Why do you like Black people so much?

A few years ago, a person I will not name, who is Black, came to talk to me about the Hall, and we spoke about his work in the field of education in our community and I spoke about my vision for the Hall in our community, and a half hour into the conversation, he leaned in, and whispered, “Why do you like Black people so much?”

Caught off guard, I bellowed out a laugh. It was a question akin to why do you like people with hair.

I spent a decade after losing my career working in the world of race and equity. This took me to Berkeley, California where I participated in workshops with Lee Mun-Wah, who made the film, The Color of Fear. Mun-Wah saw in a men’s group he facilitated that racism was still an underlying tension – and it needed a deeper conversation to expose it in a meaningful way. Mun-Wah and his film, and the time, gave rise to other champions who went into corporations, organizations, and other groups to help shed more light on implicit bias and institutional racism, because so many people were mistaken in believing they were “color-blind.”

My interest was to go out into adoption and foster care communities to speak about children of color being adopted into white families. I believed more education and vetting needed to be provided by social workers and agencies who facilitated transracial adoption.

Years later, we are living in a world where these topics are once again becoming taboo. Today, I watched Sunday Best, the documentary about Ed Sullivan and how he took a firm stand by inviting Black entertainers onto his show. Sullivan gave Black entertainers a stage amidst threats from large corporate sponsors and advertisers and viewers.

They told Sullivan not to touch a Black performer. Not to get too close. They cancelled Harry Belafonte’s performance saying he was a Communist. Sullivan, very pro-American, spoke to Belafonte, and determined he wasn’t Communist, he was Black. Belafonte performed on the show.

I cried several times during this documentary at how amazing each performance was, I cried hearing the beautiful music, I even cried about the tenderness that was visible between host and guest, and the whole time I kept wondering – why do Black people like white people?

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