Head Patting

 I think that our class discussion on "The Head Patting Incident" was particularly captivating to me and left me thinking for a bit. It was interesting that the value of the headpat actually depended on Martine's race - if he were black, it would be condescending at most, and if not, it would be racist, even if the intention behind it was only to show approval for Benji's work. 

And one could say that no, his intention absolutely would change based on his race - a white person would have made the motion with a sense of entitlement, intrigue, or othering towards Benji's hair, while a black man would not have. And that may be true, yet the effect of the action was still completely separated from his race. The discussions the boys had, and the lingering discomfort that stuck with Benji after the incident, took place long before they found out that Martine actually was black based on a photo. 

The incident makes me wonder what long term effect the incident had on Benji. That is, did he look back on his time spent deliberating with his friends as a silly, childhood mistake that ended in error? Did he look back on this memory with embarrassment at his presumption? Or did he feel justified in his outrage, holding the opinion that Martine should not have made the motion at all, especially not if it could have been perceived as a racist gesture? While I don't know his conclusions exactly, I know what the incident made me think of. I don't think that the boys were wrong or right, and that part doesn't matter as much as what their discussions represent: something children should not have been burdened with. Regardless if trying to guess someone's race was unproductive, or immature, or downright invasive, the situation they were in was created by the society they had lived through, where being hyper aware of racially charged situations was something they simply had to be, and there was no way that an incident like this would not have occurred at all, if not through headpatting then through something else that could have put them on edge.