The Huxtable Effect

I haven't posted on my own blog in forever -- too busy reading others -- but I heard a talk show host tonight referring to the Huxtable Effect (vs. the Bradley Effect) in our Presidential election -- and I'm hoping someone will run across this blog in a search and talk with me about it. I won't belabor the attributions -- you can find plenty of them online -- and even Bill Cosby commented on the theory in an interview posted yesterday (12th of November) on the Huffington Post blog...

But I'm wondering whether the people who grew up watching Cosby needed the Huxtables to "cross over" and vote for a black candidate.. I don't think so. My youngest child is 23, and when she was in 1st grade, she had a problem with a little boy in her class. She complained regularly to me that he was always teasing her; he made fun of her being a slow runner; he told her that her head was big. Her litany of complaints went on and on -- all innocuous and all problems she could solve on her own. She had gone to kindergarten elsewhere, so I didn't know too much about her classmates. This one child was listed as living about a mile from our house, so I didn't feel it was something I needed to get into.

Imagine my surprise on Parent-Teacher Night a few weeks later when this young man turned out to be black. We live in a predominantly white area -- probably 10% black population in our elementary school -- and it had not only not been part of her description of this "problem child" -- it had never come up. When I asked her about it later, and whether or not she had told me he was black, she looked strangely at me and asked "why" that would be a factor. Good question.

But my point in the Huxtable effect -- that the younger voters grew up with the Huxtable family and are thus more comfortable with a black family is curious for me here -- the show ran from 1984 - 1992. My daughter was in 1st grade when this incident occurred -- 1992 -- so I cannot now look back at this episode and not wonder if Cliff and his family aren't part of what made my blond haired, blue eyed 6 year old daughter neutral about her perception of this young boy's race.

There is no questioning that today's young adults are much less concerned about racial differences -- whether or not their watching the Cosby show has a part in that is my question. I wonder if it isn't that watching Cosby as a FAMILY didn't play a part. Sitting with your parents and watching another family, without regard to race (Cliff Huxtable was NOT anything like George Jefferson, but Lionel's girlfriend was the result of a bi-racial couple -- which only offended George) didn't our children learn from us NOT to notice race.

It was the lyrics from a song -- as the young Lieutenant in South Pacific claims when troubled by his attraction to the young island girl "You've got to be taught to hate and fear, you've got to be taught from year to year, it's got to be drummed in your dear little ear, you've got to be carefully taught...you've got to be taught before it's too late, before you are six, or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate, you've got to be carefully taught."

So maybe as a parent, I need to thank Cliff for giving me a way to teach without preaching that people are people -- that my kids don't hate people for their race or their background (but aren't particularly happy with people that are mean to them). I was taught the difference growing up -- not by parents who hated but clearly by parents who were raised in separate worlds from those of "the colored."

Another anecdote about this same daughter comes to mind from the previous year -- she was going to a kindergarten at her preschool rather than the elementary school. To help her know more neighbors, I sent her to the "Daisy" troop at the elementary school. She was nervous -- didn't know anyone but survived her first experience. When she came home, I asked her how things had gone. She said a nice girl named Myra with brown skin had taken care of her. I told her that was nice, but that we didn't describe people by their skin color. She looked thoughtfully and pointed out to me: "But they all called me the little girl with the blond hair." I did my best to explain the difference in those situations -- but the fact is, I could only reflect on how life gets its rules. You teach children what you can -- and you hope they learn the right rules for the right reasons.

I think I done good.