This is where I come from..."
–Gary Clark Jr., This Land
She said she knew what the N-word was. We recoiled a bit, not quite visibility, but we definitely sat up straight inside ourselves. I don't remember there being any precursor context, or it ever coming up before, just the fact that one day our oldest Beatrice said she heard it and knew what it was.
As the girls have gotten older, obviously the realities of the world, and the power of words, both good and bad, have made their way into their consciousness. And, as each year of their lives progress, my wife Amy and I talk with them about what they're seen and heard around them.
Except that, in this case, it wasn't the same N-word we were thinking of.
"Where did you hear it?" we asked.
"Some kids at school said it," Bea said.
We hesitated, and then asked. "What did they say?"
"The N-word."
"What is that?"
She hesitated. "N-ucker."
Nucker? What? Oh wait, right. Rhymes with...
"Beatrice, thank you for telling us. But that's not what the N-word is. You're thinking of the F-word, which is also a really bad and demeaning word."
That's when, for the first time, we started talking about the current state of racism, what the real N-word is and means, and what it was and why it was. We have be teaching them about slavery and how black and brown people alike have been treated poorly throughout American history since they were little. Both girls listened and ask legitimate questions like "why would people do that" over and over, questions that aren't hard for us to discuss, but hard for us to answer being a white family who have not experienced systemic discrimination like non-whites have in this country and elsewhere.
We have read I am Abraham Lincoln, I am Harriet Tubman and I am Rosa Parks, all children's books tackling the subjects of slavery, racism and civil rights. We also read a book about Martin Luther King Jr.'s life. We also have a children's book about the American Presidents through President Obama, and his story is one of their favorites.
Then the girls got interested in a Netflix show called Family Reunions this year, a family comedy about a black family living in Atlanta. There was one show in particular that dealt with systemic racism and again prompted a dialogue with our girls.
Then it was recommended I read So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. It opened my eyes more than ever before about what it's like being black in a white supremacist patriarchal society. So many big and little biases that we perpetuate over and over again that leave their marks like repetitive cuts that never heal. I highly recommend you all read it.
Then we went to Washington DC and Amy took them to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture to continue their education. After that, we went to Mount Vernon and learned more about the beginning of this country and the slaves that worked for George Washington and his family. What affected me the most emotionally was the unmarked graveyard where the dead slaves were buried. No mark of humanity. Nothing. Just like visiting the Holocaust Museum with our girls, it was all very moving and made us think of who we've been and who we still are.
Hundreds of years of slavery, oppression and death. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 whites. More than 73 percent of lynchings in the post-Civil War period occurred in the Southern states.
And our children ask why. Why would people do this to each other? Why would they hate so much? Why would people this they are any different or better than any other person. Not to mention the history of Latinos in this country, Asian people, Middle Eastern people, Indian people, and of course the indigenous people of North America.
I can appreciate so much better now when a friend of mine, a black father of two who shares posts activities with his kids, just like I do. Like his latest of them bringing home a Christmas tree, and saying and none of us got arrested today, that it was a good day. He's not joking either. That's not something I ever say.
And then just this morning I shared with Beatrice that our city had its first African American mayor. She thought that was great, especially in a city where less than 2% of the population is black, which she doesn't realize, and I'd bet most community members don't realize. And he had been one of the two first black city councilmembers elected to city council.
That's where the story goes south. Because the other black city councilmember was one of the two councilmembers (the other is white) this year in my city (Santa Cruz) who had substantiated claims of disrespectful workplace conduct, harassment and bullying by five female city staffers including the outgoing city mayor. Claims that the black councilmember said were false and their fault, because they were white and he was black, and it was their racist beliefs that drove their claims. This was something I was smack dab in the middle of being the chair of the City Commission for the Prevention Against Women (CPVAW) earlier this year and our pushing for a public reprimand of the two men, which never happened.
Now, when I had a conversation about this with someone recently I know well, another woman, a white woman, a women who herself has experience traumatic workplace bullying and sexual harassment, her immediate reaction was: "There it is, someone playing the race card again. I'm so sick of that."
I was quite conflicted about this, because my point was in context to what I knew had transpired above -- these men, one black and one white, had multiple complaints against by five women. To me, it had nothing to do with black or white. It had to do with patriarchy and abuse of power in the workplace.
"Well," I said to her, "systemic racism is still pretty prevalent today. This was a specific context of him turning his behavior back around on the women as a defense mechanism."
"Well, maybe," she said.
No epiphanies from this conversation other than the latent prejudices we all carry with us. Social change is hard, and as equality incrementally increases for those who had it suppressed for so long, those in power for so long begin to feel oppressed, and claim reverse discrimination, which is absurd.
Even I got caught up in it, though, because although I stand by everything we did, the backlash of the councilmember supporters and the polarization and politicization of it all overwhelmed me, and I felt compelled to resign from the commission. And then after all that, the same black councilmember came after me online with untrue derogatory comments.
So what does all this mean? Someday I'll want to tell my girls the story and reconcile my past for their future as women, and what could happen in the workplace by the hands of other men, regardless of race or ethnicity. But there is still the complexity of systemic sexism and racism that intertwines in this ongoing narrative known as America, as well as the rest of the world. The more we understand our own shortcomings and biases, the more we can be a positive agents of change.
Like the hard C (the C-word) of sexism and violence against women I wrote about over two years ago, the N-word is the sharp N, and it's cut is as deep and mortal as it's been throughout our history. And history wields a multi-edged sword, where only the larger awareness of race, class and gender intersectionality can help us better understand and acknowledge our differences, and maybe, just maybe, stop the bleeding.
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