My famous story

In honor of our first African American President being sworn in today, I’ll share my most famous story ever…

Until I turned 6 years old, I thought my Dad was black. He is not. But let me explain how I came to believe that he was a wonderful black man. As a child growing up in suburban Minneapolis, our family socialized with a handful of other families with children our age. Since our closest relatives lived just north of Louisville, we spent many holidays and birthdays together with these families. The Williams’s made up one of the families in this inner circle of friends.

Mr. and Mrs. Williams lived in a big house with a finished basement that included a pool table, an air hockey table and foosball. They had 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls. Two of the children were biological and two were adopted into the family. One of the boys, Andrew, was my age. Naturally, we played together often. Mrs. Williams was white, Mr. Williams was black. One day at school, I witnessed one of the sour faced boys spit out something nasty about Andrew. It had something to do with being “mixed”. Feeling confused and concerned for Andrew, I stepped off the bus that day and asked my mom what “mixed” meant.

Let me back up for just a moment here, you have to understand something about my mom. Growing up, she took all of our questions seriously. My mom would never say, “That’s just how it is because I say so.” Lying about a subject just to get us to move along and leave her alone did not happen. If you asked my mom where babies came from she would launch into an explanation, full of the proper terms, throwing out vocabulary like penis, vagina and something about how Queen Elizabeth created the slang of calling breasts “boobs”. Sometimes she lost me. Other times, you regretted asking the question. Most of the time though, you got the correct answer.

Mom explained that this boy was using this term to refer to Andrew’s skin color. Since Mrs. Williams was white and Mr. Williams was black, the boy was trying to use the word in a mean way to say that Andrew is a mixture of white and black. She went on to explain the bare bones of prejudice and how there are people in the world who think that white skin is better than black skin. “What you need to know," she continued, “is that the Williams family was created out of love, just like any other family. The fact that they happen to have different skin colors just makes them special.“ I walked away from that discussion sure of two things. Mr. Williams was black and that made their family special.

My parents and the Williams’ played tennis together on Saturday mornings in the summer. While they volleyed back and forth, all of the kids climbed the adjacent playground. That Saturday, I examined all of the different shades of skin. Mr. Williams’ skin was darker than his wife’s, about the same as his kids, and slightly darker than everyone in my family. Everyone, that is, except for my Dad! As my Dad smacked the neon yellow ball back over the net, I took a closer look. Yes, my Dad’s skin was WAY darker than Mr. Williams’. Come to think of it, my Dad’s skin was darker than almost every adult male I knew. Mr. Williams had dark hair, so did my Dad. Mr. Williams had a mustache, so did my Dad. The wheels turned and sparks flew across my mind excitedly.

That had to mean that my dad was black too! What luck! My Dad was black, and now, just like Andrew, I too, would be special and unique. From that moment, perched high on the monkey bars, I took great pride in my Dad’s cocoa skin. In the months that followed, I circled black baby dolls in catalogs, hoping Santa would bring me one. I longed for black Barbie Dolls, admiring their plastic brown skin and long chestnut hair. When Cabbage Patch Kid mania swept the toy stores, my mom proudly secured “Buddy”, my first Cabbage Patch doll, making me the only kids I knew who had a with a black Cabbage Patch. Meanwhile, my mom chalked up my new preference in dolls as a direct result of her efforts to raise my sister and me as sensitive multi-cultural children.

One day, my mom picked me and a friend up from kindergarten. My friend, Heidi, started talking about her Dad. She blabbed on and on about how great he was and all the things he could do. He could drive a bulldozer, just fixed the plumbing in their bathroom, and oh yes, did she mention how strong he was? Gag. No worries, she didn’t know just what I had tucked up my sleeve. I listened patiently, waited for the pause, and leaned forward to drop the bomb, “Oh yeah, well my dad is BLACK!” And with that, I tipped up my chin, crossed my arms over my Strawberry Shortcake shirt and allowed the seat belt to pull me backwards feeling quite satisfied.

My mom’s head jerked my way, “Kate honey, Dad isn’t black.”
“Yes he is,” I said.
“What makes you think Dad is black?”
“Well, you said Mr. Williams is black, and Dad has way darker skin than Mr. Williams does.”
My mom sighed, “Oh, Kate, there is more to being black than just the color of your skin. Dad just gets very tan. He is just dark skinned. He isn’t black.”

What?!! Isn’t that what she told me before, just different skin colors, no big deal, it just makes us special, and so on? Anger and frustration simmered beneath my own pale skin. I looked out the window, the trees blurred trees as we sped along. Heidi smiled smugly. That fateful day marked the end of the black dolls. I went back to my life as a boring white kid who apparently had a spectacularly tanned, but not black, father.

This week, I’ve thought about this story quite a bit. As Barrack Obama takes office, my daughter wants to know why someone shot Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “What is prejudice?” she keeps asking over and over again. Our answers continue to fall short, just as my mom’s answer to my own questions regarding race wasn’t clear to my own kindergarten mind many years ago.

My Dad isn’t black, but as of today, my President is.