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Two days ago, I got a message. It was from a person Iâd never met in real life but have corresponded with on the internet, which is how far too many of my relationships can be described now. He asked me what I thought about Rodney Harrison saying the thing that he said about Colin Kaepernick.
Harrison, a black retired NFL player with impeccable teeth who is on television regularly, described Kaepernick, a biracial current NFL quarterback who is on TV less frequently, as ânot black.â He said it as part of an answer during a sports radio morning show in response to being asked about Kaepernick sitting during âThe Star-Spangled Banner,â which Kaepernick did to protest recent injustices perpetrated against people of color. Harrison was essentially questioning the validity of the protest, which is problematic for any number of reasons.
I didnât know any of this at the time, though, so I asked the person who messaged me to explain what had happened when Harrison addressed Kaepernick, and so he did, and so I responded with something like, âThatâs dumb.â The person then explained that he was curious to know how I felt about the situation because he knew that I have children who are biracial, and so he thought maybe I had a personal connection to the controversy. I said something like, âOh fuck. I didnât even think of that,â because I hadnât, because I am dumb. Then I continued: âI thought you were just asking me to ask me,â because I did, because I am egotistical. And he responded with, âYouâre an idiot and a doofus.â
Thatâs not literally what he said â what he said was, âhahaâ â but still, thatâs what I felt.
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Of my three sons, two of them â the 9-year-old twins â have begun to think about race. The first time it happened it was indirect. This was about four years ago. The boys came home from school, and one of them, Boy A, was especially excited because he said heâd met a kid who âhad hair like mine.â (Boy A and his brother go to a predominantly white elementary school. Last year, when he and his brother were in the third grade, they were two of something like 10â12 kids in their entire grade level who were either Latino, black, or some combination of both.) I asked Boy A what he meant. He said that most of the kids had âyellowâ hair, and I made sure not to laugh. Then he said that the boy heâd met, a kid on the playground, had black hair that was very curly. He was happy about it, and I was happy for him. I didnât think too much about it beyond that moment, though I suspect now that I should have. Iâm not sure if he thought about it more either. I know he didnât say anything else to me about it, but I also know that not saying something isnât the same as not feeling something. So whoâs to say?
I shouldâve asked him more about it, probably.
The elementary, middle school, and high school that I went to were all overwhelmingly Latino. I never had to know what it felt like to look around a room and not see someone like me in it. I imagine itâs not that easy. My wife, who is black, went to a school where she was one of just a few kids who werenât white, and she certainly felt a way about it. I definitely shouldâve asked Boy A more about it. Sometimes being a dad is hard, even when it seems obvious that it shouldnât be.
Literally four houses down the block from where I live is an elementary school. Itâs not the elementary school my sons go to, though. They were accepted into a magnet program, which allows for kids in certain areas of town to attend schools in other areas of town. In our case, we drive past the elementary school by our house, which is populated mostly by black and Latino kids, and 15 minutes later we are in front of the boysâ school, a school that has better facilities, better utilities, a more successful faculty, and a decidedly lighter hue to its class group photos.
This summer was the second time the boys talked to me about race. It was far more direct. Both of them told me that they wanted to go to a school with âmore brown people in it.â This, I suspect, was a result of attending summer school. Despite the fact that it was made up of students from their school, zero percent of the kids in the third-grade summer school program were white. Their entire summer school class was made up of minorities. It looked like a different school when I picked them during the summer than it did when I picked them up during the school year.
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I talked to the boys about Kaepernick. It seemed like a good idea to have that conversation (after a stranger from the internet correctly implied that I should have that conversation). We were all sitting at dinner â it was me, my wife, the Baby, and Boy A and Boy B. I said, âHey, pickleheadsâ â because I call them pickleheads â âlet me ask you something.â
I started explaining the situation. I told them about Kaepernick being an NFL quarterback, about him being biracial like them, about him choosing not to stand during the national anthem, about how he was choosing to use his platform to try to advance a conversation about race in America that can, at certain times, be uncomfortable, but is, in most nearly every situation, vital. I explained how him doing so in a sport where it doesnât happen very often is making people uncomfortable. I explained how those moments are more valuable than most any actual sports moment, and I explained what Rodney Harrison said. I explained it all as best I could, so that a 9-year-old could understand, which, it turns out, is not all that different than how you might explain it to a 19-year-old, or a 49-year-old. After I finished, but before I asked them about Kap, I asked them about themselves, and their race. Or their races, as it were.
I said, âDo you know what race means? What race am I?â Boy B said, âMexican.â I said, âDo you know what race your mama is?â Boy A said, âYes, sheâs North American,â and in my head I said, âGoddamnit,â but then out loud Boy B said, âSheâs black,â and then Boy A said, âOh, right. Thatâs right. Youâre right,â and I felt better. I asked them how they identified themselves, about whether they consider themselves black or Mexican. Boy B said, âWell, our faces are like a Mexicanâs, but our hair is like a black person. So that makes us Mexican and black,â and, I mean, itâs flawed logic, but he ends up in the right place so Iâma count that as an insightful moment for him. I said, âOK, letâs pretend that youâre filling out a paper and it asks you for your race and you can only fill in one thing. What are you going to put in that blank?â They thought about it for a moment. Then Boy A said, âIt depends on what Iâm wearing,â which I thought was a truly interesting response, but when I asked him to clarify, he just shrugged his shoulders and said he didnât know, which was less interesting.
Boy B said if heâs with just me then he says heâs Mexican because âyou call us little Mexicans, like, âCome on, little Mexicans,â when itâs time to leave. If Iâm with with mama, then black.â I wasnât sure if they were ready to talk about code switching, another thing Iâm sure theyâre going to have to figure out as they get older, but I didnât get the chance to ask because the Baby, who is about to be 4, said, âDaddy, you didnât ask me,â and he was right. I said, âOK. What do you want me to ask you?â He said, âJust ask me.â So I said, âI canât stand youâ in my head, but with my mouth, I said, âWhat race do you think you are?â To which he responded, âDaddy, I saw a witch at the mall today,â and I could feel the conversation falling apart.
The boys and my wife and I talked more about Kaepernick, and the boys were both in agreement: What he did with the not standing for the national anthem was OK (âHe didnât think he was being treated fair so he did it. I think thatâs good. You have to say something when youâre mad.â) and what Harrison said was not OK (âI donât know how to explain it, but itâs wrong.â). Talking to kids about race is hard, but not really, you know what Iâm saying?
A thing that happened during our talk that I did not expect was me getting nervous when I asked them if they felt it was OK for Kaepernick to do what he did and for Harrison to say what he said. All of a sudden I realized the high-stakes nature of the question, because I knew how I felt about the situation (Kaepernick = thumbs up; Harrison = thumbs down), and I knew how my wife felt (the same), and so I wanted them to be aligned with us. I was glad that they were.
Itâs a very tricky situation, Kaepernickâs choice. There are layers to peel, big questions that can be drawn out of the situation. Itâs easy to get tripped up by all the pieces. To wit: Less than 24 hours after it became news, it had already morphed into a thing about how Kaepernick was possibly anti-military, even though he explicitly explained that wasnât the case, or the point. Forty-eight hours after that, #VeteransForKaepernick, a social media show of support for Kaepernick from military veterans, became the story line. And then, late Wednesday, came a report from the shadows about how, among a section of NFL executives, according to an even smaller section of invisible NFL executives, Kaepernick is the most disliked player âsince Rae Carruth.â But this isnât that complicated: A guy did a thing because he felt a way and now we are all absorbing it in any meaningful way that we can, or in any ridiculous way that we can.
After dinner was over and the Baby was in his bed, I asked the twins if they still wanted to go to a school with more black and Latino kids. Theyâd first mentioned it back in June and itâs September now and three months is 100 years to 9-year-olds. Boy B said that he was fine. When I asked him what changed, he said, âI just got used to it. Itâs fine now. Iâm fine in my school now.â
Then Boy A said that he still wanted to go to school with more black and Latino kids. I asked why and he said, âI just do. We havenât tried it. I would like to try it.â