heard rap before. I knew, in a kind of academic way, what a crack addict was, and I knew a great deal about Martin Luther King: my parents’ first date was at the March on Washington in 1963. But in the world I lived in before I moved to Baltimore—Newton, Massachusetts,
not
Boston, unless you count the occasional trip to the Aquarium or Faneuil Hall—the only black people I saw regularly were babysitters and maids. My parents were ardent Democrats, classic northeastern Waspy liberals, who nonetheless, characteristically, chose to live in a neighborhood populated with people exactly like themselves—plus a margin of Chinese, Indian, Thai, and garden-variety reform Ashkenazim—for the schools
,
the parks, the playgrounds, the excellent restaurants.
Of course it wasn’t Alabama, it wasn’t 1955; there were always a fewblack kids, a photogenic sprinkling. Tiffany and Wesley Roberts, whose father was Duane Roberts, the Celtics point guard, were one year ahead of me at Passing Brook Elementary. Tiffany was grasshopper-legged, a natural sprinter, an indefatigable four-square champion; Wesley spent recesses under the pines at the far end of the soccer field, trading stickers, buttons, Garbage Pail Kids, baseball cards, Dungeons & Dragons imaginary weapons—whatever currency of the moment.
That was where I came to know him, briefly, in third grade, before his dad was traded to the SuperSonics. He sat hunched over, legs folded, stretching out the hem of his long T-shirt like a table, displaying some treasure—a folder of Reggie Jackson cards from every season, a Don Mattingly rookie card, a mint Topps pack of the 1979 Pirates—and daring the rest of us to make an offer. It wasn’t fun, exactly, being so utterly outmatched, but Wesley knew how to work the margins, trading cards he didn’t need for the best we had to offer. He stared into space, over our shoulders, reciting statistics in a listless, deadpan voice, showing why his cards were always worth more, had more long-term potential; he used words like
investment
and
dividends
. Today we might give him a diagnosis—Asperger’s, mild autism, social anxiety disorder—but no one at the time, as far as I can recall, saw anything wrong. Never did anyone in that circle refer to him as
black
. Creatures of instinct, we didn’t care about the color of his skin, or the content of his character; we cared about his stuff. Only later did it occur to me that that was why he sought us out, and perhaps why he became—I Googled him once, in idle curiosity, a few years ago—a venture capitalist seeding start-ups and then selling them to Microsoft. He’s grown into his looks now; he and his father have a foundation together that runs after-school sports programs in Seattle.
—
This was the life I was raised to have, racially speaking, the life my parents had, post-1973, when they left Back Bay for the suburbs: the lifeof a Good White Person. I was meant to have a few, select, black friends—peers, confidants, individuals—a number of acquaintances, business associates, secretaries, hygienists, a few charities, to which I would give generously, as much as possible, and a broad, sympathetic, detached view of the continuing struggles of African Americans to achieve the long-delayed goals of full civic participation, low birth rates, ascension to the middle glass, hiring equity, educational parity, and so, so, so, on, on, on. I was supposed to live with the frisson of guilt that comes from owning an expensive, elaborate security system, and to mention, at parties, that rates of incarceration for black males are six times the national average. I was supposed to organize for Obama, and own at least ten separate items of Obama paraphernalia, and proudly display my
Yes We Did
postcard on my refrigerator for all of 2009 and 2010, and feel that slow-fading flush of warmth and exultation, as if someone had reached out and grasped my hand, and held it, a squeeze as a substitute for an
not
Boston, unless you count the occasional trip to the Aquarium or Faneuil Hall—the only black people I saw regularly were babysitters and maids. My parents were ardent Democrats, classic northeastern Waspy liberals, who nonetheless, characteristically, chose to live in a neighborhood populated with people exactly like themselves—plus a margin of Chinese, Indian, Thai, and garden-variety reform Ashkenazim—for the schools
,
the parks, the playgrounds, the excellent restaurants.
Of course it wasn’t Alabama, it wasn’t 1955; there were always a fewblack kids, a photogenic sprinkling. Tiffany and Wesley Roberts, whose father was Duane Roberts, the Celtics point guard, were one year ahead of me at Passing Brook Elementary. Tiffany was grasshopper-legged, a natural sprinter, an indefatigable four-square champion; Wesley spent recesses under the pines at the far end of the soccer field, trading stickers, buttons, Garbage Pail Kids, baseball cards, Dungeons & Dragons imaginary weapons—whatever currency of the moment.
That was where I came to know him, briefly, in third grade, before his dad was traded to the SuperSonics. He sat hunched over, legs folded, stretching out the hem of his long T-shirt like a table, displaying some treasure—a folder of Reggie Jackson cards from every season, a Don Mattingly rookie card, a mint Topps pack of the 1979 Pirates—and daring the rest of us to make an offer. It wasn’t fun, exactly, being so utterly outmatched, but Wesley knew how to work the margins, trading cards he didn’t need for the best we had to offer. He stared into space, over our shoulders, reciting statistics in a listless, deadpan voice, showing why his cards were always worth more, had more long-term potential; he used words like
investment
and
dividends
. Today we might give him a diagnosis—Asperger’s, mild autism, social anxiety disorder—but no one at the time, as far as I can recall, saw anything wrong. Never did anyone in that circle refer to him as
black
. Creatures of instinct, we didn’t care about the color of his skin, or the content of his character; we cared about his stuff. Only later did it occur to me that that was why he sought us out, and perhaps why he became—I Googled him once, in idle curiosity, a few years ago—a venture capitalist seeding start-ups and then selling them to Microsoft. He’s grown into his looks now; he and his father have a foundation together that runs after-school sports programs in Seattle.
—
This was the life I was raised to have, racially speaking, the life my parents had, post-1973, when they left Back Bay for the suburbs: the lifeof a Good White Person. I was meant to have a few, select, black friends—peers, confidants, individuals—a number of acquaintances, business associates, secretaries, hygienists, a few charities, to which I would give generously, as much as possible, and a broad, sympathetic, detached view of the continuing struggles of African Americans to achieve the long-delayed goals of full civic participation, low birth rates, ascension to the middle glass, hiring equity, educational parity, and so, so, so, on, on, on. I was supposed to live with the frisson of guilt that comes from owning an expensive, elaborate security system, and to mention, at parties, that rates of incarceration for black males are six times the national average. I was supposed to organize for Obama, and own at least ten separate items of Obama paraphernalia, and proudly display my
Yes We Did
postcard on my refrigerator for all of 2009 and 2010, and feel that slow-fading flush of warmth and exultation, as if someone had reached out and grasped my hand, and held it, a squeeze as a substitute for an
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