Page 3 - Implicit Bias

Los Angeles was consumed by riots and fires. Black folk were angry, angry at the injustice of a
system that could beat a black man for 15 minutes and no one was charged. It was a repeating
pattern in this country.

“Oh Mami, we’ve had nightly meetings all week to process our thoughts and feelings. My
community is devastated.”

Into our conversation my mother inserted, “Honey, what you think? You no thinking it be better
if we taking all the black people and giving them a state for them to live in? They be with each
other and be happy together.”

My jaw dropped. This could not be my mother saying this. My mami was warm and loving. Her
favorite phrase was, “Oh Honey, en dis life, the love y the understanding es everything.”

In my passion for my diversity work, how could I not have seen this in my own backyard?

I swallowed the tortilla that was stuck in my throat and said, “Mami, what do you think? How
about we take all the Mexicans and give them a state to live in? They will be happy with each
other, dancing to their music, eating their own food.”

“Oh, honey, no es de same,” my mother said.

“Mami, it is exactly the same.”

I knew that my mother did not learn through the head. Talking words would not penetrate.
Especially since she still lived in Wonderbread land. So, I fully disclosed the situation to my black
friends, and I found Margaret, Regina and DeShaun, who were willing to come visit with my
mom. Sometimes just one of them would come, sometimes all three of them. We hung out,
drinking coffee, some days eating homemade tortillas, some days bunuelos with cinnamon and
sugar, one time we even made homemade churros. I kind of think that they may have come as
much for the food as visiting my mom. My friend Margaret loved gardening and she and my
mother talked gardening for hours. The second time Margaret left, my mother gave her one of
her precious gardenia plants with instructions how to tend it.

The third month was my mother’s birthday. She requested that I ask Margaret, Regina and
DeShaun to her party. I said, “But didn’t you tell me that all black people would be better off in
a state of their own?”

“Oh honey, I estupid. I no understanding. I love your friends.”

And my friends were wonderfully generous. They came to my mom’s party even though they
knew everyone else there would be from that homogenous neighborhood. My mother spent
the whole night laughing and dancing with my friends. Her other friends from the neighborhood
sat on the periphery, talking and drinking.