Know Your Place
Aaron and
Jada were still asleep one morning when Amy, Asher, and I went down for
breakfast at our hotel in Williamsburg.
It was early so there was only one other guest in the room at the time,
a wiry white guy with his baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. CNN was on, reporting on protests about
Confederate monuments. I did not make
eye contact with the guy, but I could tell he was looking over at us when he
practically spat out, “C’mon, leave those monuments alone!” The way he said it, in an otherwise empty
room and staring at the only other people there, it was clear this was not an
involuntary blurting out of one’s opinion but rather a not-so coded message to
us folks who were clearly from out of town: know your place.
Even as Amy
and I enjoyed our family vacation in Williamsburg, we did not forget that we
were in part of the country that one might consider “the South.” Which came with it a certain social code where
people expected you to “know your place.”
Meaning we are no longer free to just be, but rather were expected to respect
a certain social structure, one that did not necessarily threaten violence but
nor did it automatically confer equality or respect. To be sure, many of the people in this part
of the country do not harbor such expectations.
But enough do that we, as a racially mixed family, noticed. And, in the case of that one breakfast, we
came face to face with it.
It was not
long ago that being put in your place meant something far worse: a bombed
church, a burning cross, a hangman’s noose.
However many actively participated in such vile deeds, many more gave passive
assent to them. Those atrocities are
largely behind us but not totally. And
the sentiments that enabled them to exist, and in some cases cheered them on,
are still alive and well. Let us not be
afraid to stand up for ourselves and for what we believe to be right. But let us also tread carefully.
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