I am the proud father of two beautiful children,
Elijah, 15, and Octavia, 12.
When Elijah was in the fourth grade,
he came to me,
came home from school bubbling over with excitement about what he had learned
that day about African American history.
Now, I'm an African American and Cultural Studies professor,
and so as you can imagine
African American culture is kind of serious around my home.
So I was very proud that my son was excited about what he had learned
that day in school.
So I said, "What did you learn?"
He said, "I learned about Rosa Parks."
I said, "OK, what did you learn about Rosa Parks?"
He said, "I learned that Rosa Parks
was this frail old black woman
in the 1950s
in Montgomery, Alabama
and she sat down on this bus
and she had tired feet
and when the bus driver told her to give up her seat
to a white patron,
she refused because she had tired feet,
it had been a long day,
and she was tired of oppression,
and she didn't give up her seat.
And she marched with Martin Luther King
and she believed in non-violence."
And I guess he must have looked at my face
and saw that I was a little less than impressed
by his history lesson.
And so he stopped, and he was like, "Dad, what's wrong? What did I get wrong?"
I said, "Son, you didn't get anything wrong,
but I think your teacher got a whole lot of things wrong."
He said, "Well, what do you mean?"
I said, "Rosa Parks was not tired.
She was not old.
And she certainly didn't have tired feet."
He said, "What?"
I said, "Yes!"
Rosa Parks was only 42 years old.
Yeah, you're shocked, right? Never heard that.
Rosa Parks was only 42 years old,
she had only worked six hours that day, and she was a seamstress,
and her feet were just fine.
The only thing that she was tired of
was she was tired of inequality.
She was tired of oppression.
And my son said,
"Well, why would my teacher tell me this thing?
This is confusing for me."
Because he loved this teacher, and she was a good teacher,
and young-ish, 20-something white woman,
really, really smart, pushed him, so I liked her as well.
But he was confused. "Why would she tell me this?" he said.
He said, "Dad, tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more about Rosa Parks."
And I said, "Son, I'll do you one better."
He was like, "What?"
I said, "I'm going to buy her autobiography
and I'm going to let you read it yourself."
(Laughter)
So as you can imagine,
Elijah wasn't too excited about this new lengthy homework assignment
that his dad had just given him, but he took it in stride,
and he came back
after he had read it
and he was excited about what he had learned.
He said, "Dad, not only was Rosa Parks not initially into non-violence,
but Rosa Parks' grandfather who basically raised her
and was light enough to pass as white
used to walk around town with his gun in his holster,
and people knew that if you messed with Mr. Parks' children or grandchildren,
he would put a cap in your proverbial bottom."
Right?
He was not someone to mess with.
And he said, "I also learned that Rosa Parks married a man in Raymond
who was a lot like her grandfather.
He would organize.
He was a civil rights activist.
He would organize events
and sometimes the events would be at Rosa Parks' home,
and one time Rosa Parks remarked
that there were so many guns on the table
because they were prepared for somebody to come busting into the door
that they were prepared for whatever was going to go down,
that Rosa Parks said there were so many guns on the table
that I forgot to even offer them coffee or food."
This is who Rosa Parks was,
and in fact Rosa Parks,
when she was sitting on that bus that day
waiting for those police officers to arrive
and not knowing what was going to happen to her,
she was not thinking about Martin Luther King,
who she barely knew.
She was not thinking about non-violence or Gandhi.
She was thinking about her grandfather,
a gun-toting take-no-mess grandfather.
That's who Rosa Parks was thinking about.
My son was mesmerized by Rosa Parks,
and I was proud of him to see this excitement.
But then I still had a problem,
because I still had to go his school
and address the issue with his teacher,
because I didn't want her to continue to teach the kids
obviously false history.
So I'm agonizing over this, primarily because I understand,
as an African American man
that whenever you talk to whites about racism
or anything that's racially sensitive,
there's usually going to be a challenge.
This is what white sociologist Robin DiAngelo calls "white fragility."