{"id":343,"date":"2009-08-09T12:32:35","date_gmt":"2009-08-09T17:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=343"},"modified":"2009-08-23T13:07:42","modified_gmt":"2009-08-23T18:07:42","slug":"the-day-we-kids-showed-our-racial-sensitivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"The day we kids showed our racial sensitivity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While we were living in Ohio, my father arranged for workmen to come and do some kind of work in the yard near the front of the house.\u00a0 I was about three, so I have no idea what they were going to be doing, but I do remember my mother sitting my sister and me down for one of those serious talks we had from time to time on any number of subjects.\u00a0 She was concerned that we might say something wrong when the workmen showed up.\u00a0 See, they were black, and you just didn&#8217;t encounter that many black people in rural Ohio, in the mid-1950s.\u00a0 (Even today, the African American population of the area is only 0.14%.)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Where is the emphasis, again?\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp-img\/memoir\/gwtw-poster.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" align=\"right\" \/>My mother had lived for a while in the south and had read a lot of <a id=\"l-4s\" title=\"southern fiction\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Southern_literature\">southern fiction<\/a> and fancied herself quite enlightened when it came to matters of race.\u00a0 In actual fact, although her heart was in the right place and she really <em>wanted<\/em> to like black people, she hadn&#8217;t known any, and her ideas on what it meant to be black came from the white authors of all that southern fiction she had read.\u00a0 She had seen and soaked up <a id=\"qlo:\" title=\"Gone with the Wind\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gone_with_the_Wind_%28film%29\">Gone with the Wind<\/a>, but then what resident of Atlanta had not?\u00a0 It ran in the theaters there continuously for years after its <a id=\"e3k4\" title=\"1939 premiere\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gone_with_the_Wind_%28film%29#1939_response\">1939 premiere<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Thus it was that her concept of blackness was nothing much more than a collection of <a id=\"lxvy\" title=\"black stereotypes\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_stereotypes\">black stereotypes<\/a>, but to her credit, she acknowledged the ones she considered &#8220;positive&#8221; and rejected the rest, the overtly negative and threatening stereotypes that could make an unknown other so&#8230;what is the term?\u00a0 Unlikeable?\u00a0 It had been no great feat to hear these kinds of stereotypes spouted and expounded upon in the south.\u00a0 She was accomplishing something, at least, by rejecting all that kind of talk.\u00a0 The fact is, of course, that stereotypes, by their nature, tend to be negative, perhaps especially the ones my mother considered so &#8220;positive.&#8221;\u00a0 They all diminish the humanity of the person being stereotyped.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Anyway, with nothing much to go on but her good intentions, my mother instructed us that we could &#8220;hurt the black men&#8217;s feelings&#8221; if we stared at them or said the wrong thing to them.\u00a0 I suppose she thought we&#8217;d go up to them and try to rub the pigment off their skin or something&#8211;who knows?\u00a0 I remember being largely oblivious to the men or what they were doing or what color they were.\u00a0 Even at that age, I hardly felt it realistic to think anything I&#8217;d say might have any impact on them at all.<\/p>\n<p>So, out we went on a bright day.\u00a0 It must have been spring or fall because I remember the chill air and the piercing voice of my sister, looking back through the door as we stepped outside, saying, quite cheerily, &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry, Mommy.\u00a0 I won&#8217;t say anything about those black men.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I happened to be in an advantageous position.\u00a0 Having gone out first, I could see &#8220;those black men&#8221; working right next to the porch.\u00a0 I also could see my mother&#8217;s face inside the front door.\u00a0 There was a moment.\u00a0 And then it passed.\u00a0 The workmen smiled widely, knowing that at least my mother had tried.\u00a0 My mother smiled wanly, knowing that her best efforts had almost done what she had tried so hard to avoid.\u00a0 She closed the door gently, and my sister and I went on out to play in the yard.<\/p>\n<p>My mother checked on us rather more often that day than she usually did.\u00a0 Perhaps she was, as she said, &#8220;trying to make sure we were staying out of the way.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While we were living in Ohio, my father arranged for workmen to come and do some kind of work in the yard near the front of the house.\u00a0 I was about three, so I have no idea what they were going to be doing, but I do remember my mother sitting my sister and me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[23,25],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs","tag-commentary","tag-life-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}