Everyone stood in line waiting to enter Ms. Barbour’s room for one of their first days of third grade. I stood off to the side and waited for the line to go in. I felt the weight of dozens of curious eyes sizing me up, forming their first impressions of their brand new, as they called me, “City Year.”
“You look like my cousin,” a little boy says, breaking the silence.
“Cool,” I smile at him.
“He’s light skinned,” he says, “like you!”
Light skinned... like me?
Interesting.
“You look like my cousin,” a little boy says, breaking the silence.
“Cool,” I smile at him.
“He’s light skinned,” he says, “like you!”
Light skinned... like me?
Interesting.
I sat and read our class book of the week, The Story of Ruby Bridges, to the four students seated at my reading rotation. The children’s book tells the beautiful story of how six-year-old Ruby Bridges courageously integrated New Orleans’ William Frantz Elementary School in 1960. In the story, Ruby ends up in a classroom all alone because her white classmates stopped attending school in protest of integration and her new presence. That is, all alone except for her white teacher, Mrs. Henry.
Sammy jumps up and points at the book.
“I can’t imagine having a white teacher,” he says. “That must be awful!”
Other students nod in agreement.
I look left.
I look right.
He’s messing with me.
“Excuse me, Sammy?”
“Having a white teacher must stink,” he exclaims, “I wonder what that’s like!”
Oh. He’s serious.
“Sammy, you know, three of your five teachers are white.”
Blank stares.
List them. List the teachers. Clear this up for him.
“Mr. Tim.” Pause. Nothing, no reaction. Next. “Mr. Lindsay.” Pause. All four heads simultaneously turn to look at Mr. Lindsay, the classroom reading specialist, sitting at the front of the room. Nothing. Okay, keep going. “And me.”
Heads turn back. Four young souls carefully examine my appearance.
Still, nothing.
Okay. Let’s think.
“Sammy, look at her,” I point to the picture of Mrs. Henry in the book. “Now, look at me.”
Wait. Just wait. They’ll figure it out.
“See the resemblance?”
Nope…
Okay, time for a more direct approach.
“Sammy, I am white, buddy.”
He seems to disagree?
They all seem to disagree.
“Don’t say that, Mr. Jesse,” he tells me, very concerned. “You’re just light skinned.”
A boy calls out to me from his lunch table as I walk by. “Mr. Jesse! How do I get my hair like yours?”
Are they making fun of me? What’s wrong with my hair today?
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Smooth! How do I get my hair to be so SMOOOOTH like yours?”
Oh. Alright.
“Well, uhh, I don’t think you can, little dude.”
“I want hair like you! Smooth! Mr. Smooth-hair!”
Not a bad nickname.
Another boy walks up to me and grabs my arm. He starts to rub my arm. He is laser focused.
“Mr. Jesse,” he says, still rubbing my arm.
“Yes?”
“Why you got hair on your arms?”
Hmm. I don’t know, actually. Testosterone?
For Black History Month, I worked with all my students on an independent history project. Every student chose a famous African American historical figure to write a short research report on. Before selecting their subjects, students all got the chance to look through a set of biographies I checked out from the library to see if anything popped out to them as particularly interesting.
I sit down with Tammy to read a picture book about the Underground Railroad that looked pretty cool.
“What’s slavery, Mr. Jesse?” she asks.
“Well, when America was first founded, white people owned black people and forced the black people to work for them. The white people didn’t pay their black workers anything. The white people were really mean to their black slaves and would hurt them. That’s why they ran away on the Underground Railroad – so they could be free.”
“The white people owned them? Like property?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“And all black people were slaves? So if I was born back then, I would have been a slave because I’m black?”
“Yeah, you probably would have," I tell her. "Slavery was one of the worst things our country has ever done. It wasn’t right.”
“Wow,” she pauses to think. She’s pondering something. “And you? Would you have been a slave too?”
We take a moment. We stare at each other.
Hmm.
"Well – "
“– Wait!” she yells before I can respond. “You are black, right?”
All of a sudden, Sara – the new girl in our class who is sitting right next to Tammy and closely following our conversation – passionately interjects.
“WHAT?” She looks at Tammy, upset and bewildered. “Are you serious?”
Tammy and I swiftly turn to face Sara.
Tammy is totally serious.
Sara tenaciously gestures at me with an open hand.
“LOOK at him!”
Hey!
Wait. No. Yeah, she’s right.
“I mean… no offense,” she assures me.
It’s cool, none taken.
I shrug and chuckle. I turn back to Tammy.
“Sara’s right. I’m not black so I would not have been a slave, and that’s why slavery was dumb. I’m no better than you but I would have been free and you would have been a slave. That doesn’t seem fair at all, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Something is still bothering Tammy. I see it on her face.
“So,” she starts again, “you’re not black?”
Ms. Barbour suddenly erupts into raucous laughter on the opposite side of the room where she is working with a small group of students.
“Mr. Jesse!” she calls out to me, obviously amused.
I look over and smile.
“Mr. Jesse,” she says, “can you please tell Jerry and the rest of the class what you are.”
I give her a look to signal I don’t quite understand what she’s asking.
“Mr. Jesse, Jerry thinks you’re light skinned,” she tells me, “He really thinks you’re black. Can you please tell the class what ethnicity you are?” As a black woman, as a woman, as a grown adult, she was clearly entertained by Jerry’s childish confusion.
“Oh,” I laughed, “yeah, I’m sorry, Jerry, but I’m not –”
“– Yes, he is black, Ms. Barbour!” a student interrupts.
“Yeah! Don’t say that, Ms. Barbour!” another passionately proclaims.
“No, no, no,” I quickly jump back in, “no, guys, it’s okay. I’m not black. I’m half-white and half-Chinese. Not black.”
The classroom goes quiet; everyone sits in silence to process what they have just heard.
“Chinese?” a boy asks. “So what does that mean? You live in Chinatown or something?”
Or something, I guess.
I don’t really know exactly what to make of these stories.
I think they’re pretty funny, and I think they’re pretty cute. In one way, I think they’re sad. And in another way, I think they’re kind of amazing.
My students clearly don’t know many people who are not the same race as them. These children are the products of racial segregation, in schools and in neighborhoods, that has plagued Washington, D.C. for generations. Much of what is left of the once-proud “Chocolate City” has been pushed east across the Anacostia River, creating an east-west racial divide in the District. In D.C., white people live in the west on one side of the city, and black people live in the east on the other. The capital city of a nation that so loudly and so proudly claims to be a melting pot of cultures, races, and ethnicities has been split in two, with a river serving as a physical barrier to remind us that little melting actually takes place here.
Of course, segregation has many additional negative, more tangible implications on the lives of my students and their families. Segregation directly contributes to poorer living conditions east of the Anacostia and less access to vital resources like health care, transportation, jobs, and food.
But when I think about these stories, they also show how, at the most basic level, segregation cuts off access to people. Segregation limits a person’s, or a child’s, interaction with people who are different from them. It is not necessarily bad that my students couldn’t correctly identify my race. Who cares? As a mixed-race person, people mistake “what I am” on a near-daily basis. The ability to identify someone by race does not in any way reflect a person’s intellect or character. In the case of my students however, it did reflect a lack of experience. I think diversity is a good thing. It opens us up to new perspectives and builds empathy. It’s a shame that segregation isolates my students from meeting and learning from more people who differ from them. It is also a shame that the rest of the city is isolated from my students and all that they have to offer the broader D.C. community. I can tell you, they're missing out big time.
Still, there is also some beauty in how my students labeled me. I think they may have had trouble understanding our physical or external differences because they internalized our apparent similarities and connections to one another. Maybe we simply got along too well for them to label me as different.
Unsurprisingly, in a poor black school and neighborhood that has faced years of oppression at the hands of racial segregation, the word “white” had a reasonably negative connotation attached to it. Some thought it was a curse word or the meanest insult you could bear. Somehow, someway, my kids never associated me with that word. Sure, I looked different from them, but my smooth hair and white skin didn’t mean I was a bad word – to them, I was just “light skinned.”
