I recently finished reading the book, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a
Privileged Son by Tim Wise. Here is
a memory this book managed to dredge up in me.
I was about 9 years old when my parents
were divorced. In those days one parent
had “custody” and the other “visiting rights” and paid some amount in
child-support. My mother had custody of
my two sisters and me. She went back to
work and needed to find someone to take care of us. Cheryl was in my Girl Scout Troup. Her family lived a few blocks from the
school. Her mom was willing to take care
of us before and after school. At the
time it did not occur to me that this family was black. I can’t explain it, really. Though my neighborhood was somewhat
ethnically mixed, there were not many black families. My friend Cheryl had darker skin and brown
eyes and, what I would call at the time, frizzy hair. But for some reason they did not look like
black people that I had met or seen.
Cheryl’s father worked and her mother
stayed home with the kids. They lived in
the same kind of house that we all lived in at the time. I remember being excited that I would get to
spend time with my friend every day before and after school.
We would come up with all sorts of ways
to entertain ourselves. One of the
things that we would do was create plays and perform them for our moms. One of the plays that we created was
Cinderella. When dividing up the roles I
declared that I should be Cinderella, leaving the roles of the wicked
step-mother to Cheryl and step-sisters to our younger sisters. Why should I be Cinderella, I argued? Because I was the only one with blond hair
and blue eyes and we all know (Thank you, Walt Disney) that Cinderella has
blond hair and blue eyes. Cheryl was
upset that she couldn’t be the lead of our play. When her mother found out my reasoning for
being Cinderella--and Cheryl not being Cinderella--she was upset too. She told my mother, who tried to explain to
me that just because the Cinderella in the animated version was blond and
blue-eyed, it didn’t mean that other versions of Cinderella couldn’t look
different. Somewhere in the midst of
all of this I came to the realization that my friend, Cheryl, was black.
As I remember it, things were never quite
the same. Not long after, my friend’s
mom said that she was unable to take care of us anymore. I don’t remember why. Sometime before I graduated from elementary
school Cheryl and her family moved out of the neighborhood and I lost track of
her.
 | |
| A different occasion of pretending, with my younger sisters. |
Amazing that almost 50 years later this
memory would resurface. I can’t stop
thinking of it. I wish my mother were
still around so that I could check out my recollections with her. I asked my sister what she remembered but she
would have only been about 6 years old and she doesn’t remember much of that
time. And so, with my 9-year-old-blond-blue-eyed
understanding and nearly 50 year-old memories, I think about privilege. My mother did her best to teach me that all
people are equal, no matter what their race.
I don’t think I would ever intentionally discriminate against someone of
another race, even as a 9-year-old. Had
we done the play, Snow White, would I have agreed that Cheryl should do that
role because she had dark hair and dark eyes?
I don’t know. But I realize that
I grew up in a reality where all of the movies and images that I saw around me
were white. The normative was white and
everyone else was the exception. And
because I had blond hair and blue eyes, I was special. How did that impact me? How did that impact Cheryl? I wish I could talk with Cheryl now. I wish I could find out how she remembers the
“Cinderella Incident.” I wish I could
say, “I’m sorry.”
