MicroAggressions

Last week we celebrated 10 years of the boys living with us.  Next year we celebrate 10 years since the adoption but, one step at a time.  We had this picture done while we were in Faneuil Hall celebrating our 10 years.  First we went to Dick’s Last Resort (A very big hit for the boys) and then we had this caricature created.  Top left is Dareek (23), bottom left Deron (17), top right is Alan (16) and bottom right is DQ (21) and, of course, me and Bob in the middle.

Bob got to Faneuil Hall with Alan and Deron and had to wait for me to gather up Dareek and DQ.  Later when he got home he posted the following on FaceBook [minor editing took place]:

“If you want to know something about racism in America, hang out with a couple black teenagers in a mall area. Sunday Sharon Kelley Antia and I took our kids out for a 10 year anniversary lunch. We had to take two cars and I got to Boston's Faneuil Hall first and had some time to kill. After walking around a bit Deron, Alan and I ended up hanging in the shade in front of L’Attitude Boston Boutique.

Within a minute two gentlemen with bright blue shirts marked SECURITY stood in front of the three of us, eyeballing Deron. Annoyed, I spent the next ten minutes eyeballing the security guys who decided to move to my right, out of my direct line of sight, while still watching Deron. All of us were doing our own thing waiting for Sharon, Dareek and DQ.

During the time the security guys are conducting surveillance on Deron, a gentleman with a black tee shirt emblazoned with "Now is the time for revolution" in white bold type above a white circular logo in Arabic, leads a woman by the fingertips, who is dressed in black niqab with rectangular eye slit (aspect ratio 5.5-6:1), embroidered on the edge with white thread and wearing sandals with an iPhone (white with a curved back, which would be a 3G or 3GS 2009 vintage) videotaping everything in site, often turning to get 360 views with earphones in his ear and occasionally talking as if on the cell phone slowly walks past my family and the security guys.

Security guys stay focused on Deron and Alan.

A few minutes later I get the word that Sharon is around the corner and tell this to Deron and Alan ([in other words] I talk to the two black kids) The two security guys look at each other and move on.

We are all profiling our surroundings, biased in our ignorance, knowledge and experience.

Having been briefed in OpSec and the stages of a terrorist attack my observations are as biased as when a mall security guard sees in a couple black teenagers.

I would like to think that the difference between the security guard and myself is that I am aware of my bias.

But my acknowledging my bias might be an intellectual bias on my part.

This whole bias thing is complicated.

We all have biases, how our biases cloud our interactions and how we react based on our biases defines us as humans.”

I asked Deron if he had noticed the security guard eyeballing him and he shrugged it off.  Since I have known them our kids have experienced this type of bias.  When they first moved in the two older kids talked amongst themselves about how they would ‘have each other’s backs’ when the white kids picked fights with them.  (Fortunately that did not come to pass.)  Early on I remember going shopping with them on Moody St and Dareek and DQ came our of a store and told me they had been followed around, in my ignorance I assumed they must have been exaggerating. 

A couple years later I was at Fresh Pond in Cambridge with Deron and Alan, they were probably somewhere around 9 and 10.  I had to go into the bank so they went to the Game Stop next door.  When they came out of their own volition I knew something was up.  They said they didn’t know why but the manager had been following them around and then told them to leave.  Well any parent of a pre-teen knows there is more to the story.  And any parent of a black kid knows that it might not be childish mischief.  So in I went with the two boys in tow.  The manager looked at me, looked at the kids and asked if they were with me.  I said that yes, I was their mother and I wanted to know if there was a problem.  He assured me everything was fine and the boys were welcome to shop there.  I told him no, they would not be staying.  I should have confronted the man but it is one of many times I did not.

These events repeat themselves over an over again.  My kids are great at math but some of them struggle with classwork and hence one of them was in the lowest level math class.  One day when he was in seventh grade he told me ‘people say we are stupid’.  I sent the following email to the principal and the superintendent, among others. 

D said to me this morning, "is my math class a way of segregating us?" [I didn't know he knew the word segregate]

"People say we are stupid."

I [D] told X that I am in Section E math and he said "O I feel bad for you.  That is the stupid class".  "I [D] said, 'How do you know what problems the kids in this class?  How would you feel if you found out some of the kids have certain things going on and you called them stupid?'"  I [Sharon] asked, what his response was and D said, "he didn't say anything else".

 I asked who says this class is for stupid kids and he said "everyone, everyone says this class is for kids that are stupid".  "I am not any more stupid than some of the kids.  I am smarter in social studies than some kids, why don't those kids have to be in a special class"?

"I don't understand what the point is.  They put is in a separate class.  Why do they do that?  It is like they are trying to say we are stupid.  Everyone says it".

I told him I was proud of his response to X.  I also told him that going forward whenever he hears anything along those lines he would be well advised to excuse himself from wherever he is and go tell someone, either the principal, Claudia, LaToya, someone that he is comfortable telling this too.  Identify one person and go to them each and every time he hears this.

Meanwhile, this is a burden he should not have to bear.

This is the principal’s response to D’s comments, and I quote,”

[D’s] comments point to two issues -- first that we have leveled math and second that our students have a culture right now where it's acceptable to be mean to each other.

Period, that was the extent of her response.  In other words, deal with it.

Just recently Deron at 17 sometimes finds himself with his friends driving around late (10 pm) at night.  He says they frequently get pulled over by the police.  It always goes smoothly and he does not seem bothered by it.  I am just grateful it goes smooth and pray it continues that way.  I suspect Michael Brown's parents use to say the same prayer.

Mcroaggression is a term I learned in grad school.  According to Wikipedia, “Sue et al. (2007) describe microaggressions as, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people.”  Each individual incident in and of itself is bearable, put them together time after time and it can be too much.

It exists.  Here in our community.  Don’t kid yourself.  But like Bob wrote, if we acknowledge it, if we attempt to deal with it and understand it, maybe we can chip away at it.  Just a little at a time.