One Son, One Story of Race in America

6/9/20 

I was grating a raw beet, and Max was slicing mushrooms.  We were making veggie burgers, from a New York Times recipe—a long and complicated list of ingredients no one without his own personal chef would have on hand.  The recipe’s supposed to take three and a half hours to complete, including two hours for chilling, but at the rate Max is going, we won’t be eating dinner until 9 pm.  Talk, talk, talk— does he need a pill to make him focus on what he’s doing? 

“No, I don’t need it,” he says.  “I can focus without it … “

I return to my beet.  Suddenly he blurts out: “Did you notice that all of the judges on MasterChef are white?  I think there’s only been one Latino.”  He’s practically memorized all 10 seasons of the show.  “And almost all of the winners are white, too.“  

I stop peeling.  So far he’s avoided the issue of race.  “Really?  Wow.  I bet that’s true.”   Then I pause.  “I wonder how many of the contestants are people of color?  Or how many even apply?”  I want to believe the proportions make sense, the judges themselves aren’t biased.  That blacks and Latinos simply don’t apply.  But then I wonder, “Why not?”  Does racism operate even before a child's dreams make themselves known?

“Six out of ten of the winners are white.  Just one of them was African American.” 

“That’ too bad,” I say.  Pause.  He has sliced about 6 mushrooms so far.  “But I don’t think we can talk and get this recipe done at the same time.  We have to choose one or the other.”  

I see the look of disgust cross his face. “Forget I said it.”

  

“It’s important stuff to talk about, “ I hastened to add. “Let’s talk about it later. “

He puts his head down.  “I just need to talk to you.  There’s important stuff going on in my life.” 

I sigh, put both the beet and the peeler on the counter, and turn toward him.  “What’s going on?” 

“My friends say I seem sad.  Not my usual happy-go-lucky self.  I tell them I’ve gone to the dark side.  I’m in a dark place.”

I must look doubtful. My bubbly son?

“I wish I could die.  I don’t want to be here anymore.” 

I feel a squeezing in my chest.  “You seem angry …” 

“I am angry.  I hate people, I hate myself. We’re idiots.  We’re killing the earth, we’re killing each other for money, we hate each other because of skin color …”

Max is brown.  But the skin under his socks is as white as mine, so sometimes he wonders … 

“People are going to see you as brown,” I say.  

“Latino,” he shoots back.  “… but … my father might be white.”

  

I pause.  “Would it be okay if your father wasn’t white?” 

“I don’t care what he is,” he dismisses the implication. “It doesn’t matter. He abandoned his family anyway.” 

It’s obvious to me that he does care. “Maybe it’d be good to see a counselor, talk to someone besides your parents.” 

“I don’t need a counselor. I can handle it.”

But the truth is I’m bearing the weight of his isolation: no friends ready at hand, no teachers or school advisors. 

  

My son is grieving. Not only the pandemic, the looting, the lost businesses and restaurants—but the loss of his childhood belief in the universality of good will and fairness and equal opportunity.  Now he must grapple with a biological father he doesn’t want to emulate, a racial identity he doesn’t want to accept, a society in which police are deadly to brown and black people and white people look away. 

When it comes to police killings, I used to believe there were two sides to every story.  The white cop was scared.  The black man was resisting arrest.  The white cop was walking into a dangerous situation.  The black man shouldn’t have passed off a counterfeit $20 bill.  The black man shouldn’t have been killed, but the white man believed he had a gun. 

There’s nothing more important to me than my son.  I finally get it: there aren't two sides to the story of race in America: there's only one.