Willie Mays and Henderson, Part 1
Just a note to accompany this new post: I want to thank Stacy Cantrell, dear talented and accomplished friend, for designing this blog and making it happen.
The Willie Mays book from the library had to be returned the next day, and much remained unread. This was the last chance to find out what happened to Willie. So grandson Henderson and I sat on the sofa and he read to me. At eight, his reading skills are good, but the Willie Mays story holds a world of contexts unknown to him—what major leagues are, who the Yankees are, what “rookie” means. So, non-sports-fan that I am tried gamely to fill in. But then we came to a line about baseball teams not hiring black players when Willie was a boy. Henderson accurately pointed out, “But he’s not black.” And the picture on the page, indeed, was of a brown, not a black, child. So I tried to explain that black doesn’t mean black; it means brown, and white doesn’t mean white; it means beige. Hard to explain to a literal-minded eight-year-old. This San Francisco grandson of mine has lived among all colors of skin, has a black mother and a white mother, and has little, if any, concept of race. At least he doesn’t indicate that he does. He responds to people by his direct experience—who will play with him, who is too busy, which kid plays well with others on the playground, which kid is a bully. And he has a strong sense of fairness: “Why were they so mean to him?”
How to explain the concept of race, let alone the history of slavery and all the rest of it, to a child who is still innocent of such hard facts? I don’t want him to have to know this history, but I can’t protect him from it. Will he internalize racism? What will he think of his white grandparents when he learns of slavery and Jim Crow?
In a few years, he will have to be coached on how to behave around police. Like black parents in this country who have witnessed their children’s loss of innocence as their view of the world darkened, I am afraid for him. And angry that a beautiful child has to be sullied by the world around him.
