Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Today, my son and I went to the National Portrait Galley, to get a general tour, but to specifically look at a Civil War Exhibit. He informed me that he will be studying the Civil War in his social studies class when he goes back to school next week, so I figured we'd get a jump start on things. But before we got to the Civil War portraits, we did the grand tour of the museum which was very informative. There were 13 total people on the tour, and Carlton and I were the only black people--which wasn't a big deal, until...

One of the pictures on the tour was one of Paul Lawrence Dunbar. The tour guide was going on and on about the accomplishments of Dunbar, and Carlton was taking notes and listening intently. But neither one of us could ignore the fact that every damn person in the group was looking at us. It wasn't a continual stare, but it was definitely obvious. Carlton kept looking around confused, and I kept looking at the tour guide, until finally we moved on to the next picture. Before the Dunbar picture we got no looks and after the picture, we got no looks..only at that one picture of a black man.

As we moved on to the next picture, Carlton said to me (and not softly), "why was everyone staring at us daddy?" I told him that since Paul Lawrence Dunbar was black, and we are black, that people stare because a)they want to see our reaction and b)they are aware this is one of the few black people on the exhibit. He then said to me, "That doesn't make any sense", and I agreed with him, but I explained to him that it happens, and he can either look the people in the face or ignore them. The normal Rashad would have been annoyed the whole rest of the exhibit, and I probably would have said something smart or mean to the offending parties. But the parental Rashad just kept it moving and took the high road..I don't like parental Rashad.

By the way, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" is boring. The 3-D was cool, but it was kind of boring. Tomorrow is bring-your-son-to-work-day for me, so that should be interesting...

1 comment:

Me said...

lol @ I don't like the parental Rashad. This is great :)