Daddy, Papa and Me

That’s what my 5-year-old daughter said to me this weekend.

It hurt the the core of my heart. I and Guy work hard to raise our daughter with a sense of pride in her heritage, a love for herself and understanding of what it means to be “black” in this country and still remain hopeful.

We thought we were succeeding.

I was perusing DK on Saturday and she walked in to ask me something and saw a picture of Bush. A conversation ensued.

“That’s the president?”

“Yes sweetie”

“You don’t like him do you?”

“No”

“Why not?”

I then spend a short amount of time trying hard to explain to her why not without sounding too disrespectful of the presidency and with things she would understand.

“Is he still president?”

“Yes, but remember the pictures we saw, we are choosing a new president”

She remembers and says she wants the lady to be president. She wants her because she says she likes the way she dresses (sadly, I have a fear that a lot of people vote like this 5-year-old would… someone ‘looks nice’ or ‘you could have a beer with).

“Yes, she’d be a good president”

“You want that man on our refrigerator to be president?” (that’d be Obama)

“Yes, but I like the woman, her name is Hilary Clinton, too”

“He can’t be president”

“Why not?”

“Because people like me can’t be president”

Here my heart sank and my smile disappeared. I was afraid to ask the the next question: “What do you mean?”

“People with skin like me can’t be president”

I wanted to throw up. Where did she get this? I asked her why she thought this and how she came to that conclusion, but like any 5-year-old, she lost interest in the conversation. SHe’ll bring it up again at another time, she always does.

But where in the ^%$ did she get this idea?

Definitely not in our house, where anything is possible.

Not from her kindergarden teachers. They haven’t discussed presidents. I don’t think our daughter has ever seen a list of presidents, much less a list with pictures.

It’s not that she’s not seen men (and women) who are black as leaders. The new head of her school is African American, the former mayor here was African American (and she’s met him)…

Someone, somewhere in our community of multiple races and very liberal San Francisco, said something to the effect that a black man can not become president.

Is that still the thinking in this nation? Are we stuck in the pre-60’s forever believing that a person of color can not and will not, perhaps should not, rise to the top of our nation? Are we going to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by our lack of belief?

Perhaps I am overanalyzing this. I am. It’s our daughter, of course I’m overanalyzing this. But when you can live in a very liberal community of a racial makeup with no majority race or ethnicity and have men and women of color in leadership roles.

And still your daughter can pick up somehow that there is a ceiling that black people can not rise above,

Then this virus of racism is pernicious and much stronger than this optimistic and hopeful father had ever believed.

I don’t want Obama to win because he’s black any more than I want him to lose because of it. But if he doesn’t, I hope another man or woman of color does become president sometime in my daughter’s lifetime because as trivial as this would seem in the bigger picture of things, I hope to be able point out to my daughter that yes, someone with skin like hers can be president.

And the hopeful aspect of this election season, at least when it comes to our daughter, is that come just about this time next year I truly believe that either a woman or a black man will likely be president of the United States of America. Someone like my daughter might just be president one way or the other.

And that alone is one of the most amazing things I’ve been every able to say about a presidential campaign in the 4 decades of my life.

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This entry was posted by Trey on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under Darndest Things, Politics, Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.