White Like Me

A few days ago, my daughter Marissa set out a challenge for her white family and friends after the senseless lynching of George Floyd.

WHITE PEOPLE, white friends, white family, I'm going to talk to you for a second. Your silence on the issues that people of colour face, your passiveness ("I'm not racist, I don't see colour, etc) also further systematic racism. If you don't look for information on the LIVED EXPERIENCES of people of colour, if you don't educate yourselves, if you don't push for change, ask how you can help - these things will never get better. 

Funny, we never talked about it.
Not even when Jeff came for dinner, moved in, and never left. He was just Jeff who lived in our basement, a quiet man with dreads, and glasses who didn't say very much. 
He wasn't the only young man who lived under our roof. My boys had friends who came and stayed, mostly after getting kicked out of their parents' houses. But Jeff was the only boy Marissa ever brought home to meet us. The fact he was black didn't matter to us.
And as I said, we never talked about it. 
Jeff is still with us, just married to my daughter, and the father of my granddaughter, Kennedy Rose, who is named after Jack Kennedy and his mom Rose. No, I'm kidding. She's named after me.
That, mostly has been my "lived experience" with black folks.

It was funny, growing up, I always thought my family was racist. 
I grew up reading Little Black Sambo, and hearing my intellectually disabled uncle sitting on the steps of our farm house, singing The Dark Strutter's Ball. Black people were referred to in my grandparent's house as Darkies. And my mother once told me a story of going down to  Port Dalhousie on Emancipation Day, which was a time when blacks came to our mostly white community on Lake Ontario, where they celebrated the end of slavery. 
When my mom was young, she and her friend when down to Port Dalhousie to check out what Emancipation Day was all about. 
A black man asked her to dance.
She took off, terrified.
Because he asked her to dance.
Later she warned me about going to the bandshell at Port long after black people stopped visiting our little town. 

I knew this attitude about black people was wrong. I learned at an early age because I spent most of my young life being babysat by the television. Because my granny was addicted to the news, and Cronkite, I became immersed in the subject of race. This was the 6os, when everything was possible, like putting a man on the moon but black folks still couldn't use the white restrooms, or ride the white buses, or go to school with white children.
This was the era when the artist Dion stopped singing about running around with Sue, and wrote a song entitled Abraham, Martin and John which was a testament to the loss of hope and freedom in America.

While my family was busy sorting peaches and playing cards, I was became obsessed with the issues that gripped America in the 60s: race, women's liberation, and the Vietnam War. 
I  was just a little kid but I wanted to learn more. So I went to the library and borrowed so many books, I could barely carry them on the bus. One of them was Black Like Me, about a white man who disguised himself as a black man, journeyed to the Deep South, and wrote about his experience. I was fascinated and terrified by the Black Panthers, Malcom X, and the militants that were inspiring black people to rise up. But because I was a reader, and a watcher, I understood why they felt the need to sometimes use violence in an effort to shake up America.
And I watched Sidney Poitier movies, all of them. In The Heat of the Night, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, To Sir With Love, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? My favourite was A Patch of Blue, about a black man who starts a relationship with a white blind girl. It was so exotic in the 60s to imagine a love affair between a white and black. Remember that kiss on Star Trek between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura?
As I grew older, television grew bolder. It became dominated by comedies and dramas about "the black experience". Suddenly, black people became successful and rich. Surely, that meant life was better for black and brown people. 
A black nurse, Julia, was the first mixed race lead character who was not a domestic, A white racist (Archie Bunker) was driven crazy by his upstart black neighbours, the Jeffersons. There were many, many more stories that pushed the envelope.
Then television changed.
It was the era of Dr. Huxtable, a successful baby doctor married to a hot lawyer with a gaggle of funny perfect little kids. Blacks, at least on television, were on the move, moving' on up, like the Jeffersons. Somewhere along the way, The Fresh Prince moved in with white folks, and Tootie was just one of the gang on the Facts of Life. And Michael Jackson was gender-bending, and trying to make himself into a whitey. 
Just as television changed, so did I. 
I stopped thinking about issues of race when I myself started moving on up. 
By the time I had kids, they weren't on my radar at all. 
I thought it was nice that Marissa had a black friend named Keena, who lived across the street with her rich black parents. I was so proud of her to have Muslim friends at her alternative school, and I often picked them up from their inner city neighbourhood to take them on road trips, once to buy a puppy.
Race was never an issue in my privileged life. I knew black folks still struggled, but it wasn't my problem. As long as I didn't know about them, I never thought about them much at all.
It was only when I became a single mother, and lost much of my white privilege that my consciousness was raised, ever so slightly. The alternative school looked down at single mothers; it was never said, but I knew it, and felt it. I found myself sitting at school concerts with the other single moms, mostly blonde and beautiful who were raising black children. 
Strangely, as I was becoming more white, Marissa was changing. 
Her friends at the time were all black and brown girls, and my sweet girl even got a bit of a reputation at school for being a bully. I realize now that she was just sticking up for her friends.
It was about this time that Marissa and I stopped talking. 
In middle school, she befriended Kayla, an outgoing and fearless black child whose mother was beautiful and blonde. Kayla's mom and stepdad lived down the street, and Marissa literally moved in with them. As I think back now, who could blame her?
I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I barely noticed that she had ghosted me. 
Instead of confiding in me, she shared her hopes and fears with Kayla's mom, Gayle, who taught her how to apply makeup and fix her unruly long hair. 
I was always grateful to Gayle because I knew that Marissa was safe with her, and loved by her. But I got concerned because I didn't like what was happening.
Marissa started running with some pretty tough customers, and I often didn't know where she was. I spent many nights sitting up, worried about her, and finally I kicked her out of the house. (Okay, I didn't really. In my defence, I paid for her to have an apartment on the Quebec side and gave her a car) but I was so tired of not having a relationship with my daughter, I couldn't deal with her. 
Fact is, I couldn't relate to her at all. 
Kicking her out may have been the best thing I'd ever done. 
We both realized that, despite our differences, despite the hard feelings and the hot anger, we still loved each other. 
She finally came home, completed school, and has gone on to have a fabulous career in marketing. And she gave me the greatest gift of all -- little Kenney who makes my heart sing every day.
Today, we talk about kids, and career, and the challenges of juggling both, in the time of pandemic.
We still don't talk about race. 
Looking back, I don't think we ever talked about race.
We didn't have to.
I wasn't the mother of a black girl or boy. So Marissa and I never had to have "the talk".
Now I am a grandmother of a mixed race child, so I figure it's time to have the conversation.
But not with Marissa, and not with Kenney. Kenny is not my child, so it's up to her parents to have "the talk" about how to navigate the world as a person of colour.
No, the conversation I have to have is with my friends about white privilege, and why the parents of brown and black kids have to have "the talk" at all.
First, I have to learn about white privilege, and what it means, and why we should park it, and start talking not about race, but about change. What can we do as white people to give black and brown people better opportunities, and create a culture of hope and freedom for all?
I've been watching a lot of CNN, and I've learned that change doesn't start at the top. It begins in our neighbourhoods, in local politics and education. It begins by electing more people of colour to positions of influence, raising money to make their candidacy possible.
It begins by ensuring that each and every child has access to the Internet and good food, safe neighbourhoods, and opportunities to play sports and participate in programs outside of school.
It begins when we take a good, hard look at systemic racism, and make sure we rid the system of bad cops, educators, judges and other people in positions of power who continue to hold their knees on the necks of vulnerable and innocent people. And it begins by letting our black and brown neighbours know we care about them.
It bothers me now, writing this, that we have paved so few roads since the 60s.
But it makes me excited knowing that I can play a part in laying down even an inch of asphalt.
We're not as helpless as we think we are.

So I thank Marissa for the challenge. I hope I'm up to it.

And on a final note, I want to thank Gayle, Kayla's mother for giving my own daughter a safe place to land, and Kayla for teaching my daughter how to navigate the world when her own mother let her down. Sadly, Gayle died a few years ago, but her legacy lives on with Kayla, the mother bear, her son and husband, and in her wonderful grandson, Averi who is learning how to succeed in this difficult world.

The world needs more Gayle McKinley Boily. I hope someday, people say that about me.