NOW I can tell you for sure, racism in kids is identical to French Foie Gras in ducks. Both kids and edible birds have to be sickeningly force-fed just the right ingredients to produce specific outcomes. Only difference is, when the pair are finally plated up in front of us, the duck guts look like shit but are divine to the palate. The kid remains pristine and unblemished to the eye, but tastes like shit.
by Ryan Heffernan
SINCE my six-year-old boy was very small, just a little baby, I have pondered when his glowing beauty, electrifying innocence and unquestioning faith in others would be corrupted. At what point would he start to make “judgments”, based on both genuine and sad social truths along with the stereotypes fed to us by those nearby and those telling us how (they think) it is, from mainstream media and popular culture?
For my boy the time has apparently come at age six. I found that out yesterday when we had walked to the local laundromat to wash our stinking, smelling fortnight-old clothes.
I was waiting by a machine when I noticed my son wasn’t. He was waiting outside the doors, so I called him, but he didn’t come. He looked unusually withdrawn and in no way defiant, so I went to him and asked him what was wrong.
He said verbatim: “That dark man is inside.”
Quite surprised I said: “That’s okay, what’s wrong with that?”
My boy said: “Dark men steal from other people and they get in trouble.”
Whoa. I looked inside and there was a bloke sitting quietly who was in his mid-to-late 20s. He seemed to me to be of African descent with very dark skin, dressed conservatively in a button up, plaid, short sleeve shirt and jeans with clean cut hair.
Not that dress code and grooming is an indication of much. But I was assuming he wasn’t packin’ heat, lookin to pull drive-bys in upper-middle class Sydney on a horridly wet Sunday morning.
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So I had to pause. This is one of those moments where not only are you smacked back and knocked off guard, it’s also a moment where you want to respond just the right way. This was pause for even more thought because, no doubt, I’m a racist of some kind too.
“Look mate, having dark skin doesn’t mean that you want to steal things or be bad. That man isn’t hurting anyone, he’s just doing the washing, the same as us,” I said as Louis continued to keep an eye on his imminent threat inside.
“People with any coloured skin can do bad things but not many people do bad things anyway. Whenever we meet new people or we’re around new people we shouldn’t think they are bad unless we know for sure that they are. We should treat them all the same.”
“What makes you think this would do something like that?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged.
“Where have you seen dark people get into trouble…”
Then the penny dropped. This is all my fault.
Read the full story at SuperDad SpeedBible here…
“Is this something you have seen on television at night time?”
“Yeah that’s what happens on television Dadda.”
And it is my fault. Between 8.30 and his 9pm bedtime I let the television carry on with nightly smatterings of US crime dramas.
The Black List, Blue Bloods, various CSIs, Law and Order SVU and so on and so on.
Some of these shows routinely involve dark-skinned characters in drug dealing /petty thief/violent thug roles we’ve all no doubt seen sometime throughout the past 30-plus years of TV police drama.
We don’t focus on these shows because we’re usually chatting and carrying on. But they are on and there is no other place I can imagine he could have been exposed to this kind of stereotype.
I know for a fact he can’t yet tell the difference between reality and drama.
Anyway we both moved inside and sat on a bench seat next to the “Dark Man”.
My son seemed to forget all about his concerns and began flying his little A380 plane around more like he was sitting down next old white lady than the formidable “Dark Man”.
As it turns out the “Dark Man” was an impatient and rude prick, getting openly annoyed with Louis shuffling around, huffing and puffing, on the seat before he eventually got up and left. But that’s beside the point and his cranky senior behaviour is hardly restricted to race.
Then, while we waited, I remembered. My son and I had spent a very long time talking about Nelson Mandela when he died.
“Mate, I want to ask you something.”
“Yes Dadda.”
“Do you reckon Nelson Mandela stole stuff?” I asked directly.
He looked at me stunned.
Then a twinkle broke in his eye and we both burst out laughing.
“Do you know Nelson Mandela loved running? Imagine him running down the street, then diving through someone’s window and coming out with a TV and making a bolt for it.”
By now he was bent over and couldn’t speak he was laughing so hard.
And what about if we walked home now and Nelson Mandela was in our lounge room stealing your light saber or watching your Harry Potter movies and eating your ice creams?
“Stop it Dad, that’s too much!”
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The funny thing is when Mandela died we didn’t speak about him in the context of race, other than the fact that apartheid and racism were his focus in life. But those were the specifics. He could have been an eco-warrior and the discussion would have been the same. What we did celebrate was the lengths to which he went to bring love and goodness to all of our worlds and work with people. That he spent a disturbingly long period of time in jail (my son is fascinated by jails) and then went on to become president of his nation.
“So do we think that all dark people steal and do bad things?”
“No Dad that’s just silly.”
“But Dad…”
“Yes son.”
“Can I have some cake?”
“No son…just kidding.”
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