First Encounters with Race
The New York Times publishes a weekly series on race and racism. As someone whose job it is to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion I find it important to have sources that keep me thinking about the different manifestations, versions, and instances of the -isms. Put simply, I must keep my thinking fresh, especially regarding race and racism. In August 2017, the series published an article about one’s earliest encounters with racism. The article featured the stories of four youth, ranging from 15 to 19 years old. Their stories highlight being stopped by the police, called a racial slur, and thought of as illegal immigrant. After reading the article, I was drawn to think about one of my first encounters with racism.
Photo Credit: @freestocks
It feels like it was just yesterday; though, I was around 10 years old. My family and I were vacationing in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This was a new destination for our summer vacation; we decided to try something other than visiting my dad’s family in Tallahassee, Florida. We were staying at a hotel on the boardwalk in Myrtle Beach. Like many beaches, there was a classic boardwalk separating the beach from the shops, carnival rides, and restaurants. Behind the stores was the main drag; you know that main street running parallel to beach, where there is everything to see-and-be-seen. It’s our second day in town, and my mom and I decided to go for a walk on the main drag to window shop and check out what’s around. Not more than ten minutes into our walk, an open-air Jeep Wrangler comes flying by filled with four white men in it; one screams out: “Hey Aunt Jemima!” Quickly filled with rage, I wanted to chase down this Jeep. However, stunned and 10 years old, I felt stuck, trapped, cemented, and still on the main drag.
Fast forward to the beginning of a school year not too long ago. I was walking with a colleague on our lunch break when she recalled a story of shopping at JCrew with her family. While in the store, a white boy said to her and her kids directly: " Hey Ching Chong". My colleague was mortified. While she was pretty certain her children did not know what that word was, she was certainly not ready to have a conversation about race and racism during her family’s causal shopping trip to JCrew. This will be a first encounter with racism for her children. People of color almost always remember these first encounters.
Today, part of the challenge of having conversations about race and racism is that we have these conversations in an ahistorical way, as if it were only today that our race mattered and that racism begin happening. When quite the opposite is true, even for young people. Race has always mattered, and racism, in subtle or explicit forms, has always been apart of the lives of people of color. Each of us can recount one of the first times we remember encountering race and racism. At times, it shows up in the talk parents of color give their children about their race and how they might be treated when they are in mostly-white settings. Or, it shows up when a white person, and with less frequency another person of color, notices our race and comments in a surprising or unpleasant way, and we have to deal. Or worse yet, when our race is implicated for the first time without us considering it; these moments sound like: “You know that only happened because you are ___________.”
People of color relate and share in each of these first examples. And, every person of color, including students in classrooms, bring with them not only their first encounter with racism, but also their continuous experiences with racism, and the cumulative impact of racism on their life. Because of this, when talking about race today, I think it is necessary to create room in the conversation to learn how race and racism has mattered to someone in the past alongside to learning about how it matters presently, as it is their past experiences that likely inform how they are traversing their present environment.
While many are quick to highlight the sensitivity, requirements, or closed dispositions of people of color to talking about race and racism with white people or in mixed company, few can identify the kinds of primary experiences with race and racism that inform present engagement for many people of color. This dynamic hampers what could otherwise be a productive and healthy conversation about race because a formidable factor is missing from the conversation. Put plainly, people of color show up to conversations about race with previous experiences that white people must account for in how they engage people of color.
What might this look like in action:
Recognize historical and cumulative experience.
Talking about race and racism isn’t new or exceptional for many people of color. Entering into these conversations with the assumption that something related to race and racism has likely occurred for the person of color you are speaking with is helpful. While your conversation may not unearth what has happened, and surely you can’t ask right away, you can bring an energy, care, and sensibility to the conversation that acknowledges and holds that this isn’t the first time.
Reflect on your own first encounters with race.
Just because you didn’t feel or experience impact in the moment of an encounter with race does not mean it didn’t shape how you view race and influenced how you would engage race well into the future. This is a common misstep for white people mostly in their understanding of race, suggesting that they have not had experiences with race, and therefore it hasn’t matter. Excavating one’s first encounters with race and taking a magnifying glass can illuminate how you may presently engage. Questions like - What was (un)said about race? How did the adults in my life talk about race or engage those with a different racial identity than my own as I grew up? Or, why was race missing from the conversation when people of color were present? - may help clarify what took place and stayed with from those first moments.
Talk about race with children.
Both research and literature indicate that children can notice differences in the treatment of people very early in life. This shouldn’t be a surprise; for the first four to five years kids are silent observers of the inner workings of the world. You see, that kid who said “Hey Ching Chong” learned an important lesson about race that day. Assuming that their parents pretended not to notice or corrected the child, the kid either learned that what they said was okay or bad. And in either case, didn’t learn why. No exploration occurred. Of course correcting inappropriate behavior for children is necessary, and if the only thing we have to say is “don’t say that” to the kid who says a racial epithet to the Asian American family in the clothing store, we will miss the opportunity to develop their understanding about the world in which they are being socialized.
Collectively, we can all do a little better with our conversations about race. The discussions aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Yet with a wider lens on the process in having the conversation, mixed with a demonstration of what could matter to people of color in these conversations, we likely can fare better, producing breakthroughs in our understanding which will have a positive impact on future behaviors.