Teaching an Old White Man New Tricks
I finally got there! I got through!
Of course, in his mind, it was a revelation — his revelation — and that’s fine with me. In fact, it’s perfect, because since it was his own personal revelation, it is very much now a part of him.
Here’s what happened a long time ago: my husband, born in the mid-1940s, grew up in a small town just outside of New York City. His childhood was idyllic, at least by my standards. He had loving parents, not just loving parents, but hard-working, example-setting parents who instilled in him concepts of honor and responsibility that were rare in the world in which I grew up.
If he had been born more recently, he would have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. When he tells me stories of things that he did when he was a kid, I am astounded. His mother, a working woman, a secretary, must have been awarded sainthood at her death. I’m not sure how he would have fared, had he been my child. But, lucky for him, he wasn’t. As a teen, he had the kind of parents with whom he could be honest, and open, and make mistakes, understanding that whatever small punishment he might receive, he deserved. Seriously. The whole thing sounds unbelievable to me; like a 1950s television series but I know that it happened, for sure. He has an older sister and the elements of their stories echo each other’s.
He went to elementary school and high school in the same small town. He went on school trips and made friends that he is still in touch with. At a high-school reunion ten years or so ago, he discovered something that he had not known: he discovered that he had grown up in a town where black folk were not allowed to live; where, if somehow, a black family managed to slip in, they were apparently slipped right back out again courtesy of the Fire Department. So, he had grown into young adulthood hardly ever seeing people of color, and was in his 60s when he found out how that particular scenario had been designed.
When he told me about it, I was mildly surprised by what I can only call his lack of connection to the reality of what had been going on in the world around him. I was gob-smacked. I asked question after question after question, to which he had no real answers, because when he had been told the history of his town, he’d just just accepted it: that’s what had happened; he hadn’t known; it hadn’t affected him; end of story. He moved on.
But it affected me. I couldn’t just accept it… I had difficulty realizing that this gentle, god-send of a man did not seem to grasp what his growing up in a virtual cocoon had meant in the big picture. He didn’t seem to understand that he’d been an unwitting part of a very ugly history… and how that had affected him as a human being. He had become the embodiment of the unintentional oblivious racist.
And so, over the years since then, wherever I saw an opportunity, I gently inserted stories about people of color that I had known, that I had grown up with. I talked about the treatment I received — from all sides — for being biracial but I could see that, again, there was no connection for him. None. I could see that he cared that I felt that I had been badly treated by my classmates but I could also see that he didn’t really understand why I was hurt by that behavior; he was entirely unable to relate to what I was talking about.
Then, in 2016, racism reared its ugly head, much as it had in the 60s, when he had been in military school. In other words, when, once again, he had somehow landed in a spot where he managed to be beyond the reach of the effects of what was going on in the country around him. In the 60’s, of course, he didn’t not know that it was going on, because it was on the news. But it wasn’t in his backyard and it wasn’t a part of the culture he was in, so once again, he was able to float past it all in the little white bubble that had been so carefully orchestrated for him as a child.
By 2017 I had become deeply engrossed and engaged in dealing with the rising tide of White Fear and the rabid racism that it had generated and I would, from time to time, mention something in passing to my husband about whatever most recent hideousness had reared its ugly head. The tide continued to rise and I continued to mention egregious incidents from time to time. He always voiced his amazement at the hatred and the bile of the white supremacists… he could not wrap his head around their total lack of humanity and yet, short of that kind of in-your-face activity, there was still this deep disconnect. I did not push; I did not rant or rave; I’d almost always begin my well-timed encroachments into his consciousness with something like, “Did you happen to hear…” and he may have heard or he may not have heard of something as egregious as, say, the “Starbucks issue” and he would ask me about it. And I would tell him but I could see in his eyes that the implications and effects of these day-to-day technically nonviolent incidents of racism weren’t registering anywhere near as deeply as they might.
And then, a few nights ago, we were watching some old escapist Hallmark movie, (Of course, the man likes escapist movies! And, of course, it’s going to be a Hallmark movie.) And as we sat there, side-by-side on the couch, as we do every evening, unwinding before bed, watching something relatively innocuous so that I don’t have bad dreams, the closing titles came on, and he made some comment about what a pretty town it was in which they had filmed the movie, and I responded thoughtfully, quietly, as I turned to him and remarked to the side of his head, directly into his one good ear, “and not one black person in it.”
And he turned to face me with a look that I cannot recall ever seeing on his face in all the nine years that I have known him, and after a moment’s hesitation, and in an equally thoughtful tone, he mused, “You’re right.” That was all.
But it was different; it was categorically different from any response he had ever had, a feeling tone that had never been there before, a look in his eyes that spoke of seeing something, somewhere inside.
Twenty minutes or so later we were lying in bed, me on top of him, snuggling, when pretty much out of nowhere, he said to me, “I can’t even imagine how that must feel, to grow up in a world where the movies that you see have no one in them like you.”
It was a small thing but one of the most satisfying moments in my life. He’d finally gotten it. He connected.
Oh, there’s more work to be done, I’m sure… but I’ve never been one to shirk what has to be done and, heaven knows, I’m patient… and, as always, full of hope.
