Since when did a single physical characteristic get entangled with language, customs, food, dialect, education, and maybe even crime?
Sometimes I write a blog because I am assigned to do so. Other times I churn some words as a reaction to a news item that has cultural implications. And every once in a while, I write a thoughtful blog out of a desire to help people pry open their minds. In the end, it is usually my own mind that becomes enlightened, often by the provocative comments of my readers. This is one of those.
Get ready. It’s about race.
A few days ago I posted on Facebook, the following missive. It was intended to be humorous and express a mother’s pride at watching her child learn to love and accept herself.
“My (brown) 7-year-old just revealed her big dilemma. She wants to marry Justin Bieber but can’t because she might “have white babies. I want my kids to look as good as me.” Should I tone down her self esteem?”
The comment stream included words like “Awesome” and “No.No.No.” and “No, don’t tone it down, the world already has enough to tear it down in the future.” Most readers interpreted the true spirit of my intentions.
But there were other kinds of comments. Quiet ones. Like a throat clear at the back of church. Postings that belied unspoken feelings.
“Interesting,”
“As a non-parent, I’m not going to comment.”
“Have you no baby pictures of you to show her that white babies can be beautiful?”
Finally, a bull entered my china shop in the form of a dude named Rob. His FB profile is flimsy, noting only things like his long-ago college and his penchant for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
But his words were thick and to the point.
“Racism is racism.”
I sat up straight. Believe it or not, I had never even considered the concept of race, neither when my child spoke the words, nor when I typed them in stone on the internet. I was so wrapped up in the notion of beauty being in the eye of the beholder and so proud of what my daughter beholds when she looks in the mirror, I hadn’t even considered that I might sound racist. Really. I guess I’m lucky that way.
I offered the “beauty in the eye of the beholder?” theory to the bull. But he wasn’t biting. He still declared it as racism.
“….because of the simple fact that a distinction was made, preferring one color over another. If for beauty’s purposes or not, it’s still an ugly paradigm. No doubt, a person can have beautiful skin, but it’s a subtle putdown to other kids and their parents to make race the focus.”
Then it hit me. In our society, descriptions of beautiful people can include hair color, height, weight, teeth, eye color, but NEVER skin color. All of a sudden a single physical characteristic gets entangled with language, customs, food, dialect, education, and maybe even crime. Because race to me (whatever that is) is a term that blurs melanin with opinion and saddles simple skin tone with history.
Wow.
So I gave Rob a piece of me.
“@Rob I disagree. We are all attracted to certain physical traits in human beings, be they gender, shape, height, hair texture, eye color, or melanin. If gentlemen prefer blondes, is that racism? No, it is simply stating a preference for one physical trait. Our culture gets nervous when the preference includes an attraction (or not) to melanin and this discussion spirals down to a talk about race. The term “race” includes unspoken references to culture more than physical characteristics. Imagine skin tone as just a physical trait, free of cultural trappings. In the case of my post, the person of attraction is my daughter, herself. It is a child’s way of learning to appreciate her own unique beauty and feel gorgeous. (Something to be celebrated in a culture with a history of a narrow definition of beauty.) That’s all. It wasn’t a slight against white babies everywhere. It was a celebration of budding self esteem, against certain odds.”
But my bull had a logical fastball.
“@Wendy – sounds lovely the way you put it, but to test the logic of that argument, just turn it around – have a white girl do that a school and talk about how her whiteness makes her feel ‘prettier’ than the brown-skinned kids. That’s always my test for the racial arguments. You have ‘gay pride’ you have ‘black pride…’ mention ‘white pride’ and sit back and watch the world go into panic.”
Lovely, the way I put it? I sucked back my urge to take a swipe at his reference to Pollyanna-ism. Then I went back into the ring. Yes, I know you guys have noticed that my sports metaphors have moved from a bull fight, to a baseball diamond, to a boxing ring, but stay with my clumsiness.
@Rob. I agree with you. White pride should be okay too. But the problem is that we ALREADY have too much white pride when a culture holds a narrow definition of beauty. Sigh. Increasing pride is the burden of minorities. When I stand at the grocery store check-out and see the wall of blondes on the covers of magazines, I wonder what messages my girls must be taking in. So, I am absolutely thrilled that my daughter likes the way she looks.
In the end the bull and I kissed and made up, agreeing that we live in imperfect world. As for me, I stick by my attempt at humor in my post. Because all good humor is tragedy viewed from across the street. And, Rob, I’ll even accept that I may be a tad like Pollyanna, because that girl was a true optimist!
