is your mom white?

Mine's not. She's Black. My daddy too. But that's neither here nor there.

Okay, so. My first term in phd school is very race-intensive. All my classes are dealing with race in America. Some more than others, but all more than none. Yeah. You got it.

Now, one particular class (Psychological Effects of Racism and Prejudice on Afams) is filled with some very (VERY!) opinionated people. Not always, you know, well-informed or articulate, but opinionated. I love this class. I look forward to it every Tuesday and Thursday, just because I never know what some of these folks are gonna bust out with.

Right, so today we were talking about Afams in Minnesota. (3% of the population. That's three Black folks for every hundred white folks you see walking down the street.) Well the discussion veered toward "subconsciously" racist behavior, and the professor offered up a personal anecdote of something that happened to him right before class today. He was walking through one of the parking ramps on campus, and he happened to pass a white lady. As soon as they'd made eye contact, she turned around to look back at her own car, and then proceeded to check and double-check her door locks with her little key remote. !!!!!!!!!!!

My professor shared this with us just to show that even though a lot of people think racism isn't very influential in our lives anymore, we ought to think more critically about its residual effects. Good point, right? Yes. BUT! This wasn't very convincing to one girl (yes, a white girl) because she immediately started to reply that the instance in the professor's anecdote could've been caused by anything. I was already rolling my eyes and turning away from her, when just about the whole rest of the class broke out with a great roar of "NOOOO!!!!!" I almost fell out of my seat laughing. Not at the girl and her stupid comment of course, because that would be mean and disrespectful, and that's not me. I was laughing at the unexpected reaction from the class; it just tickled me to see these twenty frustrated people all trying to get the point across, so frustrated that all they could do was exclaim. Well.

That outburst set the whole class abuzz, and the next thing I know one of the more outspoken Black girls is talking about how in her own personal life she tries to combat that kind of "subconscious" racism by flipping it around to antagonize white people, by clutching her purse when she sees a white man, or locking her car door when one stands near her on the street. I think she thinks little things like that might make a white person stop to wonder why a Black girl might be doing that. Yeah. So out of absolutely nowhere, a different (white) girl asks Antagonistic Girl if her mother is white. What?!!!?!? Yes, the girl in question is biracial, but a lot of us in the class had trouble figuring out where Inquisitive Girl was coming from or going to. She quickly responded to our bewildered and wondrous looks by saying, "Well I just wondered how you felt doing that to someone of your own race. The same as your parent."

Oh. and then. it all. broke. loose.

I'm talking about necks working (not mine), eyes rolling (yes, mine!), eyes glaring (not mine), and a generally strong show of disapproval. IG got quite a bit of tongue-lashing from a couple of folks failing to see what parentage had to do with the desire of teaching white folks a lesson, and one soul even dared ask IG if her mama was white, endeavoring to show her the complete irrelevance (and impropriety, really) of such a question. LOL. I thought things were getting a bit out of hand with that, so I tried to help the prof bring in some calm coolness by getting off the subject, but the class was having none of it for a good minute. IG tried to kind of shrug it off; she sank down a bit in her chair while the Outspoken Gang continued to remark on how ridiculous she was. Poor thing. A little bit of tension (and quite a bit of hilarity for me) hung in the air for the rest of the hour.

I'm still laughing now as I type this 4 hours later.

That class is awesome.


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A Verse For You Today

Therefore prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." ~ 1 Peter 1: 13-16 (NIV)