"We Are Not Alone" a Guest Post by Pamela Lewis
It’s a few days after Christmas. Videos of children frenziedly shucking wrapping paper, ribbon and boxes for the gifts held inside fill my Facebook and Instagram feed with intentions to warm hearts and elicit joy. My heart yields to the endearing spectacles of cuteness overload, temporarily anesthetizing the nagging ache in my soul that subsides only in moments like this. Just yesterday, after having had a few days to nurse the feeling almost away, as I had chosen to not spend my well-deserved teacher holiday break thinking about the many instances that would cause such a flare up, it was back at it again. Tamir Rice’s killer would not be indicted. I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised, but with all the media attention, the protests, somehow I had been fooled into believing in a different outcome. Beautifully wrapped presents can be deceiving. I had been expecting something sparkly, but unwrapped dirt-tasting chewing gum instead.
Annoyed that I had been forced to confront our nation’s ugliest scar during the most wonderful time of the year, I took to Facebook to bask in some holiday cheer, and as I already reported, the beauty of innocent children prevailed, and my heartache waned temporarily. Until—yep, there had to be an “until.” Until, I watched a video of two adorable little white girls unwrapping gifts from “Uncle Seth and Aunt Cynthia,” as their mother stated on the video. All hope of something sparkly gone at the sight of two brown baby doll faces staring back at them. The older girl, first genuinely confused, then, obviously irritated at the thought of a black doll as a gift. Showing the gift to her mother, she tilts her little head, giving her mom a face as if to say, “Seriously, mom?” When her mom continues with a straight face, she immediately puts on her big girl britches and feigns gratitude, though her disgust makes her portrayal hardly believable. Her baby sister on the other hand, makes no qualms about her repulsion. She begins to cry white tears of self-pity, which soon become fury, rejecting the doll all together by throwing it back into the bag. Included in this video are the sounds of their mother’s guffaws, suggesting that despite Uncle Seth’s and Aunt Cynthia’s attempt toward teaching tolerance, she would use their gift as a gag, a trick: dirt-tasting chewing gum. Her decision to film their reaction, indicative of her expectation of let down, spoke volumes as to what she taught and didn’t teach her children; her choice to laugh rather than to use their response as a teachable moment toward tolerance and inclusion suggestive of her own belief in white supremacy. It seemed Uncle Seth and Aunt Cynthia were well aware of their sister’s archaic ideologies, and decided to confront it, once and for all.
It had only been the second time I had ever even heard of a white person giving a black doll to a white little girl, yet within that same hour, I’d spotted in my news feed several white dolls under trees With A Brooklyn Accent: "We Are Not Alone" a Guest Post by Pamela Lewis:
