White Sibling Fun

Once a week my family would gather in the living room to play games or tell stories. My brother, Darrel, loved to make fun of Black people. We laughed and egged him on when he would pervert his facial expressions—minstrelsy style, and parade around the room, swaying his back and swinging his arms in an exaggerated manner. It was knee-slappin’ hilarious to our mother. 

Sometimes we watched Soul Train and would laugh while mimicking the dancers. My father didn’t like that game. He would shout at us from another room, “turn that N… shit off!”

My sister, Beverly, used to drive my brother and me to the beach. She always made sure we got an early start in the morning. “We want to spend as much time as we can before the darkies start showing up later in the afternoon,” she’d say. I asked her why they came so late. She said, “The bright sun burns their skin, plus, they’re not really supposed to come out until the rest of us (white folks) start leaving.” I remember how I marveled later at the number of Black kids running down the sand dunes and the boardwalk, their moms and dads hollering after them. My sister would sternly direct us, “Hurry up, we have to go!”

Beverly was a bit more mischievous than my brother with her “playful” racism. She would make a sport out of getting a rise out of Black people. One time, on our way to the beach, we happened to pull alongside a car packed with Black people all smashed together, waiting at a stoplight. It was a pretty common thing to see in Florida back in the 60s.  She revved up the engine and told us to get ready. She quickly explained, “There's too many of them weighing down that old jalopy, the engine will flood when they stomp on the gas.” We knew what to do. Beverly revved up the engine some more and jutted her chin at the other driver to signal a race. I bounced with excitement in the backseat. The light turned green, but she hesitated for just a moment, long enough for the other driver to stomp. Sure enough, their car stalled, Beverly hit the gas and we shouted,  “N…..s!” out the window as we sped away. 

We laughed so hard looking back at all of them yelling and swinging their fists out the windows. My brother mimicked them and we all gagged with laughter. 

I own the part of myself that still giggles when I imagine that scene. It was funny, the part about the car stalling—not the part where we were entertaining ourselves at the expense of poor Black folks in a crowded car. We thought we were having fun while doing our white duty—reminding Black people of their place in our clean white world.  We never gave any thought at all to how our mocking cruelty must have felt to them. 

Not all families were like mine, so overtly, unashamedly racist. But contempt for Black people was still noticeable, just more “polite.” White people had (and sadly, way too many still do) signals and coded words.  Back in the day when I was still a kid, everyone I knew called Black people “the ones across the river.”