DIVERSITYMOM.COM

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHEN THE CELEBRATION BEGINS?

2011-11-09T18:39:27Z

Once again, on October 23, there was a story in the New York Times (“A Diverse City? In Some Ways, Anything But”) pointing out with shock and dismay that our fair city is not as diverse as many would like to think. In fact, says the article’s author, Ginia Bellafante, in her “Big City” column, the city ranks third in a recent study among the nation’s most segregated, behind only Detroit and Milwaukee. The last time I looked, New York’s public schools actually topped the hit parade for segregation in education.

So OK, clearly Integration (with a capital “I”) didn’t quite work out as planned, neither here nor in most other American cities. Lord knows some people tried, and some – God bless them – are still trying; but for the most part, integration in both word and deed has disappeared from our collective memory, as if it never happened at all. A quick look around, or just a check at recent Supreme Court decisions, and you’ll wonder if it wasn’t all just a bad dream.

Somewhere along the way, though, Diversity (with a capital “D”) was born, and for those who are loathe to be called racist, or anti-this or anti-that, what a wondrous thing it is! Like a fine soloist, diversity can sound good without any back-up – something to mention in a brochure, list as an HR action point, or even to boast about sweetly as in, “We live in a wonderfully diverse community.” Sure, skin color usually springs to mind whenever the term comes up, but the fact of the matter is that diversity is wide open to personal and highly creative interpretation.

To define diversity, dictionaries tend to use the word variety, as in “the spice of life,” which is appropriate, given that how diversity is viewed or promoted is really more a function of how much spice a particular group is willing to take. A similar notion can be applied to the ever-popular “Celebrate Diversity”: How big a party do you want to throw? Apart from the inclusion of more ethnic and religious holidays on calendars, the appointment of people of color as corporate diversity go-to guys and gals, tedious training videos and a few pot-luck dinners, I can’t say that there’s been much sizzle to the celebration.

I thought I’d do an online search to explore the evolution of diversity as social imperative and when exactly the marriage occurred between it and the word “celebrate.” Google presented me with a rather lengthy and broad list of possibilities: many were educational in nature, and others provided multicultural support and goods; but then there were also mocking websites brought to us by various white supremacist groups, and surprisingly – well, I suppose for some diversity in itself can be a celebration of sorts – a substantial amount of pornography.

For me, however, the most intriguing hit was the one that then came up in second place after icelebratediversity.com. It offered a t-shirt, available in a choice of three lovely colors, with “Celebrate Diversity” printed across the front all right, below remarkably realistic pictures of 18 different types of guns. Only $19.99!

Now, never in my wildest dreams could I see New York City as being a big market for this particular fashion statement, but somebody is buying them; and between that and the White Power websites, I’m just not feeling the love

“Oh, but we’re so lucky to be living in New York, the most diverse place in the world,” a fellow mom enthused when I told her that I was writing about diversity issues in independent schools like the one attended by both of our daughters. Indeed, many believe that by living north of the Mason-Dixon line they are somehow immune to or absolved of bigotry, and that because of circumstances that make New York City unique in regularly throwing people of all types and backgrounds together on busy Midtown sidewalks, crowded public transportation, and high-rise elevators, they are themselves celebrating diversity every single day. Provided everyone stays in their place, of course: It’s all well and fine to talk baseball with the Dominican doormen, share a few laughs with the West Indian or Filipina women who take care of the kids, and be utterly dependent on that lovely brown-skinned secretary with the Spanish accent, but God forbid that someone who looks like them should ever be a colleague, friend, or guest in their home. Far too many adults have grown up with the idea that it isn’t or couldn’t be done. “After all,” I’ve heard people say, “What on earth would we have to talk about?”

I’ll be the first person to tell you that I enjoy a good party, whether it’s a few friends around a dinner table or a blow-out dance-a-thon. And while food, music, drinks and even decorations are important, I think it’s the people that really make the party. If they all look the same, it can be pretty boring. If they all live in the same neighborhood and are involved in the same activities, professional or otherwise, after a while, you just run out of things to say. To have a really good celebration, I’d say it’s all in the guest list and who is doing the inviting.

A lot of us are still waiting for the fun to begin.

OF TIME, PLACE AND "THE HELP"

2011-08-11T15:25:09Z

So the “The Help” opened yesterday at a theater near you. It should do well, particularly among the “Chick Flick” set, and like many, I’m looking forward to seeing it.

I enjoyed the book for a couple of reasons: First of all, it made fun of the Junior League, to which I have devoted a great many volunteer hours and nearly half my life, but still appreciate its very special culture, north or south, east or west. You have to have a sense of humor to make it as long as I have.

Secondly, I’m a sucker for a story about seemingly unlikely friendships and people who have the courage to form them. Remember that show, “I’ll Fly Away?” I cried at every episode.

But here’s the thing about The Help: Place the story in the south of the early 1960s and everyone thinks that racial segregation and discrimination happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. “Phew, glad we’re done with that” or “Thank goodness I didn’t live in the south back then.” It might as well have taken place in outer space.

Cut to New York’s Upper East Side in 2005, just steps from Park Avenue and, quite coincidentally, at the headquarters of the Junior League. There’s a party going on: Someone’s turning eight. Upon arriving to fetch her own son, my friend was surprised to find women – all babysitters of varying ethnic backgrounds – gathered together in a separate room, on a different floor from the festivities. Before heading upstairs, she stopped to greet those whom she knew, and had to ask why they were not with their various charges. She learned that the mother had requested that all of the babysitters wait in this holding room until the party was over. Puzzled, my friend went on to the room where the children were gleefully partying and asked the birthday boy’s mom what the deal was with the nannies being excluded. The mother scoffed, “Well, you don’t want the help to be where you socialize, do you?”

There it is: “The Help.” In New York City, 2005, and I’m pretty sure that’s no isolated incident. Go back a bit and read my earlier entries on the Nanny Syndrome and invisibility. That’s just a tip of the proverbial iceberg.

No, we are not done with that. Women of color still make up the majority of the domestic workforce throughout the country. They’re expected to. I could be wrong, but their relationships with their employers don’t seem terribly different from those between the maids and the Junior League gals in “The Help.” Look around: You’ll see what I’m talking about. For example, practically every recommendation, or request for a recommendation, that I’ve seen for a babysitter or cleaning lady carries the word honest. Seriously, would you suggest someone who wasn’t?

Seven years ago, I shared and elevator to my apartment with an older woman, who turned out was visiting my neighbor in a very swank, minimal minority building. We chatted about the weather on the way up, but when we parted company on my floor, she said, “Oh, you work for the woman next door?” “No,” I told her, “I am the woman next door.”

The official slogan for “The Help” is “Change begins with a whisper.” Clearly, we haven’t been whispering enough. There’s still time, though.

A Hoody P.S.

2010-11-17T15:17:00Z

I saw my first white guy with sagging pants the other day. A tall skinny dude with a lot of hair and a beret on top. I suppose he thought that letting us see his bright red boxers made him look like some kind of hipster; but really, the only thing he looked was ridiculous.

In a roundabout way, though, that comical sight made me think of white guys and hoodies and a story that a friend once told me that really brings home the point I make about jumping to conclusions.

My friend’s niece was in town for a few days. Recently engaged, she dutifully called her aunt, saying that she wanted to come by and introduce her fiancé. The aunt – my friend, who is Jewish – invited the newly betrothed couple for Saturday brunch where she laid out what was surely a sumptuous array of bagels, lox, various toppings, fruit, coffee and tea. In walked the fiancé, wearing…you guessed it…a hoody. During the afternoon, he said little, ate only an orange, and never, ever took off his hood. My friend and her husband were perplexed and deeply concerned: The niece was so vivacious and smart, what was she doing with this “sullen,” “rude” and surely not too bright man?

The answer came the following day, when the niece called to thank her hosts for a lovely afternoon. When my friend commented that the fiancé didn’t seem to have eaten anything, the niece explained that he was Orthodox and kept kosher. The only thing he could eat was the orange. In fact, she went on, finding himself without anything to cover his head – we’re still not sure how that happened – he felt it was necessary to keep his hood on the entire afternoon. As for his lack of conversation, well, turns out he’s just plain shy. Giant sigh of relief!

If my friends could be so wrong about this guy, imagine what people are thinking when the face peeping out through the hood is one of a million shades of brown. Hey, I know it’s getting chilly out there, but if you don’t want to be taken for a criminal, how about wearing a nice knit cap? And for heaven’s sake, unless you're an Orthodox Jew, take whatever is on your head off when you’re inside!

FASHION STATEMENTS

2010-10-28T20:28:00Z

Ah, it’s that time again. The leaves change, the days grow shorter, there’s a chill in the air, and all across America, up go the hoods. That’s not to say that there weren’t more than a handful of die-hards out there during the summer, but for the most part, from, say, mid-May until mid-October, we have only had to endure the assault of falling-down britches from our young men of color. Delightful.

So it’s time for me to divulge a couple of my own prejudices: Hoodies and baggy pants make me crazy. Here’s the way I look at it: If you dress like a hoodlum, people are going to think you are one. I understand that that’s precisely the point, but I fail to see the glory in appearing to be fresh out of prison.

During the summer, in 90 degrees and humidity to match, all over Harlem young black men were wearing black sweatshirts with the hoods pulled up over baseball caps. In the words of Cole Porter, “It’s too darn hot” for that nonsense. Back in February, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, lamenting the extraordinary amount of times that police stop African-American young men, pointed out that the officers often cite the kids' attire as being "inappropriate for the weather conditions." Now that temperatures are cooling down, sweatshirts themselves are not so inappropriate, but does the hood have to be up even on sunny days?

Hey, I get all the stuff about civil liberties, and absolutely, the police stop too many young men of color for no reason other than the color of their skin, but seriously, how can they tell the baddies from the goodies if they’re all wearing hoodies? (Made that one up myself.)

A few months ago, the police stopped by our place to ask if we could look at the recordings from the security cameras to see if they had captured anything having to do with a rare mugging on our block. Going back to the date and window of time that they gave me, I watched as group after group of hooded young men walked past. Any of them could have snatched that poor lady’s purse, I thought, but wait, there’s a bunch of them running! My guess is it was them, but who knows? They had hoods on.

Moving on to baggy pants, I’m truly offended by the rampant display of men’s underwear, and for the life of me, can’t understand why more people, especially the women who love them, aren’t. I don’t want to see anyone’s undergarments – not when I’m walking down the street, not on the bus, and definitely not while I’m eating. And don’t those boys look pathetic trying to walk and not have their pants fall down around their ankles? It would be comical, if it weren’t so sad. In a number of locales, politicians and city officials have launched “Bag the Sag” campaigns. Good luck with that! What will it really take to get young men to pull up their pants?

They say that fashion trends are cyclical. Since my daughter was born, I’ve been praying for the return of the preppy look of my youth. Now that she’s almost a teenager, though, time is running out. And then will surely begin a new chapter in diversity parenting. Stay tuned.

MORE ON IDENTITIES

2009-09-22T17:00:00Z

I just finished sobbing my way through the ending of Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese’s excellent – albeit a little heavy on the surgical details – novel about conjoined twins who were separated at birth, grew up in the compound of an Addis Ababa hospital, and eventually became physicians themselves. After fleeing Ethiopia in the wake of the coup that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie, one of the brothers, Marion,lands in the Bronx, interning at a small, struggling hospital that appears to be populated only by countryless souls like himself, both staff and patients.

In a book full of wonderful observations about human nature,I found a particularly relevant AHA! moment that illuminated something that I have been trying to figure out for a long time: Why some people can tell every blond child in the room apart, but can’t seem to remember the name of the one black, Hispanic or Asian child among them.

So here’s what happens in the story: Marion, who is half Indian and half British, is in the operating room assisting one of his Indian colleagues, Deepak. A white doctor, in the Bronx to collect transplantable organs for his fancy Boston hospital, happens to enter, observes their work, and after asking the colleague’s name and several questions about the procedure, compliments him on his technique then leaves for his helicopter.

We worked in silence. At last, Deepak said, “He heard my name just once…and he was able to repeat it . . . In all my years here, no one’s been able to remember my name when I’m introduced. No one has bothered. They usually see us as types, not as individuals.”

Deepak summed it all up right there, in these four,profoundly moving sentences: the experience, the frustration, a clear explanation, and the joyous dignity of recognition.

From parents of color, I have heard many stories of failure to remember their names and those of their children, no matter how many times they’ve been introduced, an inability to recognize them outside of the context of school, an unwillingness to even try to pronounce correctly names not commonly found in the US, and a difficulty in matching children to parents. Similar tales come out of the workplace. Several have said to me, “We’re just not important to them.” Others see it as an effort to denigrate – note the etymology here – sort of like the use of “Boy” in times gone by that, well, it seems are not so gone after all.

The part about seeing people of color as types, rather than as individuals really hit home with me. I thought of the time when my daughter was in preschool. There were 13 in the afternoon program with her, two of them girls with brown skin and not much else on the lookalikescale. Almost three months into the school year, a mother, who I saw every day at drop-off and pick-up, came tome to offer some niceties about who she believed to be my daughter while using the other girl’s name. When I pointed out that she was probably referring to another child, she appeared completely dumbfounded and confused. She was certain that she had the name right. I had to break the news to her that there were in fact two brown-skinned girls in the class, and with them, lo-and-behold, two sets of brown-skinned parents. In three months, she had never noticed.

Surely, as we get older, it’s natural to forget names every once in a while, and to some extent, I think we are all guilty of looking at certain people – immigrants, people of color, whatever – as types. But that doesn’t make it OK. I know I’m straying into heavy moral and theological territory when I talk about recognizing the dignity of the individual, but hey, it’s a really good conceptand one that we as parents would do well to teach to our children, especially through our own actions.

Just last week, a mother at my daughter’s present school asked me how she was enjoying Upper School. I told her that mine was actually in fourth grade now. Oh dear, there was that same bewildered look that that preschool mom wore six years ago. Yes, she had me confused with someone else, and my daughter with another child, although I’m not sure whom; forget that neither the girls nor the mothers looked anything alike. In an effort to be fair, I guess I should give the woman credit for trying. Clearly, though, we can all stand to bother a heck of a lot more.

MISTAKEN IDENTITIES

2009-08-26T16:57:00Z

A very funny thing happened about ten days ago, as I walked down the road with my daughter and fluffy white dog in the Martha’s Vineyard town of West Tisbury, just about a half mile from where the First Family is now vacationing. From a passing car, we heard someone shout, “Look! It’s the Obamas!”

Now granted, I was wearing a skirt from Talbots, my daughter’s age falls midway between Sasha’s and Malia’s, and our dog is very cute, but other than that and our brown skin, we look nothing like the First Lady and her daughters.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m flattered by the comparison. However, I continue to be baffled by this strange compulsion, this burning desire to classify African-Americans floating solo amongst the majority – and I do believe this condition is exclusive to black people – as famous, meaning athletes, entertainers, and I guess now the President and his family.

Living in Switzerland in the mid-1980’s, a place certainly better known for its xenophobia rather than its diversity, I often heard people whispering to each other that I was the singer Sade. I met a woman the other night, who looked nothing like me, but had had similar experiences in Boston. My guess is there were a lot of us. Hmmm...let’s see…creamy coffee skin, hair pulled back, sunglasses…yes, of course, it must be Sade! Does this even make sense?

When I tell people that I work in television, they ask what shows they may have seen me in. No – guess what! – I’m an executive, and as far as I know, no actress will ever hesitate to identify her calling up front.

If I’m specific and say I work in sports, more often than not someone will say, “You must have been quite an athlete yourself!” No, actually, I am the most uncoordinated woman I’ve ever met. “Oh come on,” they’ll tell me, “that’s not possible.” OK fine. Does it count that I spent an evening signing autographs in a Seoul nightclub during the 1988 Olympics? The Koreans insisted that I was Florence Griffith-Joyner, may she rest in peace. All they had to do was look at the fingers holding the pen to know that I was an imposter. Ah, but I didn’t have the heart to let them down.

One of my favorite stories comes from a friend who had been amazed at the friendliness of the neighbors and staff in the ritzy Upper East Side apartment building that she and her husband, both highly successful corporate types, had just moved into with their children. After a few weeks of big smiles and cheerful hellos, a grinning doorman blurted out, “We are all so excited to have a player from the New York Knicks living here!” They’re still trying to figure out which one.

My African-American contemporaries, products of the ‘60s,‘70s and even ‘80s who have succeeded in their chosen professions in spite of stereotypes that just won't die, will joke about us all being athletes, entertainers and, of course, so articulate. When we look at our kids, though, it just isn’t funny anymore. About ten months ago, when I started this blog, I wrote about “The Deeper Meaning of ‘Inexperienced’” in the context of all the campaign rhetoric. I said that several parents of color had told me about how shocked white parents – and sometimes teachers – can be at the intelligence of a brown-skinned child. They will gush with praise for his or her athletic abilities or performing talents, counting on them to make game-winning baskets and add some desperately needed rhythm to school musicals. Meanwhile, my daughter may be a real ham, but I have yet to see any signs of musical genius, and it appears that she may well be following in her mother’s clumsy footsteps. Her biggest talent is math; at 9, she dreads PE.

So come to think of it, forget being flattered: I’m downright proud to be able to add Michelle Obama to my list of mistaken identities. But if one more journalist refers to my “husband” as “basketball crazy…”

THE LEGEND OF THE SCARY BLACK MAN

2009-08-16T13:10:00Z

I’ve been away for a while, mired in multiple pressing matters, but that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been a few things stewing in my Diversity Mom kettle.

Back in February, my husband urged me to write about a Scary Black Man moment that he had had outside our daughter’s school. These days, with recent events in Cambridge, Mass, the legend appears to be enjoying broader circulation, if not deeper discussion. Say what you will about Skip Gates, and what happened once the police arrived at his home, but the whole ordeal wouldn’t have taken place if some woman hadn’t immediately equated Gates’ brown skin with crime.

SO, on an especially freezing day last winter, my husband – who is actually a brown-skinned Latino – had been kind enough to offer to pick me up from a morning PA meeting, which of course ran long. Fortunately, there was a space just in front of the school, where he thought he would sit in the car, motor running and heat blasting, until I arrived. The sign said, “No Parking School Days, 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM,” but never mind: He was ready and willing to move if need be. A few minutes later, he looked up from whiling away the time on his iPhone to see the school’s head of security, a former NY police officer, approaching the car with his I’ll-get-this-guy walk, a white woman following close behind him. Recognizing my husband by the time he got to the car, he said, noticeably relieved, “Oh, it’s you,” and asked him to move so that the woman, a teacher, could park her own vehicle. Now granted, I don’t know what transpired to bring security out running into the cold, but I’m certain about one thing: It wouldn’t have happened if the man in the car had been white. I doubt if it even occurred to her that my husband could possibly have been a parent.

I’ve never taken a class in psychology, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that such behavior is Pavlovian, simple stimulus-and-response: See brown-skinned man, think trouble. Look at the madness whirling around the President these days. I once read about a study that found that white mothers, instinctively gripping the hands of their young children a little tighter, and maybe even crossing the street at the approach of a man of color, were conditioning their children to do the same, to feel fear and respond accordingly. And where do you think these mothers got it? This has been going on for generations.

Remember that wacky woman from Pennsylvania back in May, who did all sorts of bad things, including faking her own abduction by black men? That’s another thing that I’ve been wanting to write about. And I’m not going to get into the too-often tragic results of preconceptions on the part of the police. We had one of those, also in May, just a few blocks away from us.

Why do these things continue to happen? Look to the legend and Pavlov’s dogs. In increasingly diverse environments, such as the schools – and universities – that our children attend, it’s time to apply a little rational thinking, to look beyond legends. Ask Skip.

BOOK REPORT #1: TALLGRASS, by SANDRA DALLAS

2009-02-22T23:01:00Z

I just finished reading Tallgrass, a rather dumb book about an important topic: the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. To me, the best part of the book was the Acknowledgements section at the beginning, in which the author provided some historical context and touched briefly on the parallels between how the Japanese were treated after the attack on Pearl Harbor and anti-Muslim sentiment today, post-9/11. It was in the Acknowledgements that she also admitted that as a white American, she couldn’t possibly imagine what it was like for those families, the majority of them U.S. citizens, whose lives were so cruelly interrupted; thus, she had written the book from the point of view of someone like her, only younger, a girl of twelve. The story goes downhill from there.

At its very basic – and it was the very basicness of the plot and writing that turned me off – Tallgrass is a study in what happens in a relatively homogenous community when people who look different are introduced. There is inevitably a combination of curiosity and awkwardness, along with array of stock misconceptions – the “I-heard-thats” – from which flat-out hostility can often be just a step away.

Under the influence of her kinder, gentler, and unusually rational father, Loyal Stroud, the story’s heroine, Rennie (I’m not kidding about these names), predictably ends up befriending several residents of the “camp” called Tallgrass that sprang up next to the Stroud’s sugar beet farm in western Colorado. Sure, the relationship was born more of necessity than courage – with much of the usual farm labor enlisted, and only a bunch of Mexicans who could possibly fill their place, Loyal needed “good workers” to plant his beets – but the entire Stroud clan soon learned that the Japanese were in fact not so different from themselves.

Predictably, the Strouds were shunned by much of their community, but just as predictably, many of them eventually followed Loyal’s lead and came around to be at least tolerant. Those who did were greatly enriched by the experience. The End – almost.

I am not a big fan of coming-of-age novels in general, and if it weren’t for the recurring themes of rape and murder in this one – it was in fact a who-done-it, with all of the predictable faulty accusations – I would have imagined it being written for teenaged readers. It’s too bad that it wasn’t (unless, of course, that’s what teenagers are reading these days and I just don’t know about it): Despite all of the basicness, the story carried an important messages for a generation that could very well grow up ignorant of this and other blots on America’s “all men are created equal” rep. World War II may have been some 65 years ago now, but the Tallgrass experience still goes on in residential, corporate, social and school communities all the time. He may have had a goofy name, but it’s going to take all the Loyal Stroud’s we can get to ultimately make a difference.

ON INVISIBILITY: PART III - The Inauguration Edition

2009-01-28T20:27:00Z

Just as I was getting ready to post a new entry last week, an inauguration happened. My, what an extraordinary day! And though it may not have rhymed, and it ran a little too long for my non-poetic taste, Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem touched on the topic for my latest ranting: speaking.

“Each day we go about our business,” she read, our new president looking wondrously presidential behind her, “walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.”

Or, I’d like to add, not doing anything…at all…ever.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with an African American mother, the friend of a friend, who is in the process of applying to schools for her daughter. Having already spent two years at an all-white preschool, a well-known bastion of Waspiness, she wondered if she was up for more of the same going forward. Her daughter had thrived there, she told me, but “of course there are parents who won’t speak. That’s the way they are, and that’s fine.”

No, it’s not fine. I had to admit to her that as much as I love my daughter’s school, and most of people in it, there are people, primarily other mothers, who for years now have not said “Boo!” to me, no matter how many times I have said, “Hello.” For a while, with a couple of the biggest offenders – the ones I see virtually every day and still nothing – it became a bit of a game, until one day I just gave up and decided not to acknowledge them, either. Maybe now that Obama is president I should try again: I’ll let you know how it goes.

Another mother once told me, shortly after her two children started at a private school in New York, “You’re in this weird zone. The parents don’t speak to you, because they think you’re a nanny; and the nannies don’t speak, because they know you’re not one of them.”

Okay, so we know that the Nanny Syndrome has a lot to do with it. But others are just rude, and yes, some people still have a hard time talking to black people. I also think that there’s something else going on in the subconscience of many otherwise decent souls: conditioned to believe that their owners couldn’t possibly know anyone one who doesn’t look like them, at least no one of consequence, their brains simply filter them out. They don’t see us; and sometimes, admittedly, we don’t see others.

I happen to know a lot of people, and as I “go about my business,” I am always on the lookout for one of them. It’s fun – well, most of the time – to run into old friends and colleagues, former classmates, fellow moms, people I’ve served on juries with, and even the women from the beauty shop. Plus, I am terrified of dissing them – well, most of them – by not at least smiling in recognition.

In his most recent TV special, Chris Rock does a bit praising our new president, saying that America has come a long way in electing him. To paraphrase, he says that, “My black friends now have a bunch of white friends. The white people I know now have one black friend.” Whatever your color, you just never know when you might find a friend. It’s actually how I met my husband, but that’s a story for another time.

Look up! Catch each other’s eyes! And for heaven's sake, speak!

ON INVISIBILITY: PART II

2009-01-07T20:38:00Z

Have you seen the Volkswagen ad where the classic beetle sits forlornly in the corner, headlights glaring, while the “curvaceously scene stealing” newest model glows eerily in the foreground? The beetle asks, “What am I, invisible?” I had to laugh when I came across it last week, while thumbing through the January issue of “Food & Wine.”

All Diversity Moms of color have to know just how that poor, neglected little bug feels. I certainly have asked the same question – for instance, when am in a store, talking with a salesperson, and a majority person jumps in with a question or order as if you’re not there. Heck, that happened to me just this morning when I went for coffee and tried to order a muffin to go with it. Or how about when you’re watching your child do some sort of activity and another mother slides in right in front of you so that she can watch hers?

A friend, who is Asian, told me about when she was eight months pregnant with her second child and went to pick up her son at some special high-priced art class. Waddling into the waiting area a few minutes early, she looked around, hoping for a place to sit. Not only were all of the chairs taken, the women sitting in them didn’t even look up. “They just stared straight ahead, no eye contact,” said my friend, “or they kept on chatting amongst themselves.” But then, when her son emerged from the classroom shouting “Mommy,” lo and behold the veils magically lifted from their eyes and “suddenly, all at once” – and far to late to be of any use – “four or five mothers offered up their seats.”

Years ago, I began to notice that no matter where I stood in a line – airport, bank, you name it – people always seemed to cut through it right in front of me. At first, I thought it was something in my demeanor, that maybe I came across as too meek, so I tried to put a little don’t-mess-with-me into my expression and stance. And still they consistently singled me out as the passageway, as if I were wearing an arrow. Intrigued by the regularity of this phenomenon, I started stepping close enough to kiss the person in front of me whenever I saw someone headed my way. At airports, I set my suitcase up as an obstacle; didn’t work. Rather than seek out another route, more often than not they would look momentarily perplexed, maybe say, “Excuse me, “ but always work their way through.

So really, what are we, invisible? Well, of course not. I can’t really speak for the others, but people definitely saw me in those lines. No, there’s something else at work in all of these cases that goes deeper, and this is my message, what I want people to wake up and understand is still happening. Like in the song from the ancient rock musical “Tommy,” sometimes I just want start singing: “See me, Feel me, Touch me, Heal me.” With my awful voice, someone might finally notice I’m there.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

2008-12-29T19:14:00Z

A friend told me a story the other day about how she had tried to engage a decorator for her new big-time apartment. When she said that she had about $40,000 to spend, the woman had the nerve to scoff, “Well, maybe I can get you a rug for that.” Sure, we all can figure out what she was trying to achieve with that off-the-cuff, hire-me-and-you’ve-arrived attitude – that psychology of exclusivity certainly worked for Bernard Madoff – but I felt compelled to make this little tale work in a diversity context. It wasn’t so much the decorator’s sheer snobbery that bothered me, but rather the thought of how often comments like that are made in regular conversations, with little consideration of a person’s true financial circumstances.

I learned a valuable lesson a hundred years ago, when I was in the ninth grade and the only girl of color in my class. A group was sitting around at lunchtime, discussing the merits of the various Southern California department stores where our parents bought our clothes. Some of you will remember the names: Bullock’s, I Magnin’s, and the old Robinson’s, before it merged with May. Nordstrom’s and Neiman-Marcus had not yet made their way to LA, but we did have the Beverly Hills outposts of Saks and Bonwit Teller, which made the list, as well. One girl, who always seemed a bit odd and normally wasn’t much of a talker, piped up and said, “K-mart has some pretty nice clothes.” We all stared at her, stunned into silence and not sure how to respond. Like many middle class African American mothers, determined to have their children look the part, mine made sure that we shopped only in the high-end stores, where just ten years before blacks were not to be seen. Having made it to the “big time,” we just didn’t go to K-mart, Sears, or JC Penney. Deeply embarrassed by my ignorance, though, I acquired a particular sensitivity to socio-economic diversity that has remained strong over the years. And of course now, I simply don’t know what I’d do without Target and the 99-cent stores that thrive on every block in my neighborhood.

There’s an episode of that silly Kim Possible show in which the title character makes a point, repeatedly, of making fun of discount stores and the people who shop in them. It was the first and only time I watched the program, and for nearly a half hour, I waited with my daughter for a lesson like the one I had. It didn’t come. In the end, the only thing a child could take away was the idea that if you did find yourself in such a store, perhaps something worthwhile could come of it. I had to fill in the blanks for my daughter.

In the face of such obvious affluence in and around independent schools – big cars at drop-off, mothers in tennis togs, lavish birthday parties, and all the talk of summer homes – it is easy for the wealthy to forget that not everyone is like them, and that in fact, many people make tremendous sacrifices to pay the tuition bills and others simply receive financial aid. (Of course, there’s this recurrent assumption that all people of color are poor and thus fall into the latter category, but I’ll save that for another time.) For some, much as it was for the decorator, it’s important to make a show of how much they have. Think people! Especially in these trying times, we can all use a dose of sensitivity, not to mention a trip to K-mart.

Oh, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

POINT OF CLARIFICATION

2008-12-02T12:16:00Z

Through the wonders of on-line social networking, I recently reconnected with a long-lost friend and former colleague, who, like most of the people I have worked with over the years, is white. Shortly thereafter, she sent me a very kind e-mail saying that she had read the entries that I had posted so far at DiversityMom and had been deeply moved. What struck me, though, was that she said, “I had no idea these thoughts were going through your mind when we worked together.” Well, maybe they should have been, but I had to write back and explain that in fact none of these observations really occurred to me until I had a child. Now that I think about it, throughout my professional life, I guess all of my anti-bias energy was focused on gender discrimination. Forget people assuming that I’m a nanny, I had to deal with many – including other women – refusing to believe that I was anything other than a secretary. But diversity in the workplace is not the point here.

A few days ago, another friend, who is black, said that although she was not surprised by content of my mini-essays, she was definitely surprised that I was the person writing it.

To both friends, I offer roughly the same story: Having been a poster child (the title of my novel) for integration for practically all of my life, being the only brown one in the room is second nature to me, so much so that I think that subconsciously I seek those situations, simply out of a compulsion to make them just a little less…well…a little less white. Before my daughter was born, I think the only time when I have felt truly out of place as a woman of color was at a NASCAR awards banquet (I worked for many years in sports). Hence, my own surprise to discover the weirdness of diversity motherhood. It was like stumbling upon a lost civilization, a strange culture where racial misconceptions and social biases are so deeply embedded that unless there is some form of intervention, I felt that they would surely be handed down from generation to privileged generation. And one way or another, my child was destined to be in the middle of it!

So for anyone who may think that DiversityMom.com is about sour grapes, it isn’t. I haven't gone militant, either. Blame the poster child in me. Only this time, rather than trying to change perceptions one person at a time, I’m determined to alter behaviors. I’m not sure, but that doesn’t sound like progress to me.

ON INVISIBILITY: Part I

2008-11-19T15:32:00Z

So I went to this practically all-white cocktail party last weekend, at which a friend was among the honorees. As I chatted with another friend, the honoree’s sister approached, clearly focused on speaking with my companion. We both greeted her by name, but when she proceeded to talk as though I wasn’t there, my friend, to her credit, asked if she and I knew each other. Having met the woman a handful of times over the years, I readily responded, “Yes,” while at the very same moment, she, for whom those encounters were obviously not as memorable, shook her head, “No.”

OK, so that was awkward. But then, after shaking my hand and uttering a quick “Nice to meet you,” she went on, as I stood there, to ask my friend if she wanted to join in the continuation of the celebration after the party ended. It was by no means an exclusive invitation, which of course should have been handled more discreetly, but rather a “We’re getting a group together/anything goes” approach. If I didn’t already have a houseguest at home, who had graciously offered to babysit for the short time I intended to be at the party, I think I would have had to jump in. Come to think of it, I should have said something anyway, regardless of whether or not I intended on going.

Well, it just so happens that following up on my most recent call for inclusiveness, my next entry was going to be about a similar experience a few years ago at my daughter’s school. A group of moms were standing around at pick-up one winter afternoon. The one on my right says to the one to my left, “What a great idea to get a group of girls together to go ice skating after school tomorrow.” The one on my left says to the one on my right, “I think I’ve asked everybody; do you think there is anyone else who might want to go?” The one on my right responds, “No. I’ve asked the entire class,” and she lists who is going. Meanwhile, I’m just standing there in the middle, silently watching like the linesman at a tennis match, the lone brown-skinned mother of the lone brown-skinned child in the class, and no one has ever mentioned the outing to me. What to do? “Well, that does sound great,” I finally force myself to say, with strained enthusiasm. “We love skating and would be happy to join you.” Looking very surprised, and a bit embarrassed, both mothers start to fumble a bit. It’s a race to see who recovers first, and then the winner mumbles, “Oh…umm…we didn’t think you would be interested…but yes, ummm…yes, please come.”

What does it all mean? There are two problems that I see here. The first is the assumption that I wouldn’t be interested. Forget whatever the reasons were for thinking that I wouldn’t want to go ice skating – black people don’t skate? Following that clearly faulty line of logic provides a tremendously convenient excuse for never including a lot of people. Where would we be if we only extended invitations to people we felt certain would accept them? And yet, that’s what happens more often than I’d like to think.

The second issue is this whole invisibility thing, which I know will come up again and again here. Many readers know what I’m talking about: those moments when you want to shout, “Hello!?! Am I invisible?” There’s just this innate refusal to recognize our existence, whether it’s a salesperson in a boutique, a business associate, another parent or even a teacher. In most instances, I don’t feel it’s intentional, like perhaps it used to be, but rather a bad habit that they picked up along the way, most likely from their parents, who grew up when it was. In far too many instances, unless people of color are where they’re supposed to be in the majority’s universal order of things – i.e., providing a service - we’re just not on the radar screen.

And I wonder: will it get better now that someone who looks like me is in the White House? What do you think? Maybe if we all post our stories of invisibility, we will become just a little more visible.

WHAT A WEEK!

2008-11-14T18:36:00Z

Wow! A lot sure has happened since I last wrote a little over a week ago, certainly not least – and definitely not most - of which was a trip to my home state of California for my cousin’s wedding – an exercise in diversity in itself, beautiful and really good fun.

And then there is our new president! I’m still a bit fragile from all the emotion of the race, but isn’t everybody? If you feel you haven’t shed enough tears yet, read Judith Warner’s New York Times blog piece, “Tears to Remember,” and take the time to go through some of the comments. I came across the article Saturday morning, sobbed for an hour, then headed with my daughter to Sea World, where I proceeded to cry through the entire Shamu show. Something about seeing the symbiotic relationship between killer whale and trainer just tore me up. I knew then that it would be a while before I recovered; time to stock up on Puffs for the inauguration.

So what happens next? On the diversity parenting front, I’d like to think that parents will now be inspired to rush to join our school’s Diversity Committee, of which I am the default chair. Maybe someone will even heed my ongoing call and step up to be my co-chair. No…come to think of it, maybe not. There are some, perhaps even many, who think that Barack Obama’s election has rendered our mission irrelevant. Without hesitation, they’ve connected a few errant dots between a black president on the one hand and inclusiveness and equal access to jobs and education on the other, but it’s not enough to form a clear, straight line. While people may be a little more sensitive to blatant prejudice, the workplace and schoolyard may very well remain largely segregated for some time to come. Let’s put it this way: if they didn’t before, they’re still not going to invite a brown-skinned colleague to their holiday cocktail party, and I’m not waiting for the playdate invitations to come pouring in from the parents who just never seem quite able to accept mine.

I keep thinking about those cautious early days of integration, a decade after Brown vs the Board of Education, but before authorities had fully mobilized into forced busing that left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. In the mid- to late 1960s, and even on into the early ‘70s, seeing brown faces for the first time ever in what had been all white schools, now that was a new day; and I must say that my memories of those years are extremely positive. One of very few students of color throughout much of my K-12 years in Los Angeles, I remember being invited regularly into homes and to birthday parties not just by my classmates, but by parents anxious to do the right thing and not leave me out. They were curious, much like the Chinese in a previous posting (11/3/08), but also welcoming and kind. My husband also recalls having similar experiences in New York, while attending a prestigious independent school in Manhattan. Although we often ask ourselves, “What happened?,” we know all too well what did.

Those days are largely over, and I don’t see them returning anytime soon – more on that another time – but there are still institutions that have remarkably maintained that welcoming atmosphere over the years. One such place is my high school, Chadwick, which by admitting a number of students of color in 1969 and 1970 set a tradition of diversity that I am proud to see continues to this day. It is deeply ingrained in the school’s culture. Almost 30 years later, my newly-married cousin graduated from Chadwick. Many of his former classmates were at the wedding, along with friends made in college and in law school, where he met his Cuban-Italian bride. I was deeply moved to see such a tremendously varied lot who were genuinely fond of the couple – a real testament, I think, to them, to their parents, and to schools like Chadwick that work hard to generate an atmosphere that celebrates diversity in all of its manifestations.

THE MYTH OF THE COLORBLIND CHILD

2008-11-03T19:29:00Z

If I had a dollar for every time a parent boasted to me that his or her child was colorblind…well, let’s just say I’d be a lot better dressed than I am now. With counting to ten and the alphabet, colors are among the first things that we teach our children. We give them “What Doesn’t Belong” and “Spot the Difference” exercises, and they learn early on to categorize, grouping similar objects and discarding those that do not fit easily into a given criteria.

So of course they notice who’s brown and who’s white, who’s blond or brunette, and other factors like hair, the shapes of lips, eyes and noses, disabilities and even smells. Even people who are really colorblind can do that. What matters here is what children do with these observations: Are they like the Chinese, who, as I toured Beijing’s Forbidden City, reached out to touch my skin and my hair? Or are they like the five year-old classmate who told my daughter that no one wanted to play with her because she has brown skin? I’ll take the curiosity of the Chinese, thank you very much.

How children react to the unfamiliar begins at home: those who are encouraged to be curious and open to the new can be shown that in the end, it shouldn’t matter what a person looks like. Or, they can follow their parents’ lead in being closeminded, insensitive and often hurtful in their ignorance. By necessity, diversity parents follow the first tact and raise their children accordingly; unfortunately, not everyone else feels the same need.

THE NANNY SYNDROME: Part I

2008-11-01T16:46:00Z

So focused on this election business was I that I almost missed a great opportunity to introduce what will no doubt be a recurring Diversity Mom theme – something I call “The Nanny Syndrome.” It’s a Halloween tale of sorts, at least it happened at a Halloween children’s dinner organized by a women’s group – many of them friends, practically all of them white – of which I am normally happy and proud to be a part. I was not the only brown-skinned person in the room. Several mothers brought along their nannies and, of course, there was the wait staff, but my daughter was clearly the only child of color. Over the course of the evening, an older woman I did not know, but who sat our table, generously divided her attentions between the little boy who had come with her and my daughter, who looked quite glamorous dressed as a movie star.   Dinner was lively and fun, as were the rounds of bingo afterwards. Towards the end of the evening, however, the woman leaned over and just had to ask me, “So, you are this beautiful little girl’s babysitter?”

Well, there I was dressed the part in my cashmere sweater, fancy French silk scarf and Italian designer loafers, sitting next to a little girl who looked very much like me, and after close to 90 minutes, it had not even dawned on the woman that I was the child’s mother. Why is it that for some, in this day and age, a woman of color in certain environments with a child – any child – still can only have one job?   Nanny, babysitter, caregiver: call it what you like, but mother seems to be out of the question. This just makes me crazy.

I remember overhearing a friend of my mother’s talk about how someone asked whose maid she was while grocery shopping near her new Beverly Hills home. That was forty-something years ago, when barriers were just starting to fall and middle class blacks were beginning to find their way into affluent neighborhoods, independent schools and big business.   No one will argue that in many ways, times have changed; what concerns me is how in other ways, they have not. Just look around some of the private schools today, not to mention a good number of corporate boardrooms. If progress is this stagnant for those who have supposedly “made it”, then what about those still struggling to get there? And forty years from now, will people carry the same faulty preconceptions about my daughter? Now, that’s scary!

THE DEEPER MEANING OF “INEXEPERIENCED”

2008-10-30T17:36:00Z

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Five days to go and the McCain campaign is still pushing the inexperienced, “not ready to lead” angle. But really, we all know what that means. They’ve been trying that argument since the first day someone thought perhaps slavery wasn’t such a good idea, and time and again it’s worked: with emancipation, voting rights, the military, educational opportunities and the corporate world. Not just white people have fallen for it, sadly, a lot of black people have too over the years, so you can imagine how even today those ads and speeches are playing with voters’ subconscious feelings.

Believe me, having spent my entire life as a poster child for integration, yet consistently having my capabilities questioned, I, unlike many in the media, am not surprised. Several parents of color have told me about how shocked other parents – and sometimes teachers – can be to see how bright a brown-skinned child is. Some have gone so far as to ask flat out how he or she managed to get into such an academically challenging school. As much as I have heard about how smart my daughter’s classmates are, I have yet to hear someone say the same about my child. She’s funny, lively, talented and oh so articulate, but never actually intelligent. Does this happen to you?

Welcome

2008-10-27T19:50:00Z

Welcome to DiversityMom.com!

Ever since my daughter was born, over nine years ago, I have wanted to write about my experiences as a mother of color in the largely white universe of private nursery programs and independent schools in New York City. While collecting my own never-ending supply of stories of slights and misconceptions, I have listened to similar tales from not just my own area, but across the country.

With our country on the verge of electing its first African-American president, millions of Americans of all colors are feeling pretty good about how far their country has come since the days of institutionalized segregation. I am starting this blog to remind people that the days of a color-blind nation are yet to come. Among today’s elite, an entirely new generation is growing up, their only interaction with people of color being with nannies, doormen and the people who work in the school cafeteria. Growing up in their own insulated worlds, these children of privilege, who are being groomed specifically for leadership in corporate and public life, cannot help but inherit something of their parents’ misconceptions and prejudices.

Although the name reflects who I am, DiversityMom.com is for all parents – yes, dads too – who differ from long-established “norms” in pedigree, religion, profession, income bracket, sexual orientation, family composition, ethnicity, skin color, or any other way imaginable. From time to time, I will add postings of my observations and experiences. I invite you to add yours – good and bad – to illustrate our progress as a society and how far we have to go.

Many thanks,

Robin