Tag Archives: race

Having Whiteness

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

My first clue should have been the way the Assistant Principal immediately recognized me. She turned around from her seat in the first row and smiled, “I just have to tell you about what Juliet said.” My oldest daughter is in pre-k at the local elementary school. We were there for the Christmas extravaganza.

For a split second I was surprised that she knew who I was. I am at work the whole time Juliet is at school. It could have been I was sitting next to my husband, who is around more often. It could have been because my daughter mentioned me recently. Yes, it could have been these things. But more likely it was because my child is the only white kid in  her pre-k class. I’m one of three white moms in the entire school.

The  assistant principal started shaking her head jovially, “That Juliet, I was in her class to observe her teacher and she said to me, ‘I am SO CUTE.’ So I told her, ‘I am so cute too!’ And then she looked at me and said, ‘AND! I am WHITE!’ So I told her, ‘Well I am cute and brown!’”

I chuckled with the woman at the audacity of my oldest. But inside I was cringing a little. My daughter had recently began talking about her whiteness with me. A few weeks earlier, in the kitchen baking cookies Juliet had noticed the flour I had spilled on the counter. “Hey mom, that flour is white.” “Yes, yes it is.” “And us too,” she continued. “Hmm?” I responded, not wanting to lead the conversation.” “Mom, we are white.”

This was not news to me. I know I am white, and I know my kids are white. We live in a predominantly black neighborhood, and for a period of time my husband and I were both teaching at schools that were almost exclusively black. For a white woman, I have spent a lot of time thinking about race. But there, in the kitchen with the spilled flour, I had no idea where we were going with this conversation, so before I handed my four year old a copy of Why Do All the Black Kids Sit Together in the Cafeteria, I thought I would ask her what she already knew.

As casually as possible I asked her, “What do you think that means?” She sighed, exasperated at the question. She pushed her sleeve up and pointed at her arm. “Like this mom” she then pointed at my arm. “You got this too.”

Indeed I did have this, have whiteness. I was still trying to figure out exactly what to tell Juliet about our white skin when it was mentioned in my kitchen. Though I don’t want her to be ashamed of her race, it is a historical fact that white people have often been the oppressor. The basic understanding I tried to give her of Martin Luther King brought that to the forefront pretty quickly. I also did not want to feed her exclusively stories about white people as the freedom giver. I spent my first three years as a teacher unlearning that story myself. I had tried to find some age appropriate books about whiteness and found only books published by the KKK. I couldn’t be the only one dealing with this, could I?

I was pondering all of this again when the lights dimmed and the curtains came up on the elementary school Christmas extravaganza. I sat awestruck and delighted as each group performed. But I was also, often, a little confused. While I recognized the words and music to most of the classic Christmas songs, I was not familiar with any of the versions. My daughter danced to Santa Claus is coming to town sung by The Jackson Five, not Bing Crosby like I am used to. When the beat dropped on the hip hop version of the Sugar Plumb Fairies, the whole audience erupted. I too was delighted, but the explosion of cheers freaked me out a little. I just didn’t know that was a thing you did at a kids’ assembly.

The unfamiliarity of the whole thing, coupled with the conversation I had before the show began, left me feeling alone and confused in an environment I had anticipated being familiar. The cues I knew from my own experiences were missing, and the ones in their place I had difficulty understanding. It was a little lonely, being the only white parents in the room.185965286_38af90fa7b_z (1)

After the show I collected Juliet from behind the stage. I told her what a good job she did, just like every other mom there. She introduced me to all the other kids by name (or just asked them when she forgot). She started each introduction with, “This is my friend….” She hugged her friends goodbye so much I had to bribe her with ice cream to get her out of there. We thanked the teachers and she walked backward out the door, waving and smiling. She loves it at her school, and she really loved that night.

Juliet knows she is white, but she also knows she belongs. I was reminded of the truth that was, even if it didn’t quite feel like it: We weren’t alone; we were welcomed.

* * * * *

AbbyAbby lives and loves in the city of Atlanta. She swears a lot more than you would think for a public school teacher and mother of two under three. She can’t help that she loves all words. She believes in champagne for celebrating everyday life, laughing until her stomach hurts and telling the truth, even when it is hard, maybe especially then. You can find her blogging at accidentaldevotional and tweeting at @accidentaldevo. Abby loves all kinds of Girl Scout cookies and literally burning lies in her backyard fire pit.

Bing Ice Cream photo by Richard Lemarchand.

Learning from Ms. Norman

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

At my first school the kids called me “Freedom Writer.”

Who you got for English? Freedom Writer.

That is pretty much all you need to know. If you know they called me Freedom Writer you know that they were black and poor and I was white and young. You know that we both swallowed the lie that a young white woman can save a whole generation.

My students don’t call me Freedom Writer anymore. It isn’t just because I’m older. I now work at an upper-middle-class school and they just call me Ms. Norman.

Teaching is one of the only professions where no one uses a first name, at least at any school I’ve ever worked at. Generally, the adults in my building even refer to each other as Mr. or Ms., for continuity’s sake, which means most of the kids don’t even know our first names.

Very occasionally, a student will see me in public and call out my name. I know before I see who is shouting that they are my student. Just hearing someone shout “Hey, Ms. Norman” puts me immediately into teacher mode, even in the middle of the grocery store.

I like Ms. Norman. I like my classroom and I like who I am in it. I have carefully curated the furniture (spray painted funky colors) and the posters (MLK, Mother Theresa, Ghandi), just as I have carefully curated the persona that is Ms. Norman. In fact, sometimes I wish Abby could be a little more like her. Ms. Norman is always in charge. Abby, not so much. Ms. Norman may not always have the answers, but she knows where to find them. Abby doesn’t even know the right questions to ask half the time. Ms. Norman takes no crap, not from anyone. Ms. Norman handles her business so well that she only has to write an office referral for discipline once a year. Abby takes a lot more crap and does way more freaking-out-about than handling of the business.

I know exactly who I am in my classroom, and my students know what to expect. I will yell a little when you turn in a paper late, but I will let you turn it in. I will just give you a dirty look for saying a swear word, but I will not tolerate you saying unkind things to the other students. My classroom speaks to this. I have a giant hand-painted sign where you would expect the clock to hang that says BE KIND. My bean-bag chairs speak to my desire for kids to be comfortable in my room. My giant piles speak to my general disorganization. Even that flaw Ms. Norman is comfortable with.

After almost ten years in the classroom, I am considering trying my hand at something else. I am not sure quite yet if this is a phase, or if I really am ready to leave. As I contemplate the possibility of not being a teacher anymore I think about how there won’t be a place to hang the posters I have so carefully picked and laminated. What in the world will I do with eight bean-bag chairs?

Without a classroom, I also wonder what will happen to Ms. Norman. Will I ever need to be able to shout down 35 kids in 15 seconds or less? Will I maintain the ability to simultaneously read a passage aloud and confiscate a cell phone? Will I remember all the dirty jokes in Romeo and Juliet or be able to recite whole pieces of Of Mice and Men without looking? These are all things Ms. Norman does very well.

I have been surprised at how lost I feel even thinking about leaving the classroom, the loss that I feel, the uncertainty. Can the best parts of Ms. Norman, of myself, live on if there is no classroom for her to reside, no plaque with her name, telling the world she belongs here?

*   *   *   *   *

Abby“Learning from Ms. Norman” was written by Abby Norman. Abby lives and loves in the city of Atlanta. She swears a lot more than you would think for a public school teacher and mother of two under three. She can’t help that she loves all words. She believes in champagne for celebrating everyday life, laughing until her stomach hurts and telling the truth, even when it is hard, maybe especially then. You can find her blogging at accidentaldevotional and tweeting at @accidentaldevo. Abby loves all kinds of Girl Scout cookies and literally burning lies in her backyard fire pit.

Walking While White

Posted on by under Out of Place

Trembling, I stood up in church on a sweaty summer morning. It was prayer time, and the requests and testimonies had been weighty thus far. There were loved ones awaiting parole hearings, babies in the NICU, and the ever-present lure of the streets growing in intensity as the weather warmed. I looked at the worn faces of grandmothers who had been praying for decades, and my own request seemed trivial. They waited, nodding encouragement and softly chorusing “Help her, Lord.”

The Lord helped, and I spoke. “I would like to ask for courage so that I could walk in my neighborhood this summer. I’m not afraid for my safety, not physically, but I just get so tired of being ignored when I say hello to someone. The angry glares are hard for me. And it’s hard, well, to stand out all the time. Please pray that God would help me. Thank you.”

I sat down quickly and wished that I could sink into the pew. Really, did I just ask a congregation of African-Americans to pray for a poor little white girl because she couldn’t handle a little unfriendliness? Did I just complain about standing out to a group of people who had experienced prejudice since their births? Did I really just say all that?

Staring hard at the songbook in front of me, I heard the murmuring begin again. “Oh yes, Lord.” “Thank you, Jesus.” “Help her.” Someone squeezed my shoulder, and my husband covered my hand with his. The murmuring grew, and a middle-aged black man in a crisp white shirt stood on the other side of the church.

“Thank you for sharing,” he said. “And I would like to say something. I also take walks, and I understand what you mean. But here is what the Lord helps me to do: I always say hello and smile. If the person says hello in return, I thank God for that person.

“But,” he looked at me, “if they are rude, I know God has given me a special job. He has given me the job to forgive them and to pray for them. And so that’s what I do. That’s why I haven’t stopped walking. They need my prayers.”

He nodded for emphasis and sat down.

There was a communal breath of silence before everyone began clapping. It was if a door had opened and we all felt the breeze.

“Yes, Lord! Thank you, Lord!” We weren’t murmuring anymore.

***

Earlier that week, my two blonde preschoolers were running down the sidewalk with total abandon, excited to spend their quarters on candy at the corner store. As we passed a block of row houses, there were voices from a porch, and I saw a group of five or six teenage girls staring as we passed. They were whispering, but not very quietly.

“I mean, isn’t this a black street?” one girl said, a little too loudly for her friends’ comfort, and they shushed her.

“Crackers!” another called, and they all broke into nervous laughter, shocked at her audacity. I was walking as fast as possible, face burning, but still I heard one more thing.

“Why are they even here?”

This is a good question. As my children were contemplating their candy purchases, I thought about my city. Pittsburgh has the dubious distinction of being one of the most segregated cities in America, and because we also have an unusually low Latino population, the city is largely divided into “black neighborhoods” and “white neighborhoods.”  The convenience store where I stood was smack dab in the middle of a black neighborhood, and the teenager on the porch was right—I did not belong there.

My neighborhood came to me by way of marriage. My husband, a Scandinavian from Los Angeles, bought his house two years before we met in the fall of 2004, and I fell in love with his commitment to his urban neighborhood even as I fell in love with his ability to cook. But though we appear to be similar, at least in terms of race, our experience of life as a minority is vastly different.

My husband has never had the experience of “blending in.” His area and his schools had always been predominately Asian and Latino. In contrast, my high school in rural Western Pennsylvania was 99% white, with a graduating class of eight hundred. I can still remember the name of the one African-American boy who was in my honors-level classes.

Now I wonder what high school was like for him.

***

Here is something I’ve learned in the past decade: When you are a part of the majority race in a particular place, you don’t really think about your race much. When you are a minority, you think about it a lot, and particularly in situations where you are vulnerable.

For me, walking is a vulnerable situation. Although most people are too preoccupied with the details of their own lives to care if I am white, black, or purple, I become an instant target to anyone with baggage or prejudice. While walking, I am on display for anyone who thinks I don’t belong in their neighborhood, and I am immediately subject to their reactions. It is at these moments that I return to the question asked by the teenager on the porch: Why are we even here?

There is no simple answer to this question, but my husband and I are grieved by the ignorance and mistrust resulting from our racial divisions. We also sense a call to serve our particular church, and can do so more credibly as members of the community. Ten years ago, these would be all the reasons I could offer, but recently another has risen to the surface.

Why are we there? We are there to walk. While white.

Whether I like it or not, my identity as an educated white woman in America yields a certain amount of power and privilege, intrinsic to my appearance, speech, and culture. In order to love my neighbors, who are not educated white women, there are times when I must use this power for their sake. For example, when a member of my community is unjustly imprisoned, my presence at a rally or my carefully composed letter may help to bring attention to the case. I am not “the answer” or (God forbid!) “the savior,” but the God who can use unjust realities to bring about justice may choose to use me.

Most of the time, however, I am not engaged in the use of power, but in its surrender. Walking while white has become something of a spiritual discipline for me, a discipline of chosen vulnerability. In the midst of a larger world where I don’t often think about my race, I walk to be reminded of it. I walk even though—and especially because—I can’t blend in.

And I also walk because on those days when I smile and say hello, someone may just smile and say hello in return.  And if they don’t—if they glare—then this is a part of my education too. It may even be the most critical piece.

****

Again, I am out walking with my two excitable children. This time we are heading to church, and they run ahead of me up the hill. A group of black teenage boys are stomping down the hill toward us, laughing loudly. My mind calculates their age, demeanor, and sagging clothes; I swallow the urge to call my children back to me.

“Jen, stop it,” I scold myself internally, “They’re just teenagers, being loud.” Still, they are so very loud, and they are approaching my daughters. Without noticing, I’ve quickened my pace.

And then suddenly, drastically, everything changes.

I recognize one of the boys. He had been a counselor at our church’s summer camp. He recognizes me too, “Miss Jen! What’s up?” He greets my older daughter and she gives him a big hug. I ask about school, and his friends stand around, looking amused at our interaction. We finish our conversation, hug, and continue on our way.

“Mama, that was my counselor!” my daughter announces, now skipping up the hill with glee. I think about how quickly how the nameless ‘black teenager’ became ‘my counselor,’ and I smile at her. “Yes sweetie,” I confess, “I know him too.”

And in my confession, I confess something larger: I walk because I have a long way to go.