Our Hidden Conversation by Michel Norris

I need to correct something I got wrong in my first post about Michele Norris’s Distinguished Lecture on January 23^rd. While reading her book, “Our Hidden Conversations” I ran across this race card in the chapter “Black Babies Cost Less to Adopt:”

“Vote (for) Obama! He looks like me!”

That was the 8-year-old daughter said that. The person who sent in the card was her father, Dr. Val Sheffield and he was a medical student in Iowa at the time. Once you know that, you realize why he wondered whether he should have been “…happy or dismayed by this comment.”

Anyway, I’m a little over halfway through the book, “Our Hidden Conversations.”

The title of the chapter above, “Black Babies Cost Less to Adopt” is troubling and it has a lot to say about how it was common in the past to discount the cost of adopting black babies. Foster care of non-white kids was also a subject in the chapter. Identity conflicts are common and can lead to reminiscing about things like:

“I was not Black enough.”

“I was not Asian enough.”

“I was not Hispanic enough.”

What matters is being kind enough.

This is a short post about my initial impressions about the book, “Our Hidden Conversation” by Michele Norris.

I’m not finished with the book yet, but I thought I would let you know that the first chapter, “Bread Crumbs” was tough to read. I had to put it down and come back to it a few times because it brought back memories.

The chapter title “Bread Crumbs” means the clues that parents, grandparents, etc. might leave for subsequent generations to find which might shed light on one’s background, explain troubling circumstances, and so on.

I have some bread crumbs left to me by my family. Some are in the form of photos, although there is no family photo of all of us together.

I remember the hair combing routine my mom had with me and my brother every Sunday morning before church when we were kids. Our father was black and my mother was white. Dad was out of the home and we lived with mom. We were the only black kids in the church. In fact, all the members were white.

Mom used a prodigious amount of hair oil while vigorously combing our curly hair back. It took many strokes and the pulling pinched a bit. The ritual took a little while. When I look back on it, I guess the goal was to straighten our hair as much as possible.

Everyone in the church always treated us kindly and I was baptized there.

If you decide to read “Our Hidden Conversations,” give yourself a break whenever you feel like you need it.