I just applied for (and was accepted!) to a very credentialed online university to get my Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy Counseling. Part of the application process was to answer seven essay questions, many having to do with my family of origin, my childhood, my place in my family, and my life experiences. Typing out each of those 500 word responses had me reflecting on some experiences from my childhood and the relevance it has had to this week.
This week was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. In 1963 I would have been 7, almost 8 years old. What I remember from being 7 years old, and what I wrote about in one of my responses, was about an incident in a pool in Houston, Texas. In 1963 there were no more "For Whites Only" signs around town, but there was still an unspoken agreement that Whites and "Colored People" did not go swimming in the same pools. However, on that day in August of 1963 there was the first encounter for me and people of color. My family not been swimming long when everybody in the pool started getting out, all at once, for no apparent reason. My father, seeing what was happening put his hand over my hand, which was hanging on to the side of the pool. He said in a low, but very stern voice, "Do NOT get out of the pool"! I was not sure what was going on, everyone else was getting out, but my dad was making a point that we were not to get out of the pool. I was momentarily confused, but then I saw the cause for alarm. A Black couple and their children, were walking up to the gates of the pool, wanting to go swimming like anybody else that hot afternoon. My father was adamant that we stay in the pool. Whether it was a show of support for equality or not, maybe he just wanted to let that family know that not every White family was bigoted or racist. I remember he did go over and speak to them, and we went on swimming, unaware of what had really just happened.
Seven years later it would happen again. We lived in West University, which was basically a White working class neighborhood, and there was a neighborhood pool. To keep the pool running and pay for life guards, families could purchase a membership each summer for unlimited swimming. You could bring guests for $.75. My father and mother often went to the pool with us after dinner, and this particular evening, my father saw two young Black boys riding up to the pool on their bikes. The pool's policy for entrance was for "members and their guests". Upon seeing the two boys, my father quickly got up and went to the front entrance, just as the two boys got there. My father did not wait for the cashier or the boys to say anything. Instead, he asked the two boys if they wanted to go swimming. They replied that yes, they did, and my father told the cashier that the two boys were his guests, and paid the $1.50 for them to get in. He told them to have a good time, and came back to where we were sitting. Just like seven years prior, there were some people who left when the two boys came in.
This was hardly surprising for me or my siblings, since my dad had been telling us for years that we were not any better than anyone else, just because we happened to be born White, because we had nothing to do with that. He had grown up in the Rio Grande Valley and was super sensitive to the poverty of the Mexican workers who crossed the border every day when he was child. His parents had money, and employed three Mexican workers every day. He wrestled with the unfairness in life, and questioned why he had had it so good, when so many people lived in such poverty. He never talked about White privilege, per se, but he lived it, and it was uncomfortable for him.
My dad passed in 1989, and this week, I wondered what he would have had to say about what is now a very normal part of my life, that quite honestly, I now just take for granted. I was at water aerobics at the Y this week. There are people of color in my swim class, and often in the hot tub that adjoins the pool. This week, I particularly noticed two older Black men and one older White man in the hot tub talking, laughing, and sharing stories. They were obviously enjoying each other's company, at times laughing loudly at something one of them had shared. When they got ready to leave I was close enough to hear them ask each others' names, and to see them shake each others' hands. Not forced, not because there was anything to prove, just genuine human kindness and politeness.
Those men made me think about my childhood, and the difference 50 years has made. My dad not letting us get out of the pool when all the other White people got out, and my dad paying for two little boys to swim because he knew that otherwise they would have been turned away. Not because they were not members, but because they were Black, and in 1970, we still judged little children by the color of their skin. Dr. King's dream speech was only seven years old then, and people's hearts and minds had not yet begun to change. But this week, this week, I did notice that 50 years later, three older gentlemen, Black and White who were most certainly alive in 1963, sat in a hot tub and enjoyed each others' company, and the color of their skin had nothing to do with the conversation and the laughter. Indeed the Y, and countless other places have made it illegal to discriminate based on skin color. However, I am not naive enough to think that it still does not still happen, particularly in the South, and in places where money can still keep people segregated. But this week I saw a marked difference from my childhood to today. Thank you Dr. King for your dream.
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