Sunday, August 1, 2010
The next generation
Brian and Irene had radically different views about how to teach their children about racism. She was all for hiding ugliness and the truth from them so that they could enjoy their childhoods, and he was all for laying it on the line so that they didn't grow up with illusions and would be prepared for the inevitable. Any thoughts on that discussion?
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Good question. I wonder if this, too, is influenced by Irene and Brian's differences in skin color. It's probably much easier for Irene to hide from racism and pretend it doesn't exist because she can "pass" when she feels like it. And maybe most of her encounters with white people are the wealthy socialites who banter with her at parties. And maybe that gives her an unrealistic, idealized vision of how much racism her sons will actually encounter.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I wondered too whether her high-society outlook affects her views on racism. I can see why she'd want to protect her kids from certain knowledge — partly because the ordeal of explaining it to them (something like lynching, for example) would also force her to regularly confront those realities and the fact that for most black people they really, really existed. Most black people weren't living in ritzy houses in Manhattan and moving in privileged circles and staying above the racial fray. She didn't want those realities to affect her nicely ordered life and shape her kids' self-image in any way, and I don't blame her at all. But keeping them removed from the real world seemed like a disservice, too, like never telling kids anything about sex, pretending it doesn't exist, and letting them go out into the world completely ignorant. Only worse.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, no book on me -- did the story say whether the boys were light-skinned? I can't see how it matters, but maybe Irene thought, like her, the boys could largely go through life moving in and out of whichever world they preferred.
ReplyDeleteOn this matter I thought Brian was absolutely right -- it would be dangerous to shelter the boys very long from the Ballews of the world.
cl, I think Junior was dark. Irene says at that disastrous tea party that "One of my boys is dark," and when Junior's described from Irene's perspective, it says "Junior ... was almost incredibly like his father in feature and coloring, but his temperament was hers, practical and determined..."
ReplyDeleteYour comment made me think again about Irene's desire to ship Junior off to a European school. Ostensibly it was because he was getting "queer ideas" about sex and life in his school, but do you think maybe she was also afraid he'd find out about racism in the U.S.?