Future Mr. and Mrs. Bastrop at the Washington Journalism Conference, senior year in High School.
Tomorrow is my oldest son's birthday and the week after next he will enter Middle School. Watching your child gain an important year toward adulthood is always bittersweet. Crossing over the line into adolescence from young childhood is a major reality check for parent and child. I've been ambivalent lately about my oldest boy growing up. I'm not the kind of parent who tries to stop it and I'm definitely not in denial, but there is a wistfulness to seeing maturity happen, when childhood is almost gone.
So it was with a tremendously sinking feeling that, when I walked in on him this morning as he lay across my unmade bed watching footage of Ferguson on MSNBC and I asked him if he knew what was going on, his answer was a devastatingly innocent "No, but I'm glad I'm not there. I'm glad that isn't me."
No, son, that isn't you. But it very surely could be...
My wife and I have been together since our senior year in High School. She was the editor of the school newspaper and I was the editorial writer. She likes to joke that the only time she ever spent in the Principal's office was when she was there defending something I had written. She also likes to joke that she was in the Principal's office more times than I ever was, but neither of these are jokes because they are both true.
I grew up white and privileged, there is just no other way to put it. Part of that privilege was the ability to be a shit and get away with it. I have no problem admitting that now because I have grown up (a little) but in my youth (and beyond) I was very lucky and my record of narrow escapes and squeaking out of tight corners remains a mystery to me and everyone else in my life. Blessed, lucky, guardian angel, whatever you want to call it, my wife has always had one thing to say about it: you wouldn't be here if you were black.
Mrs. B grew up poor, government cheese poor. The granddaughter of a 92nd Infantry Division Buffalo Soldier who almost stayed in Paris after the Apennines and Po Valley campaigns of WWII and a sharecropper who still worked(s) the same sugar cane fields, for the same family, his ancestors worked as slaves in Acadian Louisiana. Her experience with police was a cordon as they removed another body from the field behind the apartments, or the time as a little girl her father slapped her mother when she talked back to a policeman called to have her move along from the "white" watermelon stand on the side of the highway. There were no tight corners or narrow escapes in her world when it came to authority. People went to prison for that, or got dead.
At school we made an unlikely pair in the eyes of many people but our friends thought we were great and many are still our friends today. We encountered some resistance but our school was unusually progressive. I do believe we were the only black/white couple on our small campus and there were more than a few who didn't like it but nowhere near the level of hostility to be found outside that bubble. And while Houston in the late 1980's was still largely segregated and certainly a racist place we never encountered the level of hostility that we were due to encounter once at college in Boston. Being my home turf, I was genuinely surprised as we walked down Newbury Street our first winter there and some kid turned as we passed and said "I fuckin' hate to see that." I can still see his face, the one I wanted to rearrange but didn't. I can still feel her tug on my arm as she kept us walking on. "Don't," she said. And I didn't. I didn't know what white privilege was. I didn't know the decision to choose or not to choose a fight is almost by default the definition.
As the years went by and we realized we were together for the long haul we naturally started talking kids. We would be smart about it, no unwanted pregnancies for us. Despite being adamantly pro-choice that was not an option. We would be in control of our futures and once we were truly ready, after we had both finished graduate school and had viable careers, we would take that leap and never look back.
Before we leapt we did look forward and considered all the possibilities the world would have to offer, because any child we had would be "black" as well as "mixed" and would never be considered "white" and we had zero frame of reference for what that really meant. Each year it seemed we encountered more and more black/white couples, but there were no role models for us to draw upon. We only knew what society and history told us and that was the black experience. After all, the One Drop Rule was a fresh reality in principle if not in practice and Loving v. Virginia striking down inter-racial marriage was barely 20 years old. I still remember the fear we felt simply talking about the possibilities. Every time we read or heard about another black kid killed or abused by police or by a racist element would bring a sense of dread. Mixed doesn't matter at the point of a gun or the end of a baton.
Eventually leap we did and then one day, Congratulations! It's a boy! And what a beautiful boy he was and is. Healthy, happy, with a crazy mix of all of his genetic ancestors. Big, high cheekbones from his Native American great-great-great grandmother. Wavy thick hair from his Georgian great-grandfather. Undefinably oblong eyes from both of those roots. A Dutch mouth. An English nose. Skin that could be from a dozen regions of the world, depending upon the light, or his clothing, or the angle of the sun. Strongly built from both sides, clearly destined for the over-six-foot height that skipped my and my brother's generation. My boy is a strapping, handsome bronzed son of a gun if I may brag. How could anyone find this child threatening?
The life our kids lead is a varied as their ancestry. Acadian Louisiana black culture is a rich thing and so is New England yankee. The boy can peel crawfish and eat boudin with my wife's family just as well as crack lobster and steamers with mine. Visiting family in Lake Charles or at his aunty's place in the lower 9th Ward is no mystery to him. In summer he pilots our boat and picks raspberries at our island in Maine. He was born into two rich cultures and two very different worlds. My wife says that miscegenation is the way of the future, appropriating that word and turning it out of context. I am in agreement 100%.
A potential danger to that diversity is that he sees himself as "separate" from the negative of dangerous aspects of one and as parcel to the privileges of the other. Nobody chooses poor over privilege. He can observe the drug dealers at the end of the street when we visit Louisiana or sit in a room full of aunts watching Trayvon Martin coverage on MSNBC and hear the warning and excruciating anger. In his mind, though, that's not about him. His life is different, he's going to MIT, next summer we'll actually go to Seattle again before we go to Maine. At least that's the way it has been until recently, until earlier this year. He had a wake up call and I wondered this morning if he is finally making that connection.
At the end of the school year he got blamed for something that was pretty serious and it broke his world, the kind of offense that would have meant expulsion had they so chosen. He didn't do it, and the kid who did finally came foreword, but not before suspicion had permanently tarnished him in the eyes of principals, teachers, parents and other students. It was a sucky, unfair, totally fucked up way to end his time at what had been a really great school and left the first true sting of injustice. It wasn't a race based assumption, we don't think, but is was a likeliest target assumption. He'd done some innocent hacking like silly batch files that change the screen color and everyone knew he'd done that. In third grade. It was logical to go to him first. What wasn't logical was their refusal to look further and to simply assign blame. He felt unfairly targeted and he had been. We never doubted him and he knows that much. Some parent's said we should have cut him lose to learn a lesson even if he didn't do it. Those parent's all have white kids. One of those parents has a son who actually did it. We are all still waiting (in vain) for apologies. Another rude reality.
Flash forward to this morning as he lay across our unmade bed, asking to explain why the police killed Michael Brown and why they were holding a riot in Ferguson, MO. The realization that right now is the very best time to make sure everything we have told him before sticks really, really well, before he gets into Middle School where kids start to fool with drugs and gangs shit really takes off. Before hormones and attitudes trump decision-making and before mean words lead to fights in a school where poverty outnumbers privilege three to one and racial lines are pretty clear. Before he has a chance to lose the trust of teachers and principals in a world where many see your color and your size before they see your heart. In a school where police keep order inside the halls as a miniature version of the world at large.
We've had these talks before: Keep your hands where they can see them. Do not turn your back. Keep your mouth shut and say yes sir and no sir. May I reach for my wallet, sir? I am reaching for my wallet, sir. Do not talk back, do not argue, do not give any attitude. Follow orders even unto jail. We will never be upset with you and will always bail you out. Never fight back and don't ever try to run.
These are not new words but today I think he heard them for the first time and that had us both weeping.