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"She would stare down my mother when she left for work. My mother would stare back and wave." (Norris 16)

Michele's parents could have been mad and and showed their anger, but instead they kept their emotions under control.

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When Michele's father was losing his battle with a brain tumor, the doctors suggested to move him back to Minnesota. At the airport before the flight two women were making fun of her fathers speech. Even though he was humiliated and mad, he patiently waited for his flight and did not say anything back. This was the last time Michele saw her father alert. He slipped into a coma within a day after the flight and died a week later from the tumor.

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This article shows how parents can help their children not feel superior about their skin tone and ashamed.

http://racerelations.about.com/od/raceconsciousparenting/fl/How-Parents-Can-Counter-Colorism.htm

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Colorism may be an offshoot of racism, but it doesn't generate nearly as much press. Despite being overlooked in the mainstream media, skin color bias has a number of deleterious effects on its victims. Learn more about the impact of colorism with this overview.

Causes Intra-Racial and Intra-Familial Tensions

Colorism is a particularly divisive form of bias. In the face of racism, people of color can turn to the support of their communities, but that's not necessarily the case with colorism, where members of a person's own racial group may reject or resent them due to the skin color biases rooted in the nation's white supremacist framework.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, blacks in the U.S. were largely barred from home ownership in white communities or enrolling in white academic or cultural institutions. Colorism in the African-American community led to light-skinned blacks denying their darker counterparts access to join certain civic groups, sororities, etc. This led to these blacks being doubly discriminated against--by whites and the African-American elite, alike. Colorism turns intensely personal when it shows up in families. It can lead to parents favoring one child over another because of their skin color, eroding the rejected child's self-worth, breaking the trust between parent and child, and fostering sibling rivalry.

Promotes a Narrow Standard of Beauty

Colorism has long been linked to restrictive beauty standards. Those who embrace colorism not only tend to value lighter-skinned people over their darker-skinned counterparts but view the former as more intelligent, noble and attractive than darker complexioned people.

Actresses such as Lupita Nyong'o, Gabrielle Union and Keke Palmer have all spoken about how they desired lighter skin growing up because they thought having darker skin made them unattractive. This is especially telling given that all of these actresses are widely considered beauty icons, with Lupita Nyong'o earning the title of People magazine's Most Beautiful in 2014.

Rather than acknowledging that beauty can be found in people of all skin tones, colorism narrows beauty standards by deeming light skinned and light skinned people only as beautiful and everyone else as less than.

Perpetuates White Supremacy

While colorism is often thought of as a problem that exclusively afflicts communities of color, its origins in the Western world are rooted in white supremacy. Europeans have prized fair skin and flaxen hair for centuries. In Asia, fair skin is said to be a symbol of wealth and dark skin a symbol of poverty, as peasants who toiled in the fields all day typically had the darkest skin. When Europeans enslaved West Africans and colonized various groups of people across the globe, the notion that fair skin is superior to darker skin spread. Oppressed groups internalized the message and continue to do so today. Moreover, being blonde and having blue eyes continue to be status symbols.

Fosters Self-Hatred

Colorism leads to self-hatred given that no one has control over their skin color. Hence, if a child is born with dark skin and learns that dark skin is not valued by her peers, community or society generally, the youth may develop feelings of shame. This is especially true if the child is unaware of colorism's historical roots and lacks friends and family members who shun skin color bias.

Without an understanding of racism and classism, it's difficult for a child to understand that no one's skin color is innately good or bad.

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Colorism may be an offshoot of racism, but it doesn't generate nearly as much press. Despite being overlooked in the mainstream media, skin color bias has a number of deleterious effects on its victims. Learn more about the impact of colorism with this overview. Colorism is a particularly divisive form of bias.

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The Ferguson shooting illustrates the consequences of generational anger against the other race. Michele's father was trying to spare her of this cycle.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/11/us/missouri-ferguson-michael-brown-what-we-know/

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It's a case of he said, he said. The accounts of why a police officer fatally shot Michael Brown on a street in Ferguson, Missouri, on Saturday couldn't be more disparate.

One side says the teenager was surrendering, his hands in the air to show he was unarmed, when the officer opened fire. Authorities counter that Brown attacked the officer in his car and tried to take his gun.

The St. Louis suburb of 21,000 was wracked by violence as protesters outraged over the 18-year-old's shooting faced off with police.

Although there were reports that some demonstrations were peaceful -- protesters held up their hands, as Brown reportedly did, and others demanded a fair inquiry, chanting, "No justice, no peace" -- there were also reports of fires, looting, vandalism and attacks on police officers.

As federal civil rights investigators and the FBI carry out their own inquiry into the case, tensions are running high in Ferguson, where there's a history of distrust between the predominately black community and the largely white police force.

Brown was African-American. Police have not identified the shooter, but a witness told CNN on Tuesday that the officer who opened fire is a Caucasian male.

The dispute between distraught Ferguson residents and police isn't likely to be settled soon.

One thing is sure, though: What police say was self-defense by the yet-to-be-named officer doesn't jibe with the accounts of those who say they saw the encounter.

Here's what CNN has learned:

Brown was spending the summer in the neighborhood with his grandmother Desuirea Harris, she told CNN affiliate KMOV. She described him as "a good kid."

Family members say he was a recent graduate of nearby Normandy High School and was going to begin classes at Vatterott College on Monday.

Brown and a friend were walking to Harris' house, his mother and grandmother said, when a Ferguson police officer confronted them.

This is where the stories part ways.

Dorian Johnson, 22, told CNN that he and Brown were walking in the middle of the street when a white male officer pulled up and told them, "Get the f*** on the sidewalk." The young men replied that they were "not but a minute away from our destination, and we would shortly be out of the street," Johnson said.

The officer drove forward but stopped and backed up, almost hitting the pair, Johnson said.

"We were so close, almost inches away, that when he tried to open his door aggressively, the door ricocheted both off me and Big Mike's body and closed back on the officer," Johnson said.

Still in his car, the officer then grabbed Brown by his neck, Johnson said. Brown tried to pull away, but the officer kept pulling Brown toward him, he said.

The officer drew his weapon, and "he said, 'I'll shoot you' or 'I'm going to shoot' " and almost instantaneously fired his weapon, hitting Brown, Johnson said.

Johnson and a bloodied Brown took off running, and Johnson hid behind the first car he saw, he said. The officer got out of his car.

"I saw the officer proceeding after my friend Big Mike with his gun drawn, and he fired a second shot and that struck my friend Big Mike," Johnson told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "And at that time, he turned around with his hands up, beginning to tell the officer that he was unarmed and to tell him to stop shooting. But at that time, the officer firing several more shots into my friend, and he hit the ground and died."

"We wasn't committing any crime, bringing no harm to nobody, but my friend was murdered in cold blood," he told KMOV.

Witness Tiffany Mitchell was picking up Piaget Crenshaw for work when she saw Brown and the officer "tussling through the window." Mitchell and Crenshaw concurred with Johnson, saying Brown appeared to be trying to pry himself away from the officer's grasp. Brown had his hand on the police cruiser, trying to push himself away, Mitchell said.

Mitchell reached for her phone to record the encounter.

"I didn't get the video because a shot was fired through the window so I tried to get out of the way," she said.

After that shot, Brown broke free from the officer's grasp, both women told CNN, and started running, but he only got about 20 feet from the squad car by Crenshaw's estimate.

"The cop gets out of his vehicle shooting," Mitchell said. "(Brown's) body jerked as if he was hit from behind, and he turned around and he put his hands up. ... The cop continued to fire until he just dropped down to the ground, and his face just smacked the concrete."

Added Crenshaw, who said she was watching the incident unfold from a nearby balcony, "The (officer) actually shot kind of carelessly. They shot my neighbor's building that was on the opposite side of the police car. They then later came and removed that bullet. ... Anybody could've been standing right there."

That Brown was unarmed is undisputed -- St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said every casing found at the scene was from the officer's weapon -- but he said at a Sunday news conference that Brown was not an innocent victim.

"The genesis of this was a physical confrontation," Belmar said, adding that Ferguson police asked his office to investigate the case.

Without revealing what led to the dispute, Belmar said the preliminary investigation showed that the Ferguson officer tried to exit his vehicle, but Brown pushed him back into the car, "where he physically assaulted the police officer" and struggled over the officer's weapon, Belmar said.

A shot was fired inside the police car, and Brown was eventually shot about 35 feet away from the vehicle, Belmar said.

The officer was taken to an area hospital where he was treated for a "swollen face," Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson said, adding he had not personally seen the officer's injury.

He was released the same day. Jackson said he has spoken to the officer, who was "very shaken about what happened that day and the aftermath. ... He's hurt."

It's unclear how many times Brown was shot. Mitchell said it was "more than about five or six" times. Johnson said it was more than three, and Brown's mother said she was told he was shot eight times. Some witnesses said they heard as many as 10 shots. Belmar said only that it "was more than just a couple."

The chief didn't explain how Brown got so far away from the car or whether he was surrendering. He said he was declining to disclose certain details because he didn't want to "prejudice" the case.

The officer is on paid administrative leave. There's no word on when authorities will identify him, but Belmar said he has been with the force six years and is "unaware of any other issues that he's been involved in."

He will be required to undergo two psychological evaluations before returning to duty, the chief said.

Meanwhile, Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, didn't need to know his identity to direct some pointed words at the man who shot the son she knew as a "gentle giant."

"You're not God. You don't decide when you're going to take somebody from here," she told KSDK.

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what we know about michael brown's shooting - cnn

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What we know about Michael Brown's shooting

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It's a case of he said, he said. The accounts of why a police officer fatally shot Michael Brown on a street in Ferguson, Missouri, on Saturday couldn't be more disparate. One side says the teenager was surrendering, his hands in the air to show he was unarmed, when the officer opened fire.

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http://thefederalist.com/2014/06/06/our-neverending-conversation-about-race/

In the fourth paragraph of this article goes along the same path that Norris does in the

chapter "Daddy". They say that by having constantly having debate filled conversations

about race just bring up old disputes and hatreds. Basically they're saying that silence

can be healing, and even graceful.

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In the metropolitan areas of the U.S. today, the average white American lives in a

neighborhood consisting of 77% other white people. Even today, in a day and age

where we would like to think of ourselves as integrated, statistics like this are still

remarkably true.

http://www.metrotrends.org/commentary/neighborhood-diversity.cfm

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When the Norris' moved into an all- white neighborhood, their closest

neighbors were devastated. They all immediately put their own houses

up for sale. Minneapolis was known as accepting of racial diversity but

when a black person moves into a white neighborhood, and someone

an't sell their house, they are brought to outright tears. When the real

people that should be crying are the Norris'

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"The notion that I can lift up others through stellar work or stall their progress by falling short has been drummed into me since childhood"(Norris 19-20).

Norris talks about how one person can represent the whole race, and how she needs to be an "ambassador" of the entire black population.

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"I was raised by a model minority to be a model minority, and to achieve that status, certain impulses had to be suppressed."(Norris 9)

Michele was taught by her father to always be a model minority and to do that you need to reach past anger and stay in control of your emotions.

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"Here is the conundrum of racism. You know it's there, but you can't prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, how it colors a particular situation. Those pink satin ladies were strangers to me, so I have no idea if they would've been as quick to judge a gray-haired white man with impaired speech (Norris 7).

Michele explains that racism can be hard to discern from plain judgement, but she also goes on to explain that the fact that they were white women enormously added to to his shame.