“Mom, that kid just called Joey a nigger!” Jimmy, my fair-haired eleven year-old, his face flushed with anger, stood before me on the elementary school playground, trying to process the insult that had just been hurled at his darker-skinned younger brother. “I was going to fight him, but I decided to come and tell you.”
It was a brilliant fall afternoon, one of those days perfect for after-school pick up football games, which my boys, in their rare moments of unscheduled time, love. Standing on the sidelines moments before, paying only half-attention to the scene before me, I had marveled at the fact that on this particular day, there were so many boys of so many ages participating in the game, tossing the ball around, everyone getting along, the older ones even letting the younger ones run some of the plays. They were jumping and shouting and laughing and arguing technicalities. It all seemed chaotically peaceful, and healthy, and right.
Until the word “nigger” stopped the play in its tracks.
“WHO said that?” I asked. “That kid.” Jimmy pointed in the direction of a thin, small, barely adolescent boy whom I recognized as a former student at our elementary school, now in the neighborhood middle school. He was Hispanic, with light brown skin, very similar to the skin of my own Joe, who had been adopted from Guatemala.
Incredulous, enraged, shaking, I marched over to him. “WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL MY SON?” I shouted. He just stood there, skinny shoulders hunched, looking at the ground, silent. The other boys, a mix of sizes and skin colors, seemed frozen. No one moved. No one said a word. Joe stood silent, too, a confused look on his face.
“DID YOU JUST CALL MY CHILD A NIGGER?” No answer. “DO YOU KNOW HOW OLD HE IS?” Still no answer. I moved my face closer to his, threatening, bending over a bit to force him to look me in the eye. “HE’S SEVEN YEARS OLD. HE’S IN SECOND GRADE. DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A BIG MAN TO CALL A LITTLE KID A NIGGER?” At this point, I’m pretty sure I was screaming at him. “HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF A KID WHO WAS OLDER THAN YOU CALLED YOU A NIGGER?”
In a very small, very shaky voice, which cracked a little, he answered, “I wouldn’t care.”
I took a deep breath. I straightened up. I lowered my voice. “Well, I care. I’m calling your mother.” He looked really nervous now. He shook his head, licked his lips and backed away.
“Do you have something to say to Joe?” I asked. He looked at Joe, whose coffee-colored skin and brown eyes mirrored his own, and softly murmured, “I’m sorry.”
“This game is over,” I said. I collected my two boys and their friends who were in my care that afternoon and we marched off the field. “I should have decked him, Mom,” said Jimmy. “No, you did the right thing by telling me,” I answered, secretly unsure of myself and the way I had handled the situation.
In the car on the way home, we talked about what happened. I had to clarify the word “nigger” for Joe, who had never heard it before. We talked about the fact that in the old days some people used that word to insult people who had dark skin. One of the boys brought up Martin Luther King, and we talked about how he fought to make sure that schools like theirs, where there are kids with all sorts of skin colors, exist. We talked about the fact that sometimes middle school kids, in an attempt to be cool, can tend to say stupid things that they don’t really mean.
Later that night I checked an old school directory and called his mother. She was horrified. “I didn’t raise my kids to be that way,” she said. “We don’t use that word in our family. I try and teach them to be respectful. I tell them they are a reflection of me.” He was grounded for a week.
Maybe this is some sort of twisted progress. Maybe the fact that in this decade, white mothers with dark-skinned children are now calling dark-skinned mothers to complain that their kids are calling other kids the “N” word is a step forward. Or maybe the fact that dark-skinned kids are using that word on each other to be cool is just a sinister step backward.
Since then, my boys and this boy have played in a few after-school pick-up games, when the schedule allows, and everything seems O.K. As far as I can tell, everyone is getting along fine, and no one is calling anyone names.