White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (47 page)

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Authors: Tim Wise

Tags: #History, #Politics, #Sociology, #Memoir, #Race

BOOK: White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son
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DON’T MISUNDERSTAND THOUGH:
my kids are no less susceptible to internalized biases than anyone else’s children. I’d love to tell you that wasn’t the case—that growing up in the Wise/Cason home was the perfect inoculation for such a thing—but if I told you that, I’d be lying.
It was early 2008, on a rainy Sunday afternoon at the beginning of the summer, when I fully came to appreciate just how deep the roots of racism can be planted in children, even when you think you’ve done everything you can to protect them from the poison.
We were sitting at home, unable to do anything outdoors because of the weather, the kids—at that point six and four—growing bored and restless, and looking for anything to occupy their time. Not up for playing any games, they requested to watch a movie on cable, to which we quickly agreed. If it would keep them from whining about how bored they were, and could bring us up to dinner time, we were all for it.
I queued up the On Demand cable satellite movie thing, looking for any films that might be good for kids and families, and preferably something they hadn’t seen already. Within a few seconds the trailer for
Evan Almighty
popped up. The comedy, which stars Steve Carell as a newly-elected Congressman and Morgan Freeman as God—the latter of whom has apparently chosen the former to build an ark and recreate the Biblical story of Noah—is a cute flick, which, as it turns out, my kids and wife had already seen when it was still playing at the local theatre. As such, they didn’t really want to see it again; but because they recognized the dialogue and the actors in the trailer, it got their attention.
Rachel looked up, saw Morgan Freeman in the role of God, in the flowing white robes, and said exactly what any four-year-old would say.
“Daddy, is that God?”
Realizing that she knew nothing of the Screen Actor’s Guild or casting directors at that age, I laughed, thinking her innocent query to be among the cutest things she had said in a while.
“No sweetie, that’s not God,” I explained. “That’s an actor named Morgan Freeman. He just plays God. Often. But he’s just an actor playing a part.”
I really assumed that would be the end of the discussion, but sadly, I was mistaken. By now, Ashton was curious as to what we were talking about, and had looked up from the book she was reading. She too saw Morgan Freeman in the role of God. It took her no time at all to chime in, dismissively to her sister.
“Rachel, that
can’t
be God,” Ashton said defiantly, as if to suggest that claiming otherwise would have been the most preposterous thing ever spoken into the universe.
In that moment I hoped that her doubt as to Morgan Freeman’s divinity was going to turn on a technical point—for instance, that God would be far too busy to bother making a feature film, or that if he did so bother he’d surely make one capable of getting better than a 23 percent approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website—but somehow I knew it wouldn’t be that simple, or innocent. I felt certain I knew why she had been so sure that Freeman couldn’t be God, and though I hardly wanted to have my suspicions confirmed, I knew I’d have to ask.
“Why not Ashton? Why can’t that be God?” I inquired, hesitantly.
In the split second before she answered I had this fantasy, in which she replied with an answer quite different from the one I anticipated. I hoped that perhaps she would say that Freeman couldn’t be God because God was a woman. Better still, I wished for some existentialist answer like, “Oh Father, what
is
God, anyway?” A proclamation of transcendentalist skepticism would have been a welcome relief in that moment. But I got nothing of this kind; rather, she responded as I knew she would, without any sense of irony or misgiving.
“That can’t be God because God isn’t black. God is white.”
Now it probably won’t surprise anyone reading this book to learn that in our home, there are no racialized images of a deity; there are no pictures that would have given my child the impression at such an age that God had any racial identity, let alone that the said identity matched her own. We hadn’t allowed those pernicious Bible Story picture books for kids, in which Adam and Eve are drawn in such a way as to give the reader the impression that they had resided in the Garden of Sweden. But still, at some point Ashton had seen those images—perhaps in the church she attends with her mom and sister; perhaps in bookstores or libraries; or perhaps on the Christmas cards sent to our home every year with pictures of Jesus on the front that would give one the impression he had been born in a manger somewhere in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. No matter our own efforts, she had internalized the notion that divinity was white like her, not black like Morgan Freeman, or for that matter, like several of her friends and classmates, or her kindergarten teacher that very year.
At first, I asked why she had said that, and of course she offered the stand-by six-year-old answer, given for pretty much every question, no matter the subject: “I dunno.”
I thought a while about how to process the event, and a little later decided to revisit the subject.
“So Ashton, let me ask you about that whole color of God thing,” I said.
“What about it?” she replied.
“Well, let’s think about it for a second. So, tell me something: What did God do, so far as the story goes?” I inquired.
“Um, God created everything I guess,” she said.
“Okay,” I replied. “So, God created people?”
“Yeah,” came the answer.
“Okay,” I continued. “So where were the first people?” I asked this knowing that she knew the answer. The previous year, there had actually been a bulletin board in her pre-school class that showed, visually, how humans had arisen in Africa and branched out from there, so I figured she would remember what she’d learned.
“Um, Africa, right?” she replied, concentrating hard, wanting to get the right answers.
“Right, okay,” I said. “So, God created people and the first people were in Africa. Now, what color are people in Africa?”
“Black,” she shot back, not having to think long about that one.
“Okay,” I replied. “So God created people, the first people were in Africa, and Africans are black. Now, in whose image were people created?”
This one stumped her a bit. After all, she was no Biblical scholar. Although she and her sister are being raised Episcopalian and attend church with their mom, she hadn’t really committed to memory little scriptural details such as this.
“Um, I don’t know,” she said. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” I replied. “According to the story, God created people in the image of someone or something. In whose image do you think that might have been?”
“Uh, in the image of God, I guess?” she answered.
“Exactly,” I replied. “So, let’s think about it. God created people, the first people are in Africa, Africans are black, and they were made in the image of God. So, final question: What color is God?”
Her eyes got wide as the implications began to sink in.
“I guess God could be black?” she exclaimed.
End of lesson.
Now of course, one could say that the lesson was meaningless, and perhaps it was. Obviously these kinds of matters will have to be revisited many times over the years, and frankly, I no more want Ashton to believe in a racialized
black
God than a racialized white one. But simply to get her to challenge her own assumptions of white divinity was sufficient for that particular moment. We’ll deal with the rest later. Seeing as how I’m a militant agnostic myself (I know, a contradiction in terms, but still), the odds are pretty good that she’ll end up somewhat skeptical of any supernatural being. Indeed, she already seems to be headed in that direction (unlike Rachel, who comes across as a prime candidate for the Episcopal priesthood). But what the incident and conversation suggested to me was that kids are capable of thinking things through if we believe in them enough to engage the difficult issues, and if we do so in a way that leads them to the conclusions we hope they’ll reach, rather than just hit them over the head with those conclusions.
Interestingly, the lesson seemed to have stuck. Several months later, during which time we had never revisited the matter, Ashton came up to me one morning before school and with a puzzled look on her face asked if I really believed God could be black.
“I don’t know, what do you think?” I replied.
“I don’t know, I guess so,” came the answer.
“Very good then,” I said. “Have some cereal.”
Little victories are nice.
PERHAPS THE MOST
important thing I’ve learned about kids when it comes to racism is how important it is for them to learn of role models from whom they can take direction. In our home, obviously, it’s a bit easier than for most. Ashton and Rachel know what their dad does, and what both their parents’ beliefs are when it comes to these matters. And because I’m very careful not to berate them about these subjects, they don’t feel the need to backlash against my views just to get back at dad when they’re angry at me. It’s a lesson I learned in my own home growing up. My mom and dad never tried to indoctrinate me into any particular way of thinking. They just made clear what their values were, exhibited a consistency between what they said and what they did, and encouraged me to always think critically—this last trait being one that almost by definition tends to mitigate against the adoption of right-wing or consciously racist viewpoints.
I’ve met plenty of parents who worry, however, about how to teach these lessons without scaring their children about oppression (especially children of color), or instilling guilt in their white children once the latter become aware of the history of racial subordination and white privilege. The concerns are understandable. Learning about injustice can be frightening, especially if the injustice has been directed at people like yourself. And learning about unearned advantage can cause kids to feel guilty if the subject is not handled carefully.
A year or so ago, I was having a conversation with a teacher whom I’d met at a workshop session I was facilitating. She taught kindergarten, and around Martin Luther King Jr. day had discussed with her class who Dr. King was, what he had done, and ultimately what had happened to him in the end. She didn’t want to pull punches or soft-pedal the matter, she said, and so she had been brutally honest and straightforward about the subject.
A few days later, she noted, she got calls from both white
and
black parents, complaining about the lesson. The white parents expressed concern that she had made their children feel bad. One of the white students had apparently said something at dinner about white people being mean because a white person had killed Dr. King. The black parents expressed concern that she had scared their child to death and made him wonder if his white classmates were going to hurt him because he was black, or if some other white person would at some point in his life. Both the white and black parents asked the teacher to refrain from discussing these matters any further in the class, and both said something about wanting their kids to retain their innocence around the matter of race for as long as possible.
“What should I have done differently?” was the question she put to me.
On the one hand, I told her, she had done the right thing by broaching the subject with the students. Whatever “innocence” parents may believe their children possess around these kinds of issues often doesn’t exist—as they are already beginning to think about matters of race and color whether they mention it to us or not—or is going to be stolen soon enough. The only question is whether we can burst that bubble in a deliberately controlled way, not whether it’s going to be popped at all. And frankly, I’d rather teachers speak honestly about what Dr. King and the movement were about, rather than water it down the way so many do nowadays. Too often I’ve met kids who seem to think King’s fundamental message were he alive today would be “don’t hit back if someone hits you,” or “don’t join a gang.” While there is little doubt that the good Reverend would agree with both of those points, to suggest that the fulfillment of such banal platitudes were the purpose of his life’s work cheapens that work and the larger movement of which he was a part.

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