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Playing the Race Card Has No Value
We’ve been conditioned not to call out racists, even when our lives depend on it
When I was nine years old, my teacher just didn’t like Black students. No, that’s not quite right — she had disdain for us. While she displayed overt favoritism for White and Asian students, she made it clear she expected the Black children in her class to fail. When I managed to do well on tests and write a compelling story, her reaction was to ask whether I was adopted or mixed.
But from a very young age, I couldn’t call her out. No one had ever told me this, but I somehow knew: Don’t bring up their own racism. Or, in White people terms, don’t “pull the race card.”
At 10, I watched a White police officer in Orlando brutally slam a Black teenage girl on the hood of her car — for the brazen, life-threatening offense of “having a smart mouth.” The cop then turned to her partner and casually remarked: “They grow big fast, and can’t be treated like children. I wonder what they’re feeding them?” The two of them laughed.
That teenage girl knew not to pull the race card.
At 15, two of my close friends were Lakshmi, a Black girl, and Cassandra, who was White. We frequently hung out at Cassandra’s house after school. I met her parents and often had conversations with her father. We were, genuinely, on friendly terms. One rainy afternoon, the three of us were watching the then-new Bone Thugs-N-Harmony music video, “Crossroads.”
Angered by the music, and seeing only his daughter seated in the armchair, he irritably yelled from the kitchen, “Hey! Turn that off. I told you I don’t want you listening to that street thug nigger shit.” Cassandra turned off the television and stared at the floor, mortified. When her father entered the front room, he froze. We didn’t bother listening to his apology; we picked up our backpacks and left.
That same year, I walked with a friend and my cousin to a local pizza parlor. We wanted to check out the new Street Fighter Alpha machine and have pizza with some other friends. A motorcycle cop, without warning or provocation, made an abrupt U-turn — during rush hour — pulled over, drew his firearm, and demanded we all get on the ground. We were forced to lie there…
