Nobody Told Him He Was Black

On Christmas Eve years ago a neighborhood kid knocked on our front door. I was used to seeing this kid at random intervals. When we first moved to the neighborhood, he had put homemade flyers in mailboxes advertising his availability to mow lawns. As we were new to the area, exhausted from the move, and still managing two little kids- we hired him to mow the lawn a handful of times that summer. The following summer we had our act together a little more- but we enlisted his help when we were out of town or lazy. 

He’s a good kid- rather socially awkward- but pretty normal as young high schoolers go. He had braces when we moved here, and I noticed when I opened the door on Christmas Eve that his teeth were shiny and bright- no braces in sight.

He smiled awkwardly and asked me if I was busy. I kind of laughed. I had two kids under 5, my husband is a pastor, and we were planning on driving 2 hours to the in-laws that evening after the Christmas Eve service. But technically, in that moment, we weren’t busy. So I said “not too busy, what do you need?” He explained in a convoluted way that he needed a ride to the gym, and so did his buddy who lived in the adjacent neighborhood. He had a ride home- but not a ride to the gym. Could I drive him, pick up his friend, and take them to the gym? I laughed again. I said- “You need to exercise on Christmas Eve?” “Yes!” -was his genuinely honest response. I noticed that he had bulked up a bit and wasn’t the same dough-boy we had seen when we first moved to town two years before. I could tell he was on a mission, and I had no legit reason for why I couldn’t drive him. I told him to wait a minute while I got my shoes on.

I went upstairs where my husband was working from home, and waiting to hear about why the kid knocked on our door. I explained the situation and he decided he would feel more comfortable if he took the boys instead of me. I hadn’t really thought about it- but I didn’t mind him running the errand. 

He took the boys, and when he came back- I laughed and asked him how it was. He said it was just funny- but then he said that the kid asked if we were going out of town. This is normal casual conversation, and it is actually a step up for this kid’s usual social banter. Jason felt bad, but with the other kid around, he felt awkward in answering the question. The voice of suspicion crept into his brain. The one that assumes that people are up to no good and conspiring to take advantage of you. “Why does he want to know if you’ll be out of town? Is he planning on breaking into your house?” Jason admitted this a bit sheepishly, and said he didn’t think the kid was thinking anything like that- but that was just the thing- the kid didn’t know about the voice that creeps up in the back of a lot of people’s brains.

And I thought something that simultaneously shocked me and educated me, my brain said: “It’s like someone forgot to tell him he was a black teenager.” 

I realized in that moment the tragedy of this thought. 

I suddenly remembered all the articles I had read about the Trayvon Martin case, the subsequent stories I heard about people who had been in accidents or lost and were shot or ignored because they were black. I thought about stories from friends about teaching their children how to act because they were deemed "suspicious looking" by our culture.

My best friend from high school had shared that she was followed in a shopping mall because someone thought she was going to steal something. This girl was about as squeaky clean as they get. But she is black. I never knew.

It hit me: it is dangerous to be black in the US. I wondered in my mind if my sons were black, what kind of horrible, yet humiliatingly necessary conversations I would have to have with them? “Watch what you wear.” “Don’t assume people assume you are innocent.” I am just now grasping this portion of what it means to live in fear for African-Americans and others who look like someone people have been taught to mistrust…

I have the luxury of realization. For many this is life, not an epiphany.

This realization of mine is certainly very old news for anyone who has had to live in the fishbowl of racial tension. I knew these ideas in theory- but for the first time when my sweet goofy neighbor became suspicious, it hit me to my gut- this neighborhood boy who sometimes mows my lawn is in danger- every day- just for the color of his skin. 

As a white girl, I grew up absorbing the sometimes subliminal and many times outright obvious message that darker skinned people were to be distrusted, that they were more likely to be dangerous. This message infiltrates every layer of our cultural existence: in media (what stories are covered), in literature, in movies and shows, in the omission of positive portrayal. It is disgusting.

I am reminded me that racism is not as simple as understanding that all people are equal. I can say this day and night, but that won’t change my primal urge to lock a door when a black man walks towards my car. That urge comes from years of conditioning as a white girl. I have to recognize that impulse and then shatter it.

To my friends who cannot shed their danger, who cannot chose whether to speak out or not, but by their very existence are vulnerable: tell me what I don't see, tell me what you need me to know, do, stop doing. I am listening.