Watermelon, The “N” Word and the Hearts of (Wo)Men

It was fun, I guess. We did all kinds of art projects together and cool stuff like learning how to sew and make sun tea and somewhere in there, there was the obligatory “how to tie a knot” exercise. I remember going to a dude ranch and riding an ornery horse and eating some kind of campfire stew made with canned tomatoes and beans and water that had way too many onions and not enough salt. And in my then-12-year-old world, you just couldn’t beat earning enough pins to make the sash all heavy and stuff.

Good times, Girl Scouts.

Until that one afternoon my cousin and I dared ride my bike on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was only one block away from my childhood home, but it might as well have been Mars in my neighborhood, where black families had only begun to dot the lily-white streets of this mostly blue-collar, working class community. There were streets you walked down if you were black and many others you didn’t—those were the (unwritten) rules, and those of us who lived there just kinda went with it.

My cousin? She was from South Carolina. And a rule breaker. And since she was driving and I was riding, we found ourselves on Pennsylvania Ave., cruising past my Girl Scouts Troop leader’s house. Her daughter—a fellow scout—was having a party with a bunch of girls sprawled all over her front lawn. We’d barely gotten past the yard when the troop leader’s daughter hurled her greeting.

Nigger want a watermelon?

Stunned, scared, hurt and betrayed, I was rendered mute. But my cousin, whose mouth was bigger than the Long Island Sound, had no problem saying a few choice words back—nasty enough to get the fellow scout and all of her friends to chase us all the way down the street. All the way off Pennsylvania Avenue.

I never stepped foot back on that block again. And I never went back to Girl Scouts, either, for obvious reasons. And at age 12, I swore that no daughter of mine would ever be a Girl Scout or find herself in a situation where she was The Only and The Others could jump her or verbally abuse her or make her feel unwelcome or a combo of the three.

Of course, my 12-year-old pronouncement is smacking against my very real world mom experiences, which, if I’m worth my mom salt, must include letting my babies pursue their passions and experience the beauty of trying something new.

Thing is, letting my babies be The Only in a room full of The Other is not easy for me. It happens, no doubt; though we seek diversity in most everything we do with our children, the way we live and the circles in which we move and the experiences we have and the passions we let our kids pursue sometimes wind up being as homogenous as a carton of 2%. My daughters can handle themselves in such situations; it’s not a thing for them to be The Only—it doesn’t change who they are in any way or make them feel lesser or want to be something other than the beautiful brown girls that they are.

But it’s not my girls I’m worried about.

No, the ones who give me pause are the grown ups whom, whether knowingly or ignorantly, create social settings in which my girls are the only black kids in the room. I mean, how comfortable with brown folk could they be if we’re their only African American friends or we’re the only black people out of dozens who signed up for their program or the materials/programming/experiences they’re offering up are about as diverse as a 1950s lunch counter in the South?

This is what I was trying to convey to my blog friend, Tracey, when she wondered why I was all freaked out about sending Mari to sleepaway camp a few weeks back. Mari chronicled her three-day camp trip over at MyBrownBaby (in pictures and prose), and I wrote a short intro confessing that even though my 11-year-old was the one roughing it out in the woods with, for all intents and purposes, a bunch of strangers (she went with her 6^th grade class, which she’s attended for only a few short weeks), I was the one who was damn-near grabbling the smelling salts as I packed her duffle bag and hugged her good-bye. Now granted, Mari got to go on the trip because her class is pretty diverse and her school cares about such things and her teachers are absolute rock stars who would never leave my baby to fend herself from personal, racial attacks. Still, I was anxious—out of my natural born mind with worry.

This feeling would only be about a bazillion kazillion times worse if my babies rallied for an extended sleep-away camp with a bunch of people I don’t know. It’s not the lions and tigers and bears that scare me. It’s the humans.

Nigger want a watermelon?

I raise my hand and cop to the fact that I need work—that it’s time I stop expecting the worse and I let go of the pain of the past and focus on helping my girls embrace a good time, and, in the instances when they’re with people too ignorant to see them for who they are, learn how to navigate the isolation, the cold shoulders, and yes, the nastiness and vitriol that comes when people stereotype and lash out at folks who don’t look like them.

But I’ve no control over the hearts of men (or women or their children).

And that’s the scariest proposition of all when babies are involved.

My babies.

And so I struggle with it.

And pray with all my might that my daughters won’t have to any time soon.