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Constans Comment

The will power of naivete

I grew up in the segregated north, in Redding.

Except for the American Indian family from the Hoopa Tribe who lived across the street, white faces surrounded us, including our own when we looked in the mirror.

We played frequently with the "Indian kids," as people called them, and often heard our "good" neighbors’ accusations and insinuations about "those kids’" father having a "drinking problem."

"He is Indian after all," they would say, as if that explained everything.

As a child, I didn’t understand the bigotry or stereotyping that was occurring. All I knew was that their father was rarely home, and if he was we had to be very quiet.

A couple of years ago I contacted a member of that family, Mary, with whom I had gone to school, and asked how they are doing.

She’s now married and working as a lawyer for Indian rights and, she said, her brothers and sisters are doing well. It turns out that her father was alcoholic and died many years ago, as have many fathers who are white.

In the late ’50s when I was 6, my mother started working part-time and hired a woman named Alberta to watch my sister and I at her home.

Alberta was black, and her husband Lemual was a Baptist minister. They had two children, Albert and Brenda. They were probably the first black people we had ever met in person, let alone seen.

They lived in a small, dilapidated home in a run-down part of town. At the time, we lived in what would now be identified as the middle-class suburbs.

As a teen-ager, I became aware that most of the black people in Redding lived in a poor section of town, literally on the other side of the railroad tracks.

Alberta was a big, dark brown woman whose loud, strong voice could stop us in our tracks and get us to do anything.

If Candace (my sister), Albert, Brenda and I were outside playing tag or hide-and-seek and Alberta called for us to come in, we didn’t linger, but headed in as fast as our legs could carry us.

She was strict, but caring. I remember her giving us big warm hugs that enveloped our little bodies, until it felt like we had disappeared. At one point, I believe our mother asked if she would be our godmother.

Occasionally, Alberta would take us all to her husband’s church, and we would play outside while she attended choir practice. We would moan, along with the other black kids hanging around, about how boring it was and wondered when they would be done.

Albert and Brenda fought off and on, like brothers and sisters do, but never picked on Candace and me.

It was in Brenda’s bedroom that I first heard soul music: the Supremes, the Miracles and Little Stevie Wonder. We would dance and sing, and laugh at all our dancing and singing, until Alberta told us to quiet down.

After four years, when my mother had divorced and remarried, our family moved to a bigger home, farther out from town. She said they kept in touch with Alberta and her family for a while, but they moved out of the area and I haven’t heard from them in decades.

As a teen-ager in the late ’60s, I "went with" a black girl in high school. Her name was Barbara, and it only lasted a few weeks.

At first I just followed her around until she noticed me. Then we talked on and off, and held hands once or twice. At the time, I was doing everything I could think of "against the establishment," and this was simply another way to proclaim my independence and spit in the face of convention.

It didn’t really mean much to her, nor I, and I doubt if she would even remember it today.

What strikes me about all these experiences of childhood, and as an adult, is that I, as a white man, have always had the choice of when and how I interact with or befriend people of color and deal with race.

Sometimes I have done so when it fulfills a need, is convenient, gives me a sense of having "helped" someone or fits my self-image of being an accepting, understanding person.

When I interviewed Lee Mun Wah, a well-known facilitator and videographer, for my book on transforming grief for social good, he said, "We don’t take the time to really look, to really experience.

"The American Indians are right when they say, ‘You want my customs, my rituals and my land, but you don’t want me.’

"What we do is, we use people and cultures. We use them when it’s convenient — for a service, for artifacts.

"Rarely do we take the time to understand how we relate to each other."

At times, I too have not really looked or listened. I have put people in boxes and preconceived, easily digestible categories that make life comfortable and lead me to believe that "everything is so much better nowadays than it used to be."

And maybe it is, in some respects. But it shouldn’t stop me from looking honestly at myself and not minimizing or candy-coating their experience out of my own need for security.

In "Notes of a Native Son" (1953), James Baldwin wrote, "The black man insists that the white man cease to regard him as an exotic rarity and recognize him as a human being. This is a very charged and difficult moment, for there is a great deal of will power involved in the white man’s naiveté.

"Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious, and the white man prefers to keep the black man at a certain human remove because it is easier for him thus to preserve his simplicity."

I wish things were simple. I wish just talking about race and prejudice were simple. I wish everybody was treated equally and had the same opportunities, but we’re not.

The best I can do is not be afraid to look at myself and the person in front of me without looking through rose-colored glasses and tell the truth as I see it inside and out.

Gabriel Constans is a counselor in the Center for Grief and Loss in the Hospice Caring Project of Santa Cruz County, located in Aptos.

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