A Rude Reawakening.

Emily Bernard says in her essay "Teaching The N-Word" that, as a black woman living in America, even as a black woman married to a white man, she still finds herself fearing that the word "nigger" is hiding at the back of white people's throats. She writes,

"Here is a story for your [African-American Lit] students," John tells me. We are in the car, on our way to Cambridge for the weekend. "The only time I ever heard 'nigger' in my home growing up was when my father's cousin was over for a visit. It was 1988, I remember. Jesse Jackson was running for president... 'I'm going to vote for the nigger,' my father's cousin said. 'He's the only one who cares about the workingman.'"

John laughs. He often laughs when he hears something extraordinary, bad or good.

"That's fascinating," I say.

The next time class meets, I tell my students this story.

"So what do we care about in this sentence?" I say. "The fact that John's father's cousin used a racial epithet, or the fact that his voting for Jackson conveys a kind of ultimate respect for him? Isn't his voting for Jackson more important for black progress than how his father's cousin feels?"

I don't remember what the students said. What I remember is that I tried to project for them a sense that I was untroubled by saying "nigger," by my husband's saying "nigger," by his father's cousin's having said "nigger," by his parents'--my in-laws'--tolerance of "nigger" in their home, years ago, before I came along...It's an intellectual issue, I beamed at them, and then I directed it back at myself. It has nothing to do with how it makes me feel.

Perhaps I shouldn't be writing this yet, because I haven't finished reading the essay, but since I'm already writing anyway.. so far this has been hard for me to read. It's been hard for me to be reminded that this is a constant issue in people's lives. Two of my best guy friends are black (please excuse me for writing that sentence--it's isn't meant as the typical white-woman "I'm-not-racist-because" excuse), and I see it in their lives, but, like so many people I suppose, it's easy for me to forget things that I don't want to remember. Sometimes.

One of these guys gets pulled over on a regular basis. Once he was pulled at three o'clock in the afternoon, by two cops at the same time, because one of his front headlights was out. And there is no pretending that that isn't racist bullshit.

I was lucky enough to grow up until late in high school thinking that racism was a problem that had been dealt with and conquered during the civil rights movement. My parents are pretty good about judging people based on things other than their socioeconomic status or their skin color or religion, and I grew up going to a summer camp that had, if not equal parts black and white kids, more black kids than white. I never noticed until I was on staff. I have always known that there were disproportionate ratios in terms of race across the socioeconomic spectrum, but I always attributed that to the fact that it takes a little while for people to work up in the world, and assumed that the issue was on the way to correcting itself. I wish I hadn't been so wrong.

When I read of Bernard's fears, my immediate reaction, other than sadness, is to think, "That's awful! Why would she think that?" Next to question myself, but before reading this essay I'd have no more thought to call anyone "'nigger" than I'd have thought to call Andromeda a minnow. It wasn't even on my radar. It wasn't even on a list of  "things not to do." It hurts and angers and confuses me to realize that there are so many people all over the world for whom that isn't true.

A normally very sweet (to adults, anyway), respectful, well-behaved Chinese boy at the dorm last year told me that he was a little scared of black people. He got along fine with all the black kids in the dorm, of course (my observation, not his)--but he was frightened by the 'ghetto' culture. I guess it's all too easy to see any culture and think of the people that compose it as legos--all identical, all for no purpose but to comprise the culture in question--and even to see all people who look similar to those living in a certain culture as legos as well. Really though, that's like saying "I hate movies. All movies. Because theaters have bad lighting and that freaks me out." Not all movies ever show in theaters. Not all theaters show the same kinds of movies. Even in one theater, a vast array of completely different movies play. And anyway, a theater is just a venue. Usually, the movie itself doesn't have anything to do with the theater at all.

Honestly, forget worrying about who "discovered" America first and whether to teach religion or science in science class (btw, I'm Christian and I still say "science." Religion for religion class, science for science class. How is this even an issue?)--grab those kids the second they hit the school system and make sure they understand that, biologically speaking, they are no different from any other human. Yes, a lot of complicated questions arise when we start talking about differences between cultures and which cultures and dialects are preferred and whether or not that's fair or right, but let's not enter into a single one of those discussions until we understand this: we are all the same. We are all brothers and sisters.