Worries

For a dad of two girls, I guess I don’t do a ton of worrying.  There are so many clichéd things I guess I’m supposed to worry about, but really, I don’t actually worry in the true sense of the word.  Maybe it’s because the girls are at an age where they are pretty self-sufficient, yet aren’t operating outside of (nearly) constant adult supervision.  Sorta like going to the circus, seeing trapeze artists, but also seeing the big, bouncy net below them.  I mean, I obviously know there are a thousand things that require my attention, things that are extremely--if not direly--important.  And I’m confident that once they are out driving around, my worry-meter will skyrocket and I’ll get an ulcer.  And every time I see teenagers behaving badly on TV, like some naïve high school sophomore girl letting a hornball senior scale an inexplicably strong and bare rose trellis up to her room (why is that thing there?!?), I have a mild panic attack. 

I attempt to mollify my fear of the future by teaching them lessons that will prepare them for the world out amongst the wolves.  About honesty and integrity.  About work ethic.  About stranger-danger.  About self-confidence with humility (self-confidence is challenging for one, while the humility is nearly impossible for the other).  About good grades in school.  About leadership.  About what boys are starting to see in them (and the reason those boys keep adjusting their waistbands in the middle of class).  About acceptance and forgiveness.  About grace.  About underage drinking and drugs.  About competitiveness and sportsmanship.  About unconditional love and how to treat one another.

There are a number of things Amy and I try to teach the girls by example.  Amy serves as a role model by showing them what they can achieve if they study their asses off, work their asses off, and subsequently demand to be granted the same considerations as anyone else after having accomplished those first two things.  I’m not entirely sure what it is that I offer, other than how to scream at sports on the TV (I’m fairly certain the dog thinks his name is “God damn it, Royals!!!  Hit the ball!!!!) or how to cuss with panache in the car, but I’m sure I’m doing something positive in there somewhere. 

I do know that the girls notice how Amy and I are with each other.  They will occasionally say something like, “You and Mom are so nice to each other!”  We usually respond with something like, “Well, yeah, of course we are.  It isn’t magic.  That’s how good relationships work.  It’s what you should expect, too.”  I know Amy is careful to point out when I do something nice, even if it’s no big damn deal, saying something like, “See?  That’s what people do for one another when they love each other.”  They proceed to roll their eyes and make gagging noises, but I’ll bet it’s getting through a little, and it’s a pretty big lesson. Because of the few things I actually do worry about, one is how they demand to be treated by others in their lives, whether it’s by friends or boyfriends or whatever.  I actively worry about this because of what they’ve seen before they came to live with us.  I’m not entirely sure how things worked in their bio-mother’s household, but from what little they remember and have told us, I have to assume it wasn’t just a sparkling example of domestic bliss.

Amy and I teach the girls about the world as we see it.  We teach them through the lens of our own experiences and worldview, because that’s the only world we know.  It’s a world where you are expected to go to school, expected to behave, expected to work hard, and expected to achieve.  Overall, I think Amy and I are pretty good parents.  We have significant failings at times, but we’re doing okay.

The other day, I brought the kids to a friend’s birthday party at his house.  They wanted to say hi, tell him “happy birthday,” pet his dogs, give him a hug, then go back home with Amy where they would watch a few “girl movies” while I stuck around for a while.  It was still early evening, and the girls were sitting in his living room, watching a recording of “Inside Out” (when Bing Bong went missing in that damn pit of forgotten memories or whatever, the girls kept asking me to come in and watch, because they know it makes me cry and they think that’s just hysterical).  I was talking to the first few guests in the kitchen about God knows what.  The doorbell rang, and in came a middle-aged couple.  When the woman saw the girls, she told them she loved their hair (both the girls have box braids now, one with red extensions mixed in and the other with blue) and talked to them for a while.  The woman bubbled and asked them about school, about their summer, about going to the pool, about their friends, etc.  When the woman came into the kitchen, she asked me if I was their dad.  I said yes, I was, and she complimented me on how bright, well-mannered, and beautiful the girls are.  I thanked her, made my customary self-deprecating jokes, said that their good behavior has nothing to do with me and that she should thank my wife because they are that way despite my influence.  We all laughed.

Now, there is something I have noticed since becoming a father…particularly, the white father of black children.  I get these kinds of compliments a lot.  And sure, it could be because I am just such a stellar father and Amy is such a stellar mother and the kids are just so amazingly stellar that strangers just can’t help but notice.  I mean, the girls are freaking adorable, and they are smart, and they are well-mannered.  But at the same time, there are other kids at the party that are also well mannered and speak in full sentences to adults…so why aren’t they piling on the praise to the other kids, too?  Behind my smile and true appreciation for complimenting my parental skills, I can’t help having the surreal suspicion that the reason they are so enthusiastic with their praise is because they are, though surely unwittingly, a little surprised my kids behave so well.  But both kids are total suckers for positive reinforcement, and I’m a sucker for flattery, so it sure as shit could be worse. 

Later, after the girls had left and after a good amount of alcohol had been consumed all around, the same woman began asking me about being a foster parent.  I talked to her a bit about it, and then she talked about how she is a foster parent for dogs.  She then made a weird comparison between the two, saying that we all need to watch out for “strays.”  I laughed awkwardly and then gently told her that my kids aren’t “strays,” they’re children.  She said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s not what I meant, but…you know.” 

I did not know, but did not want to press the issue further.

A few minutes later, out on the porch, she was talking about people abusing dogs (she is apparently a very enthusiastic animal rights person), and then said something to the effect of “I got these two dogs now that some ni***rs were beating…oh!  I mean…black…people…”

And just like that, the whole party stopped and everyone stared at her.  Then at me.

Now, this is not the most sophisticated woman in the world.  I should remind everyone at this point, again, that I live in the Texas Panhandle, not universally known for its progressive agenda.  Abject poverty that knows no racial lines is not situated only at the far ends of some metropolis, but it is interspersed within and throughout the town.  This woman had obviously come from absolutely nothing and is still struggling day to day (she wanted to play dice that night, because if she won, she was “going to Walmart baby!”).  She has little to no higher education.  All she knows is what she has been taught by her relations, her friends, her immediate surroundings, and the hard lessons she’s had to learn throughout her life. 

She looked at me in horror, turned away, went inside, got another drink, and then came back out to apologize profusely to me.  “I’m so sorry I said that earlier.  I want you to know your babies are beautiful and wonderful and it just makes me sick to think of them when I said that word.”

I tell her that I’m fine, but that I’m glad the girls weren’t here to hear her either.  She nodded.

“You just have to realize where I come from, where I live.  I live out on the Boulevard, see.  And there are some good, nice Black People, and there are some hard…well…you know…”

I do know.  But I didn’t want her to explain the age-old white explanation of the difference between black people and [n-words].  I’ve heard it before, lady, and it’s ugly.  I don’t want to hear it again.

“Sure, I get it,” I say.

“Anyway, I mean, every one of my family members is on meth…” and so she dove into one of the most depressing stories I’ve ever had in my life.  I really wasn’t mad at her for saying what she said.  She’s a product of her world, and it’s an ugly, ugly world full of drugs and death and brutalization…it’s amazing this woman is still alive.  There is iron strength in this woman, iron that cannot be dismissed and can’t be anything but admired.  I don’t have that kind of iron.  I don’t know many people that do. 

“Anyway, hon, I’m sorry for saying that.”

“Don’t sweat it.”  As if I could say anything else at that moment.  How do I say it’s okay when it clearly isn’t?  But what else am I going to do?  Lecture this woman?  I could tell she really was truly sorry.  Maybe sorry just because I had heard her, but I wasn’t going to press it.  So I just said, “Sorry about your brother.” Within her litany of terrible stories, she had revealed her brother had just died from some kind of tumor on his spinal cord, one that had apparently been attributed to his meth addiction.  He had died poorly.

“Yeah, me too,” she said.  “I guess his birthday would’ve been coming up soon.”

At this point, I realized something that had never really occurred to me before, something that I might very well be guilty of.  Before, when I’d heard that word, it slid off like nothing.  I mean, sure, I’d think, “Man, that’s in bad taste,” but it did not affect me at a visceral level.  And now it’s like a gut-punch, because I can’t hear it without imagining what my daughter’s faces would look like if they’d have heard it too.

My daughters put a face to that word.  They take away the “otherness” of that word. 

I don’t feel that just because I have black daughters that I get some kind of limited honorary invitation to “the club.”  In fact, if anything, my daughters show me that there is no way I can EVER get it, because I don’t walk into a room full of people who expect less of me because of how I look or are surprised that I am “well spoken.”  I don’t elicit those same kinds of reactions, same kinds of expectations, or same kinds of emotions, based on my skin.  I also know there isn’t some kind of “club,” and that it shouldn’t be spoken about as such, because it allows us to imagine Blackness as some kind of privileged membership.  That they enjoy some kind of special treatment, thus validating the flawed narrative that there really isn’t racism, and that if anything, there is “reverse racism” (which is a total bullshit term). 

My girls don’t belong to a club.  There isn’t a newsletter that comes in the mail.  They don’t enjoy some kind of imagined Black Privilege.  They are simply navigating the world in which they are being brought up.  Just like I did.  Just like Amy did.  Just like the woman at that party did.  And that world will surely shape the kinds of people they will become.  I mentioned before all the things we teach our girls.  We instill our values in them and teach them the things we were taught.  We support them, do homework with them, go to their sporting events, go to their recitals.

Shit, we belong to a Country Club.  They’re learning golf.

Which begs the delicate, controversial question:  Are we raising them…white?

Is there such a thing?  And if so, what does that mean for their Blackness?  And is there such a thing as that?  Is there a shared cultural experience they are missing out on because we simply cannot give that to them?

And the most important question:  Are we failing to recognize the existence of, and subsequently failing to teach them, crucial lessons on what it means to be black in America?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, there are some racial issues going on right now, and in the end, I think the divide isn’t about whether or not you are on “the Blue Side” or on “the Black Side” (into which these issues have sadly devolved lately, because rooting for a side is easier than a discussion).  I think this side-choosing is a symptom of the real disconnect:  whether or not there is a different America that black people experience beyond the scope of white understanding.  Rudy Giuliani just got done espousing that there “is no Black America, just America” and was given raucous applause for it. 

To put it very, very lightly: I think some would beg to differ.

I’m not wondering if I need to get them tutors on “how to be black.”  Their experience will be unique, made up with their own set of privileges that come with middle class America, like extra tutoring for dyslexia, extracurricular activities, moderately active and engaged parents both with salaried daytime jobs, those kinds of things.  There is of course a varied spectrum of “the Black experience,” and there are probably people they will encounter who will tell them they aren’t “really black” because they were raised by white parents.  And we can’t protect them from that. It is something they will deal with when the time comes. 

But what about basic lessons that aren’t simply intellectual?  What about lessons that are as much about safety as telling them to use their seatbelt in the car, or stranger-danger?

There was a story I read about a white mother of a black teenager who raised her son much like we are raising our own daughters.  They didn’t talk much about race unless it came up, and then usually it was something like, “race doesn’t matter, you can’t change ignorant people, you’re beautiful inside and out,” etc. etc.  But what she had failed to teach him was that race shouldn’t matter, but that it does matter, especially when it came to personal safety.  One night when he went out with a friend they got pulled over (this is a very loose recounting of the narrative).  Since he had never had a bad experience with a police officer, nor had his mother ever said anything negative about the police, he had no real reason to fear what happened next.  The police found a baggie of pot on his (white) friend, who subsequently was put in handcuffs.  The black teenager said something “smart” I guess, and was beaten with in an inch of his life, threatened with a gun to his forehead, and called a “ fu**ing n***er” when he regained consciousness.  This wasn’t in Mississippi or something.  This was Denver.

This story shook me to the core.

My kids are smartasses all the time.  They’re smartasses because they’re kids.  And kids are stupid and willful and at times reckless.  But are my girls at increased physical risk because of their race?  If they say or do something stupid, are they going to get physically harmed?  Or killed?  I realize they are female and so their chances are lower than if they were male, but what about a situation later in life, and they maybe have a black boyfriend and they get pulled over? 

Do my girls have to “watch it” more than other kids?  Not just with police, but in every encounter with authority?

What if something happens and my daughter looks at me and says, “Dad, you taught me so much…why didn’t you teach me about this too?”

My kids aren’t afraid yet.  But should they be?

I don’t want to raise my daughters to be afraid of police.  As a matter of fact, when they first came to live with us, they tended to freak out at the very sight of a police car.  I assumed it was because of previous experiences.  I don’t know what those experiences were, but I do know the girls looked up and began to panic when a cruiser passed us or was tailing us.  It obviously wasn’t because my kids were holding drugs, or because they were in a gang, or because they had anything personally to worry about.  They were simply scared of police.

It could have been because they saw their mom hauled off by the cops at some point.  Or because their dad was in jail.  Or, it could simply be that someone, somewhere, taught them that the police were not to be trusted. 

Early on, I had to ask Shay to stop calling them “Po-Po.”  No kidding.

Whatever it was, it was deeply seeded, and they couldn’t understand why we were so calm about the whole thing.  I’ve actually said, “Girls, the police are not here to hurt you, and it is okay to trust them.  They’re just making sure no one is doing anything dangerous out here.”

Was I telling the truth?  And if so, who’s truth?

And honestly, I do believe that.  I am pro-cop.  I believe they do a hard job, a dangerous job, a necessary job, and an honorable job.  They are to be respected and revered.  But as with any job, there are people who are bad at it.  That have no business wielding that kind of power.  That have neither the intelligence nor temperament to serve and protect anyone.  I’m positive most police officers are wonderful people of the highest moral character.  It’s just that the bad ones can really, really ruin it for the rest of them.  And institutionalized culture within individual departments can overwhelm and defeat even the finest police officer.  It was the same in some of the military units I’ve seen during my time in the Air Force.  Some units were good, some were bad.  And it had nothing to do with the caliber of soldiers or airmen.  It had to do with the culture of the unit and its leadership. 

But those facts are cold comfort, and it’s easy to stand back and say, “well statistics show…” when it isn’t YOUR kid in that situation.  Last year I saw that video of an out of control police officer dragging that young black girl in a bikini around by the hair because the group she was with had crashed a pool party.  It made me sick because I could see my Mo in that situation, out with friends, probably where she shouldn’t be, as teens tend to do…and then being dragged by her hair in her swimsuit…screaming… 

Yes, I’ll teach my girls to be respectful of the law, which appears to be the panacea for all racial tension (said with not just a little sarcasm).  But to my friends who are parents of white children:  what would you say if your kid got a little glib with a policeman and they dragged her around by the hair and slammed her to the ground?  What if your daughter was at a traffic stop and beaten within an inch of her life for daring to roll her eyes in a moment of pubescent annoyance?  Or was even doing something that she shouldn’t have been doing with her friends?  What if you went to bail her out, angry as hell because she had snuck out of the house or something, and you see her face was a mask of blood and sutures and you couldn’t even recognize her?  What if her teeth were smashed out?  Well, I guess you should’ve done a better job raising her.  I mean, I know that with proper parenting, it would never, ever happen, because as everyone knows teenagers are always in control of their emotional reactions and never roll their eyes or say anything flippant, right?  And always make the very best decisions.

But what if one day she didn’t make a good decision and said something “smart”…

…and it was to a bad cop…

…who had had a bad day…

…what skin color would you rather she have?