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How blind is color blind?
My daughter Katy is part black.
"So?" you might say, if color doesn't matter.
"How black?" you might ask, if it does.
Not so many generations ago, 1/64th black would have cast Katy into slavery. Today, my daughter believes her 1/2, or 1/4, is no big deal.
Things are different now, she says. Indeed, the worst racist experience she can remember happened at the mall, when some kid whispered, "Vanilla and chocolate," as Katy walked by with a white friend.
Racially mixed couples? Katy claims she and her blond Swedish boyfriend have never been mistreated. Someone did ask him once what it's like to kiss a black girl, and Katy says they just laughed at his stupidity. No big deal.
Some would say my daughter's an "Oreo" because she has white parents, siblings, and lives in a middle-class white suburb. Still, none of that alters her skin color, and that's what other people see. So if they're prejudiced, why hasn't Katy noticed? Things have changed, she says.
Yes, things have changed. Slavery is illegal, and so is racist-inspired violence and discrimination. We're all equal now, at least that's what the law says. And Katy hasn't yet faced the difference between rules and reality. She believes in freedom, equality, and justice for all, just like they teach it in school.
But, Katy hasn't left the safety of her school, family, and community. When she goes to college in the fall, she might discover a different truth -- that not every place or person has changed with the law. Some people may disdain her, simply because she is (part) black.
In an editorial from an Oregon college newspaper, a student wrote that she thought racial discrimination was over, until she talked to fellow students of color. An Hispanic student told her he's treated rudely in local stores. An African-American student said her employer often "forgets" to pay her, while remembering to pay the white employees. Once, the same student found KKK literature all over her car.
The stories continue ... Black students stopped by police for no violation except their color. Hispanic students interviewed for good jobs, but not hired. The common problem here is that some white people still assume young men and women of color are poor, angry, and dangerous.
I read these stories, and boil. Will Katy face such meanness? We never taught her to be tough. We raised her to believe that if she worked hard, she could succeed. We urged her to dream, and make her dreams come true. Could we be wrong? Should we have prepared her for hatred and humiliation?
Maybe Katy will escape this kind of abuse because she's light-skinned, and can almost "pass" as white.
"No, Mom," she would say, if I suggested slipping through white walls. "I won't pretend to be something I'm not."
She makes me proud. And scared.
Katy will be herself -- part white and part black. And she will push forward the truth, the dream, that it's no big deal.