My first moment of racism

I WAITED more than a week for an opportunity to brush my hand against Jimmy's arm, scheming at night as I lay in bed. When he first arrived in my all-white, New York suburban, first-grade classroom, he was a deep and mysterious entity who unraveled himself in our young minds with his disarming charm and kindness.

He was so friendly that I don't think he suspected my motives as I stealthily moved toward the water fountain. I stood behind and watched him sip, pretending to wait my turn. But when he turned, I moved the back of my hand across his mahogany skin, stunned by the familiarity of its soft smoothness. It was my first moment of racism. I had never before moved so deliberately close to a black person, but my curiosity was greater than my trepidation.

Sally Jacobs's article in the Globe earlier this summer detailed Catherine Donnelly's 1981 freshman year at Princeton University as Michelle Obama's roommate. The story was an honest portrayal of white racism and a courageous admission of the prejudices and fears that burrow in our minds. But as Donnelly has said, society is not static, and many whites have moved beyond the racial divide that blocked her from forming a meaningful relationship with the future wife of Barack Obama.

The year I entered first grade was 1961. The era ushered in the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr. stumping his message of equality. But even in the progressive Northeast, blacks were not welcome in the upper-crust suburbs. Jimmy, whose single mother was a housemaid, disappeared from our classroom that fall almost as suddenly as he had arrived. By the mid-1970s I had found my way to Boston. It was a period when court-ordered school busing was tearing the city apart. But I was only marginally aware of the controversy as I reveled in my Boston University lifestyle. I encountered few black women there and befriended none, though my interest in people from other walks of life remained as buoyant as the day that I'd met Jimmy.

By the late-1980s, I was in graduate school at Suffolk University, soon to marry a classmate who was sharing his apartment with a younger brother. The brother was dating a black woman engaged in a cat and mouse game with me. Though I was a frequent visitor to the apartment, she always left just before I arrived, and in several months of visiting, I had never set eyes on her.

I thought you were a racist, she tells me today, just before the two of us dissolve into laughter. Angela earned her medical degree at Yale and is a physician. The brother had consulted me when he was deciding to marry her, and I told him that couples have an easier time when spouses share a similar background. I couldn't hear the racism in my words back then, but when he relayed them to her, she could.

Racism can be so subtle that someone like Michelle Obama or my sister-in-law cannot always counter or confront it. The only choice is to ignore it, deny it, or spurn anyone who falls under suspicion. Almost two decades later, my sister-in-law and I no longer worry about such things. We are both single mothers, each with two teenage boys, united by life's trials. We no longer see black and white. When we greet each other, I am not surprised that her skin feels as familiar as mine.

This Fourth of July, as we shared a blanket under the starlit sky and our four boys tossed a Frisbee, I reflected on the trusting relationship we've forged. It is so unremarkable to us that I often forget to anticipate the surprised looks when the boys, whose hairstyles range from brown afro to layered blonde, are introduced as cousins. I am forced to remind myself that this familial bond is still unusual. Still, I have hope that the historic presidential campaign between Obama and John McCain will be decided on voting records, political platforms, and qualifications, rather than skin color. I like to imagine that even Jimmy, wherever he may be today, believes in the same possibilities.

Joyce Pellino Crane is a Globe correspondent.