Still Uncomfortable With Racism

by Fern Kupfer

My daughter's college boyfriend was a person of color. She went with Ahmad all through college, and it was this relationship that helped sensitize me to the way that young minority men are viewed in this country. It also made me think about what it would be like to be a mother to such a son.

Although character, not race, is my prevailing consideration with regard to my daughter's friends, it was not as if I were exactly color-blind. In fact, I don't really trust a white person who says, "I am not a racist," in the way that Nixon once proclaimed that he was not a crook. We see race. We make judgments all the time from the impressions that are initially based on race.

Racial stereotyping is what good and thoughtful people fight to overcome.

I was sitting in a beanbag chair in my daughter's dorm room the first time I met Ahmad. He knocked and opened the door at the same time. I must confess that the first thing I felt when I looked up and saw this tall, dark-skinned man standing in the doorway, was a flutter of fear. The thought came to me almost as an unconscious response: Someone was breaking into the room. Ahmad must have seen the look on my face, because he said politely: "Oh, you didn't expect me." Although he had called and we knew he was coming over.

Later, I took the kids out to eat, for a drive around the campus. We drove past the campus and Ahmad pointed out his usual jogging route. The area, before it led out into the country, passed along the railroad tracks through a seedy part of town. "Oh, isn't it a little scary? For you to run out here?" I asked him.

"Fern," Ahmad said, "if anyone sees me coming, then they're the ones who cross the street." I was staying overnight at a downtown hotel, and that evening Gabi and Ahmad joined me at the hotel pool for a swim. They were already in their bathing suits and I went up to change. When I came down, they were sitting in the hot tub. "I thought you wanted to swim some laps first," I said.

Gabi pointed to three middle-aged white men in the middle of the pool. Jovial laughter echoed off the tile. The table over by the side of the pool held their towels, packs of cigarettes, cans of beer. The men were loud, perhaps a little drunk, but seemed good-natured, like salesmen or conventioneers, relaxing a little after their day.

"I think we'll just stay in the hot tub and then we're going to go," Gabi told me. "Those guys keep looking over at us." Indeed, I saw their heads turn when I walked over to talk with Gabi and Ahmad.

"So what?" I said.

"Well, Ahmad feels uncomfortable," she told me.

Later, in the hotel room by myself I thought how three interactions in the short, first day that Ahmad and I had met were defined by the color of his skin: my initial response to him; his explanation of how he, a black man jogging, was a source of fear; my inability to see what he saw in the hotel pool: a setup for a potentially explosive situation.

Every mother wants to protect her children. If you're the mom of a minority male child, there are additional specialized lessons. Over the years I knew Ahmad, I also came to know some of the ways he saw the world and how his own mother had trained him to behave in it. Ways in which she could help ensure his safety: Yes sir, no sir; look him in the eye; have all your identification ready; move slowly, if at all; keep your hands out of your pockets; don't answer back, scowl, sneer; speak clearly and use full sentences. Those instructions are not for someone away at military school. They serve as a behavioral checklist for talking to a police officer if you are a minority young man stopped for a driving violation.

Or just stopped. With no violation at all. Depending on the neighborhood, the time of day, getting stopped by the police can become fairly routine. Annoying at best, when you want to get somewhere on time. Perhaps humiliating. Or frightening.

But Ahmad knew the drill. And knowing Ahmad enabled me to better understand the defensive posture that minorities assume and are sometimes criticized for. This defense can be tiresome for white people who don't live every day defined by the color of their skin. Aren't you being a little oversensitive?, I was about to ask Ahmad that first night at the hotel pool. But what's that joke? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not really after you.

Ahmad's mother had taught him well. With authorities, be polite and respectful, even when you're feeling harassed. Leave the scene if you sense there's danger.

Try to help put other people at ease with who you are.

Perhaps some people feel angry at this. Why should minority people have to go out of their way to accommodate racism? As a white person, maybe I have no business writing about this subject at all. But I am a woman who has raised daughters, and teaching them to be safe in a threatening world is one of my responsibilities. And for me, and for every other mom, the priority - before everything else we hope and pray for our children - is that we want them to survive.

Fern Kupfer is a novelist and writing professor at Iowa State University. She is a frequent contributor to Working Moms' Internet Refuge.

Family | Career | Art of Juggling | Single Moms | Health
Dad's Voice | Bookshelf | News | Recipes | Sports Mom | Discussion Lists
Business Directory | The Boards | Wisdom of Mothers | Postcards | Resources
Search | About Us | Contact Us |Advertising on the Refuge | Home

Copyright © 2000   Working Moms Refuge.