Interview with Ethan Emerson Kabati: "What it's like to be white and black"

How has racism and social injustice impacted you directly?

Race has been an issue for me in my life in all kinds of ways, and I have a perspective on what it’s like to be black in our country and what it’s like to be white, because my mom is white and my dad is black. I identify as black, and most people see me as black. But while I was growing up -- before I started to move around in the world on my own -- I spent a lot of time with my mom, and so I was treated like she was treated whenever I was out with her, which is to say I spent a lot of time inside her bubble of white privilege.

It wasn’t until middle school that I started to feel out of place because of my race, but at the time, I didn’t realize it was because of my race; I just knew I felt out of place. In elementary school, kids were too young to understand the concept of race and racism and the idea that having a different skin color could mean something beyond just, well, having a different skin color. So, everyone was always very nice to me in grade school, because I was always nice to everyone. And then I went to middle school, and all of a sudden, kids were very unkind to me and they were bullying me and sometimes even beating me up – and in the beginning I was still being kind and pleasant to everyone, so I didn’t know why this was happening. But as time went on, I realized one of the reasons for this abuse was because I was black -- one of only a few black students at this school. This was a small private school, Christian but non-denominational, and made up primarily of people who were Catholic. This abuse really played with my head. It made me feel like I was worthless because everyone seemed to hate me, and I couldn’t understand why, so I began to feel like something must be very wrong with me. My experiences at this “Christian” school really soured me on religion. For a long time after I left the school, whenever I would go into a church or be around people who were talking about religion or God, all I could think about was the way those kids treated me, and I wanted nothing to do with that God or with religion in general. And I still feel that way a lot of the time. It left a pretty big scar, one that I’m still healing from, even at 20 years old. It was my first big run in with race and racism, and I didn’t understand what was happening, so I took it all personally.

One of the things this experience taught me is that it’s very important to educate black young people about the racism that exists in our society, so that when people insult them and say terrible things to them for no apparent reason, they will be able to depersonalize this and recognize it as racism – things people say and do to you just because of your skin color and not because of who you really are as a person. My parents didn’t teach me much about racism until I started driving, and they were worried about me getting shot as part of a traffic stop. They weren’t really equipped for teaching me about racism as a child because my dad grew up in Zambia, where he was not a minority, and my mom, as I said, is white. So I’m actually a first-generation African-American in my family, the first person in my family to grow up black in America.

All through my life, as I’ve grown up and become more independent, I’ve found that people don’t always treat me like a person who’s equal to them. When I was around 15 and coming out of the 7-Eleven near my house in Falls Church, this guy in a red truck drove past and shouted at me that I should go back to wherever I came from…which, of course, was my house just a few blocks away.

Then there was a time senior year in high school when I was volunteering at The Lamb Center and had to use the bathroom. I asked Deb Hayes, who runs the center, where the bathroom was, and she pointed me to the volunteer bathroom and told me to go use that one, since I was a volunteer. So, I’m about to walk into the bathroom, and suddenly this guy comes up and puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “No, you have to use the bathroom over there.” Now, I’m not always thinking about what color I am and how people are going to react to that, and I was having a good day, helping out Deb, who’s a family friend, so when the guy told me to use another bathroom, I didn’t think anything of it. I just started walking to where the guy pointed. But then Deb sees me heading away from the volunteer bathroom, and she tells me again that that’s the one I should use. OK, so I head back over to the volunteer bathroom, and the guy stops me again – he was a white guy working the front desk -- and says that bathroom is only for volunteers. This time I tell him that I am a volunteer, and this time Deb is right behind me and tells the guy who I am and what I’m doing there, and then the guy is like, “Oh, OK.” But not until after this back and forth did I realize that the guy stopped me because I’m not white…so, obviously, I must be homeless or down on my luck or at the Lamb Center for help instead of helping at the Lamb Center.

I’ve also experienced racism at my university in the Midwest. During welcome week as a freshman, I was talking to a guy and we were sharing stories about our lives, and he was talking about how much he loves this country, and I said I wasn’t a big fan, and when he kept asking me why, I explained that I find America to be a pretty racist country, and that’s when he said that if I didn’t like it here, I should just leave and “go help my kin back in Africa.”  

And then there was the time, recently, when I went to visit my aunt at her assisted living community. I was dressed nicely, but I had my hair tied up in a doo-rag because I’d just washed and twisted by dreds and didn’t want them to get all frizzy. I went to sit down with my aunt (who’s white) in the dining room to have dinner with her, and the man she shares a table with came over and started demanding to know who I was, how I got in, and what I was doing there. He was being very aggressive and acted like I was some kind of threat to my aunt -- my aunt. I just played it off, and my aunt explained that I was her grand-nephew, and the man settled down once he realized I was part of her family. But it wasn’t a great experience. 

I play these kinds of things off most of the time because I don’t feel the need to be harsh with people; I realize most of the time people are just showing an unconscious bias. Sometimes it’s conscious, but a lot of times, I think it’s unconscious and comes in part from how the media often portrays people of color – as criminals, thugs, gang members, poor and desperate, people to be afraid of. It’s getting better, but there’s still a lot of “black” equals “bad” messaging out there. So, when I have the time and am in the right mood – meaning a good one – I’ll try to explain to people who show a negative bias toward black people why what they said or did is offensive and wrong, and how they can guard against doing it in the future. But it’s a lot to do that all the time, because these kinds of things happen a lot. And I get very tired of being looked at like a second-class citizen. I mean, you can see it everywhere. One of the times I notice it most is when my dad and I go into nice jewelry stores to buy gifts for my mom, and the security guards will follow us around – not anyone else in the store, just us – and then the sales people will sometimes suggest we look at this piece or that piece, things that are “more affordable,” like we can’t afford what we actually came in to buy. I mean, we’re wearing nice clothes, and we drove up in a nice car, but there’s still a bias.

Of course, I’ve also experienced negative racial bias with the police. When I’m stopped in my car, I never reach for my license or registration until an officer comes to my car window and asks me for it, and then I still tell the officer where it is and ask permission to get it, and I always move slowly when I do that. For me, when I interact with the police, my goal is just to get out of the experience alive. And I shouldn’t have to feel that way. Now, I’ve met some very nice police officers and had some positive interactions with them, but the list of bad experiences I’ve had with the police is a lot longer than the list of good ones. I once had an officer come to my car window with his gun drawn, and I’ve been put in the backseat of a patrol car for an issue with my headlights. It feels like when a lot of police officers see a black person, they assume you’re a criminal, and they are going to look for a way to lock you up. Even my dad, the times he’s been stopped in a nice car, the first question the police ask him is: Is this your car? But my mom has never been asked that question as part of a traffic stop, not once, when she’s driving the same car. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

What advice would you give to people who want to overcome a negative bias toward people of color?

Read about African-American history; read about all the struggles that black people have gone through. There are plenty of books on it: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, Caste, The Warmth of Other Suns, How to be an Anti-Racist. (You can find resources to educate yourself about racial equity and injustice, including more information about these books, podcasts, movies, and other media at HTLC’s Racial Equity Initiative web site.) I think you have to understand how we got here before you can understand how to fix it.

And if you have black friends, you can always talk to them, but that’s a conversation you have to start carefully. You can talk with them about how you’re trying to be more inclusive in your thinking and how you’re trying to overcome what you’ve realized may be some unconscious biases you have; and you can ask your friends to help you understand their experience being black in our society. But if they don’t want to have that conversation with you, then you have to drop it. For some people of color, it’s just too painful and uncomfortable to talk about, and you have to respect that. But if they say yes, they’ll be able to offer you some very useful information because they’ve lived it firsthand.

The other thing you can do is to guard against making assumptions about people as soon as you meet them, especially assumptions that are based on appearance. I mean, we all do this, I do it: I’ll meet someone and make assumptions based on how they look, how they’re dressed, their posture. But don’t take those assumptions to heart immediately and don’t speak from those assumptions before you’ve had any kind of proper interaction with that person in front of you.

One of the other things I’ve been doing lately is using my music to try to help educate people about racism and racial equity. I write and produce my own songs, and I have one called Privilege, about what it’s like to be both black and white. I also have another one that just came out about racial injustice called Eyes. You can find them both on Spotify or Apple Music under Kabati.