A SEAT AT THE TABLE

By Marlene L. Johnson

Remember those family meals when you were a kid and had to sit at the “kids table” when company came? Remember how you kept “fighting for a seat at the table” with the grown ups, so you would be as important as they were and share in the camaraderie?

I remember those days. And in remembering, I know that race, poverty and gender can keep you from having a seat at the “company” table. I wore three of those labels. I worked hard to overcome being labeled as poor. Because the other two labels are God-given and innate, my life has been one long fight for a seat at the table.

My first memorable struggle was to be just like the other kids, even though as a foster child I was taunted by for being a “welfare” kid and seen as different by the other kids and adults saw me as a child to be pitied because I would grow up to be worthless.

That’s how too many whites still see all African Americans.

African Americans have been fighting for a seat at the table ever since we were brought to America and enslaved. After building this country, African American men had to prove they were worthy of defending it. The Tuskegee Airmen proved it as did other black military men. Black soldiers returning from the wars still had to “fight for a seat at the table” of equality for themselves and their families. They had to march in the streets for the right to vote, for the right to send their children to public schools, to protect their families from hooded white terrorists who hung them with impunity, dosed and destroyed their homes and churches with fire, and white farmers who stole their labor by underpaying them or paying them in pig guts and overripe vegetables from the fields.

But getting to the table may have been the easiest part. Once you got a seat at the adult table you were seen as a nuisance to be put up with and still were not part of the camaraderie. When the food was passed, you didn’t get to help yourself, someone gave you a scoop of this or a spoonful of that, as if you couldn’t do it yourself. And they watched for you to “mess up” saying ‘Don’t spill your food, wipe your face with the napkin,’ as if you they didn’t have food around their own mouths.

It’s like finally landing a job for which you have studied hard to educate yourself and finding that as an African American and as a woman you are undervalued, underestimated and marginalized. But we still go to that hard-won job where we are grudgingly dolled out this assignment by folks who don’t really want us to be there, who believe our skin color or gender means we are not up to the responsibilities of the job, and who don’t value our work unless someone wants to go on vacation, then we get to do their jobs as well.

The best assignments are deemed to be beyond the realm of our capabilities and are given to others, although we know full well we could handle them. We are either intentionally given more work than any one person can do and are scolded for “messing up” or are stripped of all but “make coffee” type duties that make it hardly worth getting out of bed to go to our jobs. But we do.

It’s time America sets the table for all of us. African Americans and women have earned a place at that table, so say the blessing and pass the potatoes please!