By Michael Smith | Reflective MVS
Some people think conversations about race are optional.
You can almost hear the moment when the tone shifts. The air tightens. The words get slower. Someone starts feeling accused even when no accusation has been made.
Then suddenly the exit appears.
The conversation ends.
The subject changes.
The phone goes silent.
For some people, race works like that.
It’s a topic. A debate. Something you can step away from once it stops feeling comfortable.
But race has never worked that way for me.
Because I can’t hang up on being Black.
Growing Up in the Middle
Being biracial in America sounds simple when people say it out loud.
Two cultures.
Two families.
Two sides of yourself.
People imagine it as a bridge.
But growing up inside it often feels more like standing in the middle of a road while traffic moves in both directions.
You’re learning two ways of seeing the world at the same time.
Sometimes those ways align.
Sometimes they collide.
And children start noticing those collisions long before anyone explains them.
You begin to see small things.
The way certain jokes land.
The way certain relatives speak when they think the room agrees with them.
The way you’re sometimes treated slightly differently from cousins who look more like the people around you.
No one announces those moments as lessons.
But they teach you anyway.
The Quiet Curriculum
People like to talk about racism as if it only exists in its loudest forms.
Slurs.
Laws.
Violence.
But a lot of racism enters a child’s life quietly.
Through moments that others later dismiss as harmless.
I remember one of those moments clearly.
I was with my white grandfather—my mother’s father. We had pulled over near a cemetery. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. Kids trust the adults they’re with.
He asked me to get out of the car and grab some wires from a trash can nearby.
So I did.
But while I was digging through the trash, he started driving away.
At first I thought maybe he was moving the car.
Then he kept going.
I remember the sudden drop in my stomach as the car rolled farther down the road. I remember the panic rising in my chest as I started running after it.
I remember screaming.
And I remember him laughing.
To someone else, maybe that was a joke.
But I still remember what it felt like to believe—even if only for a few seconds—that I was about to be left alone in a cemetery.
Children don’t always understand the meaning of moments like that.
But they understand fear.
They understand humiliation.
They understand when they’ve been made the punchline.
The Exception Rule
Later in life, I read something from bell hooks that explained a pattern I had already seen many times but hadn’t yet named.
She wrote:
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination.”
Real love requires honesty.
And honesty means questioning the ideas we were taught about other people.
But that’s where things often stall.
Because instead of questioning those ideas, many people simply make an exception.
“You’re different.”
“You’re not like the others.”
“You’re one of the good ones.”
The stereotype survives.
You just get moved into a separate category.
The system stays intact.
The Moment Conversations Break
Eventually, conversations about race reach a moment where honesty enters the room.
That’s usually when the temperature changes.
Some people lean in.
Others lean away.
And sometimes the easiest solution becomes the simplest one.
End the conversation.
But that solution only works for people who experience race as a discussion.
Not for those who experience it as a life.
A Reflective Thought
Some people can disconnect from conversations about race the moment they stop feeling comfortable.
They can hang up the phone.
But identity doesn’t disappear when the conversation ends.
Memory doesn’t disappear.
Experience doesn’t disappear.
And neither does the skin you wake up in every morning.
You can hang up.
But I can’t hang up on being Black.
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