I wasn't too old--five, six maybe--before I realized something was very, very wrong with this world I'd been born into.
Things just weren't adding up.
What I learned in church--that Jesus loved everyone the same, that we were supposed to love everyone the same as He did--just didn't appear to be happening in day-to-day life.
I arrived a few days late in the dog days of a hot Washington, DC, summer, disappointing my brother, as my due date had been the 4th, and he'd drawn a picture of me "shooting out like a firecracker," as he wrote in the caption.
The year's events demonstrate the transition in our nation from the innocent and prosperous (for white people) 1950's to the next decade, during which society would be turned upside down by a bunch of white college students rebelling against the values of their parents (my sister included) and the unrest and protest of those "other" Americans--the ones who'd lived at the margins of society since merchants sold them into slavery and, despite Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, had never really been freed.
But what did I know of that? My family lived in a post-war, solidly built brick Cape Cod in a neighborhood of nearly identical such homes, each with the dappled trunk of a sycamore stretching ever higher into the sky, dropping spiky seedballs into the grass below for children's bare feet to painfully land on.
Those were the worries I had as a child--not whether my mother could pay the heating bill, or whether the lights could be turned on at night, as one of my students would write many years later when I assigned an essay in which they were to describe a difficult time in their lives.
My father's job as an aeronautics electronic engineer kept us comfortable enough that we'd eat at a restaurant every Sunday night to give my mother a break from cooking. Enough so that we had a maid named Millie, a large black woman whose dentures fit so poorly I could never understand what she said. I'd cringe every time I heard her call my name; having to ask her to repeat herself embarrassed me terribly--SO awkward. Even that young, I realized that Millie's life was much harder than my parents' simply because she had black skin and they didn't, and I felt ashamed that I couldn't understand her, secretly praying when I heard her big voice calling "Mary Dell!" I'd be able to make out her syllables well enough to not have to ask her to repeat herself.
"I can't understand why colored people are treated the way they are," I told my brother John, my senior by four years, when I was six or eight--still pretty young and idealistic. The idealism part has been trounced out of me pretty much in the four decades since, but it's still not entirely gone despite indisputable evidence that what I thought we were meant to be and do had very little to do with actual human existence.
"It's not fair to treat someone different because of a different skin color," I continued pronouncing my manifesto while my brother half listened and watched a game. No doubt I kept talking to his fist held against his face as he slumped on the couch focusing on the sports announcers.
I understood that being born with a certain skin color had nothing at all to do with a person's character or volition--our nearly sacred Declaration of Independence declared that all men were created equal--and even that young I could understand that a word such as "man" meant all of humanity--though I hadn't learned the word metonymy yet. Our births were a mysterious misfortune or blessing--we had nothing at all to do with being born into whatever family we came into, so how could any of us be held responsible for a "bad" birth or claim credit for a "good" birth? Yes, this was self-evident! Jesus never specified skin color when he told us to love one another.
My brother, obsessed by sports, didn't care to discuss societal inequity, probably muttered something--but what I remember so well was standing up and pronouncing, with my arm held up like the Statue of Liberty's: "When I grow up, I am going to change that! I am going to get a job and make it so that all the people are treated exactly the same!"
Years later, I'd realize that people of color didn't need my help--they could chart their own destinies without a do-good white girl leading the charge. But my view of what is right and wrong about the issue of race never changed. My heart is heavy these days as what seems to be a regression in race relations in this nation is unfolding before our eyes.
Things just weren't adding up.
What I learned in church--that Jesus loved everyone the same, that we were supposed to love everyone the same as He did--just didn't appear to be happening in day-to-day life.
I arrived a few days late in the dog days of a hot Washington, DC, summer, disappointing my brother, as my due date had been the 4th, and he'd drawn a picture of me "shooting out like a firecracker," as he wrote in the caption.
The year's events demonstrate the transition in our nation from the innocent and prosperous (for white people) 1950's to the next decade, during which society would be turned upside down by a bunch of white college students rebelling against the values of their parents (my sister included) and the unrest and protest of those "other" Americans--the ones who'd lived at the margins of society since merchants sold them into slavery and, despite Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, had never really been freed.
But what did I know of that? My family lived in a post-war, solidly built brick Cape Cod in a neighborhood of nearly identical such homes, each with the dappled trunk of a sycamore stretching ever higher into the sky, dropping spiky seedballs into the grass below for children's bare feet to painfully land on.
Those were the worries I had as a child--not whether my mother could pay the heating bill, or whether the lights could be turned on at night, as one of my students would write many years later when I assigned an essay in which they were to describe a difficult time in their lives.
My father's job as an aeronautics electronic engineer kept us comfortable enough that we'd eat at a restaurant every Sunday night to give my mother a break from cooking. Enough so that we had a maid named Millie, a large black woman whose dentures fit so poorly I could never understand what she said. I'd cringe every time I heard her call my name; having to ask her to repeat herself embarrassed me terribly--SO awkward. Even that young, I realized that Millie's life was much harder than my parents' simply because she had black skin and they didn't, and I felt ashamed that I couldn't understand her, secretly praying when I heard her big voice calling "Mary Dell!" I'd be able to make out her syllables well enough to not have to ask her to repeat herself.
"I can't understand why colored people are treated the way they are," I told my brother John, my senior by four years, when I was six or eight--still pretty young and idealistic. The idealism part has been trounced out of me pretty much in the four decades since, but it's still not entirely gone despite indisputable evidence that what I thought we were meant to be and do had very little to do with actual human existence.
"It's not fair to treat someone different because of a different skin color," I continued pronouncing my manifesto while my brother half listened and watched a game. No doubt I kept talking to his fist held against his face as he slumped on the couch focusing on the sports announcers.
I understood that being born with a certain skin color had nothing at all to do with a person's character or volition--our nearly sacred Declaration of Independence declared that all men were created equal--and even that young I could understand that a word such as "man" meant all of humanity--though I hadn't learned the word metonymy yet. Our births were a mysterious misfortune or blessing--we had nothing at all to do with being born into whatever family we came into, so how could any of us be held responsible for a "bad" birth or claim credit for a "good" birth? Yes, this was self-evident! Jesus never specified skin color when he told us to love one another.
My brother, obsessed by sports, didn't care to discuss societal inequity, probably muttered something--but what I remember so well was standing up and pronouncing, with my arm held up like the Statue of Liberty's: "When I grow up, I am going to change that! I am going to get a job and make it so that all the people are treated exactly the same!"
Years later, I'd realize that people of color didn't need my help--they could chart their own destinies without a do-good white girl leading the charge. But my view of what is right and wrong about the issue of race never changed. My heart is heavy these days as what seems to be a regression in race relations in this nation is unfolding before our eyes.
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