When I listened to the Barack Obama speech on racial relations three weeks ago, I said to myself, “You tell them, Barack.” Then in his column two weeks back [Even OP has plenty to learn from Obama’s plain talk on race, March 26], Dan Haley reminded me that Obama was not just talking to “them.” He was also talking to me.
Dan’s comments forced me to ask myself if I was resting on my laurels when it came to race relations. I hated the question. I have been strongly anti-racial bias since the 1960s. I have never wavered in my support. While I mulled over the Haley Challenge, my memory drew me back to an event about 15 years ago. The event is about me. The event is true.
About 20 years ago when I lived in a suburb of Detroit, there was a racial incident at our high school. The incident led to some finger-pointing, name-calling, and chest pounding on all sides of the issue. The school district’s Inter-Racial Committee scheduled an emergency session to discuss the incident. I was a new member of the committee and the meeting would be my first.
As frequently happens, by the time the committee could meet, the incident’s volatility had abated. Apologies had been made, hands had been shook, and the agitation had shriveled up-at least temporarily.
At the committee meeting, the details of the incident and its resolution were reviewed by the school principal. She said it had been a misunderstanding between a couple of boys and not a racial incident. Several committee members lamented the fact that an insignificant misunderstanding had led to racial discord in the community. The incident was receiving a committee tsk! tsk!
Doris, an African-American woman spoke up. She angrily said she was having no part of any soft-pedaling of the incident. She strongly stated she believed that the incident was racial, and the African-American community’s outrage that followed was justified. She demanded answers from the school and the school district on a series of questions she had written down. The questions were reviewed, and it was agreed that a written response would be provided. A meeting for the following week was scheduled.
As the meeting was breaking up, a more casual and friendlier discussion began about race relations. After listening for a while, I said that I felt while progress had been made on race relations, there were still barriers to overcome, and that many of them were hidden. (It was about as profound as I could get in those days.) To illustrate my barrier point, I said that despite the fact that I had attended an integrated high school, had been in the military with blacks and whites, and worked for a company that assertively sought to hire minorities, I had never been in an African-American’s home. That sent a committee tsk! tsk! in my direction, as in “What has that to do with anything?”
A few days later, I received a call telling me that the location of the Inter-Racial Committee’s next meeting had being changed. I was then given Doris‘ address and was told that she had requested that the meeting be held there. When I arrived, Doris asked the committee members to excuse her for a couple of minutes. She then took me on a tour of her home pointing out every detail-her family photos, the piano in the living room, her favorite painting, the new microwave in the kitchen, etc. At the end of the tour, she laughed and said, “See? It is just like a white person’s home.” When we got back to the dining room, the meeting was held and a proposal to send a resolution to the board was passed. There were some more meetings on the subject before the incident quietly dissipated.
I saw Doris several more times after the house tour. Our conversations were always cordial and open. We disagreed on some issues, but never angrily and never without at least trying to understand each other’s viewpoint. As time went by, we spent more time talking about our kids and our concern for them than anything else. We talked like friends.
When Doris asked for the meeting at her house she could have smugly said, “See? My house is just like yours.” She chose to go further. She showed me her house and in doing that, she showed me the things that were important to her. She forced me to look closer at our differences. She let me look in her soul, a soul that had been angrily guarded when she angrily chastised the committee members. Her soul was sweet. It has taken me 15 years to figure out that she Obama’d me.
In thinking about Doris now, I realize I have wavered in my support for racial diversity and equality. I have not followed through on the lesson she taught me. I have allowed myself to ignore the amount of racial biases and barriers that still exist and failed to realize that some are better hidden than they were 20 years ago. I am them!
So I am going to take the Haley Challenge. Step 1 will be to go to the Main Library, the most diverse place in Oak Park, and sit on the second floor for an hour. I am not going to read though I will prop a book on my lap. Instead I am going to look at faces. I am going to look at mouths for smiles, frowns, grins, and grimaces. I am going to ignore color completely-all faces are in play. I am going to guess if the person is married, what kind of job they have, what kind of books they like, where they buy their shoes, and whether they are proud of where they live. I am going to ignore differences and find similarities.
Then I am going to move to Step 2. That’s when I begin talking to these people and offer a little of my soul in hope that they will let me see some of theirs.
I have not planned any Steps 3, 4, etc. yet. That will come after I talk to some souls.
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