There may be no limit to what a mother would do to give her son a world of opportunities.  Pam and her son frequently drove over 5 hours a day commuting to high school and to sporting events. And Pam has spent many, many hours on the track and soccer sidelines cheering him on.

Now at age 58, Pam is very excited that her son is about to start his second year of college playing Division II soccer.  She may have been most proud when her son was recognized as the Triple Jump Champion and Indoor Track and Field Newcomer of the Year for the collegiate President’s Athletic Conference. Born in Marietta, she currently works as an administrative guru for a major employer in Atlanta.  They live together in Decatur.

Racial equity issues have affected her often, almost daily. 

Have you or your family members had an experience with police brutality? No.

Has a cop pointed a gun at you? Yes. I was at work at a major transportation and logistics company in the late 1990s. I had just become a manager. It was late. We had just sent the trucks down to the ramp to go out that night for delivery the next day. Our bay doors were open because we were waiting on the trucks to come back. I had just ran a report and I was walking down the hall. It was myself and another manager there. I heard somebody said, “Put your hands up.” I was like, “What?” I turned around and it was an Atlanta police officer, gun drawn on me. The other manager said, “What’s going on? Can I help you?” and the police officer said, “Someone robbed the storage unit and they ran this way.” I said, “Do I look like I just robbed the storage unit?” I [was] in business attire.

My co-worker told him we were working and that nobody had been in there. He said, “You can lower your weapon.” It was bizarre. The police officer just turned around and put [his gun] back in the holster and he just walked off, but he didn’t apologize.

Tell me about other ways racism has affected your family. As fair skinned as my mother is, there are people that think she’s white. When we were in college, my mother was working a part time at a local department store to help my sister and I. There was a black person that was trying to return an item. My mother was standing around putting something up. The white clerk was helping a black customer and she refused to take the item back. When the black person left, her coworker turned to her and said, “These n*%$&rs think they can get away with anything. I know she wore that,” not knowing that my mother was black.

We’ve all had situations where we bought something and we try to take it back to the store, price tag was sticking on it. We are asked, “Did you wear it?” Why would I wear something and bring it back? And they tell us, “We can’t take this back. It’s been worn.  I smell deodorant” when that simply isn’t the case.

Has racism affected your career? When I was younger in my early 20’s to early 30’s, I tried not to be this angry black woman that saw racism in every situation. I try not to be that woman. When we talk about sharing the same story because all of us have experienced it in some way, shape or form. I’m not trying to have my story top your story. We’ve all just been discriminated against. 

Early on, I worked at a major transportation and logistics company, when my son was really little, I was the only single parent and we got a call that we needed to be at work at an ungodly hour at 5:00 in the morning. I told the senior manager, I couldn’t be there because I had to get my son to day care. He told me I could leave him in the car. That was upsetting, and I obviously did not do that.

Later, I was a manager and another [white male] manager asked a secretary to tell me to do something. I told her I didn’t know how to do it.  And it also wasn’t part of my job. He comes to my office and he says, “I understand you’re refusing to do what I asked you to do.” I told him I didn’t know how to do [the task] and he argued back and forth with me.  Then, he said, “I know how much money you make.” 

This was not my boss. This was my coworker. He went and told the senior manager that I was being insubordinate. I’m called to the boss’s office, and when I get into his office, the senior manager and the other manager are in there and he tells me to sit down. The senior manager told me, “Anything he tells you to do, you do it.” I refused and said that I wouldn’t be part of this discussion.

He yelled and said, “If you get out of that chair, I will throw you out of this building” and he told me “I’m writing you up.” I felt he was threatening me. I did report it. Security came and interviewed me. They interviewed the witness. Nothing happened, and I was written up. He wrote me up for insubordination.

About a year later, I was called into the office one day and that same senior manager had the HR manager (who was a black guy) in there with him and I stopped dead in my tracks. The senior manager told me he was moving me to the night shift for the next year. My son was in the seventh grade. So I said, “I am a single parent. When am I supposed to see my son?” He said, “That’s not my concern.”  He told me I had three weeks to report for the night shift or I would lose my job. Someone quit the secretary position, and I chose to take that job in order to keep my paycheck. They told me I would never get a raise.  Then, as a secretary, they started asking me to do tasks that had been part of my old job as a manager, like auditing the books, without compensating me for it.  Again, they started threatening to write me up for insubordination. Once my son was about to start high school, I finally left the company after more than 23 years. 

What do you wish white people really understood about your experience as a black woman? I’m an educated, for the most part well spoken, pretty well informed African American woman. When I show up and I start speaking, I’ve had white people say, “Where are you from?” and I look at them and I say, “I’m from Marietta.” Or they will say, “You don’t sound black.” What does black sound like? When you peel back the melanin in my skin and in your skin, we’re the same.

The only difference is my hair texture is different and the color of my skin is different. Deep down in my soul, I have the same concerns about my well-being and family as you have about yours, but I have to work four times as hard to prove to anybody that I’m good enough to do a job. I shouldn’t have to do that every day, day in and day out. I shouldn’t have to do that, but I do.

Inherently, I like to think that all people are good. I like to think that the people that I have in my circle of influence, my friends recognize me for me. When they think of me, they don’t say, “I’m going to call my black friend, Pam.” They’re just going to call Pam.

How has your experience affected your parenting? I have done my very best to make sure that my son grew up in a diverse world because the world is more than black and white. When I was growing up, I went to an all-black elementary school, all-black high school, and all-black college. That was my experience, but I wanted more for him because the world is a melting pot.

All of his friends are a melting pot. When my son saw me, he didn’t see me as a black mom. He just saw me as mom.

Do you feel like we are making progress in the United States on these issues compared to your parents’ generation?Well, I think we made progress but now I think we’ve taken a few steps back. What is that saying, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it or something like that. I think we’re in a repeat moment right now. It’s like the definition of insanity. How many times do we have to go through this, and why? Why do we have to go through this? We shouldn’t have to. It’s not just black people. None of us. 

None of us are any better than the other but for some people, they feel as though being white makes them superior. I’m not sure where that idea came from… where it came from and how did you get everybody to believe that lie. For me, that’s the question.