The Trailing Edge

  My parents were your basic lower middle class white people. They "meant well," and "tried" ... sort of. But conversing with them on the topics of race and class for five minutes made it very easy to discern their perspective. An example. One day we were watching the news and they ran a story about standardized testing (such as the SATs) and how these tests were often designed with implicit bias baked right in. They interviewed a student, who read from one of the tests she'd used as practice.  "Differentiate between the musical styles of Wagner and Beethoven." She got the standard pronunciation of "Beethoven" right, but rather than pronouncing "Wagner" in the German style ("Vogner"), she used the more standard English pronunciation. I remember how my parents jumped on that. They were huge when it came to spelling, grammar, usage and pronunciation.  "WAG-ner!" they scoffed, and turned away in dismissal. As if to ...

  In my blue-collar hometown, in the early 1970s, we had neighbors named the Vs. Kathy and Kenny V. were siblings; Kathy was a year younger than me, and Kenny was about a year younger than his sister. Their mom was an extremely anxious person, always worried and afraid. She once watched her kids go down our swimming pool slide, having a great time, and let out a loud gasp. The dad, from what we gathered, was a strict "no fun is best" type of parent. These were not carefree types.  I knew this. So it surprised me, at age 11 or 12, one day at the local park, to see Kathy run joyfully across the grass and throw herself into some guy's arms. That can't be right,  I thought. This is because in some ways, my parents weren't too different from Mr. and Mrs. V. My dad, in particular. He was a bit of a drama-lover. His recipe for instilling the "right values" in me was to overreact and characterize normal adolescent foibles as a gateway to Federal prison. So when ...