By Sandy Sanders
There has been so much talk recently both nationally and locally about racists, I decided to ask myself the hard question: “Am I a racist?”
I could answer with the standard response from white people: “No, I am not! Some of my best friends are black!” That answer we all know is a lie. 1. Why are you separating your friends into colors; 2. No one has a bunch of ‘best’ friends (unless you are on Facebook and then those are only friends … and that’s suspect). We are trying to side-step an issue we do not feel comfortable talking about.
The Sept. 14 cover story of Newsweek asked the same question, but they wanted to know “Is your baby racist?” How in the world can a baby be considered racist? I asked myself before I read the story.
Authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman based part of their writings on research done by the Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas. Researchers there keep a database of thousands of families in the Austin, Texas, area. To get a sense of Austin, they explain it is a liberal city where parents welcome multiculturalists and embrace diversity.
The parents have raised their children to be colorblind when it comes to race. They do this by not drawing attention to it. They do this by using such terms as “Everybody’s equal” or “God made all of us” or “Under the skin, we’re all the same.”
We don’t mind talking to our children about gender (“Mommies can be doctors just like daddies.”) but we don’t say doctors can be of any skin color. One we reinforce; one we don’t. I have five granddaughters and you better believe I want them to know they can do just as well, if not better, than boys.
My wife and I have been much like these parents as we have raised our children. We assumed, just as the Newsweek article says, “Children see race only when society points it out to them.” Wrong. It seems that children see racial differences the same way they see that “blue” is for boys and “pink” is for girls. “‘White’ and ‘black’ are mysteries we leave them to figure out on their own,” they wrote.
As you read this article you learn that the “more diverse the school, the more the kids self-segregate by race and ethnicity within the school, and thus the likelihood that any two kids of different races have a friendship goes down.”
We all know the history of discrimination in America but what about the future. Parents who prepare their children for bias on a regular basis “were significantly less likely to connect their successes to effort, and much more likely to blame their failures on their teachers — whom they saw as biased against them.”
However, talking to a minority child about ethnic pride is “more likely to tie their success to their effort and ability.”
We witnessed two contradictory messages recently here in Valdosta. Our president, Barack Obama, gave a televised speech to the students of this country about the importance of school with the message that he came up through adversity to the office of president. He wanted students to understand: You can, too.
The Valdosta school system with its large minority population did not show the video at its scheduled televised time but offered it in other formats.
At the next school board meeting, the board drew fire from black activists in the county. Their message — fire the superintendent of schools because the white leadership does not want our students to succeed. Valdosta City students now have two messages to try and decipher — one positive, one negative — and I am afraid the second one is being reinforced more than the first.
Back to my question, “Am I racist?” I think we all are — black and white — to some extent. I have heard some say there should be a dialogue between the races. I think we would all be better served by talking honestly to our children about race. I know I am.
