(originally written in January 2017)

Eight years ago now, we read the op-ed pieces, or heard on television, the radio, or even face-to-face with someone we know: “Come on, give the man a chance.” But if you think about it — and it doesn’t take too much brainpower — all of those optimists, God bless them, were white

For the rest of us, we will still be Black. The same color as the man who Donald Trump has dedicated years now to discrediting — first with the whole birther nonsense and then, as a candidate, the inflammable messages of “Take America Back” and “Make America Great Again.” It was far too easy to appeal to even the most latent of racists — “Who me?” they ask — and he couldn’t resist that. Those same pundits can deny it all they want, but people of color know. We can see and feel the hate.

We will still be immigrants. The same people who founded this country and have arrived in wave after wave to conceive new futures for themselves and their families. And they’re still coming, but the waves are darker these days. Trump voters got downright ecstatic about the promise of a wall to keep those darn Mexicans out. They’d build one along the country’s entire perimeter if they thought it would work.

We will still be Latinos. You know, those “darn Mexicans,” because if they speak Spanish, they couldn’t possibly belong here. People who have been here for generations suddenly became regarded as “illegals.” Hispanics come in handy to do menial jobs, but really, they all have to go back to wherever they came from and stop taking our jobs. What?

We will still be Muslims. The same people who Trump first wanted to prevent from coming into the country and then wanted to expel. Called to action, his supporters now think it’s OK to attack them, wherever they are in this country we all call home.

We will still be women. Still struggling for equality and not quite making the mark. Apparently, far too many women just don’t care. They voted for a man who brags about sexually assaulting them. Their right to vote isn’t going anywhere (or is it?), but their rights to their own bodies is in for an assault. Fasten your seatbelts ladies!

We will still be LGBTQ. A few giants steps forward and… Well, I just don’t know. Hate is in the air.

I think you get my drift. But do not forget that we will also still be Americans.

I have a problem with #BlackLivesMatter.  There.  I said it.  Take back my black card.  But hear me out.

Does the loss of unarmed black men at the hands of the police – or any other white person – have to stop?  Absolutely.  Is there racial injustice pretty much everywhere we can look?  No question.

Here’s the thing, though: The last time a black life mattered to a lot of white people in this country, really mattered, was when it could be bought and sold.  A lot of work has gone into making that clear even in today’s wacky world.  And no one knows that better than those very same black lives.

For 250 years, much of this country was built on the concept that the only possible way that a black life mattered was as a commodity, and naturally, always as a  servile commodity.  As long as that was the case, it was tough even for non-slaveowners to value those lives.  Abolitionists may have thought slavery wasn’t right in principle, but they weren’t exactly rushing to adopt what are now called DEI measures.  I’d like to say that this begs the question “Why?,” but I already know the answer.  We all do.

Think about it – White people, this means you: What would you do if you suddenly realized that your life didn’t matter?

Option #1: Give up.  Drugs work well for this.  Alcohol too – in nips, maybe, because, thanks to institutionalized racism, you’re too poor to buy big bottles.  Having a life that doesn’t matter is enough to make you crazy.  Did you know that a “disproportionate number” of black people are affected by mental illness? And that’s only the ones that we know about: many more go undiagnosed due to community stigma and well-documented disparities (surprise!) in health care.  A lot of us just can’t deal with not mattering.  It’s tough.  Even if you somehow manage to stay sane, though, what is the point of going to school? Of getting a high school diploma, let alone going to college?  The “system” is against you.  Seriously, why work?  Why subscribe to “healthy behaviors?” Keep puffing away on those cigarettes – yep, right in front of your children in strollers.  And why on earth would you put your trash, including those nip bottles, where it belongs as you walk down the street in your own neighborhoods?  Why care?  

Option #2: Do something, anything to make you feel as though you do matter.  That you have a certain, undefined power.  Curse as often and as loudly as you can, especially using the N-word.  Dress provocatively.  Raise a nasty pit bull.  Join a gang.  Carry a gun.  Use it.  Have you ever noticed how many public, too often violent, disputes involving Black people are attributed to “disrespect?” Sure, respect is a virtue to have and to give, but if you don’t have anything else…

Option #3: Get mad.  You know, like we used to. Some, but not enough of us, remember the “I am a man” campaign from the Memphis Sanitation Strike of 1968.  Think about that: people had to carry around signs to remind the white people in charge – and sadly, themselves – that they mattered.  And then what?  When the load gets to be too heavy, many take the road back to Option #1.

Getting back to the murderers of unarmed black men…In almost every case in which an unarmed Black man is killed, and the charges – if there ever are any real charges – ultimately dismissed, the defense is the same: They just didn’t know what that Black man – and, let’s face it, more and more that Black woman – was going to do.  We may like to think that police officers are brave, but the reality is that they watch the same television shows and newscasts as the rest of us, and in all of them, the criminals are inevitably Black.  

Let’s face it: there are some bad eggs out there.  Quiet as it’s kept, Black people can be afraid of Black people.  Back to Option #2.

Meanwhile, how did we get here?  Those passionate young Black Lives Matter organizers, bless their hashtag hearts, have missed one single fundamental fact: Black people, young and old, are weary of not mattering. Spend an afternoon in a predominantly Black neighborhood and listen to how parents talk to their children – or not, because they’re so busy cursing to someone else on their phones. I know. I hear. And I have cried.

For centuries now, much of American society has been built on Black lives not mattering.   So, says the all-too-prevalent racist, now Blacks want their lives to matter?  Hell, yeah!

As heinous and unforgivable as all of this is, it’s only part of the problem: until those very same Black lives can truly feel that they matter, we as a nation – and above all, African-American people – have a very long row to hoe.  Maybe we should focus on that.  

Bottom line and what I learned from my mother: You must love yourself before others can be expected to love you.  Dear #BlackLivesMatter people, time to spread the love amongst us.  Get to it!

OK, so maybe integration didn’t quite work out as planned. Lord knows some people tried, and some – God bless them – are still trying; but for the most part, integration in both word and deed has disappeared from our collective memory, as if it never happened. A quick look around, and you’ll wonder if it wasn’t all just a bad dream.

Somewhere along the way, though, DIVERSITY was born, and for those who are loathe to be called racist, or anti-this or anti-that, what a wondrous thing it is! Like a fine soloist, diversity can sound good without any back-up – something to mention in a brochure, list as a strategic planning action point, or even to boast about sweetly as in, “We live in a wonderfully diverse community.” Sure, skin color usually springs to mind whenever the term comes up, but the fact of the matter is that diversity is wide open to personal and highly creative interpretation.

To define diversity, dictionaries tend to use the word variety, as in “the spice of life,” which is appropriate, given that how diversity is viewed or promoted is really more a function of how much spice a particular group is willing to take. A similar notion can be applied to the ever-popular-and-now-overused slogan “Celebrate Diversity”: how big a party do you want to throw? Apart from the inclusion of more ethnic and religious holidays on calendars, the appointment of people of color as diversity go-to guys and gals, tedious training videos, and a few pot-luck dinners, I can’t say that there’s been much sizzle to the celebration. A lot of us are still waiting for the fun to begin.

A few years ago, I thought I’d do an online search to explore the evolution of diversity as social imperative and when exactly the marriage occurred between it and the word “celebrate.” Google presented me with a rather lengthy and broad list of possibilities: many were educational in nature, others provided multicultural support and goods, but then there were also mocking websites brought to us by various white supremacist groups, and surprisingly – well, I suppose for some diversity in itself can be a celebration of sorts – a substantial amount of pornography. For me, however, the most intriguing hit was the one that came up in second place after icelebratediversity.com. It offered a t-shirt, available in a choice of three lovely colors, with “Celebrate Diversity” printed across the front all right, below remarkably realistic pictures of 18 different types of guns. Only $19.99!

Now, never in my wildest dreams could I see my own town of New York as being a big market for this particular fashion statement, but somebody is buying them; and between that and the White Power websites, I’m just not feeling the love.

“Oh, but we’re so lucky to be living in New York, the most diverse place in the world,” a fellow mom enthused when I told her that I was writing about diversity issues in schools like the one attended by both of our daughters. Indeed, many believe that by living north of the Mason-Dixon line they are somehow immune to or absolved of bigotry, and that because of circumstances that make New York City unique in regularly throwing people of all types and backgrounds together on busy sidewalks, crowded public transportation, and high-rise elevators, they are themselves celebrating diversity every single day. Provided, of course, everyone stays in their place: it’s all well and fine to talk baseball with the Dominican doorman, share a few laughs with the West Indian or Filipina woman who takes care of the kids, and be utterly dependent on that lovely brown-skinned secretary with the Spanish accent, wherever she’s from; but God forbid that someone who looks like them should ever be a colleague, friend, or guest in their home. Far too many people grew up with the idea that it isn’t done; they’re simply not comfortable with interacting socially with people of color. “After all,” I’ve heard people say, “what on earth would they have to talk about?”

Not surprisingly, then, rare are the white parents who put diversity at the top of their lists of criteria when looking at schools, public or otherwise. The majority are not seeking educational experiences for their children that reflect the real world. They want the perfect world, and I don’t mean the one envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr., “where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.” No, make no mistake: this perfect world is peopled by families who share their values, religion, language, net worth, fashion sense, vacation habits, any combination of the above, and, oh yes, skin color. What I can’t get is that for some, if the skin isn’t white, there’s no point in even considering the other factors.

Sure, in a time when more often than not public schools can be downright abysmal, the quality of the education is and should be the most important factor in school choice, especially for those who can afford to choose. Nobody – white, black or otherwise – really wants their kids to go to a lousy school. Who children go to school with, then, may not be quite as critical as the ultimate likelihood of their going Ivy League, but in the minds of many, they’re indeed related. The logic goes something like this: If all the “best” people send their children to School X, then by also attending School X, my child too will grow up to be one of “the best”.

You don’t need me to point out the flaws in this argument, but because of it, competition for Kindergarten space can be downright vicious. And what happens, pray tell, to everyone else? In April of 2020, a court in Michigan had to rule that students in Detroit had a constitutional right to an “adequate education.” But that’s a topic for another post. Back to the celebration…

A white woman I know once told me that she very much appreciated her children’s pre-school, because she would never have to explain to them about someone having two mommies. Not only does it not have same-sex couples among the parent body, that school is about as ethnically un-diverse as you can get, what my husband describes as a casting call for The Sound of Music. But it does attract many of the “best”, obviously heterosexual people, and that’s what’s important!

I agree that certain subjects, race and sexual orientation among them, can be stickier than others, especially when discussing them with children, but this concerted effort to avoid lesbians really demonstrates that while they may deny it, parents who can afford to choose really think long and hard about whom they do and don’t want their kids to be exposed to – in other words, how much spice can they as mothers and fathers take.

To an extent, when it comes to fast girls and trouble-making boys, being so discerning seems reasonable for all protective parents; what bothers me are the creepier underlying motives stemming from fear, entitlement, snobbery, and a heavy dose of the primal instinct to mark, protect and, if necessary, defend one’s territory.

As one African-American mother put it, “These schools are all about tradition, and we simply are not a part of their tradition.” (Now where have I heard that before? Ah yes, the white supremacy websites). Sure, it’s easy for anyone who is different to feel that way, but to the great defenders of these traditions, I would argue that it’s all in the spin – diversity is an opportunity, rather than an obstacle, for both the children and the institutions themselves. Traditions can evolve with the times: is it too much to ask that people do too?

Another day, another hundred analyses of what’s going on in our country: What will happen with the midterms? What do the Democrats need to do in order to take back Congress? What happened to the collective Republican moral compass? And why in the world would any woman support Trump?

To all of these questions – and more –  the answer is simple: Trump has promised to get rid of the brown people (all shades). And if he and his merry band of thieves can’t get rid of all of them, then they will, at the very least, make sure that those brown people will be held down to the greatest possible extent, and above all, that never again will one of them be in a position of real power. They will do it in education, in healthcare, in housing, in employment, in criminal justice, and in voting rights. And to do that, they need the likes of Brett Kavanaugh to join their ranks.

What so many analysts fail to mention is the fact that there are still people in this country who are angry that slavery is over. As America continues to be more diverse, they are desperate to have someone to look down on, to enforce their sense of being of the superior race, despite their shortcomings, of which there are many. Add the presence of people from Mexico and Central America to the mix, and they are at once terrified and furious. They complain that these brown people are taking something, anything away from them – and they should not be allowed to do so. These are the constituents of Republican lawmakers: without them, they would be unable to hold on to their own positions of power. And so they march in the key of Trump.

Democrats missed this fundamental fact in the days leading up to 2016 presidential election, and it continues to elude them. I would argue that although some Democrats reveled in the idea of electing the first woman president, the repercussions of having a black man in charge for so long were in many ways insurmountable, especially in the face of a candidate promising to put an end to everything he stood for. In the end, the feel-good aura of so-called “post-racial America” – remember that? – has been extinguished. We should be asking ourselves, “How can we bring it back?” or, “Is that even possible?”

While Americans fret about foreign policy, the environment, immigration reform, the delivery of social services, and civil rights, remember this: nothing is more important to the 40% or so who continue rally to around Trump than keeping the brown people down and, above all, out.  Not even the rights of white women.

We’ve all read the op-ed pieces, or heard people say it on television, the radio, or face-to-face with someone we know: “Come on, give the man a chance.” But if you think about it – and it doesn’t take too much brainpower – all of those optimists, God bless them, are white. And, with the exception of Kellyanne Conway,  they will still be white men in the morning.

For the rest of us, well, we will still be black. The same color as the man who our new president has dedicated years now to discrediting – first with the whole birther nonsense and then, as a candidate, the inflammable messages of “Take America Back” and “Make America Great Again.” Back from whom? How bad was it? Appealing to even the most latent of racists was far too easy. Those same pundits can deny it all they want, but people of color know. We can see and feel the hate.

We will still be immigrants. The same people who founded this country and have arrived in wave after wave to conceive new futures for ourselves and our families. We’re still coming, but the waves are somewhat darker these days. Trump voters got downright ecstatic about the promise of a wall to keep those darn Mexicans out. They’d build one along the country’s entire perimeter if they thought it would work.

We will still be Latinos. You know, those darn Mexicans, because really, if we speak Spanish, we couldn’t possibly belong here. People who have been here for generations have suddenly become regarded as illegals. Hispanics come in handy to do menial tasks, but shouldn’t we all  go back to wherever we came from and stop taking jobs from real Americans?

We will still be Muslims. The same people who Candidate Trump first wanted to prevent from entering  the US and then wanted to expel. Called to action, his supporters now think it’s OK to attack us, wherever we are in this country we all call home.

We will still be women. Still struggling for equality and never  quite making the mark. Apparently, far too many of us just don’t care. 53% of white women  voted for a man who brags about sexually assaulting women. Seriously.  Our right to vote isn’t going anywhere (or is it?), but our rights to our bodies is in for an assault. Fasten your seatbelts ladies!

We will still be LGBTQ. A few giants steps forward and… Well, I just don’t know. Hate is in the air.

I think you get my drift. But never forget that we will also still be Americans.

Here’s a little game to play every time our new president makes some kind of proclamation about what he’s going to do: add the words “if you’re a straight white Christian man” to the end of it. That’s what we have here. God help us.

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

When I was little, my parents taught me to never hate another person. “To hate someone,” they told me, “is to wish that they were dead.” Believe it or not, then, I grew up saying that I hated raisins, ketchup, and maybe “Lord of the Flies,” but never, not even as a teenager, did I dare to utter or even think to utter, “I hate her” or “I hate him.” I’ve tried to pass that on to my daughter.

In these past few months, though, I’m been having a little problem: not many days are passing by when I don’t want to say out loud, “I hate him,” or, to broaden the net, “I hate those people.” And I’m terribly uncomfortable with that.

But then it occurs to me that the reason that I hate these people is that they hate me: as a woman, as a woman of color, as an educated woman of color. It doesn’t make it any better, but it does feel better coming from a defensive position. They hate me, so I hate them. So there.

Hate keeps me up at night. Probably more than my reluctance to hate others, I don’t want to be hated. It’s all part of the same lesson: if one is kind, one will receive kindness. I’ve based my life on that. Unfortunately, though, we all know that it doesn’t work that way. That said, we can still stick to kindness as a moral, innate imperative. I know that I do. The alternative is a truly hateful heart. I hope and pray that I haven’t gotten there yet, because I can attest that it is indeed “too great a burden.” Dear Lord, help me to once again “stick with love.” Thank you, Dr. King, for reminding us.

With an inauguration looming, I went back to an entry from eight years ago almost to the day, following the inauguration of Barack Obama. It sprang from the poem by Elizabeth Alexander.

“Each day we go about our business,” she read during the ceremony, “walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.”

Or, I’d like to add, not doing anything…at all…ever.

Not long before the inauguration, I had spoken with an African American mother who was in the process of applying to schools for her daughter. Having already spent two years at an all-white preschool, a well-known bastion of Waspiness, she wondered if she was up for more of the same going forward. Her daughter had thrived there, she told me, but “of course there are parents who won’t speak. That’s the way they are, and that’s fine.”

No, it’s not fine. I had to admit to her that as much as I love my daughter’s school, and most of people in it, there are parents who for years now have not said “Boo!” to me, no matter how many times I have said, “Hello.” For a while, with a couple of the biggest offenders it became a bit of a game to see if I could get them to even look at me, until one day I just gave up and decided not to acknowledge them either. That’s a shame!

Another mother once told me, shortly after her two children started at a private school in New York, “You’re in this weird zone. The parents don’t speak to you, because they think you’re a nanny; and the nannies don’t speak, because they know you’re not one of them.”

Okay, so we know that the Nanny Syndrome has a lot to do with it. But others are just rude, and yes, some people still have a hard time talking to black people. I also think that there’s something else going on in the subconscience of many otherwise decent souls: conditioned to believe that they couldn’t possibly know anyone one who doesn’t look like them, their brains simply filter us out.

I happen to know a lot of people, and as I “go about my business,” I am always on the lookout for one of them. It’s fun – well, most of the time – to run into old friends and colleagues, former classmates, fellow moms, and even people I’ve done jury duty with. Plus, I am terrified of dissing them – well, most of them – by not at least smiling in recognition.

Obama may be leaving the White House, but it’s not too late to speak. Whatever your color, you just never know when you might find a friend. Look up! Catch each other’s eyes!

So often during this election cycle I’ve thought about Pandora and her box. A lot of hatred has been voiced and, worse, legitimized by a terrifying number of Trump supporters. No matter who wins at this point, the box has been opened wide: you can’t just put the hate back in, close the lid, and pretend that the past year didn’t happen.

With Pandora on my mind, I thought I should check the “facts” of the story. I had forgotten that it was Pandora’s own curiosity that made her open the locked box sent along with her by Zeus when he gifted her, the first woman, to Epimetheus, brother of the better-known – at least in our day – Prometheus. I’m not sure that curiosity has anything to do with this modern-day version of the story, but boy oh boy, the aftermath is a perfect match. When Pandora lifted the proverbial lid, out flew a lot of bad stuff, not least of which were sickness, envy, and, you guessed it, hate. Seeing what she had done, Pandora, unlike Mr. Trump I might add, quickly closed the lid, but never mind, it was too late anyway.

The most disturbing part of the story, though, at least in today’s context is that Hope then became trapped in the box, never to see the light of day. Why it was in there in the first place scholars have an array of theories, but in the presence of the rest of evils, its absence is, to say the least, disconcerting.

Immigrants, Muslims, racial minorities, LGBT, foreigners, non-Christians, women…It’s time to rewrite the ancient myth: only Hope is going to get us – and more importantly our children – past this one, and I’m just not sure if that’s going to be enough.

My husband and I often find ourselves to be the only people of color at parties and other situations, which is fine. We’re used to it. And we wouldn’t trade the friends who invited us there for the world. But once again, last week, someone just had to tell me that I looked like Michelle Obama. It reminded me of a piece I posted a few years ago.

A very funny thing happened as I walked down the road with my daughter and fluffy white dog in the Martha’s Vineyard town of West Tisbury, just about a half mile from where the First Family was vacationing. From a passing car, we heard someone shout, “Look! It’s the Obamas!”

Now granted, I was wearing a skirt from Talbots, my daughter’s age falls midway between Sasha’s and Malia’s, and our dog is very cute, but other than that and our brown skin, we look nothing like the First Lady and her daughters.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m flattered by the comparison. However, I continue to be baffled by this strange compulsion, this burning desire to classify African-Americans floating solo amongst the majority – and I do believe this condition is exclusive to black people – as famous, meaning athletes, entertainers, and I guess now the President and his family.

Living in Switzerland in the mid-1980’s, a place certainly better known for its xenophobia rather than its diversity, I often heard people whispering to each other that I was the singer Sade. I met a woman the other night, who looked nothing like me, but had had similar experiences – in Boston. My guess is there were a lot of us. Let’s see…hair pulled back, sunglasses…yes, of course, it must be Sade! Does this even make sense?

When I tell people that I work in television, they respond that they’ve seen me on some show.   No – guess what! – I’m a producer, and as far as I know, no actress will ever hesitate to identify her calling up front.

During my time at ABC, if I was specific and said that I worked in sports, more often than not someone will say, “You must have been quite an athlete yourself!” No, actually, I am the most uncoordinated woman I’ve ever met.   “Oh come on,” they’ll tell me, “that’s not possible.” OK fine: Does it count that I spent an evening signing autographs in a Seoul nightclub during the 1988 Olympics? The Koreans insisted that I was Florence Griffith-Joyner, may she rest in peace. All they had to do was look at the fingers holding the pen to know that I was an imposter. Ah, but I didn’t have the heart to let them down.

One of my favorite stories comes from a friend who had been amazed at the friendliness of the neighbors and staff in ritzy Upper East Side apartment building that she and her husband, both highly successful corporate types and rather tall, had moved into with their children. After a few weeks of big smiles and cheerful hellos, a grinning doorman blurted out, “We are all so excited to have a player from the New York Knicks living here!” They’re still trying to figure out which one.

What does all this mean for our children? When I started this blog, I wrote about “The Deeper Meaning of ‘Inexperienced’” in the context of all the rhetoric surrounding the 2008 elections. I said that several parents of color had told me about how shocked white parents – and sometimes teachers – can be at the intelligence of a brown-skinned child. More often than not, though, they will readily gush with praise for his or her athletic abilities or performing talents, counting on them to make game-winning baskets and add a little desperately needed rhythm to school musicals. Meanwhile, my daughter may be a real ham, but I have yet to see any signs of musical genius and it appears that she may well be following in her mother’s clumsy footsteps. Her biggest talent is math.

My African-American contemporaries, products of the ‘60s,‘70s and even ‘80s who have succeeded in spite of the ever-present stereotypes, will joke about us all being athletes, entertainers and, of course, so articulate. When we look at our kids, though, it just isn’t funny anymore.

In 1968, I was ten years old, and George Wallace was running for president. My parents told me that if Wallace won, we would have to leave the country. For reasons I have long since forgotten, Switzerland looked pretty good to me, and I began to pray daily for Wallace’s victory. Imagine my disappointment when Richard Nixon prevailed.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized the true implications of a hypothetical Wallace presidency. For a middle-class African American family like ours, and indeed all people who were riding the Civil Rights Movement wave of the sixties, the results could have been infinitely more devastating than my personal loss of life in a chalet. Surely, Wallace’s campaign was destined for failure from the get-go, but I still find the fact that almost ten million people voted for him chilling.

Memories of my near escape to the Alps occur to me more and more these days as I watch the antics of Donald Trump and, worse, his supporters. The anti-Obama antics of Marco Rubio are pretty scary too. The hate is looking a lot like what surrounded the late Governor Wallace – not to mention a few other special characters. All this “take back America” rhetoric is giving me the creeps.  A few months ago, I followed a tractor-trailer on I-95 that had “Taking America back – one truck at a time” emblazoned across its back.  Seriously?

There is an all-too-familiar undercurrent in this country today that I can touch, a bitterness that I can taste. We all recognize that racism may never go completely away, but nor should we want to see ourselves as a nation go backwards. The forecast, however, is becoming cloudier by the day. It’s worse when I think of my daughter, who is yet to become an adult in a far too hostile world. No matter who wins the Republican nomination, and the general election in November, the collateral damage has been done.  The beast has raised its ugly head, and he is roaring.

Quite coincidentally, I ended up living in Switzerland for a spell as an adult. Swiss society is by no means perfect – consider its prevalent xenophobia – but those three years gave me many of my fondest memories. Would I ever think about going back? Check with me in August, right after the Republican convention.