The race card
I went to my favorite Vietnamese restaurant for lunch today. They always have a muted TV showing CNN without closed captions, and the coverage this afternoon largely surrounded the Obama/Gates situation. I happened to be watching when a dialog box popped up on the screen with the following prompt soliciting comments from viewers:
My next stop after lunch was Supercuts. I was second in line to a ridiculously adorable black toddler whose apparently adopted mother was white. When I added my name to the list of people waiting for a haircut, I noticed that the woman had written "African American" in the "Requested Stylist" field. My only guess is that the little boy was more comfortable around strangers who looked like him? Who knows.
What I do know is that when the boy started freaking out about being put in the chair and screamed NOOOOOOOOOOOO when the incredibly patient African American stylist approached him with scissors, his mother snatched him up, put him on her lap, told the stylist to continue, and everything was fine. Clearly this was a child in the presence of his adoring mother, and she had the situation totally under control. As the haircut proceeded, the mom and barber chatted and laughed while the tentative little boy sat calmly on his mother's lap. The whole scene was completely adorable.
People kind of gawked. Among them was a super elderly white woman sporting an oxygen tank and curlers who was wearing the expression of someone in Normandy on D-Day.
I don't really have any conclusions to draw from this weird sequence of events, but I did leave the barbershop thinking about one thing in particular: When that little boy gets older and starts asking his mother about why she looks different than he does, and as he begins to become aware of the bizarre cultural differences in the nexus between black and white Americans, the fact that we will have had a black president may well change the way he grows up perceiving the world. It's going to be a long time coming, but perhaps it's possible that one day race won't be an issue in America.
Is race an issue in America?Aside from being one of the more ridiculous questions I'd ever seen posed with what I can only assume was a straight face, it made me wonder whether there are respectable people in this country who would actually say No. I mean, am I crazy to think that race is obviously a huge issue in this country? Could social psychologists all be wrong? Could the whole Reverend Wright situation have been caused by, like, a simple misunderstanding? Could Michelle Obama's thesis have been written so long ago that her daughters won't experience any of the same things she did? Could Don Imus be a good guy? Did we all totally have the wrong idea about that NY Post cartoon?
My next stop after lunch was Supercuts. I was second in line to a ridiculously adorable black toddler whose apparently adopted mother was white. When I added my name to the list of people waiting for a haircut, I noticed that the woman had written "African American" in the "Requested Stylist" field. My only guess is that the little boy was more comfortable around strangers who looked like him? Who knows.
What I do know is that when the boy started freaking out about being put in the chair and screamed NOOOOOOOOOOOO when the incredibly patient African American stylist approached him with scissors, his mother snatched him up, put him on her lap, told the stylist to continue, and everything was fine. Clearly this was a child in the presence of his adoring mother, and she had the situation totally under control. As the haircut proceeded, the mom and barber chatted and laughed while the tentative little boy sat calmly on his mother's lap. The whole scene was completely adorable.
People kind of gawked. Among them was a super elderly white woman sporting an oxygen tank and curlers who was wearing the expression of someone in Normandy on D-Day.
I don't really have any conclusions to draw from this weird sequence of events, but I did leave the barbershop thinking about one thing in particular: When that little boy gets older and starts asking his mother about why she looks different than he does, and as he begins to become aware of the bizarre cultural differences in the nexus between black and white Americans, the fact that we will have had a black president may well change the way he grows up perceiving the world. It's going to be a long time coming, but perhaps it's possible that one day race won't be an issue in America.
posted by B S Goldsmith at 7/24/2009 02:37:00 PM
4 Comments:
I imagine the mother requested "African American" for the hairstylist because there's a difference between cutting a white person's hair and a black person's hair, and you can probably trust a black person to know the ins and outs of it a little better. Maybe I'm wrong, though, and maybe Supercuts provides special training so all their stylists can cut everyone's hair—"ethnic styles," I'm sure the class is called. Of course, this cuts both ways (ha ha) and implies I wouldn't want someone black cutting my hair, which makes me sound like a complete bigot. It is so hard to talk about race.
Bigot. (kidding)
Cape Verdean barbers were always a little hesitant to cut my hair, and never used scissors, so they had to sort of hover above my head with clippers, but it always turned out fine in the end. Plus they always used a straight razor to clean up the neckline and sideburns which was awesome.
To Ben's point, I think that having had a black President will absolutely change the way the next generation of Americans perceive society. I do think race will be an "issue in America." But it is becoming less of an issue to the bulk of society, and overtime it will make race issues sort of fringe. We're certainly not there yet, but I agree that there is hope.
I mean race is probably always going to be an issue in America. Just like religion or class or gender.
But if you compare the photos from the beer diplomacy summit today to what was happening 40 years ago, it is hard not to feel like some sort of "progress" has been made.
[Quotation marks added especially for the philosophy majors in the house.]
To a large extent I think that we might be farther along and in a more promising position with race than we are with religion, class, and gender.
It might just be the people who I deal with, but they are much more aware of racial biases and discrimination than they are any other sort.
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