What I learned about racism as a child...

Our most formative and profound experiences come from what we live as children. Once the imprint of life has been left on our childhood, it cannot be erased, is seldom forgotten and will drive our behavior and our perception of the world for as long as we live.

I was raised the son of very poor parents in the aftermath of WWII in one of the new “cities” that were built to replace the destruction resulting from 5 years of war. Rows after rows of box-like buildings in what seemed like unending construction sites. It was also the time when France tried to shed its past as a colonial power. In the process, millions of people left North Africa and Africa (Muslims, Jews, Pieds Noirs, Africans) to immigrate to a “homeland” they knew nothing about and were not really welcome to. A lot of them moved to the kind of dark and sad city where I was growing up.

Imagine that in the span of a few months, our neighborhood saw the arrival of hundreds, and thousands of “newcomers”. They had left most of what they owned back in North Africa or Africa. They were bitter. beaten and helpless. Check the history of France at that time, it was particularly raw and intensely desperate, with bombs blowing up in protest every week or so.

As it turns out, or rather, as luck would have it, my parents were rebels in their own way and soon developed a lot of relationships and friendships with these newcomers. I thus discovered an entire new facet of the “universe”, thanks to all the people I met with my parents. Folks with different skin color (wow, there are people who do not look like me!). Or who spoke French with a “funny accent”. Or who spoke Arabic or Hebrew. They had different customs and cooked meals I had no notion existed. Spicy and colorful. Going to one of their homes was always like arriving at a huge gathering, people coming in and out at all times of the day. The men spoke loudly. The women spoke wisely. I played with the children of these families and it was joyous and wild. Children were always treated like princesses and princes, even with no socks or shoes. I have never been hugged as much as I was in those days.

Yet, soon enough, the stupidity and ignorance of white, resentful parents translated into the cruelty of their children. At school, I became the objects of insults, harassment and bullying: “Hey, Collard, your parents are friends with “ratons” and “bougnoules”, they are traitors to France” [google the words “raton” and “bougnoule” because I could not find a strong enough equivalent].

I remember going back to my house in tears because I had been bullied with words I simply could not understand (bullying that often times ended up in fist fights). “Maman, what is a raton? Papa what is a bougnoule? Maman, Papa why do people say Jews are bad people?”. And if that was not enough, some of my newcomer children friends would relay some of what their parents were saying: “The white French people, they sold us out. You parents are no better than the others. All of you hate us”. Simply imagine the sheer incomprehension of what was happening to me and the despair. The world did not seem to make much sense.

I was lucky enough to have parents who were rebels in their own ways. They explained to me that you need to take the world one person at a time, regardless of their skin color, religion, and/or where they came from. They told me that labels such as “raton” and “bougnoule” are the expression of fear and anger. And, most importantly, that the joy I derived from being with all these newcomer families should overwhelm the anxiety generated by the insults from some pupils at school. In other words, I had a choice to make. And that is what, at the age of 7, I learned: we all make choices and those choices have consequences, some of them pleasant, others less pleasant. Choices! Driven by convictions!

Since those days, when it came to race, I have lived my life with the imprints of those early experiences in my DNA. I have tried, and believe succeeded, to pass on to my daughter the same principles of acceptance, tolerance, and strength of convictions. And living with the consequence of one’s choices.

I spent quite a bit of my life in California, the melting pot of all melting pots. It has, however, its own issues when it comes to race relations, especially with Latinos. And immigrants. How incomprehensible it is to hear, in a country built by immigrants, that immigration is wrong? I remember the same “arguments” made for the same “reasons” from my childhood. Even more incomprehensible when you know that millions of those “immigrants” came to the USA against their will. They were called slaves….America has yet to come to term with that part of its history in the same way France has yet to come to term with the part of its history I lived thru as a child.

Because of and thanks to my parents, it is utterly foreign to me to look at someone thru the prism of what they look like, dress like, sound like or believe in. It is not in my DNA. I often wonder what would happen if all parents were like mine. What would happen? Because you are not born a racist! You are raised a racist.

Thus, what is my modest lesson in these traumatic times. Simple! Children inherit the sins and rages of their parents. No Palestinian child will hate a Jewish child unless he is taught to. And vice versa. No white child will call a black child a “nigger” unless he is taught to. Nobody will treat Latinos as second-class citizens unless they are taught to. Nobody will look at Asian citizens as an impenetrable menace unless they are taught to.

And how do I know this to be true? Simple! My father and his father (my grand father) were members of the French Resistances during WWII. They were both captured and tortured. My grand father was shot, and my father escaped death only by sheer luck. As a child, my dad told me everything about what he went thru and his visceral hatred of Germans. He also told me that this hatred had to stop with him and his generation. May be his complete acceptance of the newcomers from North Africa was in some way to compensate for his hatred of Germans. I do not know and never will. But, as the result, he raised me without hatred of Germany and total acceptance of people from different walks of life. An amazing gift from a rebel who knew the consequences of making choices. I derived similar strength from my mother. Her words were softer spoken but just as powerful. I have often wondered what would happened if all the mothers in the world were in charge of the world…I wish they were….

White folks have oppressed, exploited, and killed minorities for the past 400 years. And continue to do so. There are two things I thought I could do to break that terrible spell: first, teach my child to respect people for who they are, regardless of what they look like (or sound like or love like). Second, in my personal and professional life, I took a stand against racism and discrimination as many times as I could. Which probably means not enough times. I also promoted inclusion in as many instances that I could (especially when I was a CEO). Which probably means not enough times.

Laws will not change the fundamental outcome of our collective behavior. Raising our children, so they take the world one person at a time, will. This is done one child at a time. And it should start today.