By SYDNE DIDIER
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Daily Hampshire Gazette
AMHERST — Like so many others, I was appalled by the recent Supreme Court decision allowing Michigan to uphold its ban on race-conscious admissions at public colleges and universities.
I am a white woman and my path through college and graduate school was, relative to many, an easy one. I never had to consider how I was viewed because of the color of my skin, what opportunities I was exempted from, or what assumptions others made about me. While not necessarily willful ignorance, it is the way most white people make their way through the world. We don’t need to be aware of race because it’s never an issue for us.
But for people of color who walk in their own skin each day, race is always there.
It’s a reality I was reminded of once again in the form of a police blotter news item in the Amherst Bulletin, the local paper for our ostensibly progressive little town.:
1:11 p.m. — A North Amherst resident contacted police about two suspicious black men carrying backpacks in the neighborhood and that the front door was open at a nearby home. Police determined the two men are renting that home.
There, in a nutshell, is the cause of my ire at the court’s decision.
In her dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor deftly articulated why the Michigan case was so important and why we cannot claim otherwise, or rather, why we cannot argue that affirmative action is either unfair or no longer necessary.
“Race matters,” Sotomayor wrote. “Race matters in part because of the long history of racial minorities’ being denied access to the political process. Race also matters because of persistent racial inequality in society — inequality that cannot be ignored and that has produced stark socioeconomic disparities.”
But for Sotomayor, it is more than this.
“[R]ace matters for reasons that really are only skin deep, that cannot be discussed any other way, and that cannot be wished away. Race matters to a young man’s view of society when he spends his teenage years watching others tense up as he passes, no matter the neighborhood where he grew up ... Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: ‘I do not belong here.’”
As the white mother of a child of color, I see it every day. I see the way we are scrutinized as a family, watched, categorized and evaluated. I know that when we fly, because of my son’s name, we are almost always selected for additional security screenings, more questions than other families, and that our life includes a few extra steps simply because my son is not white.
I see how race matters when the absence of color is glaring and when it’s hard to find television programs, advertisements, musicians, and others who reflect back at my son what he sees when he looks in the mirror. I see how race matters when I must continually explain to others how and why it matters and how that absence impacts my son and others.
As an Asian-American, my son is not subjected to the same stereotyping as the young men in my local newspaper. For most, there is no perceived threat from a man “walking while Asian” in the same way these men were viewed as a threat merely for being black.
But we do live in a world rife with stereotypes about my child as an Asian-American and also his status as an adoptee. “How will you keep up with his needs in math?” “Does he play the violin?” “It’s good you did this because the Asians don’t want their babies.” “His English is so good!” These are all things my husband and I have heard over the course of our parenting journey.
I know that as my son enters the world on his own, as an Asian-American man, he will be navigating a complicated array of assumptions. My hope as his parent is that I have taught him what I can, and because I am not a person of color and cannot walk in the skin of another, have provided him with a community where he can talk with others who share his experience.
I hope that this community can help him learn how they have made their way through and responded to racism in a way that is healthy and productive for him.
I hope that he can learn how to challenge racism but also, learn that he matters, that he is valued in our society. I hope he can see that he is more than just his skin color but that his being Asian-American is also a fundamental and beautiful part of who he is.
Sadly, until we make significant changes to the institutionalized structures of racism that exist in things like education, hiring, walks in our own neighborhoods and so many areas of our society, I fear I will continue to see these kind of news snippets.
Two men, going about their day, out for a walk, and perceived as a threat for no reason other than the color of their skin.
Clearly, we still have much work to do.
Sydne Didier lives in Amherst.
Amherst, Massachusetts NAACP