I was driving through an apartment complex as a shortcut on my way home from work in Tampa Florida, and I saw these two little boys, about 8 years old, walking with their arms around each others necks, laughing, two best friends. One was a little black boy, black as the night, and the other was a little white boy, red hair and freckles.
I know this is not uncommon anymore. I know that. But still, it made me cry. I could see the future.
The feelings I had were on many levels, and I want to try to describe them. I am an older white woman, and I view the world through my own racial experiences, growing up in the Detroit area in the 60s. I see race, I feel racial differences. But what I saw in these boys were two kids that don't see race, even though I could imagine that both sets of their parents might.
I lived in South Carolina for 2 years, and Hawaii for 20 years, and I raised my son in Hawaii. Now I have a boy who also doesn't see race. He is different from me. (more below)
My son just doesn't see race. Of course he notices skin color differences, but it means nothing to him. Everyone we knew in Hawaii was mixed ethnically (he is white and hispanic), and he had friends of all colors. When we moved to Florida, he could not understand why most of the kids in his honors classes were white, while most of the kids in his non-honors classes were black (he had a mixed schedule). He just couldn't get it - why would they be divided up like that? Of course he knows the history, but it just doesn't compute for him, he can't see any difference that would justify it. He doesn't know personally how testing has harmed the opportunities for black kids in the school system - he only sees that the kids are not any different from one another, yet they are somehow segregated like this.
I lived in South Carolina for a couple of years where my son was born, and I knew I didn't want to raise him there. I was an assistant professor (see my previous diary on race issues with my colleague), and I saw a campus that had white professors and black food service workers, classes that had white students sitting on one side and black students on the other, separate prom queens, and neighborhoods that were either all black or all white. I couldn't raise my son there. So I got a position in Hawaii, where I had gone to graduate school and knew what the integrated culture was like.
Now I have a son who doesn't see race. I still do. I still feel racial differences, based on the cultural differences present in my childhood. My son does not. Those two little boys do not. I have gotten a glimpse of what it is like for people to not even see that there is any difference.
The future is here, and I have seen it.