On Saturday morning, the date for the covert operation, Richie burst into the kitchen to find that his college-educated sibling was home and that all three of them: father, mother, and sister were seated around the green and yellow dinette set.
Before Richie could ask, Suz (short for Suzy) answered his question, “I drove down this morning, caught a ride with one of my sorority sisters. I needed a break.”
His Dad, who was the breakfast short order cook, called out, “What’ll it be, a number one, scrambled eggs with bacon, hash browns, and toast, or a number two, hash browns and toast with bacon and scrambled eggs. Make up your mind, the kitchen's about to close.”
Richie, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to wake up and catch up with the energy in the room, shouted out, “Can I have both?” Then he slid behind his sister, taking his assigned seat at the table, facing inward to the room, which was directly across from his mother. The Mama Bear was drinking her umpteenth coffee, content that her two cubs were seated with her and that they were all together in her favorite room.
“Well, Richie, who you dating? Anyone special?” Suzy asked that improper question for her own amusement, knowing that it would get under Richie’s skin. She delivered it with a meddling, see if you can dodge this, smile.
With Suzy’s question in the air, both parents focused their attention on Richie’s answer, since he never discussed dating or his social life outside of, “I’m going to meet the guys.” If he needed scratch for a date, he had his own, from his summer job pumping gas at the Jersey Shore or the weekend odd jobs he did with friends for bread.
Richie accepted the breakfast blue plate special from his father and the glass of milk that accompanied it. Then, in a nonchalant response to his sister’s question said, “Estelle Dinkins, the negro cheerleader. She’s a junior, same class as me.” He accompanied the news with a barely noticeable, shit eating grin that was part of the trial balloon that he was floating.
Suz was flabbergasted and slow to react as she just stared with an open mouth at the unexpected rejoinder. His mother tried to hide the fact that she swallowed her coffee down the wrong pipe until she burst into a fit of coughing. Only his Dad took the statement in stride, “Good looking girl…great legs. Don’t knock her up.” At least Richie thought the Old Man was consistent in his advice, black or white.
Richie took a mouthful of eggs, chewed and swallowed before making the next proclamation. “Sally Dill. I’m dating Sally Dill.”
Suz responded first. “The senior? She’s out of your league?
Richie’s Mom gave Suzy a pained look, one that signaled to her to back off, and then asked, “When did you start dating?
Richie now was weaving his web of deceit, “About a couple of weeks ago, after the Mayfair game. I’m taking her to a flick tonight.”
The Old Man remained on the sidelines, but he broke up the tension in the room with the following statement, “Sally, good looking girl, well built. Don’t knock her up.” She’s white, right?
“Yeah, Dad, she’s white and you know it.” I drive her home a lot, after practice and away games, and we just decided to start dating. She’s easy to talk to and fun to be around…And that, Ladies and Gentlemen (doing a poor man’s impersonation of Ed Sullivan) is the end of a reaaaaaaally big show. Let’s give that young lad, Richie, a round of applause for being so forthright as to who he’s been dating this morning.”
Richie waited until the clapping in the room subsided, and then, without skipping a beat, he suddenly did a reverse pivot and went on the attack. Looking at his sister and knowing that her semester had just started, asked, “College girl, the prevailing message from Dad, it’s for both of us, don’t knock her up or get knocked up.” This time, the response from Suzy was silence, which did not go unnoticed by Richie’s Mom.
Richie quickly came about and tacked away from Suzy and opened up a new dialogue, “Okay, we pride ourselves on being a tolerant white middle-class family, whose children attend school, and whose parents work with Negroes. We live in an all white neighborhood, and vacation at an all white summer resort. What if instead of Sally, I was dating Estelle? Would it be, okay? How would your friends react?” The gauntlet had been carefully thrown.
The first to pick it up, surprisingly, was the Old Man. “I'll let your sister and mother give their own unique viewpoint on interracial dating. Mine will be from a business or career perspective…Okay." The entire family was focused on the man of few words. "Maybe someday there will be interracial relationships that will be acceptable by the majority of the population, but not now, not at this point in time. I follow the news about the negroes plight in the South and the discrimination that dogs them every step of the way below the Mason-Dixon line, and I don’t like it. They’re fighting for their rights as human beings, against the unjust laws that have been stacked up against them. However, whites are unaccepting of whites dating negroes, and negroes discourage other negroes from going out with whites. I’m sure you can get away with it somewhere, perhaps on a liberal college campus, but in the workplace, trying to climb the corporate ladder? Hell, it’s hard enough to ascend in a corporation if you’re black with a black wife or white with a white wife. In case you weren’t aware, interracial marriage is a felony in 31 states of these United States of America. So, if you’re a white man and you start a career married to a black woman, your job opportunities better be in the other 19 states, and you better hope you don’t get transferred to the South or worse turn down a career building promotion because you can’t live in a town or city that your company wants to transfer you too. Dick hesitated for a second before saying, "You can do it, but if you think it's easy, you're kidding yourself."
At one time, Suzy was the moral compass of the family. Now finding herself engaged in a topic that was different from the pressing one she had planned to discuss with ‘Mama Bear,’ she regained her composure and was the next to command the kitchen. “At the University, the blacks hang out with the blacks and the whites hang out with the whites. The exceptions are the arts and athletics. Both disciplines are made up of a disproportionate number of negroes. And unlike other extracurricular activities, the blacks are not restricted by quotas; instead, they are judged simply on their talent.” A Fine Arts major, Suzy was both a musical performer and a budding actress, and had a high regard for talent regardless of race. With Suzy, you either had it or you didn’t, and the color of your skin should not influence who got the part, regardless of how the book was written. “Are there blacks that date whites and vice versa? Sure. But knowing those individuals as I do, nothing and I mean nothing would get in the way if it came down to their career aspirations.
Finally, Richie’s mother weighed in on the topic. Slow and deliberate in her delivery, “You want your children to be happy, whether you are white parents or black parents. A lot of whites in Pennsylvania resent blacks for no other reason than the color of their skin. Conversely, a lot of blacks resent whites because of their impression that whites are trying to hold them back from career and monetary advancements that they are qualified to perform. Through unwritten agreements, god-fearing people, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews have held the negro back using a quota system. Although not all of them, a fair amount of whites find ways to limit the Negroes opportunities, not based on education, but on color. Richie, you dating a negro girl would be difficult for the majority of our friends to accept, just as it would be, I’m sure, for the friends of Estelle’s parents. The question is not whether we would survive as a family; we would. But the impact on all our lives would be significant. We live in a state with limited racial tolerance. Like it or not, there is a preconceived notion of who the negro is in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs, and the picture is not flattering. Beyond marriage, there is also the question of children. Assuming you have children, are they white, black, or somewhere in between? The offspring of a mixed marriage will be neither white nor negro and the child will reside in neither camp; an oddity to be singled out.”
Richie, having started the dialogue, decided to end it. “Well, it’s a good thing that I decided to date Sally instead of Estelle.” And with that proclamation, he got up from the table, dropped his plate off in the sink, and left the room, hastily followed by his father. The two women remained in the kitchen, prepared to engage in another discussion about choice, religion, and the sanctity of life.