Teach Your Children

I grew up in Sherburne, New York. My father's parents were Lithuanian immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island in the early 20th century, what family lore reports was a successful journey escaping the Russian Revolution. Somewhere along the way my father's family ended up in upstate New York. My mother's ancestral background is somewhat murkier, though certainly upstate-New-York based: French, Dutch, Native American and likely other bits and pieces of Europe that added up to become a genetic background that produced a tall, blue-eyed, high-cheekboned White girl.

Me. 

Sherburne when I was growing up -- and, indeed, Sherburne now -- is not particularly diversified. Back then there were a few Black families in the area whose children attended my school: the Thompsons, the Hadleys, the Picketts, and the Moncurs, although I didn't know the latter back then. Dawn and Kim Thompson rode my school bus. Larry Hadley and I were in Drivers' Ed together. And Carl Pickett was in my grade, the only Black person in the SECS Class of 1974. Carl played the tuba in band and is still today a fine musician. I never thought of Carl as anything but...Carl. A great diver on the swim team. Fine sense of humor. A friend with a good-natured smile. Not Black Carl or White Carl. Just Carl. 

In 1979, after graduating from college with a degree in journalism, I moved to Northeast Arkansas to take a job as a newspaper reporter in a town called Blytheville, a place distinctly more diversified than my hometown. I was a cub reporter, and as the most recently hired I got what no doubt were considered the lowest-level assignments: working the wire desk (which required getting up at 5 a.m. and opening up the office), taking obituaries over the phone, and snapping local pictures of questionable news value -- a fallen tree blocking traffic, the biggest squash grown in the county, and school pictures. Lots and lots of school pictures. Parents loved seeing their kids in the paper, and The Courier News owner, Hank Haines, understood his audience. Photos of kids in the paper meant more papers sold. Hank was a smart man.

Blytheville was a wake-up call for me. Back in 1980, the White to Black ratio there was about 60/40 -- that's 40% Black, something to which White-girl me from predominantly White Sherburne had to adjust. I'm embarrassed to say it, but at 23 years old I did have to adjust. My upstate New York upbringing played a part, as upbringing does for us all.

So I went to the schools with my camera, schools with fleshy pigment very different from my own. The schools were divided into three: elementary, junior high, and high school. I visited these schools every week, not interviewing anybody but taking shots of kids in the hallways, on the playground, the football team, or photos of kids who had achieved certain awards. I don't remember much of those visits after the first time, but it was that first time I remember best. The elementary school was my initial stop, where I watched grade school children -- Black and White -- play together and hug each other and kiss each other, holding hands and rolling in the playground grass like little kids do. Half an hour later I was at the junior high school. Black and White kids were still in groups, but with decidedly more reserve. By the time I got to the high school that first day, there were two sides: The Black kids and the White kids. A portrait of...dare I call it racism? Albeit silent, but yes, there was a racial divide. In two hours' time and right before my eyes, I captured it on film. At the tender age of 23, I understood the tragic divide between Black and White and it broke my heart. The grade school kids didn't see color. By the time they reached high school, color was all they saw.

In the early 1980s after having moved to New York City -- a fabulously diverse place to live -- I organized a reunion of my Courier News co-workers, one of whom was Frankie, a Black girl who worked the front desk. Everyone loved Frankie, and while she wasn't in my immediate social circle I considered her a friend whose warm smile greeted me every day for almost two years. I was looking forward to seeing her again at the reunion and was disappointed upon returning to Blytheville that she didn't come. I asked someone at the reunion if they knew why. "Yes," they told me. The place I'd booked for the reunion because of its great barbeque "didn't allow Blacks." In 1982. I was speechless. Horrified. Disgusted. Embarrassed. I'm sorry, Frankie, wherever you are. Such a thing never even occurred to me to ask.

I will not sit here at my keyboard and say that today, 40 years later, I don't see color. Obviously I do if I can name the four Black families in my home town decades ago. If I see a turban I see Muslim; if I see a yarmulke I see Jew. I see Asian and Latino and White. I see them all, but what I don't do -- and maybe never did, if truth be told -- is judge. When I see Andrew Yang, I don't see a man with a Taiwan ethnicity, I see a man who ran for President. When I see my neighbor, Frank, I don't see a White guy, I see my cousin's husband who tends my front flower bed. When I see Tiger Woods, I don't see a Black guy, I see the greatest golfer who ever lived. Am I aware of color? Sure. But I also see that we all work toward the same goals, of freedom and acceptance and kindness. We all want the same things for our kids and our loved ones, don't we? A comfortable home and good food, a way to earn money to pay the bills, and a safe place to lay down our heads at night. We all want good health and a government that pays attention to our needs. And we all bleed the same red blood.

Sometimes I wonder about those Blytheville kids whose innocent faces filled my camera lens. I especially think about the grade school kids who hadn't yet been poisoned at home with racism. Because that's what happened, right? They didn't see color when they were five or six or seven, but by the time they hit 15 and 16 they had turned their backs on each other, White and Black both, because of what they heard at home. I hope at least some of those grade school kids held onto the moments when they hugged each other and tumbled in the Arkansas grass, hearing giggles not slurs, understanding in their five-year-old minds that skin color and nationality and religion have nothing to do with what is in a person's heart. While not perfect people, my parents set me on the path to understanding -- maybe by accident, I guess I'll never know -- but they did. Though they are long dead, I honor my parents every day for teaching me some simple concepts. To look deeper than skin color. To see a poor person and think maybe they aren't lazy, but instead need a helping hand. To know a lie when I hear it, and in kind to recognize the truth. The most important thing they taught me, though, is the difference between right and wrong. That's the bottom line, isn't it? To understand the difference between right and wrong? And to act on it. To do our best to do the right thing, and to speak up when what we see is  something that is simply and always wrong.

I saw my friend Carl Pickett the other day in a store parking lot. We were both masked and at first I didn't realize it was him as I walked to my car. When I recognized him, we approached each other and gave a virtual hug from a safe distance. SECS classmates. Not best friends maybe, but without a doubt, old friends with chocolate skin next to pale white, sparkling brown eyes greeting light blue. We chatted and I reminded him of a conversation we'd had back in the 1990s, when I'd just gotten back from a trip to Kenya. I told him back then how strange it was to be in a country where everyone was Black, and that to be the only White person in a sea of Black faces was...unsettling. I could only see his eyes (those pretty sparkling eyes), but I knew behind the mask he was giving me a sad smile. This was something he certainly understood. Then I told him to be careful out there, America is in a strange place. As Carl walked away and I was getting in my car, a man was getting into a pickup truck next to me. I saw him scowl and give Carl a funny look. Carl didn't see it I don't think, but I did. I think I did. Did I?

Indeed. America is in a strange place. Or maybe it always has been.

Please teach your children not to see color, or if they do see it, teach them not to judge. Teach them to base opinions on character, not pigment. Teach them to be kind and not to name-call. Teach them that diversity is a good thing. Teach them to love others, all others. Please. Teach your children well.