Tuesdays with Pauline were spent in the company of our black maid who cleaned our home during my childhood. I remember Pauline’s laughter, her chess pie, her discipline, her love, but I don’t remember her crying…. except once. The second Tuesday of April 1968, I was home from fifth grade watching a funeral procession on our color TV. It reminded me of the one I had watched in first grade on our black and white. Pauline sat with us, shedding so many quiet tears her apron was soaked. I remember hugging her, but I really didn’t get it.
Twenty years later, the thickest book on my shelf was “A Testament of Hope – The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Unlike too many books around it, I actually read this one — moved by his poetic prophetic preaching. During their annual meeting, the fourth week of April 1988, I was given the Mexico Missouri “NAACP Drum Major for Justice Award”. “Why me?” I asked, “I wasn’t even a ‘C’ in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” The presenter replied, “Honey, we’re ALL colored by God — there’s just a variety in the complexion.” I still didn’t get it.
Four years later, the last week of April, my friend and co-leader of youth events was my roomie at a training event at Montreat. The fact that Keith was African American only mattered when we awoke to the news of riots after the Rodney King verdict and I experienced his first reactions. Maybe I was beginning to get it.
The following December Keith and I were at a national training event in Kansas City for “God’s Gift of Human Sexuality” parent and youth curriculum. After eating with a group at KC’s Country Club Plaza, I drove Keith to the Alameda Plaza, a ritzy hotel on a hill with an outstanding view of the Plaza Christmas Lights. As we walked in I said, “We’ll just ride the elevators up to a top floor and look out at all the lights below and come back down.” Keith said, “I don’t think we should, Wally.” I said, “O come on, Keith. It’s great. Just look like you’re going to your room and catch the view from a hall window. I DO IT ALL THE TIME!” With fear and frustration on his face and in his voice, Keith said, “Obviously you don’t do it in my skin!” I think I got it.
What is your experience of my story? Whatever “getting it” means to you, what has helped you to or blocked you from “getting it.”
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Teaching in an inner city high school, we were just out of college, and we were the minority – no other white faces in the cafeteria, no other white faces in the halls, no other white faces in the classrooms – gave a shocking and realistic impression of the constant oppression of being a minority.
So there I was 50 years old asking my new friends/coworkers about their life growing up in KC. Thinking we might have shared experiences. My ‘did you go there did you do this didn’t just love that’ were all met with no Janet we didn’t get to do those things we are black you are white. But the real I get it moment was when of the nurses said to me Janet what do you white peoples think about our presidential candidate? And I thought Geeze I am just one !!!🙄