Peanut Butter and Race Relations

[Editor's note: On Monday, we published Jackie Morgan MacDougall's response to the controversy surrounding her year-old MomLogic post about an incident where her three-year-old son asked why her co-worker's face was brown. Today, we have a response from Morgan MacDougall's co-worker, Winter Johnson.

This, I think, is an illustration of why conversations about race can get so darned muddy and difficult. We all come to them with different context. Morgan MacDougall said of her colleague's response: "...her post has surprised me a little just with two points: 1) I wasn't her 'boss' but a part-time writer at the time. It's interesting to see the dynamic from her side. I feel embarrassed that she saw me in a position of power and I turned the situation around the way I did. 2) I was never, ever 'peeved' at her answer. I mentioned it as a light moment the next day when it came up as I made a PB & J sandwich. I saw the conversation completely different, which is another interesting thing I discovered."

It can be tough to open up personal racial interactions to scrutiny. I greatly appreciate both of these women's contributions to Anti-Racist Parent. Thanks, Jackie and Winter, for allowing us to leverage an awkward moment to spark more discussion about parenting and race.]

written by Winter Johnson

An adorable 3-year-old stared at my face for several seconds, looking at me with curiosity when his infamous question shattered the silence in my boss’ office.

“Mommy, why is her face brown?”

To be honest, I almost burst out laughing. I am no stranger to questions about my race – when I tell people that I am African-American, they usually don’t believe me. I get curious looks from men from men and women of all ages, people who examine my light skin, almond-shaped eyes and long(ish) hair as if I am a walking oxymoron. But I never expected it from Jackie’s son.

I had scored my job at momlogic only six months earlier, and being one of the only people of color there, I was of course aware of my professional need to not appear as the “angry black girl.” Plus, this was my boss’ kid! All these facts that swirled through my head as Jackie and her husband awkwardly looked at me.

I didn’t know if she wanted me to answer. I didn’t know if she was going to answer – or worse, what she would say. Most of all, I didn’t know if little Jacob had ever seen a black person before – and that broke my heart.

But Jacob was looking at me still (as were his parents), so I leaned over and said, “Well, dear, people come in all different shapes and sizes and colors, and I am the color of peanut butter.” A neat way to sum up a really strange and sensitive situation – I even felt a little proud of my simple way of getting out of the scenario, until Jackie seemed peeved the next morning that her son compared to me to his favorite snack during dinner: a PB & J sandwich.

Due to the fact that she was my boss, I didn’t feel that I could give her the hard truth: that while Jacob has seen people of other races, maybe he hasn’t seen enough people of color to make a difference in his life, or to remember that some people are brown and others are like buttermilk and others are like well-cooked toast. I’m a self-proclaimed foodie – don’t judge me for comparing skin color to my favorite snacks.

I know that Jackie was blasted all over the blogosphere for her reaction to her son’s question, but my sentiment wasn’t one of anger. It was sorrow – that any child in the year 2008 would be raised in what I assume to be a very homogenous environment. I was blessed to have friends of all different colors from the time I was very young – I had chopsticks in one hand and an enchilada in the other. As an adult, I know that this has made me a well-rounded individual, ready to embrace those who are different than myself.

I just hope that all children (Jacob and Brady included) will have the same opportunity I did.

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Trackbacks & Pings

You/We Can Do Better « Miss Incognegro on 01 Jul 2009 at 8:28 am

[...] We now have the other side of the story. Winter, the co-worker about whom Jackie spoke in her piece, has spoken out. Even more intriguing. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Oops! She did it again!How [...]
Black Like @KirstieAlley: Twittering About Race with the Fat Actress. at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture on 17 Jul 2009 at 10:45 am

[...] The idea is to explore what happens when you are forced to respond to a situation. Also see the Peanut Butter Incident on ARP. Intent and effect are different and we discuss [...]

Comments

Amanda Casabianca wrote:

Cringe vision incarnate.

Jackie Morgan MacDougall’s original post and her summation of her bravely admitted shame reads like an unintentional suburban version of Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”
Especially the ensuing adoption of her Taiwanese child who will have straight hair and not really be much of an anomaly the way darker skin and kinky hair would be.
A big reason why Asians could blend easier into the glories of Kiplings’s or Orwell’s Empire than Blacks.
Given that, her son said nothing “wrong” he was just making an observation because he lacked the experience thus far to figure it out himself. He should have been reprimanded nicely by his parents; I think he was bit rude albeit unintentionally.

The non-reaction of adults in situations like this is really disturbing having been on the inverse version of your end more than once as an ‘darker’ white person. The “what are you and/or what nationality are you?” line is Jacob at age 34, acting, in my personal opinion, invasive. and the inverse of MLK’s vision of a color blind society. Black and Latino etc etc people do it too, this kind of cultural query of a person’s appearance, not just white people.

And granted it’s not always rude to ask questions about a person’s origins (though those who have never been, or have never had their children asked, repeatedly have no real leg to stand on in defending their right to do so) this womenfolk’s son proved, right off the bat, not knowing someone and calling them on their skin color really is awkward , his age somehow does not excuse him. My son would be told that he was being rude.

True, it is from lack of diversity and to certain extent lack of education that causes a situation like that to arise. But actually there is a deeper social reason I feel that is akin to acting embarrassed (and distant) when another person trips and stumbles. People take a hands off yet rubber necking-”staring at the wreckage” approach.

Posted 01 Jul 2009 at 7:49 am ¶
Marcy Webb wrote:

Thank you for publishing the other half of the story. As a grad. school prof. once told us in class, there are at least 17 sides to every story.

Posted 01 Jul 2009 at 8:26 am ¶
hey wrote:

Just a small comment re: Amanda Casabianca’s post…Kipling was born and raised in India, and his relationship to “empire” was almost entirely within an Indian and South Asian context. I’m sure he must have visited some part of Africa at some point, and had dealt with Africans and Black people in his life, but they are not the dominant race or ethnicity in his dealings with colonial subjects. Orwell was also born in India was a British officer in Burma (in Southeast Asia) for many years–again, his British Empire is one based in the East, not in Africa, although again he must have visited the continent and dealt with Blacks in his time, his frame of reference is firmly placed in the tropics of Rangoon and Mandalay, not in the Congo or Johannesburg. I know this is only tangentially related to your point, which is a good one, but I spent years in college studying these two men (Kipling mostly, with some Orwell thrown in for good measure) within the context of British Colonial involvement in the Asian continent and just wanted to throw that out there…

Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 10:18 pm ¶
hey wrote:

Also…have you even read “The White Man’s Burden”? Do you know what it’s about? Although it does have at its center the paternalistic and dominant relationship of White men over non-whites, it was written on the occassion of the USA’s war with the Phillipines and does not refer to Blacks or Africa at all.

Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 10:26 pm ¶
Amanda Casabianca wrote:

@HEY

Yes, don’t insult me please, I never quote unless I’ve read it and you did not tell my ANTHING I did not know already.

Over a decade ago , at age 20, I co-founded The Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee and spent over 100 hours this past spring hours re-editing Robeson’s wikipedia articles, I’m very well aware of how race plays out in Western society via his life and my own.

The White Man’s Burden has become much more than the original work. It can be used for many other ways of describing racial blinders and deep rooted conscious and subconscious feelings of white guilt, supremacy and or superiority

Were you aware that Orwell was snitch? Both men wallowed in empire though Orwell tried. Apart from Wigan Pier and A Homage to Catalonia, I think he is a grossly overrated writer. Kipling was actually better, Gunga Din and all.

From CounterPunch:

“Over the past couple of years the matter of George Orwell’s snitching has been a public issue. Orwell, in the dawn days of the cold war and not long before his own death, compiled a snitch list of Commies and fellow travelers and turned them over to Cynthia Kirwan, a woman for whom he’d had the hots and who worked for the British secret police. Now, Orwell is Hitchens’ idol, and he lost no time in defending Orwell’s snitch list in Vanity Fair and The Nation. Finally, CounterPunch co-editor Alexander Cockburn wrote a Nation column giving the anti-Orwell point of view, taking the line that the list was mostly idle gossip, patently racist and anti-Semitic, part and parcel of McCarthyism. Bottom line snitching to the secret police wouldn’t do. Hitchens seemed genuinely surprised by our basic position that snitching is a dirty business, to be shunned by all decent people.”

Posted 04 Jul 2009 at 2:29 am ¶
Neville A. Ross wrote:

@Amanda Casabianca:

I was not aware that the UK even had a secret police; I always thought that it had New Scotland Yard & MI5 for internal security. Orwell’s snitching aside, what you said makes you sound like someone from the tinfoil hat brigade.

Posted 18 Jul 2009 at 12:44 pm ¶
n wrote:

With children, I don’t assume. They can’t usually formulate questions that really indicate what they are wondering. If your skin color is not what “typically” goes with the rest of your features, I think even a child who had been around non-white people would find it noteworthy. And 3 is quite young.

I know kids who wonder why my sisters hair is nappy, it isnt that they haven’t seen nappy hair, its that they have probably never seen it on someone “white”. (Like Chrystèle Saint Louis Augustin) I grew up military and know a lot of people who appear totally Korean, but are dark brown and that confuses children too. If a person doesn’t fit into any of the categories they know, or seems to fit into multiple categories, they cant figure out how to label them.

And though it may be rude to ask the person, a question is appropriate. Its how they begin to learn about diversity, by getting answers.

Posted 18 Jul 2009 at 9:12 pm ¶
Mr.Walks wrote:

Beautiful….i laughed allowed when imagining the atmosphere surrounding the childs innocent inquisitive or natural curiosity about the apparent differences in hue or color of people…….i appreciate your answer…also cause me to blurt out in laughter…..i think you handled it quite profoundly…i’d love to be compared to a peanut butter sandwich than something a lot more derogatory that i want bother going into, but i’m sure you get my drift…..

Posted 22 Jan 2010 at 10:22 am ¶
Boston Mom wrote:

Here’s some not very novel advice for both women:

1. If your kid asks you a question, just give an honest answer. Some simple biology can’t be harder for a 3-year-old to understand than a socially nuanced admonition of why such questions ought not be asked.

“Her skin is brown because she has lots of pigment there. Pigment’s the stuff we all have in our bodies that gives us colors in our hair and eyes and skin. It’s really cool! You can have red hair or blue eyes or brown skin, or skin with spots–like Mommy, and it’s because of pigment!” My 4-year-old seemed to accept this explanation when she asked me about different skin colors.

2. Remember that children’s questions, when interpreted through “grown-up goggles,” may be neither what they seem, nor a reflection of much of anything parental.

My child has seen me and my body every day since she was born. One day, at age-4, she poked her finger into my chest and asked “why do you have these big ones there?” I don’t know why that question came up then or even exactly what she meant by it. But it wasn’t anything to do with the gender inequality that pisses me off so much as a woman, or because our family is Muslim and the females are all secluded and draped in burqas, or something.

While Jackie has clearly learned a lesson, I still don’t get why it was ever a big deal for her to answer this question. Why all the walking on eggshells about how Winter would want the question answered? Unfortunately for Jackie, she managed to share a fairly trite “oh, the simple things I learn from my child” moment–just as most parents sometimes do–but about an issue over which adults are almost incapable of staying calm.

Similarly, I don’t understand at all why Winter would have “never expected” such a question from this child. Winter’s value judgment is thinly veiled. She seems to be saying that until the 3-year-old asked why she had a particular skin color, that she had thought his mother was a good parent, but because he asked this thing, that his mother was suddenly exposed as a deficient parent: “Most of all, I didn’t know if little Jacob had ever seen a black person before – and that broke my heart.” That rich comment is immediately contradicted by her own next sentence: ” while Jacob has seen people of other races, maybe he hasn’t seen enough people of color to make a difference in his life…”

Honestly, if wanting to lay out the “hard truth” of a 3-year-old’s impending racism was the first thought in Winter’s mind, she also seems to have some issues.

In fact, this all just seems like a ton of personal, adult baggage being exposed by folks who both view themselves as open-minded progressives, but who are both somehow embarrassed by talk of race.

Isn’t one better way towards a racially healthier society to try to stop viewing race as a big taboo area?

Posted 17 Feb 2010 at 4:41 am ¶