Have you ever been in that awkward situation where someone makes an off-color joke, or worse, a blatantly racist one? People laugh uncomfortably, or look away, or pretend they didn’t hear.
Maybe your son’s new coach makes a subtle racial slur and you don’t want to make the other parents uncomfortable, so you stay quiet.
Or a fellow student says “That’s so gay” and even though you might know — or be — a gay person, you keep your mouth shut because it’s high school and who wants to stand out?
Later, you think of just the right words and wish you would have confronted the bigot, the racist, the homophobe.
After a week of hearing stories of incredible sacrifice leading up to Martin Luther King Day and the inauguration of our first African-American president, I had the chance to test the courage of my own convictions in a small way.
On “Fresh Air” Jan. 19, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) told the radio show’s host Terry Gross about being beaten by Alabama state troopers as he and 600 other voting-rights protesters marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965. They knew they might be hurt, yet they stepped on past the fear.
Local students who read their winning essays about Martin Luther King on KRFC in Fort Collins last Sunday had to overcome the jitters. Nerves aside, they spoke with the eloquence of children about how racism had affected their lives.
As Abbie McCeney, a student at Lesher Junior High, read about her “Papa,” a white-haired woman sitting outside the broadcast booth wiped away tears. As a young lawyer, Jonathan Brown Sutin proved that African-Americans were being excluded from the voting process in the early ’60s.
It dawned on me and other volunteers who were there that it was Abbie’s grandmother, Sutin’s wife, who was crying as her granddaughter read: “I have learned that change can happen by words of a famous person, Martin Luther King Jr., but it also happens by the work of anyone like you and me. Gandhi once said ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world. . . .’ ”
Moving, yes, but I had no idea how much that call to action would resonate on Inauguration Day. After watching the swearing-in on TV, I hauled myself to the gym, thinking I’d march on the Stairmaster along with the parade. Our gym has a cafe/ bar, and I stopped to have some soup first.
One of the employees was checking the tea and noted out loud that they were out of black tea. To the other server, she made a joke about ordering some more “Obama tea.”
On this day, of all days, I could not turn away, pretend I didn’t hear.
My pulse raced a little. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach. In the larger scheme of things, calling her on it was a small act.
A person of color might say, “that’s nothing compared to the things people have said to me.” But to pretend I hadn’t heard, when indeed I had, as the televisions above the bar showed images of President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, walking the parade route, was unthinkable.
I did the uncomfortable thing and spoke to the server (the jokester had disappeared), and to the club manager. “What do you want me to do?” the manager asked, when I said I thought it was not a harmless joke but a racist statement. I suggested racial sensitivity training at the very least. He said he would “take it under advisement.” I found out later he spoke to her about the incident.
That day, I left before the tears of frustration spilled over. You might expect to shed some tears watching Obama take the oath of office as our president, for whatever personal reason. But tears of anger and fear? Anger at others’ lack of outrage. Fear at being singled out as the trouble-making complainer.
That same afternoon, my 13-year-old came home from school and announced, “I got a kid in trouble today.”
He told me that as his geography class was watching Obama place his hand on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, another student said, “It’s still not too late to shoot him.”
My son whipped around and told his classmate to be quiet, which got the teacher’s attention. This is seventh grade, when kids will do just about anything to fit in. But he told the teacher what the other kid said, which led to a lecture about respecting the office of president, regardless of personal politics.
If those of us who are offended by bigotry don’t speak up, if we don’t examine our own assumptions about race, how will the offenders ever get the message?
Obama himself addressed the issue, although I think he was talking about fixing the economy: “We have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task . . . Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end.”
For some, that journey has yet to begin, but the way is open.
Kristen Browning-Blas: 303-954-1440 or kbrowning@denverpost.com.
