After being called the ‘N’ word at school, my son’s pain is one I can’t treat

His eyes were bloodshot and a bit swollen when I saw him. I had arrived a little early to collect him from his afterschool care and usually would have been met with smiles and hugs for ‘rescuing’ him, but today his slumped shoulders told me something was wrong. 

I signed him out as usual and asked him what was wrong. “Nothing,” came his quick reply.  But I knew intuitively something was wrong. Driving home I could see in the rear-view mirror the tears streaming down his face. “Son,” I coaxed, “I can see something is clearly wrong, but I cannot help you if you tell me nothing is wrong.” 

“They have been calling me the N word mum, and sometimes laughing and cackling after one of them calls me a black monkey. When I tell the caretaker, they deny this and then it seems like I am lying about this but I am not. I don’t know what the N word means, but I know that I am not a black monkey and when they make monkey sounds and look at me, I feel like I don’t want to be here anymore,” he blurted as my heart broke into pieces. 

Here was my beautiful chocolate son, a smart and sensitive old soul, learning about his identity not on his own time but through derogatory words being thrown at him to show that he was clearly different. He is unfortunate to grow up part of a significant minority, being a black boy in modern Australia, at a time when global politics encourages division and bigotry. Conversations that previously have been had in private now take place in the town square. His childhood has been robbed of its innocence because of the racist taunts of kids at his school and we’ve had to have hard conversations about racism, colourism, and bigotry way earlier than I had hoped. 

These conversations have brought home the truth that even as a ‘good’ member of society, as a doctor, I could not shield my children from the bad that exists in society. They’ve reminded me of his observation that we are treated differently when we’re out shopping and I have my work scrubs on, compared to when I’m in civilian clothes: being asked to show invoices of everything in our trolley despite everyone else being given the ‘benefit of the doubt’”’, assumed ‘good’ enough to not have shoplifted a whole trolley of groceries. 

As we debriefed on how best to handle this new incident at school I mentally wrote and rewrote emails to the school for a please explain. The reality of our shared sadness hit me hard. This has prompted a retreat to focusing on my family unit and making them a priority as we navigate our challenges in this place we have chosen to call home. 

I can only hope that more of Australian society learns to be allies in the face of such blatant racism and that we don’t expect the victim to also be the one to call out the abuse. We should all equip ourselves, and especially our children, to know what is right and wrong, and call out the wrongs on behalf of victims.