Photographic artwork by Kris Saknussemm
Our five-year-old grandson sidles through our living room accompanied by our 15-year-old granddaughter as they look for different members of the Paw Patrol with their associated vehicles, Thomas the Train locomotives, anthropomorphic stuffed animals, and brightly-colored plastic dinosaurs. They live 300 miles away from one another and she's his only cousin, so he spent considerable time happily setting up this new activity in anticipation of her arrival. Until then, he refused to even show us how it worked. As he gets his highly forbearing much older cousin to a branching point in his still mysterious activity, he breaks into "eenie meenie miney mo."
When he gets to the line, "Catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go," I hold my breath and wince, wishing for the power to stop time.
When I was his age, that line was different: "Catch a n— by the toe." Whenever my cousins and I got to that point, we would giggle, daring one another to say the word. At some point, giggling became reluctance, and in turn, reluctance became refusal to say it.
I'm especially nervous because our granddaughter, his older cousin, is black, and our grandson is white.
Does he know? Does she know?
This time, the tiger stays a tiger. I open my eyes and exhale.
Language and Time
The eenie meenie "counting-in" or sometimes "counting-out" verse goes at least as far back as the early 19th century. Non-offensive versions were popular in several European cultures and possibly Africa.The racist version is mostly, though not exclusively, American. Our grandson's father, our son-in-law, who's from Scotland, was unaware of the alternate version, which fell out of common use around 1960, roughly when my cousins and I understood the couplet wasn't just naughty but wrong. I suspect we also grew out of using ditties to randomly—or in the version that ends "I choose you" or "I don't choose you," not so randomly—make a choice.
Our grandson is clearly unaware of the racist version. Perhaps an even more encouraging sign of progress: he may not even know the "n" word. When I was a kid, we knew it because some of the adults around us used it. I suspect he picked up the "tiger" version from pre-school. Our daughters were also unaware of the version I grew up with. I was even more surprised to learn my wife was, too. I did wonder briefly if I'd hung out with peculiarly racist Northern California Chinese-American cousins, but later asked around and discovered others my age who grew up in different states were familiar with the "n" word version.
Our 15-year old granddaughter also appeared unaware of any racist connotations. It, however, might have been more a matter of her being more careful than unaware. She didn't say the rhyme along with her cousin.
In fairness, one shouldn't expect children's counting rhymes to make sense, and "tiger" clearly doesn't. First, tigers have claws instead of toes. Second, most anyone not named Siegfried or Roy would run in terror if they found themselves that close to a live tiger. Tigers—at least when not in Disney movies—also don't holler; they growl or roar.
There are different takes about the origin of the American variant. One especially disturbing version traces it to slave auctions: a buyer's informal test of temperament or compliance. "Tiger" was patched over the "n" word, but the scab of history refuses to fall away undetected.
I was occasionally confronted on playgrounds when I was the only Asian kid by the taunt "Ching Chong Chinaman." Fwiw, it wasn't just white kids doing it. My cousins and I never repeated that one. I don't remember feeling fear or anger about it. It was mostly frustration. I just wanted to be another kid on the playground.
The alliterative three words aren't that horrible, but, like "eenie meenie," they have a troubling history. One 19th century version went as follows:
Ching Chong Chinaman
Sitting on a wall.
Along came a white man
And chopped his head off.
Given that verse, how did not valuing human life get to be an Asian stereotype? Couldn't they have at least spent some time trying to rhyme it?
Steinbeck's Cannery Row documents an arguably softer and maybe more historically conscious variant:
Ching Chong, Chinaman,
Sitting on a rail.
Along came a white man,
And chopped off his tail.
The tail refers to the queues the Manchus forced ethnic Chinese men to wear. It also implies Chinese have tails, making them more like animals. It does possibly mention the Chinese connection to the railroads. Schools still teach the names of the men who financed the Southern Pacific but not the names of those who actually built it. Today, China aggressively promotes a belt and road initiative in underdeveloped nations while we argue the merits of infrastructure investment in our own. What will that verse look like 50 years from now?
The Ching Chong part survived into this century. Shaquille O'Neal invoked it when making a joke about Yao Ming. In the last 15 years, Rosie O'Donnell, Rush Limbaugh, and Steven Colbert all drew heat for using the phrase to make a joke. I suspect all—well, maybe not Rush Limbaugh—were unaware of the verse's history. Today, you won't hear the racist version of "eenie meenie," but you'll still run into "Ching Chong" variants.
A Malady Analogy
People frequently refer to racism as a kind of cancer. I spent most of my life conceiving of cancer cells as invaders: cigarettes, toxic chemicals, over-exposure to sunlight, artificial ingredients in our food or drugs injected cancer cells into our bodies. Cancer is not really a foreign cell invasion; it's seemingly healthy cells already inside us altering in ways beyond the body's capacity to regulate their spread. Although some cancers appear to be genetic, roughly 90 percent aren't. Most cancer cells don't start out as "bad" cells. While the wrong environmental factors can coax healthy cells into malignancy, the change can also happen at random. Mutation is inherent in nature. It can give species a way to adapt to changed conditions. Sometimes, it shortens your life span. Sometimes, you become Spider Man.
If racism really is like cancer, it, too, might do its most destructive work internally. Once it sets in, the tiger could simply turn back into the "n" word and "Ching Chong" might reacquire its head and tail. I don't think it's a matter of good people vs. bad people. The possibility lurks within all of us, sitting below consciousness and outside our control.
The Party in the Park Across the Street
For ten years, my wife and I have lived in a friendly and openly tolerant neighborhood. It sits inside a medium-sized city, but it's built around an artificial lake linking some 600 households via four miles of tree-lined hiking paths. When we moved here, we saw the trails as merely a nice feature, but they also enhance the sense of community. Hiking paths in a city neighborhood attract dog owners. The dogs stop to check one another out; their people then stop and chat. We may know more dog names here than human ones.
The second factor has been a Facebook-based message board. Mostly, it's residents giving things away or selling them; people seeking home maintenance or improvement services; or trail walkers sharing photos of children, pets, or the plants and creatures who share the neighborhood with us. Now and then, the board's Facebook genes find expression. Someone once found an empty holster under a bench by the lake and an online argument broke out about the dangers of a possible unaccounted for handgun posed by the appearance of the lost tactical accessory (Amazon's term, not mine) posed.
The most recent Facebook neighborhood board controversy started with two innocuous posts:
"There are a bunch of cars taking up all the extra spaces on the road near the park this afternoon. What's going on?"
"Some sort of event at the park."
That road fills up with non-neighborhood cars sometimes, but it's rare. The last one was a "Pops in the Park" concert by the Durham Symphony, an annual event.
Our house happens to be on the far side of the park, but we too noticed more traffic than usual. My wife—ever vigilant on behalf of the children and dogs who cross to the lake near our house—mentioned that too many drivers seemed to be in a hurry. All the people in the cars also happened to be black.
More messages went up on the board:
"They're blocking traffic. What if an emergency vehicle needs to go through?"
"I talked to a police officer nearby. He told me to call 911 because it was a safety matter."
"It's perfectly legal to park in our neighborhood. From what I see on our street there's room for an ambulance or firetruck to go down the middle of the street."
"I'm just repeating what the officer told me. I did call 911 as he suggested."
"I talked to a couple of them. They were perfectly friendly and polite."
Street Smarts
Our city is 41 percent white, 37 percent black, 3 percent Hispanic, and 6 percent Asian. I secretly hope the three percent unaccounted for happen to be like Harry Vanderspiegel from Resident Alien. Our neighborhood is probably more than two-thirds white, though that includes several mixed (race not grey-alien hybrid) households. That said, it's otherwise quite diverse.
When we moved from California ten years ago, we were told not to buy north of a street named for a prominent civil rights leader. The street is a few blocks from a church where said civil rights leader gave a famous speech in 1960 about "filling up the jails." North of the street named for the civil rights icon, the residents turn blacker or more Hispanic, a reminder of the city's past and its still unrealized dreams.
We happen to live equidistant from Duke and the University of North Carolina. Much of the Triangle identifies with one or the other school's teams. Actual connections to either aren't required. The proximity likely accounts for the fact that more than two thirds of our neighbors have a graduate degree. We're actually closest to a third college, North Carolina Central, but the school seldom gets mentioned either because it's a historically black college or because its basketball games aren't nationally televised. Naturally, NCCU sits on the north side of civil rights icon street.
More posts appeared. Most of the partygoers were from North Carolina Central. Hundreds of students had gathered for an impromptu party: the date and time get posted on the net, but the location only got disclosed just before. Someone reposted an online announcement for the gathering promising "free chicken and oil." An oil spill party had landed next to our neighborhood.
What's an Oil Spill?
Some time later, I looked up "oil spill party" on my goto place for slang, the online Urban Dictionary. It turned out not to be hip enough to have picked up the term. More intensive Googling turned up something called Omega Oil, which is both a fish oil supplement that may help with various auto immune diseases or a semi-secret fruit punch associated with Omega Psi, a black fraternity. The Omega oil drink appears to be one of those concoctions that appears less alcoholic than it actually is. It's something you give to unsuspecting girls. Fwiw, I cross searched "omega oil" and "date rape" and nothing turned up, possibly because Omega Psi either didn't pay for Google placement or paid not to be linked. (Can you do that?)
Oil spill parties were a relatively recent Spring event popular with the HBCUs in Atlanta. I eventually found video clips of various oil spill parties online. In the clips, partygoers get dressed up, wander around with Solo cups, step dance, and listen to music, all primarily to check one another out. An associated comment mentioned a persistent smell of cannabis. Some appeared to be a good time with proceeds going to some sort of scholarship fund. At these, IDs were checked and of-age and underaged participants were sorted via wrist bands, security was provided, and hours were posted. Other video clips documented gatherings on the edge of slipping out of control.
I asked two African-American friends who happen to be in their 50s if they'd ever heard of an "oil spill." Both intuited I didn't mean the kind that draw headlines when they happen in the Gulf of Mexico or the Santa Barbara Coast. Neither had ever heard of the term, and one of them even works at our local HBCU as a mechanic. He guessed it might be some sort of car or truck rally. The other had to Google it, and we then got in a conversation about the dangers of "Omega oil" and "lean" (codeine cough syrup, hard candy, alcohol, and soda). It was the first time I'd ever heard of lean. Apparently, you have to be under 30 to know what an "oil spill" is.
The Party in the Park Continues
My neighborhood Facebook board speculates about free alcohol and cannabis at the part in the park. Online copies of the party notice surface. Someone brings up 420 parties (it's the same week, but it isn't April 20) and Atlanta. Someone else guesses that the free "oil" is alcohol. Apparently the free chicken really is chicken. Much of the neighborhood has shifted into full NIMBY mode, or is it Not in the Public Park Across the Street from my Backyard?
As many as a thousand college-aged students had gathered in the park across the street, relegating the pickleballers and dog park users "parkless." It was likely but never confirmed that the invading celebrants drank, smoked pot, and step danced to bass heavy music. Many were definitely parking in our neighborhood and arguably making it impossible for fire and rescue to access our streets. The closest anyone came to saying they were all black was to mention the connection to the HBCU.
The Party Ends
The police shut down the party by the end of the afternoon because the event organizers didn't have a permit. For a couple days, the posts about the party on our neighborhood board continued:
"I looked it up. It wasn't a college-sanctioned event."
"The notice for the party suggested that attendees take Uber. I wish more of them would have done that." (Given the free oil, it would have been a good idea.)
A request for a referral to help someone remove weeds from their yard slipped in. A neighbor quipped back:
"Maybe hire someone from the party?"
"I don't think they'd have the work ethic."
Most of the posts after that was about discarded chicken bones left in the neighborhood by partygoers coming back to their cars.
"What would happen if a dog found one and choked on it?"
Eventually another neighbor responded with a very long post (what follows is more of a paraphrase than a direct quote):
"Would you be suggesting some of these things had the students been from UNC or Duke instead of an HBCU? I understand the concern about their leaving a mess, but... was there, perhaps, some other factor in calling 911 or conjuring images of drinking, pot ingesting, and reckless driving in our residential haven?
Or is there a bigger issue you don't want to admit to? The one where when my husband walks the trail, very few acknowledge him unless I am with him? Or when he goes to the pool in the middle of the day because of his work schedule the kids have to all be on the other side of the pool away from him? Yet—I have seen the reference to "ask the police officer" over the last few years, and I cringe.
I'm asking you to think about what you say and how you say it. Because it's coming across a bit as privilege. Whether it's meant to or not. Woodlake is a predominantly white community, I'm asking you to reflect on how (and if) you can be alienating your non-white neighbors with the snarky statements. If you wouldn't say it to my face—then it doesn't belong here either."
A few neighbors agreed. Then the board moderator cut off comments. On another thread, another neighbor—his wife and he have adopted and raised one non-white child–applauded the police for having done their job. Another mentioned a car accident on a nearby street involving party attenders.
Unconscious Bias
Stanford Professor Jennifer Eberhardt has spent her career researching unconscious racial bias. As an African-American woman who spent much of her childhood in mostly white schools, Eberhardt acquired a sensitivity to the subtle ways it surfaces. Her book Bias essentially alternates between her often ingenious research, public anecdotes, and her personal experience. To me, the most interesting anecdote involved a run of purse snatchings by young black men in Oakland Chinatown. While older Asian women were being targeted, it turned out not to be rooted in anti-Asian animosity per se. The young purse snatchers had figured out that their targets couldn't identify their faces. Instead of all Asians look alike, this was a case of all young black males looked alike to these older women, something that's not necessarily unique to older Asian women, btw. One of Eberhardt's more provocative studies starts with a drawing of a mixed race individual. Participants are then asked to make their own drawing of the individual from memory. If participants think the individual is white, they draw him to look relatively benign. If participants think he's black, the result is more stereotyped and sinister looking. In both cases, the result looks strikingly different from the original.
The most moving story from Bias is a personal one. Eberhardt's six-year-old son returns from a shopping trip near Stanford and mentions to his mother that people seem to maintain a distance from his African-American father in the stores: whatever checkout line he's in stays shorter than the others. The son compares it to an invisible force field in Star Wars. Eberhardt asks her son why he thinks that is, and he immediately says, "Fear."
In another study, she notes police officers presented with a video of a suspect pulling an ill-defined object from a pocket are more likely to see a weapon of some sort when the suspect happens to be Black.The police officers are both Black and White. Eberhardt suggests these biases are deeply internalized and structural. When they come out of us, it isn't necessarily a function of what we consciously believe; it's more like a reflex.
Was some of the reaction to the party in our park like the people in the checkout line at the Target where Eberhardt went shopping with her family? Why couldn't a neighborhood filled with highly educated adults of perfectly good will not see it? Interestingly, I asked two neighbors, a mixed couple, about the postings about the party in the park. They told me they had a discussion about whether the party was legal or not. Neither of them had been troubled by the call to 911.
Cicadas and Eclipses
Two weeks later, the whirring sound of millions of cicadas drowned out any oil spill from the park. We live just outside the overlap between the 13-year and 17-year brood's emergence. Their massed mating call simultaneously soothes and unnerves me. My wife thought they sounded like some sort of machinery. My take was more hovering alien spacecraft; instead of coming from space, these alien invaders led their entire prior lives beneath the surface of the earth. Now and then, a dead one will show up on the street. Let me put it this way: my first reaction is to stomp on it rather than to pick up and gently provide a proper burial.
It turns out cicadas are harmless, if a bit noisy. They don't bite, spread disease, or eat crops. They come out every ten years or so, sprout wings, "socialize," then go back underground after sharing the surface with us humans, sort of like overly noisy Earthbnb tenants. The cicadas started doing this four million years ago, or 3.7 million years before modern homo sapiens emerged as a species. We're actually the Earthbnb tenants. I suspect the cicada's bulging orange eyes, translucent wings, and multiple hook-shaped legs provoked my stomp-it-now reflex.
Different triggers a fight-or-flight reflex in many of us, but we're often conditioned to see things as different from us when they aren't. Structural racism and unconscious bias happen to be very close cousins. American culture tends to make a fetish of choice, aka freedom. Some of us don't like the suggestion that some of our choices are actually reflexes. In my life, there've been changes. We now don't necessarily think people who are overweight can simply wish it away, or that various addictions are always a sign of poor character or a lack of will. Oddly, the idea some of us are beyond unconscious bias or anyone can be the victim of structural racism hasn't progressed quite as far.
A couple weeks before the party in the park, the neighborhood message board invited us to view the solar eclipse. About ten of neighbors showed up; a few we knew, most we didn't. One neighbor had brought two pairs of those cardboard-framed polarized glasses that let one view the moon passing in front of the sun directly. We took turns, taking our hit of the natural phenomenon occurring some 250 thousand miles away, then passing the glasses on to someone else for a non-plant based high. Humans have been observing and trying to predict eclipses for thousands of years. How and when did we come to see race?
A Confession
When a group of young black males who aren't necessarily in business suits comes near me, I get nervous. So far, I've never been mugged. There probably are times when I should still be cautious. I've also noticed that when I'm walking around our neighborhood lake, I'll see people and assume they're from the apartments across the street or even from beyond civil rights icon street. It has nothing to do with the way they're dressed. It's strictly based on race, yet we have significant numbers of neighbors of all races. It's a reflex, the product of an indoctrination that started well before my cousins and I heard the bad version of "eenie meenie miney mo." It is, however, just a reflex. So long as I'm aware of it, I suspect I've been able to figure out what to do next. Often, it's just a matter of saying, "Hi," smiling, and seeing what happens next. Usually, it's good, but it isn't always.
Love It or List It
A few years ago, one of our neighbors homes wound up on the home remodeling show Love It or List It. The show fixes the perceived problems with your house in some alarmingly short time frame. Inevitably, unexpected issues arise, and the fix turns out either to be more expensive than planned or only gets partially implemented. It's almost never perfect. At the end of the episode, the homeowners must decide to stay in their fixed up home or move somewhere else. The neighbors, an older black couple, chose to stay. Fwiw some of the homeowners from the next city over who appeared on the show wound up suing the producers for the slipshod quality of their renovations.
Obviously, our neighbors' choice had more to do with countertops, open floor plans, and decks than the invisible structural qualities of our neighborhood, but they also mentioned they loved living where they lived. Our neighborhood remains a friendly and kind-hearted place. Our two grandchildren see one another as cousins, whether or not 23 and Me happens to think so. The chicken bones got picked up, the park has reverted to dog owners and pickleball players, and the next generations of cicadas has made its way back underground. The next time I see a cicada corpse on the street, I won't stomp on it or kick it to the gutter. The next time a massive party breaks out in the park across the street, I hope I simply take a moment to try to figure out what's actually going on rather than reflexively responding to the color of the partygoers. Hopefully, the tiger stays in place for some time to come.
