When I was young, I remember driving through the West End of Richmond, Virginia. I recall tooling around the Windsor Farms neighborhood and seeing black women at bus stops waiting for a ride to the black side of town. These women were maids and nannies, baby sitters and housecleaners. The homes were white and affluent. Just a memory from my youth.
The world has changed.
When my wife and I purchased our first home, we knew the sellers. They were a part of our friend group. The transaction was agreeable and we moved into our home. We were the only black couple in the neighborhood. I remember that a gardener, Faustino, and a maid came with the house. After a year, we welcomed our first born home. The maid’s daughter, Alma, from Tijuana became our babysitter.
The arrangement worked well for years. We would treat Faustino to lemonade on the deck when he took well-deserved breaks. And our maid would cook delicious Mexican dishes for us on occasion. We urged Alma to speak Spanish to our baby so that he would hear as many Spanish words as possible. Today, our oldest is fluent in Spanish, although he speaks Spanish with an Argentinian accent.
Things happen.
When we moved to our new place, we retained the services of Claudia as our housekeeper. Claudia happened to be Latina from Mexico. We all loved Claudia. Claudia would grow to know us well. She knew when we had too much alcohol in the pantry. She knew what we ordered for takeout. She learned my obsession for The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. She saw our three kids grow up and leave our home. Claudia knew our children’s bedrooms better than my wife and I did.
What is my point? I have two observations here.
First, I am remarking upon the ethnicity of our help. This is not something I would ever do in real time. Coleman Hughes has written a recent book about Colorblindness. In fact, although I respect Coleman, he missed the mark with his title. It is not the aim to be color blind. The aim is to be color indifferent. As a default position, I was color indifferent with people who helped our family function and thrive over the years.
What would the Woke make of this? Were we the evil oppressors? Do we owe reparations to Faustino, our former maid, Alma, and Claudia? But I thought Blackness is Oppression. Nothing else matters? Are we the oppressed and our help the oppressors in the upside down world of race discourse? In a recent Glenn Loury Podcast, Glenn remarked that the Monk Ellison family had a black housekeeper in their summer place and how she was treated not in a standoffish fashion but as part of the family journey. That’s how humans treat one another. I would like to think we were something more than oppressors as we welcomed Faustino, our former maid, Alma and Claudia into our homes and our lives for years.
Conclusion: Once upon a time, I would drive by black housekeepers, maids and nannies at the bus stop in the Windsor Farms neighborhood. Times have changed since the 1970s. Race is not the same in San Diego. If we can be color indifferent, we will all be happier and live with one less care in the world.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. We all have an Irish maid or an English nanny or a black domestic in our family line, I suspect. I leave you with a You Tube video from a movie my wife loved back in the day, The Help (2011).
I think most people want a job, and housework, being a nanny, etc., are not bad jobs at all. We have a couple in town (both white) who actually worked for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. The husband was their cook, and his wife was their nanny.
This all started with a landscaping business, and a job with Ben and Jennifer. I don’t know how they ended up being the cook and nanny, but they have great stories, and the wife is still friends with Jennifer.
My husband and I hired a very nice white woman to clean our house. She cleaned houses for lots of people. She was wonderful, and we even had her stay at our house a couple of times to look after our dog when we went on vacation. She was happy to do it, and we definitely compensated her well.
I would happily have anyone of any ethnicity do those things, but I found my person because she was working at a store in town, and I overheard her talking to someone else about cleaning. I just asked if she might be available/interested.
It’s NOT insulting or beneath anyone.
I did a podcast where I tried to articulate that you'd have to be blind to not notice that my skin is black. Nevertheless, there is more to me as a person than the color of my skin, and that is how I should be judged. Talk to me or the other 13 million black Americans, and you find rich and diverse stories of strife and success. Your essays are like talking to you. Your writings have taught me a lot about who you are as a man. I enjoy you, not because of the color of your skin, but because of the contain of the character you display in your writings. In my podcast I expounded upon Dr. King's words concerning not being judged by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.
-We need to live in a world where no opinion or conclusion will be made about who we are because of our skin color. The final conclusion about who we are should be based on the information and experiences we have lived which have formed our individual nature as a person.