Do you have an extra five minutes today? I’d guess we all do. I encourage you to spend five minutes watching this video “A Conversation with my Black Son.” It features a succession of African-American parents simply looking into a camera describing how they feel giving “the talk.” It’s the talk black American parents feel obligated to give to their sons and daughters about how to respond if they are stopped by the police. It’s the same talk several say they received from their parents.
While one speaker in the video is roughly my own age, most are roughly the age of my own grown children. I had several emotions as I watched.
- One was a deep sadness about the racial divide in our nation—I taught my kids: “the policeman is your friend.” Here are parents teaching their kids the opposite. Not because they want to, but because they feel they have to.
- Another was empathy as my father’s heart beat in tune with several fathers. I watched tears begin to form in the corners of one Dad’s eyes that were running down his cheeks by the time he finished. He spoke about how he loves his son and wants to keep him safe.
- A third is hard to put words around. Maybe “piquant.” While the credits role at the end, every father or mother who spoke holds up in front of them a photo of a winsomely smiling son or daughter (most around 7-10 years). The photos look exactly like the annual grade school photos of my own kids. As far as I can tell, these kids are being raised in normal, middle-class American households like mine—not in a violent urban ghetto, not by absentee or negligent parents. Except for one difference: the color of our skin.
Of course, you may have a different reaction. Spend five minutes watching the video and see for yourself.
Here’s my take-away. My worldview as a white American has major gaps with the worldviews of black Americans.
The video helps me admit that I know very little about the racism my fellow Americans experience as an ordinary part of their lives. I’m totally oblivious. I’m clueless. It’s a black hole to me. Worldviews are shaped by experience, and the experience that shapes these parents’ worldviews is so different from mine, we might as well be living on different planets. It’s not “white guilt” to admit this—it’s just reality. Listen to these parents talk about their kids and see if you come to the same conclusion.
I was introduced to the video through an article that features Dr. Roland G. Fryer, Jr., the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard and the first one to receive a John Bates Clark medal, a prize given to the most promising American economist under 40. Dr. Fryer’s research compares how several major city police departments’ use higher levels of force against blacks versus whites. You will find his conclusions challenging.
Here is how Dr. Fryer, a highly decorated professor at a flagship university, shares his personal experience:
“Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It’s an awful experience,” he said. “I’ve had it multiple, multiple times. Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them.”
My white American worldview might tempt me to write off these words as excessive, as exaggeration, as a rant. Or, I could conclude that in the presence of new information, I need to re-consider my worldview. If you’ve read this far without watching the video, take just five minutes and watch it now. It won’t solve racism in America, but it does puncture the happy assumption that racism does not touch all our lives, black and white.
Share your reaction to the video in a comment below.
I am one who has nearly always included people of color as my close friends. And Muslims, Hindus, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Jews and Gentiles. Until we begin saying “us” instead of “them” we will never come together as Americans. That starts in the home where prejudice is first taught or not, where moral values are lived out or not, where respect and responsibility are exhibited or not.
Knowing blacks who grew up in a ghetto as I do, you are right to say you know nothing of their experience. It’s shockingly different. Imagine teaching school in the projects, and knowing your little students are going home, up the stairs to their apartments where couples are fornicating, where there is human fecal matter. How can we possibly relate to such a childhood. My women friends taught in such places, came from such places. But their matriarchal families, like that of Dr. Ben Carson, said, “Go to school, get an education. It’s the ONLY way out of here.” They listened, some got PhD degrees; all became financially independent. But with deep, deep scars. Were these marks on their souls due to white people. That’s a question to ponder, isn’t it.
This weeks Christan Century includes the blog found here:
http://christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2016-07/your-black-lives-matter-me
It is a reminder that it is extremely difficult to be a black person in America than it is to be white in America. The blogger presents something that we can practice with blacks within our day to day encounters, that we say, “Your back life matters to me!” I need to practice this.
During the televised protests in Furguson, MO. my daughter asked, “Why should anyone judge me because of my color?” She is black, born in Ethiopia, and adopted by my wife and I when we served in Ethiopia as PCUSA mission co-workers. She becomes anxious when ever she sees a police vehicle, or a police officer while she practices driving with me. As her white father I have tried to help her understand the best response to being stopped, not only when she is with me, but in the future when she is licensed to drive on her own. I am beginning to get it, but I know that I can never understand the depth of fear on the part of the parents in this video. These parents experience racism as a personal reality. The fear is real and existential. I can only say that I believe I know the fear.
It’s wonderful to read this. Your words as a white man and pastor have a bigger impact than the black voices trying to be heard. This is the best thing you could do.