Under the Bus

My son is an African-American child we adopted as a new-born. Born in 1995, he was part of that generation which saw a large number of babies born which we called “bi-racial.” I will always be of the opinion that this influx of babies born in those days probably will do a lot to improve race relations in America as many, if not most, of them had grandparents who dote on them, regardless of race. Shortly after his adoption, I ran across against a man I knew who couldn’t wait to tell me his personal experience. He told me he had one of “those” too, his daughter had “taken up with a black kid and came up pregnant.” She and the baby were living at home with his wife and him and as he spoke about the little baby I could tell he was the light of his life. I knew this man and knew he was a redneck racist, but this little baby was melting his old rotten redneck, racist heart. He was a better man because of his little grandson.

There are many people who believe a child with any degree of African-American bloodlines whatsoever should be raised in a black family. Their argument, simplified considerably and perhaps unfairly, is that only a black family is socially prepared to raise these children and that if they are raised by white parents, or, I suppose, by mixed parents, they will be confused and this will be detrimental to their well-being. This argument was first proposed years ago by a group of African-American social workers; however, it has been discredited in more recent years. The new idea is that the child will benefit from having two loving parents dedicated to providing a wholesome environment for the child or children regardless of their racial differences.

Here is my observation: We may call a child of mixed blood whatever we want, but if there is a single drop of known African-American blood in him or her, they will think of themselves, and society will think of them, as African-Americans. That may not be reasonable, but it’s reality. The African-American social workers would say, “See, we told you so.” But, I come from a completely different background and look at things completely differently than they do. I see this attitude as a hold-over from the slave days in the Old South and the Jim Crow era. In those times, people were considered to be Black even if they had a single drop traceable to an African lineage, thus making them subject to slavery during the days slavery was allowed in America and susceptible to discrimination while the Jim Crow laws were the law of the land. I personally like the designation, “Bi-racial”, but I have lost that battle for now. I’m hoping I have not lost the war.

My son, when he was very small, had no idea what it was to be Black. In day care, there was a mixture of kids, giving it the look one would expect to see in a day care at the United Nations. There were Blacks, Indians, Indians from South America, Chinese, Hispanics, Bi-racial and God knows what else. There were even a couple of White kids there as well. None of those kids had any idea what “race” was, nor did they think they should act any differently toward anyone. That observation and that reaction took a while for the kids to learn from their parents and did not manifest itself until about the third or fourth grade in elementary school. I watched my son go from having no idea that he might be any different from anyone else, to slowly becoming aware. He didn’t understand what it was, nor did he understand what it was to be “Black”, he just knew that whatever Michael Jordan was, he was. He was the only child of African-American descent in the family, and we didn’t have that many friends of this bloodline. We did not intentionally expose him to a Black culture as this would have been foreign to us and would have come across as artificial. So, he had some difficulty in deciding who he was. We did not try to hide it from him, nor did we try to shield him from the experience. We openly spoke of him as a bi-racial child, and assumed this would be his identity as he got older. However, it soon became apparent that he was going to identify himself as an African-American child; he never did accept that he was bi-racial.

He was in about the fifth grade in elementary school when he was becoming more aware. His friends in school didn’t treat him any differently because of his race and I felt I saw positive signs for our nation in that young generation. As he’s grown up, I’ve become more and more impressed with the tolerance of younger people. I believe my generation has been better than that of my parents and now, it seems to me, my children and grandchildren are better than mine. They do not have the suspicions or the fear of people not like themselves that characterized earlier times, and that may be, in part, caused by the presence of so many bi-racial children his age.

Still, he considered himself “Black”, as did his classmates, even though he had more “White” in him than “Black” and a not insignificant amount of American Indian. I’m not sure he thinks all that much about it, nor am I sure his friends and classmates think all that much about it. This is as it should be, but I’m not sure if the reaction would be the same if he had darker skin.

He was in the fifth grade when I decided to take him to lunch with me. We were driving to Oklahoma City where I intended to take him to a place called Family Affair. While driving, I told him this was unlike any other restaurant he had ever been to. I explained that it was in an area of town which was predominantly, if not exclusively, populated by African-Americans. I told him it was owned and operated by some Black women and most of the patrons would probably be African-American. After I had told him this, he simply asked if I had been there before. I assured him that I had, in fact, been there several times. That was all he asked, he seemed satisfied.

When we drove into the community where the restaurant was located, he didn’t notice that everyone on the street was Black. He didn’t notice the bars on the windows and on the door which were placed there to prevent break-ins, even though we didn’t have such security measures on our windows and doors at home, nor had he ever, so far as I knew, ever seen such a thing. We walked into the restaurant and to his surprise, and mine, the place was nearly full of diners. It was busier than I had ever seen it. And, every person in there, patrons, wait staff, cooks, everyone was Black. He grabbed my leg in a bear hug, holding as tight as he could, so tight it would have been impossible to slip a cigarette paper between us.

I was painfully aware that he had no experience at all in being around African-Americans and he was frightened. Was it unreasonable? Yes. Was it understandable? Yes. Did it say anything bad about him? No. It probably was a greater testimony on me than it was on him and the reader can pass judgment as he or she sees fit. I won’t argue the point. I was reminded of a lawyer I once worked with. She was raised in a military family and she had travelled the world, always living in base housing. She was always a small minority, racially speaking, wherever she lived. In 1973, she came to the school where I was teaching, a school which had a large number of African-Americans. Her father had retired and he brought his family to this, his home town, to live. She told me later, after we were both lawyers, that when she moved to that little town she was terrified. She had never lived around so many Blacks and she brought with her her own stereotypes and prejudices, together with her discomforts and fears. My son was seeing in this restaurant more Blacks in a single setting than he would see in a year’s time. More importantly, he and I were clearly the minority and all the talking I had done beforehand had not prepared him for this experience.

There was an empty table next to us and another across the room. I pointed them out and asked him where he would like to sit. “This one,” he replied, selecting the table nearest us. We sat down and he looked around the room. It seemed all eyes were on us and then he leaned closer to me. In a stage whisper I am sure most everyone heard, he said from the corner of his mouth, “Dad! Dad! Everyone in here’s Black but you!”