Race Talk at Brunch

Sunday morning at a small get-together, I had the first direct personal conversation I ever had with an African-American about growing up on opposite sides of the color line in the South.

I'm almost sixty years old; how could it have taken this long?

Surprisingly it wasn't the Obama campaign that started the conversation. It was the movie The Secret Life of Bees, with the black woman in the group saying it was a shallow and unrealistic treatment of the black characters in the story. She called it "a white woman's fantasy."

This friend--I'll call her Jane--grew up with a mother who worked in a white woman's home. I grew up with a black woman helping to take care of me from my earliest memory until adulthood. In only a few minutes, we took a run through some very sensitive stuff: how this kind of arrangement could affect a black kid, how a black nanny might really feel about the white family. A fuller picture than either side typically saw.

During the conversation, I felt as if I were walking a high-wire: easily, but not daring to look down. At the same time, I felt a growing exhilaration and relief.

By the time I was halfway home, though, I was very sad. I didn't feel the connection with the earlier talk; but I knew it was there: how much my privilege has cost people I love, and how little I ever did to shift that balance.

I've come to feel that there's not a lot of point in flaunting guilt, or at least no admirable point; there's plenty to be done still, so I should shut up and do it.

Still, the straight talk was a good thing. For me, anyway.






If you like this post, please bookmark it on del.icio.us, share it on StumbleUpon, vote for it on Digg. Thanks so much.