Pink Thunder

Questions and Answers: What Racism Looks Like (Updated)

Interestingly, I have received absolutely zero comment on this series. Often, I get comments on the site or when I see Pink friends or via IM or email. The radio silence is pretty deafening. What's the deal? Are you afraid to discuss it? Still processing your own reactions? Well, fear not -- I am in a question-answering mood these days it would seem. Here are some questions I imagine you might have. Or perhaps that you should have. So let's pretend together that I am taking questions from a live audience that includes, of course -- dear reader -- you.

PinkThunder: Yes, why don't you get us started?
Internet Genius: That must have totally sucked.
PT: Sir/ma'am, that's not a question.
IG: I know. I'm just saying. Dag. I'm really sorry that you had to go through that.
PT: Well, that is mighty sweet of you to say! The fact of the matter is that all of that happened almost 30 years ago. I see it all much differently than you perhaps. While you are experiencing your feelings about what happened right now, I did that a long, long time ago. I see it more like a movie in my mind's eye and have a fair amount of detachment and clarity about what happened.
IG: Reading this series was like watching a car accident. It made my stomach hurt. It made me sad and angry.
PT: I know. It's ok, though. Ain't no rain ever gonna fall on my parade. Not for long anyhow. You've got to know that by now! Helen Keller said: "Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow." That's my modus operandi, focusing on the positive, not the negative. And honestly, I can't say that I personally experience racism very often at all these days. In many ways, we really have made a lot of progress.

PinkThunder: Yes, you in the camouflage T-shirt...
Jet-setting Journalist: Is it even possible, outside of Hong Kong kick flick movies using special effects, for some of what you describe to happen? Like one kid taking on a bunch of other kids?
PT: Looking back, it does seem remarkable, doesn't it? I must have been a real pistol back then! A tiny tigress! I can only tell you what I remember. But as Nabakov would tell you, memories can be misty and malleable. Anyway, it's not the size of the dog in a fight that matters, as the old saying goes. It's the size of the fight in the dog.
JJ: Followup for you: did all or any of that stuff really happen?
PT: Again, all of the stories are based in real events, yes. Did I use poetic license and creativity to fill in a few gaps? Yes. Did I highlight the most dramatic events? Yes. Did this kind of thing happen daily back in grade school? No. Not even weekly.

What Racism Does and Doesn’t Look Like: Alice's Story Part II

Sticks and stones may break my bones.
But names will never hurt me.

In order to tell you Alice’s story, our finale, I’d like to tell you more about Alice. It may help bring what she did more into context. The second part of the story will then, finally be Alice’s story: What Racism Does and Doesn’t Look Like -- the very special episode. The last post of this series - still in development - will be the Epilogue - the moral of these stories...

All About Alice

Alice wasn’t my best friend. No, that was Heather. Heather was spunky and funny, a regular comedian with a light brown flyaway bowl cut and snaggle teeth. Her smile and giggle was infectious and nothing got past her. She was pretty smart.

My mother told me that Heather’s mommy had gotten the feminism in her and wanted to become a lawyer. She was in law school. That’s why Heather and her little sister lived in the low-income housing townhouses near school. And why her daddy didn’t live with them anymore. I liked Heather’s daddy. He was funny and called her “knucklenoodle.” My mother disapproved of divorce and thought that Heather’s mommy had been foolish and selfish. You could have a career and not sacrifice your family. I thought the feminism, whatever that was, sounded scary. The worst things I’d gotten so far in my life were the flu and chicken pox.

What Racism Doesn't Look Like: Alice's Story Part I

The best part of this story is at the end of Part II. So if your time is limited, just hang on for that part. It's cool with me. Otherwise, read on and stay tuned for the exciting last chapter of the series. You'll laugh, you'll cry, etc.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

Martin Luther King, I Have A Dream Speech

Fighting with Girls

In the Maryland of the 1970s, it was still considered highly unladylike for a young girl of any age, religion or ethnicity to engage in fighting. Perhaps it still is today. Thus it was too much to expect  that my girl friends would actually pitch in and start fighting if I was attacked by another group of kids. Instead, they chose indirect methods. They would run and tell the teacher on duty during recess. Many times I would be gratified to see one of my friends dragging a teacher by the hand to come rescue me.

Once I was really in trouble and losing ground when all of a sudden I heard a noise so terrifying it sent a chill up my spine and shook me to the core. If you've never heard the sound of three small girls -- all white -- launch into a simultaneous, purposeful, piercing scream of emergency and rage, well, let's just say it was a fearsome weapon that made the enemies' ears bleed. It was fight-stopping and teacher-calling. I encouraged them to help out that way, whenever they felt the urge to do so. It seems the nature of violence that perpetrators prefer to do it in the dark or when they think no one is watching.

What Racism Looks Like, Part II

My arms were curled over my face. My heads were on my head. My legs were folded up toward my abdomen. I lay on my right side in the dust. Waiting. Hoping it was going to stop soon.

The kicking, that is. About six boys, bigger than me, were kicking me into the dirt. Through the yellow-brown dust swirling about, I peeked between my forearms looking for help. I was in over my head. I'd made the mistake of wandering away from the protection of my friends again.

I could see a teacher about 100 yards away. He was tall and had a big black mustache. He could clearly see what was happening. I watched him, watching us. He stood in his red plaid shirt with his arms folded. Watching. I was surprised to see something like a look of satisfaction on his 40-something face, a hint of a smile just hidden under that mustache. I didn't know him. He wasn't my teacher.

What Racism Looks Like, Part I

It was late fall and I'd made the mistake of wandering away from the rest of the gang. I was in a contemplative mood and found myself among the tall daisies I knew grew on the other side of the playground near the soccer field fence. My boyfriend Stevie hadn't come to school that day and I was feeling blue. Autumn usually makes me feel that way.

I saw some boys riding bikes across the way but paid them no nevermind. All of a sudden my ears pricked up and a blond boy about 12 shouted to his friends: "Look there's a nigger! Let's get her!"

Actually, I'm not entirely sure what he said exactly. The only thing that registered in my head was "Words. Bad. Danger. Run!" I was 6. There weren't too many kids of color at my school and it wasn't the first time in the first grade that I'd been targeted by a bunch of other kids trying to hurt me. Or worse.

It might make an interesting word problem in math, actually.

Q: How many seconds does it take for one little girl running on foot to collide with 4 boys more than twice her size on bicycles hell-bent behind her from 50 feet away?

A: Seems like it was about 10-15 seconds before I was on the ground feeling the brand new sensation of hard rubber tires roll one by one over my turning back and front. The first tire wasn't a surprise, but somehow the 5th one was and fortunately hurt less than the first. Through the yellow and brown dust swirling around me, I clearly saw one set of black tires that sped past rather than over me.

Sue

This is a new series I'd like to explore. Being African-American, PinkThunder has had some experience with racism personally, but is also privy to extensive family history. Mostly oral but there's also a fair amount of documentation.

For some reason, I've had a friend in mind. I am sure she remembers me as well as I remember her. Her name was something very unfortunate like Soo-Yuk or Soo-Fuk. Us second graders were instructed to call her just Sue. She came late in the school year-- maybe November. So she already stuck out. Furthermore, she was direct from Korea. Her English was excellent (looking back), but she had a slight accent. And she was smaller than most of the kids and looked, well, different.

By second grade, I'd been in enough racially based fights from bigger kids in my all-white school that I had practically invented my own martial arts form. The kids in my grade knew me and mostly liked me - I was a funny, friendly, good-natured kid. But outside of that safety, there was peril all around me.

When Sue arrived though, that all changed. Kids in my grade started making fun of her. For example, Alice, a friend of mine, was sitting in Sue's seat chatting with me during a break. Sue was like "Excuse me, but you are in my sit!" Instead of "seat". The kids were merciless and unrelenting. I wasn't having it. I gave kids 3 warnings: "Leave Sue alone." "Stop making fun of Sue!" and finally "If you don't stop messing with Sue, I am going to have to hurt you."