blurted out, “They have such low expectations for those kids, and they haven’t even bothered to find out what they can do.” Sophia’s outburst surprised me. She’s usually quiet, the only one among us with exquisite movie-watching etiquette. “My guidance counselor told me I should go to community college,” she went on. “Didn’t even try to get me to apply to four-year schools. She told me a four-year college would be too much pressure. I mean, can you believe that?”

“Believe? Oh, yeah,” James shot back. “Teachers told me to forget about college and forget about trying to be a professional.” James, it should be noted, is a Stanford graduate and a former pro football player. “No question. I know something about low expectations!” James was getting worked up. He jumped to his feet, waving a finger as he headed toward the fridge for some ice cream. “They said I was not Stanford material, and when I asked them why, they couldn’t give me an answer. Not any kind of answer that made sense. It basically came down to: ‘Kids like you can’t really deal with that kind of pressure. Do yourself a favor and set your bar a bit lower.’ ”

Agog, I shook my head in disbelief, an appalled grin on my face. I, too, had been counseled to apply only to junior colleges, even though I’d set my sights on some prestigious institutions. I told the group my story, and Sophia, James, and I shared a shock of recognition. Each of us had assumed that if you were black, this kind of bias was just the deal. There was no need to dwell on it. James, I, and Sophia graduated from high school in 1969, 1979, and 2008, respectively, in different American cities. Three white guidance counselors, spanning nearly forty years after the beginning of integration and the rise of the civil rights movement, had willy-nilly tried—unsuccessfully, it must be said—to stymie the ambition of three black high school students. For that their motives should be questioned, if not
denounced. But here we were swapping race war stories with righteous indignation. How many other black youths had been told to check their aspirations? Had they been damaged by the advice? Did they rise or fall as a result?

Both Dad and Mom would have scoffed at our conversation that Saturday night: Dad, who never spoke to his family about the humiliation of his shooting and the terrifying night he’d spent in a Birmingham jail upon returning as a World War II veteran; Mom, who’d kept her mother’s turn as an itinerant Aunt Jemima a secret from her children, perhaps out of shame. Why? So as not to allow us to be hindered by acrimony and rancor in our struggle to rise above “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and achieve self-fulfillment no matter what. How would I have been different without their complex grace of silence? And what’s been more corrosive to the dialogue on race in America over the last half century or so, things said or unsaid? What racial legacy should Broderick and I bequeath to our children?

All the talk of a postracial America betrays an all too glib eagerness to put in remission a four-hundred-year-old cancerous social disease. We can’t let it rest until we attend to its symptoms in ourselves and others. Jimmy Carter talking about white voter discomfiture with Barack Obama’s race; Eric Holder suggesting that Americans are more often than not cowards in their refusal to address the subject candidly; Harry Reid surmising that Obama’s advantages are his skin tone and lack of a “Negro” dialect: all have been subject to immediate and loud public censure by people more interested in excoriating them for daring to bring up the subject of race than willing to examine whether their statements bore hard truths.

So often the mere mention of the word
race
can make some people apoplectic or pious or frozen by anxiety, only to beat a hasty retreat to their comfort zone: grim taciturnity. Our collective discomfort with the issue is why discussions about race
can so easily become so explosive. But our sensitivity renders us vulnerable to those who would exploit race for their own agenda, if not their ratings. Public discussions of race are very often a blood sport. Private conversations—with no audience, fewer sanctions, and, often, fewer filters—can be altogether another matter. They are no less painful—the hurt can be profound—but the results are almost always far more productive.

In the course of writing this book I’ve had conversations that made me weep and that made me want to holler from frustration. Many of the people I spoke with said disturbing things but had the courage to reassess themselves through the prism of their conflicting emotions. I hope you will appreciate their honesty, learn something from the bravery of their candor. When Julia Beaton spoke of her disdain for white people, she came to realize that that was not exactly what she meant, even as she heard herself speak. When Aubrey Justice said he didn’t think he’d benefited from white privilege, he was presented with the opportunity to reexamine his life vis-à-vis that of others.

Our continuing national conversation on race will no doubt proceed by fits and starts and occasional spats and squabbles. But all of us should be willing to remain at the table even when things get uncomfortable. We need to be fearless while unburdening ourselves, even as we respect the same effort in others. There is often grace in silence. But there is always power in understanding.

On a trip to New York City I took my kids to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, the centerpiece of which is a massive aircraft carrier now permanently docked in the Hudson River. We were out sightseeing for a couple of hours before taking the train back to D.C. I’d originally planned just to drive past the ship and point it out to them. But something told me we should
make a proper visit. A battleship is much like a floating town, and I thought the kids would love to investigate its secret world. The
Intrepid
is a magnet for navy veterans and their families. That day I must have seen a dozen men wearing headgear, jackets, or sweatshirts announcing their service to their country. Military men often carry themselves a certain way; these senior citizens were erect and slightly stiff, with puffed-out chests. I’ve struggled to find the right words to describe the emotions that washed over me. My father was so present at that moment. Of course, he’d never served on the
Intrepid
, but he’d spent time aboard a navy ship.

At the entrance to the museum, we were greeted by a volunteer worker, an old gentleman wearing a yellow fleece
Intrepid
jacket, who ushered us toward an eight-minute film about the carrier. It showed us the
Intrepid
’s history, from World War II to Vietnam and on to 9/11—when the ship served as living quarters for the FBI. But, I soon discovered, the film presented only four shots of African Americans, and if you blinked, you might have missed them altogether. As we stepped out of the theater we again saw the man in the yellow fleece jacket. He suggested that we might want to head upstairs to see the main attractions: the hangar and flight decks.

“Where can we find the kitchen?” I asked.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

“Where would we find the place where all the food for the sailors was prepared?”

“Down that way, past those two big signs, and down two flights,” he said. “But I must tell you, this is a big ship and if you had to skip anything, I would say you could skip the mess area.”

Undaunted, I pressed on: “I’d like to find the mess area. My father was in the navy, and that’s where he spent most of his time. I want my children to see it.” An awkward silence ensued. The man slowly began to turn red, a look of embarrassment
washing over his face. He stammered a bit before he found his words. “Oh yes, of course.” Then he sputtered, “Well, as I said, it’s past those two signs and down the hall.” I could feel him staring after us as we headed toward the stairs.

To be sure, we visited the hangar deck and the ready room, where pilots reviewed footage of their fighter plane runs. We also saw the cramped quarters of the specialists who tracked the enemy on radar and sat slumped over telegraph machines, transmitting secret codes to Washington. And, of course, we made our way to the big attraction, the flight deck, now outfitted with retired flying machines. We posed for pictures and ogled the sleek lines and sheer awesomeness of the airplanes. Eagles at rest. Still majestic. Still powerful. Quite beautiful. But the kids grew bored and were made antsy by winds whipping across the deck.

You see, my two young children were already exhausted from the thrill, the sheer joy of gawking at the
Intrepid
’s kitchen belowdecks, with its huge soup cauldrons and “ginormous” ovens. They had peeked into the tiny quarters where messmen used to sleep on triple-decker bunks that were suspended on chains hanging from the ceiling. These, for them, had been the highlights of the visit. It was all they talked about on the way to the train station.

Somewhere, Belvin Norris Jr. was smiling.

I WAS UNABLE TO SPEAK
at my father’s funeral. I was wrung out. Stunned and crazy with grief, I sat in the front pew clutching the Father’s Day card I would have given him in the hospital if he’d held on one more day, instead of slipping away as Saturday yielded to the Sabbath. Everyone expected me—the journalist, the former cheerleader, the extrovert, the biological daughter—to get up and say something. A eulogy. A tribute or remembrance. I couldn’t do it. I was twenty-six years old but made completely infantile by sorrow. Instead Uncle Joe rose and walked toward the little podium surrounded by a sunburst of gladiolus (a ridiculous name for showy flowers that are most often present in moments of grief).

“Good night, sweet prince.” Joe Norris stood with one hand on his brother’s casket. He quoted Shakespeare and Flaubert and made us chuckle with words written by Langston Hughes. He covered for me beautifully. All these years later, perhaps I have finally found the words to lift my father up as he deserved. I’ve come to realize that I may have been pinned to the pew because, deep down, I didn’t really understand who he was.

How well do you know the people who raised you? Look around your dining room table. Look around at your loved ones, especially the elders. The grandparents and the aunts and uncles who used to give you shiny new quarters and unvarnished advice. How much do you really know about their lives? Perhaps you’ve heard that they served in a war, or lived for a time in a log cabin, or arrived in this country speaking little or
no English. Maybe they survived the Holocaust or the Dust Bowl. How were they shaped by the Depression or the Cold War, or the stutter-step march toward integration in their own community? What were they like before they married or took on mortgages and assumed all the worries that attend the feeding, clothing, and education of their children? If you don’t already know the answers, the people who raised you will most likely remain a mystery, unless you take the bold step and say: Tell me more about yourself.

Few of us actually believe that David slew the giant Goliath with nothing but a slingshot, or that a little Dutch boy prevented a massive flood by sticking his finger in a dike. These stories are allegories. So are many accounts we read in history books. History is made in lots of little ways every single day. We all know about the four young men who started a lunch-counter revolt by refusing to budge at a Greensboro Woolworth’s. They weren’t the only ones who stood up against restaurant segregation. They simply captured the attention of the
New York Times
and the television networks, and so their story was enshrined and is singularly presented in history books. But have you ever heard of Claudette Colvin? Susie McDonald? Aurelia Browder? How about Mary Louise Smith? Though I’m sure you’ve heard of Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks was, of course, the woman who amplified the news of the civil rights movement by quietly saying no when asked to get up and move out of the whites-only section of a city bus. But long before Rosa Parks and her legendary act of defiance, other black women also shook their heads and said no, standing up against segregated public transportation. Claudette Colvin. Susie McDonald. Aurelia Browder. Mary Louise Smith.

Maybe their families know the role they played. Maybe not. And if they did, maybe they stopped talking about it, so painful was it to recall a relative being unjustly and forcibly led off a bus
in handcuffs. Maybe they didn’t want to poison the minds of the family’s youth by dwelling on segregation and racial hatred. Maybe, while waxing nostalgic, they mistook the fidgetiness of a young one as impatience with or repudiation of their yesteryear experiences. Perhaps these old men and women now sit at lace-covered tables every holiday, surrounded by grandchildren, nieces, and nephews who have no idea that the dainty little old woman mashing up her peas put a down payment on their futures five decades before by confronting segregation codes.

Many steps lead to the crossing of a threshold, and many are the people, often anonymous, who play minor roles in history’s grand tales. I am betting that some of them might be sitting at your family table. They might take their tales to their graves if you don’t invite them to share their stories and wisdom. But “Tell me more about yourself” will likely be just a start. You’ll never learn much at just one sitting. Be persistent: string together some simple questions, then sit back, shut up, and listen.

You’ll find out amazing things about your family, and thereby learn essential things about yourself. Be patient. Be gentle. Record the stories if you can. Invite the children to participate; get them to ask questions, because their natural curiosity has not yet been tinged by judgment. And remember, food always helps. A piece of pie. A slab of pound cake. A nice square of noodle kugel. Something delicious to enliven the senses and stir the memory. The atmosphere should say, “I am here with you; I’m listening.” There is grace in silence, and power to be had from listening to that which, more often than not, was left unsaid.

I could not have written this book without the support of my family. My husband, Broderick Johnson, reminds me every day that Love is the best part of any story. Always & Forever are more than just words. You are my heart. For Aja, Norris, and Broddy, I hope this book helps you understand Grace in all its many forms. At our dinner table you learn that Grace is that thing that must be said before a meal. In school, you learn that dictionaries define Grace as a disposition to kindness and compassion. In life, I hope you learn that Grace is also measured by how you climb up the rough side of a mountain and what you do with your life once you get there.