CRI CASE 4 — “I Couldn’t Bite My Own Kid.”
By: Catherine Pugh
Tags: Advice, Parenting, Racism, Society

I began The Call Really Is Coming from Inside Your House (“CRI”) series as an adjunct to There Is No Such Thing as a White Ally. It illustrates one point, on repeat: stop shifting your failures to us, and then offering to “help” us accommodate them. That’s a hard thing to recognize in the moment, and it will take decades of practice to master.

CRI is meant to help with that. When I encounter these events, I address them as stand alone articles to share with you. You can follow along as I first identify the CRI point, then walk through the burden shifting chain, then process it, and finally return it to its rightful owner.

This is CRI Case Study 4 — “I Couldn’t Bite My Own Kid.” ~Best

I was talking to a very good friend of mine, a person I adore, about a piece I just published. In it, I told the story of me biting my oldest son — bear with me — as an abject lesson and to clarify that overwhelming force to redress racism is not personal: it’s business. The story:

“When my oldest son was about two, he bit me on the back and then calmly stepped back to gauge my reaction. I just as calmly reached over, drew him close, and bit him in the back.

Much, much harder. And that little face was serious as he looked at me, stunned, then turned and walked away.

My boy had developed a curiosity around biting — around power, in truth — but he never bit another person again. You have enjoyed Black grace, Black teaching, Black admonitions. You have long since pulled the tiger’s tale with incautious abandon — perhaps you need meet with her teeth.”

The Year of the Daycare Biter

Let’s call my friend she/her/Sandy. Sandy was one of the folks I asked to preview that piece. This was Sandy’s first response: “What is it, exactly, that you want your white audience to do? To know that you are going to bite back with 400 years of repressed pain of millions? What will that look like?”

Hm. This did not sound like Sandy, and merited investigation. So, I asked for clarification. This was Sandy’s next response: “Does biting back mean using equivalent force? Or does it mean something else?”

And this was mine: “See, you’ve hit biting twice. What’s your problem? Because I don’t feel like it has to do shit all with what I want from White people.”

And away we went. Things softened, we chatted a bit, and as a part of a larger back and forth, Sandy finally said this: “Yes, I got hung up on the bite, bc — and seriously no judgement . . . — I couldn’t bite my own kid.”

This is where I always get in trouble. I have a temper, and it is never a good idea to unleash it on someone I love. Sandy is tougher than me — she can handle it — but our relationship deserves something deeper than a reflex. So, I sat with it. The result? Bullshit.

Let me first introduce Sandy to you.

Sandy is one of the most powerful people I know, in the right way: the brick and mortar way. In fact, I was talking to my husband about this very conversation and his whole face said “hero worship much?” She is probably the most enlightened, yet brutal empath I know. Sandy is honest and selfless; she gives herself no passes, no excuses. I have watched Sandy throw her entire self into the gears of justice to clog those babies up to save a soul. Sandy lives in the skin of the forgotten and abused, and has ground adults to dust with her overwhelming force and superior intellect.

Sandy is White. And, although I am sure she has them, I have yet to hear of her cases involving White clients.

As I respond to Sandy, these are the things that inform my thinking. I answer Sandy in two parts: first, through the below letter; and finally, through an addendum at the end of this piece.

A letter to Sandy.

Ah, Sandy.

If my sons cannot submit to authority as effortlessly as they can breathe, they die.

I was not being gratuitously cruel. You know me — surely, you must know that. Why would I do such a thing, Sandy? Did you not wonder? Yet, with everything you know, and everything you’ve seen, and everything you despise, and everything you believe in, you still judged me from over there, standing in your little white shoes.

Let me tell you what Black babies and boys have to learn from day one. They must master this amazing dichotomy of self-possessed obedience. It must be so ingrained and innate that that synapse fires before a muscle moves, an eye twitches, a breath is taken, a heart beats, an expression is made. And their instruction must begin in the cradle.

Have a look. These are just a few snack-sized stories from my boys’ childhood.

The Year of the &%(! Vice Principal

Once, a school Vice Principal suspended one son, claiming she’d heard from a teacher who’d heard from my son’s teacher that my son made a scene in front of the class. Knowing nothing more than my son and his home training, I flat-out rejected that narrative. The VP insisted, and when I cut short a meeting, immediately flew home, and insisted they explain it personally, both teachers denied it happened. And yet, the Principal had to make the Vice-Principal withdraw the suspension.

On another occasion, a middle school child stole my son’s brand new and very expensive drawing kit, but it was for chasing her, the school VP explained, that he — and not the girl — was to be suspended. That was another fight to the finish to pen the VP to the mat.

There was the time my son forgot his gym clothes and had to wear the school’s loaner clothes. The same VP admonished him for wearing — ready? — gang colors. Girl! Those were your school’s clothes!

Things were so bad — this woman hungered to criminalize my boys— that I had no choice but to deliver to her a signed, undated civil rights complaint. I told her that should she engage my sons one more time, she could fill-in the date and expect my filed copy in the mail. It was not until then, when the Principal finally barred her from having any interactions with our children at all that she finally let our boys be children.

And let’s not forget the time in high school when a girl, fresh off of the set of Dallas, slapped one of my boys in a packed lunch room for — and this is from her — not returning her calls and overtures. My son had to have super human self-control, had to stay absolutely still, silent, and calm until adults stepped in and others could shepherd his exoneration.

With every new school, my husband and I had a transition period for the boys — and only the boys — where I had to wildfire the administration daily until it finally sunk in to leave the GDMF Pugh boys ALONE: day care; pre-school; both elementary schools; middle school; high school. These were children, Sandy. They had to have more self -awareness, and self-control, than the armed and trained men and women who police the nation today. Let that sink in.