The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Debbie Spragg Brisentine
Plain City, OH
I was born in 1954, lived in Mt. Pleasant Ohio, pop. approx. 500. Attended school from 1959-1972. Had both white and black friends but, to me, they were all just friends – no difference! I never knew anything about racial issues until maybe 1969, 1970. It was an idyllic childhood…
Jackie Loya-Torres
Kansas City, MO
As a small child in the 1970s, I remember having to take some sort of standardized test in school. You know…the ones where you need a #2 pencil to fill in the ovals? On the cover page, in addition to listing my name, gender and age, I was asked to mark my race. As I recall, my options were something like White (or maybe it said “Caucasian”), Negro, Asian/Pacific Islander and American Indian. I remember feeling panicked that my race was not an option. Which oval should I mark? Aren’t I going to be graded on this? My classmates had already flipped the page and were swiftly marking their ovals. I approached Sr.’s desk and informed her that I didn’t know which oval was mine. She looked at me as if I had two heads. She told me to mark “white.” I looked back at her as if she had three heads under that habit. White? How can that be, I wondered. I thought, maybe American Indian or possibly Negro. These didn’t work either, but they at least felt in the ballpark. I tried to explain to Sr. that I wasn’t white and that surely, there must be another form for me to use. Annoyed, she again told me to mark “White.” So, like the good Catholic schoolgirl that I was, I followed her instruction and reluctantly marked white. I went on to fill in all my ovals and as I recall, scored well on that standardized test.
Almost 40 years later, this experience still resonates with me. The forms still don’t work for me. I am well aware that being Latina (in my case, Mexican-American) does not qualify as my race, but as my ethnicity. I know the forms and the Census Bureau want me to mark that I’m a white Latina, but that doesn’t work for me either. My skin is not white. I have never been afforded the privileges of being white and I do not identify as white. I am brown. In my mind and in my experience, my race is brown, Mexican-American, Chicana, Latina and maybe, just maybe, even Hispanic (another word I’m not crazy about), but not white. After all these years, I’m still searching for my oval.
Judith McConkie,
Salt Lake City, UT.
The sentence describes our family’s conflicted past. As liberal Democrats in the 1970s my husband and I considered the ban on blacks holding Mormon priesthood to be ridiculous and insidious — a reason to leave the faith. We held on and held out faith that things would change, slowly perhaps, but they would change. We are part of a prominent family in the church. We have alternately rejoiced (that hardly covers our euphoria) and then felt terrible shame. How could we properly show ourselves as sincere penitents without taking on a tone of supercilious idiots. Last summer our brother-in-law had his DNA mapped. The map showed markers common to Black Africans. In checking his genealogy he found a woman who had in one census had a name and connection to a black family in the south. The state’s birth certificate listed her as “mulatto” . After she joined the church in the late 19th century, her name has changed and her race is “white” The brother-in-law remembers his generous father describing her life and personality something like this: My grandmother was a kind and very loving woman whose life story is “shrouded in mystery.” For months now, we have sincerely envied his heritage; he and his children and we are actually thrilled. And we older members of the family know of the consequences of his father’s characterization of his grandmother’s past. I cannot adequately tell you how many times we have turned and examined this woman’s decision to literally alter her “race card” and her grandson’s decision to leave it alone, to let it be mysterious. We who found life partners in the Mormon church in the 1960s understand how his life would have been entirely different. Stunning really.
Nedra De Lima,
White Plains, MD.
Experienced “minority status” when we moved stateside from Hawaii in the 70s. I was most often identified as Hispanic/Mexican. Was also identified as generic Native American or African American. Also Inuit or Louisiana Creole. Too many times, I only became acceptable after I identified as Hawaiian Chinese. Then I became exotic and welcome. People would break out into a relieved smile which I found offensive because it was always the folks who thought I was Mexican or Black. Most of the time they would pat my back or arm and want to engage in a conversation. I was safe enough to touch and interesting enough to talk to now. I was always polite but in my mind and in my heart they sickened me.
Judy Jessick
Fresno, CA
In the early 70s, agencies turned us down unless we wanted to adopt a son w/mental or physical disability or a minority child. We applied for a multi-racial child. People freely voiced their opinions (we are Caucasian), including the one above that we were not Dale Evans-Roy Rogers who could adopt multiple children and live on a mountain top. Months later, we received a Scandinavian child! He will soon be 41, has a degree in Ethnic Studies (he is my son!), and adopted a beautiful little girl who is Mexican and Jewish. What a wonderful circle. I couldn’t be prouder or love him more.
Jeannette Chavez
Albuquerque, NM
It was the early 70′s in the Texas panhandle. On a road trip we stopped at a diner to eat. He didn’t want us in there. He ruined our food. He put pickles in my pancakes. His action enraged me. Now it scares me.
Skywalker Payne,
Homer, AK
In the 1970’s I worked at the University of Texas in Austin, where I first heard the oxymoron “minority-majority.” I wrote an essay then, called “The Minority Myth.” It’s now, “,” The 2021 census has shown we, People of Color, are becoming the new majority. Maybe we will learn to unify and let a true democracy manifest.
MK,
Baltimore, MD.
A few moments in my “coming into adulthood” stand out as I am navigating the world of race. I remember probably 10 years back now that in conversation with my mother-in-law in a less-than-intellectual blue collar town her speaking of how racism towards white people was apparent in the area. She noted she wasn’t racist because she had a black friend. On another occasion, years before this, I can still hear my grandpa’s words echo as he learned I was dating someone for the first time.. “as long as he is the right color.” I knew exactly what he meant even though I wanted to ask, “What is the right color?” I was taken aback in these instances, but also realized how different the world was through these generations in terms of how race was viewed and how our own perceptions are shaped by the world around us. With these comments I saw an ingrained sense of separation in my grandfather coming from growing up in the 40’s and 50’s to my mother-in-law’s work to appear not to be racist coming from growing up in the 60’s and 70’s to me- a product of the 80’s and 90’s who is surprised by these comments, yet still aware and always becoming more aware of my own internal biases and observations about how often we flock to those that seem “the same.” Why is this? Does outward appearance make us the same? Or does the culture that we have grown up in make us the same? Or something else? What is the “right” color or “wrong” color? Where do we find commonalities and where does a certain level of comfort come in regardless of differences-outward and inward? What does it mean to have a black friend? A white friend? A Hispanic friend? An Indian friend?
Diana Gonzalez,
Franklin Square, NY.
I am an adopted person. I’ve been searching for my past all my life. I’m 60 now.
One of my adopted parents was Austrian and one was Italian. I was raised to think of myself as Italian. In the early 1970’s I searched and found out I was born in Brooklyn and my name at birth was, Female Gonzalez.
I was of Spanish descent. It was a big shock. I continued searching and around 2000 I found out I am 100% Puerto Rican.
I have issues about what race I am. For instance when my adoptive mom was in the nursing home and I was pushing her around in a wheelchair, I always felt people must think I’m her aide. (My adoptive mom, being Austrian, was light skinned and had green eyes.) I am dark skinned, brown eyes, dark hair. You would never pick us out as mother and daughter.
When she and I were out and about when I was growing up I sometimes felt awkward when we were introduced as mother and daughter. The awkwardness came because we were so different. If I was out with my father, it wasn’t an issue because, being Italian, he was dark like me.
I’m trying to figure out if my adoption would be considered a transracial adoption. Not sure.
Jane Meacham,
Washington, DC.
My dad is a lawyer in Kansas City, MO, who always had mostly black, working-class clients. When the city school district started to decline in quality in the early 1970s, we moved away to a nearly all-white suburban school district nearby. So I realize now, all these years later, that his African-American clientele’s fees inadvertently helped us flee the changing complexion of a busing-integrated school system.
Emily Green-Cain,
Nashville, TN.
I grew up in the city where James Lawson led teach-ins for non-violence that led to sit-ins throughout the Southeast. No one in my schooling, neither my parents, my church or the local education system taught me anything about these events. I did not know the specifics of what happened here until the series “Eyes on the Prize” did an episode on the Nashville sit-ins in 2006. Is not sharing the pain and difficulties of recent history convenient for the white community who still holds the power to make it invisible? Or is it a willful act to keep their children in the dark about what really happened? Now, the Nashville Public Library has a civil rights room that teaches the historic struggle…I wish it had been there in the 1970’s when I grew up.
Shannon Luders-Manuel,
Los Angeles, CA.
Awesome project, and glad I found it! I’m black & white and write about race issues.
Desiree,
Chesapeake, VA.
When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s I use to hear about black people are the most uneducated race, and have the highest drop outs rates. In my family neither mother or father side have education. If anyone is educated there are distant family members. Therefore growing up the children did what they saw the parents do, except when I quit school because I had kids early, I decided to return, and obtain my GED, and life goes on from there, as I continued to seek education through out my life, and even now at 45 still engaging in an learning environment in spite of life challenges along the way. I have refused to live life uneducated and be a statistic.
Michelle C-H
Dorchester , MA
When I was a little kid, in the 70’s, My family was the only black folks most of the people around us had ever seen. Everyday in my elementary school I got some ignorant comment. “Are you brown cuz you eat brown bread?” and the like. The worst was from the old lady who served us snacks. When it was my turn to help her, she made me wash my hands to get the brown off. Over and over and over. Wash your hands, brown is dirty.
Robert Kruk,
Bloomingdale, NJ
When I was a boy (13 or so) my father & I were watching the news, and an African-American demonstration was shown. After listening to a speaker, my father exclaimed the above sentence. Even at the time, I thought that it was one of the stupidest things I’d ever heard anyone say. Years later. now in my seventies, I realize that my father was actually one of the worst kind of rascists: one who doesn’t know he is a rascist and, if he were alive, would vehemently deny that he was.
Joe Stainback IV,
New Tazewell, TN.
A quote from my mother … My positive spin on ‘race’ interactions gleaned from mandated busing in the early ’70’s – Richmond, VA.
Richard Bacon
Chicago, IL
Mid 1970s living in perfectly nice middle class neighborhood in NE Dallas Texas. The desecration, by busing, of the neighborhood school (which was mediocre anyway) caused about half the families with school age children to move out in one summer. My best friend moved. Those of us who stayed were dispersed to private schools, or lived in families that “didn’t care.” It was like surviving a plague–half the people you knew were suddenly gone.
By high school, I was back in Dallas public schools, at a superior high school with multiple academic magnet programs and about 40-50% white kids. But by early 1980s it was clear that the “best” white kids had moved to suburbs or private schools. Dallas ISD is now only 5% white.
As an adult I moved to Chicago, to the South Side, for grad school, living in a neighborhood surrounded by a sea of neglected and abandoned neighborhoods, beautiful places with tree-lined boulevards, right by Lake Michigan, that white people fled a generation earlier.
Then I married a South Side Irish/Polish woman. Here entire extended family & friends had fled multiple times, moving en masse and replicating whole streets in a new suburb, only to flee that new refuge when a black family moves in. And every move some get left behind and the familial and social connections get frayed a little more. For 3 generations white flight has been organizing principle of this population.
I now live in one of those abandoned/neglected South Side neighborhoods, not wanting to recapitulate the white flight story of my life. It’s a wonderful street, rehabed and infill dwellings, with really wonderful neighbors. But I still feel like refugee.
I don’t blame black people for all this. I blame the white folks who disrupted and dislocated our lives. They wanted to be “safe,” but they create self-fulfilling prophecy with their fear.
Sarah Hildreth Ingersoll,
Middlebury, VT
Growing up in Baltimore in the 70’s and 80’s, I attended an all-girls’ school, starting in fifth grade. In the early grades, I don’t recall any classmates “of color”, but by the time I graduated, we had one black classmate. She was really smart and went to Yale. I don’t know if she had any friends because I never talked to her outside of school.
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