Chapter XI. Everything That Rises Must Converge. #2
There are five white parents, three Latine, two Asian American, three South Asian, two whose race I can’t determine, and the rest are Black or something mixed with Black.
After three-plus months of carpool pickup and drop-off, two track meets, and one upper-school art exhibit opening, I can attest the percentages by no means represent the student body at large.
But I suppose a group of adults who are willing to “dialogue” about race and ethnicity on a Tuesday morning is somewhat self-selecting.
When we are all settled with our teas and coffees in compostable cups, Jonas, the facilitator, a wiry, thirtysomething ginger, starts the session by reminding us we are in a safe space, and anything said in the circle will stay in the circle.
This feels like nothing I’ve ever attended in the kids’ Paris school.
Or frankly, anywhere, as an adult. I’m not sure what kinds of things are divulged in a parent dialogue at the Bancroft School, but I am certain I’m not willing to divulge them.
For some reason, I was under the impression that this would be more of a discussion about how race and ethnicity was dealt with in the school curriculum.
But that is not what this is at all. And in my head, I curse Francois for putting me in this position.
Jonas proceeds to ask us to speak from the heart, and to take the time to “appreciate and allow” any feelings that might come up. He also expresses the importance of listening while others are talking. And to raise our hands before speaking. As if we are four-year-olds.
An attractive, well-accessorized African American mom begins the dialogue by introducing herself.
She is wearing a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress and classic pumps.
Her hair cropped short and pixie-like. Her lipstick vermilion.
Everything about her screams corner office and I find myself wondering what she does for a living, and where she is heading to after this.
A network? A studio? A PR firm? Breakfast with Oprah?
“… and it infuriates me that we are still going through this. In this century,” I hear her say. All around the circle people are nodding, and I realize I have already broken Golden Rule Number Three. I have not been listening.
“Every week, it’s another hashtag,” she continues.
“Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Walter Scott. My son should not have to know these names. He should not have to know these stories. But each one becomes a lesson. And I hate that I have to teach him this so young. That I have to teach him survival skills along with multiplying fractions.”
It packs a punch. Particularly at eight thirty in the morning.
Since our arrival stateside, I have been trying not to become too consumed with American news.
Or to consume it but not internalize it.
Because I am counting on this being a short stay.
And it’s a little like being on vacation, where I want to know the weather and the traffic patterns, and the big picture, but remain above the minutiae.
Above the smaller political players and legislators whose decisions will not affect me in any real way.
I have been trying to observe it and appreciate it from a distance.
Like theater. But unarmed Black men being killed by police is impossible to tune out.
Impossible not to internalize. Impossible to regard as theater.
Still, here on the Westside of LA, it does feel a half step removed.
This is a community that prides itself on its private art collections and tennis courts.
Not a neighborhood where individuals sell single cigarettes on the street corner.
There’s private security, but little noticeable police presence.
Just palm trees and sunshine and Masters of the Universe.
And so, even though the uptick in the reporting of these killings rattles me, they still feel distant.
Something that is happening to someone else.
Julien is still, for all intents and purposes, a boy, living in a multimillion-dollar tree house.
Andrew is safely ensconced in Notting Hill, where the majority of the police do not carry guns.
And my father looks too old and too Asian to be a threat.
At least that is what I tell myself. My male cousins, too, are scattered.
Kingston, Montreal, Toronto, Singapore. Places where the narrative is less perilous.
And where their features—some muddled mix of Black, Asian, and European—makes them less likely to be targeted. At least that is what I’ve told myself.
But this morning, in a tony private school, tucked into the verdant hills of Brentwood, a von Furstenberg–wrapped woman is about to upend my fantasy.
The idea that Black boys west of the 405 can’t be killed.
And so, in addition to mass shootings, and wildfires, and drugs, and cars careening out of control on Sunset, I have another thing to worry about.
“I wish I could say this was a new conversation, but I can remember my daddy sitting my brothers down when they were still in junior high. And with Miles, it started young. By kindergarten, he could tell you about slavery, Jim Crow, separate but equal. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the right time,” she continues.
“We’ve already moved into how he should and should not behave around the police. He knows the police can’t legally search his things without a warrant or probable cause. But he also knows that he should follow their directions and do whatever they say.”
“What grade is your son?” I hear myself say.
The room is deathly quiet. I’ve spoken out of turn and broken another golden rule.
Worse yet, Corner Office Mom likely announced her son’s grade when she introduced herself.
But I’d been so busy itemizing her wardrobe and imagining her life I did not register it.
“Sixth,” she says.
I’m still absorbing that information, when a gentleman seated across from me—Anthony, father to Elijah, tenth grade, and Isaiah, seventh—recounts how his own father gave him “the talk” when he was twelve years old, but he felt compelled to sit his younger son down for the same conversation at the age of nine.
“You want to protect their innocence for as long as possible, but Trayvon Martin was a wake-up call. And Kim and I had lots of conversations about finding that balance. At what point do we stop worrying about protecting their innocence, and shift into protecting their lives? At what point do they need to know the code?” he says, reaching over and squeezing the hand of the petite woman seated next to him.
They are both wearing navy business suits.
Him without a tie. Her with diamond studs and a professional wash-and-set.
Something clenches in my gut then. The conversations I have had with Julien and Lucie about race in America have been mostly historical, abstract, and on a need-to-know basis.
Slavery, the Civil War, lynchings, Martin, Malcolm, the KKK, Barack.
Most of it told as if at a great distance—in time and space.
(Except for Barack, whom we championed and celebrated continuously.) But survival techniques?
The code? Not a lick. I don’t know what, if anything, my parents said to Andrew.
Other than to be the exemplary Jamaican: polite, well-mannered, respectful, no talking back or raising your voice to adults, no dreads or ragamuffin hairstyles, no piercings (for him), no tattoos, no torn or saggy jeans.
That coaching alone was supposed to get us through most situations.
There’d been no talk about probable cause or search and seizure.
There’d been no PowerPoint on how to be Black in America. Suddenly, I feel woefully inept.
The conversation shifts then. Less lethal, but no less emotional. Sunita, a Malaysian Indian mum, shares that her son’s honors algebra teacher regularly refers to him by the name of one of the two other South Asian boys in his class.
Sun-Hee, a thirtysomething Korean woman with a heavy accent and flawless skin, tears up talking about her first grader, who has demanded her mother no longer send kimchi in her lunch box.
And who insists, when her American friends visit for playdates, that her parents speak only English in front of them. Because “Korean is so embarrassing.”
Tonya, a dark-skinned Black woman with a faint Texan drawl, breaks down recounting how her twelfth grader, a volleyball player and lifer (a student who’s been at Bancroft since kindergarten), went from being popular with plenty of diverse friends to feeling excluded when all those friends became couples and no one wanted to date the dark girl.
The room becomes quiet again, save for the sound of a couple of others sobbing, and I am having a hard time keeping it together. Distinct memories of being told I was “pretty, but dark” in high school, in college, playing over in my head. As if the two were mutually exclusive.
I don’t feel comfortable crying here because I don’t know these people. And this is what my therapist is for, after all. Although, unfortunately six thousand miles away.
The blond woman to the right of Tonya wraps her arm around her, while Jonas hands down a box of Kleenex.
“I feel this profoundly,” she says in a deep voice.
Her diction is perfect, her accent British.
She is fair and barefaced, sporting a ponytail and a pair of geeky, oversized, black-rimmed glasses.
“Lilah is still quite young, but her big sister is so popular and confident, and I just want to shelter her from everything bad.”
She doesn’t give us any grade levels or context, but everyone in the group’s eyes are on her, and they are nodding in support. A little too earnestly, I think.
And then it hits me: Cressida James. The movie star.