Chelsea Sia,
Saint Louis, MO
Okay – here goes.
I do realize that being Caucasian does predispose me to privileges. I can own that. My daughter is Hispanic and my husband is Chinese and Philippine.
My daughter has been playing softball since she was five, she is now 12. We are from a town where whites are a minority. We really haven’t had the conversation arise regarding true racism and what it really means. Quite frankly we’ve never been put in a position where racism has been an active present issue – until recently.
For the first time, my daughter watched the movie Hairspray. She thought it would be a good idea to ask somebody on her team what Negro day was. The individual she asked is African-American, but had she asked a white girl on the team, or me ….wouldn’t that have made her racist as well? Anyhow-Long story short I ended up getting a call from the coach to come in and speak with this parent who is concerned that my daughter may be brought up in a prejudice and racist environment. When this was brought to my attention I was completely mortified, when I talk to my daughter about this she was sobbing as she was completely unaware she had insulted someone. This was all brought to our attention five days after the incident occurred.
I certainly agreed to meet and was looking forward to conversing with this parent hoping to meet some common ground on the lack of education. I did apologize that the comment/question was insensitive but I’m also not going to ridicule my daughter for asking questions.
Of course the stories didn’t match. What my daughter said happened (there definitely is ample proof that this other individual had contacted my daughter multiple times on a friendly basis after my daughter supposedly “insulted” her) is not what the other child said happened and of course there were no witnesses. The other child on the team is no longer comfortable being around my child and the option was to move to a different team.
This is not a solution to our worldwide problem. The impact these accusations have had on our family as a whole is unfathomable. This “meeting” did not clarify or induce any type of epiphany for my daughter to realize what she did wrong. She has no ability to grasp the concept being labeled. What’s really sad is this mother is also an educator for fifth grade students in this area. It is so, so sad that people are so quick to be offended, that they can’t even be a contribute to the solution.
