Black. White. Revisited.

The other day I saw Black. White. On FX. I had been eagerly awaiting the airing of this show because I think the premise is a good one. Take a white family. Have them sit in makeup for six hours to become a black family. Have a black family do the same. Have them live together for the six weeks that this experiment takes and see what happens. I wasn’t real surprised by too much, I see racism every single day, anyone denying its existence is caught up in it. When you are wrapped up in something, sometimes, it’s impossible to see. But one factor was stark to me. The white father’s insistence that his approach to being called a racial slur was going to be the blueprint that he solves the problem for black people. It’s all in the reaction to being called the “n” word – which he seemed to feel the need to repeat several times in the hour-long show. Walk confidently, like you have a right to be wherever you are, and do not react to other’s derogatory comments directed towards you.

You know. I used to say that to my boys all the time. The reason he’s doing it is because you react to him. If you don’t react to him, he will quit trying to bother you. Besides being in the international mom’s almanac, I did actually believe it, as I was viewing from the outside.

But the reality is – ignoring it does not make it go away. Walking confidently with your head held high can sometimes make you a real target for low blows. What bothers me more than anything is the refusal to acknowledge someone’s reality. We all have opinions about our friends lives, other adults’ relationships, their kids, their bosses, their families. We all have advice at the ready. But unless you are one of the people involved in the relationship, you have absolutely no idea what is going on in that relationship and therefore cannot offer an opinion. Even if your friend tells you everything – it is still just one side, one point of view. That’s 50% of the information. Not enough.

To say to a man who has lived as a black person from birth how that man might change all of his interpersonal contact with white people is bile-inducing arrogance. For me to walk up to a Mexican immigrant and give him clues as to how he might “do better” in our society would be demonstrating the same sort of arrogance. Unless I have walked in that person’s shoes, I cannot begin to fathom of what his existence consists. Why does he need the lesson? Why tell the black guy – this is how you respond to negative, insulting behavior – when in reality it should be – no one should ever say that to you, and if they do, you have a right to let that person know just how objectionable that kind of speech is to you. By trying to correct his response it revealed to me that the white guy thought that the black guy’s response was overstated and in turn, minimized the impact a continuous barrage of negative verbiage, signage, and behavior has on someone. How can you possibly know what it’s like to be three and be black? Five? Seven? Nine? A teenage male? How can you possibly know, just because you have black makeup on, what every second of every day brings for a black person at that age? To be looked at in a different way? To have so little representation in politics and entertainment? Where extremes of your race seem to get all the attention; throwing your race into a caricature of what it really is? It blew my mind that a white man could say – you need to let it roll off your shoulders – and keep a straight face. You don’t know what it’s like. I commend the family for being a part of the experiment. It was a huge commitment. But absorb the experience, do not attempt to be some sort of template for the other race. Be a road map for your own race, by all means. Look what you did. See what you saw. Understand how that made you feel. That helps white people understand and gain from your experience and that would be society changing. Oh but please, please don’t tell that African American man how to be black. Gads.

I thought it was funny the way the families initially responded to each other when the makeup was on. The black couple were like – eeuu! You aren’t anything like the kind of person I would be attracted to. The white couple were in tears absolutely speechless over the beauty of that individual as a black person. The black son said he felt sexy. Wow. He is a cute kid, and to be honest, I thought he looked a heck of a lot better black. But I thought that was very revealing. The daughter looked beautiful as a black girl but was probably the whitest black person I had ever seen.

This is the first segment. I don’t know how many there are. It’s very good. Worth recording. Maybe it’ll start a dialogue about acknowledging the reality of others. And how we can become more introspective about the we treat others and the validation we give each other’s experiences. It’s a thought.