Category: Let’s Do Better

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What To Do When Someone Uses the N Word Around You

Maybe you’ve seen the shaky phone videos pop up in your Twitter and Facebook feeds, or you’ve heard folks talking about them in the office kitchen — evidence of white folks behaving badly.  Really badly.  Like truly despicably.  They are all the rage in this age of America reclaiming its greatness.

It feels to me that hate has come out of the closet.  People are feeling emboldened and justified in spewing their ugliness, tossing it around like confetti at a parade.  It makes my stomach turn.  I miss the days when folks knew enough to hide their hate and censure themselves.

Over the weekend a Facebook friend posted about this exchange she had while running into her local 7-11:

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See, now, this ain’t right.  None of this is right or okay or acceptable in any way, shape, or form.  And I think it is happening more and more.  Somehow presidential politics has opened up Pandora’s box of hate and it shows no signs of closing anytime soon.

Full disclosure, I have wondered more than once what I might do if I saw something like this happen in front of me.  Would I whip out my phone, record the hate, then use my platform to shame the person?  Would I avert my eyes and go about my business, embarrassed and ashamed about what just happened?  Would I reach out to the victim of the assault?  Would I find my nearest soap box, hop on it, and exclaim, loud and proud, that hate and bigotry are unacceptable?

What I love about Tyra’s suggestion about how to address racist behaviors in your presence, is that it requires action and participation. It’s not enough to think racism is wrong.  It’s not enough to not engage in overt acts of racism yourself.  It’s not enough to apologize and sympathize with those being targeted.  Say something.  Do something.  Own that shit.  “Racists should feel uncomfortable, not the rest of us,” says Tyra.  She’s right.

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And check your own prejudices.  Tyra points out that the racist man who called her a “n-gger b-tch” was not a “hillbilly confederate” rolling coal in his American made pick-up with a southern flag waving behind him and a wad of tobacco in his cheek.  Nope.  This was a middle-aged dad and his young daughter, well dressed, white, and driving a late model SUV in 2017 Chicago.  Not exactly the first stereotype of a racist that comes to mind.  Hate is everywhere, folks.

The advice Tyra gives is to reclaim the space around hate.  Call it out. Make it clear that hate and bigotry are not acceptable.  Tyra wants us to “Require [racists] to be better people.”  I don’t know if that is possible, but it is possible to put a light on hate and state clearly, loudly, openly, and without shame or fear, that hate and bigotry have no place in our presence.

And, as a white gal, I want to say this so other white folks get it.  Racism is our problem to solve.  White people need to take ownership of racism and how it impacts all of us in ways big and small, overt and covert.  We need to listen, see, absorb, and acknowledge.  We need to understand how we benefit and have benefited from racist systems, practices, and institutions. Real estate, public education, the criminal justice system, and our health care system are perpetrators of racism just as much as that white dude with his daughter and his SUV calling Tyra a “n-gger b-tch” was.

Tyra presents a challenge when you see someone acting overtly racist — see it, acknowledge it, own it, feel a responsibility to change it. And I would suggest that we don’t have to wait for some hating, SUV driving, mouthy, bigoted dad to spout off before we start, because racism is all around us all the time.  Own that shit.

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The Viral BBC Dad Video: Does It Matter If She Is the Mom or the Nanny? Yes, It Does

If you’ve spent any time at all on the Internet today, you’ve probably seen the man being interviewed on BBC about important matters related to the geopolitics of South and North Korea before his two kids bust in, making them all an instant meme, gif, and viral sensation.  His name is Robert E. Kelly and he is an American Ph.D. who is a political science professor at Pusan National University.  In the off case  you live under a rock, here it is:

This.  Is.  Glorious.  Seriously.  Everything about these 55 seconds are comedic perfection — the young girls banana yellow sweater, her unselfconscious dancing, the curious wheeling baby, the books tossing on the floor, the father’s grimace and tightening lips as he is powerless to stop what is unfolding on live television, his repeated apologies, his brain visibly churning, willing his children to just go away, for all that is good and holy in the world, just go away.

And then she appears, in a frenetic blur of sliding socks on hardwood flooring, the woman who takes care of business.  In a flash, this gal grabs two children by the arms, pulling them out of the room, out of the camera’s eye, their wails and resistance be damned.  Then, when you think the moment has passed, she leaps back into view, reaching with everything she’s got, to close the door, thrusting herself forward on her knees.  The same door dad should have probably thought to close before he switched on his Skype.

Who is she?  The nanny?  A babysitter?  His wife?

Yep, turns out, the gal is wife and mom, not the nanny, not the hired help, not someone who can be fired for her momentary lapse in attention that led to this Internet gold.

What’s interesting to me, in watching the commentary unfold over the course of the day today, are the numerous and quick assumptions that the woman must be the nanny.  We saw this false assumption play out all over the media — everyplace from Time magazine to friends’ comments on Facebook.  There seems to be an innate intellectual obstacle from pairing the white man and the Asian woman as co-parents.  A reflexive disconnect, if you will.

Many might think the mistake a harmless one, but not my friend Marie.  “That shit happens to me all the time,” she told me today. Marie, you see, is mother to an infant son, and, like the gal in the video, often mistaken as her son’s nanny instead of his mother.  I have read her Facebook status updates cataloging these type of incidents throughout her son’s first year of life.  They are brutal.

Marie is Native American and her son is fair skinned with bright blue eyes.  Her long dark hair, beautiful brown eyes, and light brown complexion don’t, somehow, make sense to folks when they see her with her whiter than white baby.  They assume she is the nanny and tell her so, with alarming frequency.

I thought of Marie instantly this morning after first seeing folks labeling the woman in the video as a nanny, then seeing it confirmed that she was, in fact, the mom.  Did Marie, too, see this unfold?  What were her thoughts?  “I think it’s strange that in this day and age people are still subconsciously not accepting of interracial marriage. They immediately think it must be an employee and not a wife.  I want to punch them in the face.”  Mind you, Marie followed up that last statement with four laugh-crying emojis.

“I mean, I don’t really want to punch them. But it stings. I try to brush it off. People will usually start by complimenting my baby who is obviously absolutely precious and well-behaved and basically perfect. And then they will almost feel sorry for him. Like this poor child is being left with the nanny.”  Marie has heard, “I think it’s amazing that you are working on a Sunday!,” from well intentioned folks more times than she would care to count.

So how is one to react to that?  Marie is still figuring that out, “I never want to make people feel weird, but it’s awkward to correct them, so sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.”

What is clear to me, watching Marie’s stories unfold on Facebook over the past year on top of the litany of comments about today’s video hero being a nanny instead of a mom, is that whether people realize it or not, we, as a culture, are not as evolved as we might think we are.  And, for those personally involved, for those moms and dads who folks assume are paid employees, it can hurt.

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Have You Ever Met a Refugee?

This morning I had the opportunity to drive three little girls to their dance lessons.  They happened to be Syrian refugees who live in my neighborhood. Two of the girls are sisters and while we waited for the third girl to get to the car, they told me their stories, totally unsolicited, and with joy and laughter.

The sisters are in Kindergarten and 4th grade. We giggled that all of our names start with the letters “Sh.”  The 4th grader loves school, but her sister finds it boring and wants to switch to the school her friends go to because it is more fun.  They looked a lot like twins, despite having a few years between them.

The younger sister told me they have lived in Chicago for two years and before that, they lived in five other countries after leaving Syria. Their father died when the girls were one and five. They miss him. The older girl, who was four when her dad died does “not really remember him.” They knew that he had eyes that turned green in the sun. They wished their brown eyes did the same.

A few minutes later, the other girl came down with her mom who didn’t speak a lot of English, but gave Chicago a thumbs up. This little girl recently relapsed with cancer.  I wanted to explain to her mother, the woman sitting next to me with the kind face and gentle eyes wearing the hijab, that I understood, that I, too, once mothered a daughter with cancer, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.  Her English was much better than my Arabic, but it still wasn’t enough for us to share such specific intimacies.

I dropped them off at the dance studio where my own daughter danced so many years ago.  Officially, the main studio has been named after our girl, and there is a plaque and photo of Donna above the door as you walk through.  After the girls went in, I pointed to the photo and said, “My daughter,” to the mom I had just met.  She smiled and said, “Oh.”

I left and returned as the class was ending.  The teacher invited me in saying the dancers needed to get used to having an audience. Would I mind watching?  I was honored.

The music started and within moments I felt tears welling up.  There were a dozen dancers, probably eight to ten years old.  Some had blond hair, some had black hair, all were beautiful.  The choreography was gorgeous and involved the dancers huddled together at times, protective and nurturing.  Other times they danced in formation, powerful and graceful.

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These girls, in their pink and purple lycra, were bonded.  It didn’t matter that some have fled war across oceans, or others were born not three miles from where they still lived.  It didn’t matter that some worship in a church and others in a mosque.  None of that mattered to any of them.

As we were leaving, the girls laughing again and holding hands, happy to get outside where they could run along the sidewalk, I noticed another photo of my daughter in the lobby of the studio.  In this one, Donna is bald and concentrating on her dancing, focused.  I pointed again, to my fellow mother and said, “My daughter.”  Again, she smiled.  Did she make the connection?

In the car riding home, the three girls laughing and going in and out of English and Arabic, I asked the mom if she had other children. Two other daughters, she said, one ten and one nine months.  It struck me in that moment that she was the mother of an American citizen. She asked me the same, “You?  How many children?”

Answering this question is complicated on the best of days, but today, with the language barrier and the bond of cancer between us, it was especially hard.  “I have two boys,” I said, “Eight and three years old.”  “And your daughter?,” she asked.  “She died,” I offered, “She is gone.”  I think she got it.  I don’t know.  Does it even matter?

A lot of people want you to believe that we should fear Syrian refugees, that they are somehow a danger to our way of life here in America.  I am not afraid.  I refuse to fear three little girls giggling in my back seat.  I refuse to fear a child that carries a purple backpack with colorful cats on it.  I refuse to fear a nine year old in the midst of a cancer relapse.  I refuse to fear a mother who left her home in search of something better for her children, one of whom is an American citizen.  I refuse to fear another mother who lost her husband in civil war and fled with a young child and infant, hoping for safety and peace.

Fear is a powerful tool.  It can easily be leveraged and manipulated, exploited for political gain.  It is easy to fear that which you don’t know or understand. Today I met four Syrian refugees.  There was nothing fearful about them.  They were lovely and sweet and very much like our own daughters.