JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It is one of the scariest calls that a parent can get. Author Natalie Baszile was headed out of town in 2016 when her phone rang. When she picked up, she learned a neighbor had called the police on her teenage daughter and her friends. The police questioned the kids, and then they left. But the incident was especially intense for the only other Black kid in the group, a kid with white adoptive parents.
NATALIE BASZILE: And the dynamics that unfolded between our family and the family of this young man were fascinating. As we tried to get to the bottom of who called and why and how are we going to deal with this incident, it became very obvious to me that there was a novel there, even as I was reacting as a parent.
SUMMERS: This incident is the spark for Baszile's new novel, "Friends And Family." It zeroes in on the intricacies of a close friendship between two moms - Babs, a Black woman, and Nora, a white woman with an adopted son - after an encounter with the police. And through the lens of their friendship, Baszile wrestles with questions of race and allyship that are personal to both herself and her family.
BASZILE: We live in San Francisco, a city that prides itself on, you know, being progressive and open-minded and inclusive. And that was also part of the interest to me and the attraction - was this idea that this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen in San Francisco. These kinds of things happen elsewhere.
SUMMERS: You've said that that incident made you question your own relative privilege, as well as what it protected you from. What do you mean by that?
BASZILE: You know, in the wake of that incident, Juana, as I really began to look at the assumptions that I had made as an African American woman who, you know, has worked hard - my husband and I have also - you know, we've been married a long time. We've put our backs into climbing, you know, the - any number of ladders, social and economic...
SUMMERS: Yep.
BASZILE: ...And, you know, watching these events unfold. And then writing the book, I really had to ask myself, you know, what assumptions have I made about my safety, about my relative privilege, about how I see the world. And it was really an opportunity for me to reflect on, you know, the rules that maybe I have bought into, the ideas that I have bought into as just an American.
SUMMERS: I have to say, Natalie, as I was reading your book, the thing that kept coming up for me over and over again was just replaying in my head some of the conversations that I had with white friends in and around 2020 after the killing of George Floyd. It was something that tested a number of my oldest friendships, and some of them did not survive because I realized we, frankly, weren't speaking the same language or living in the same reality. And I wonder if that came up for you, too, as you were writing.
BASZILE: Absolutely. Although I started the book in 2016, 2017, in the wake of this police encounter, I was still working on the book in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd and the - all of the social upheaval that happened then. And I had to grapple with those feelings of rage and anger and disappointment and frustration, and I really had to examine my friendships with people. You know, I have plenty of white friends, and most of them have really - you know, they are good people and want to do the right thing. But it was a struggle, I won't lie, to really examine those friendships and to figure out what I was willing to explain, what I was willing to indulge, what I didn't have time for. And it was really a challenging time. It was a challenging time. But it made for a better book, I think.
SUMMERS: Babs has spent years helping Nora understand how to raise Nathan, who is her Black son. And I was really interested in this and how you thought about the emotional labor that we, as Black people and especially as Black women, are often expected to perform in interracial relationships.
BASZILE: I think in my own life, I was feeling exhausted. You know, especially, you know, 2020, 2021, 2022. I was looking at the time and the energy that I had invested, that invisible labor that I had done to really prop up and support so many people. And I thought it was important for Babs to be a character who is willing to acknowledge to herself, ultimately, that she's tired, you know? She needs a break. She needs to step back a bit and look at what she needs rather than always putting other people first, especially with Nora, who, you know, as things unfold, she realizes she has been doing a lot of work to keep this woman propped up, to help her understand. And Babs reaches a breaking point.
SUMMERS: Babs and Nora are two really different moms, but it - I do feel like they both believe they're doing what is best for their children and to protect their children, but that definitely does not look the same. How do their respective races and levels of privilege shape what safety and protection means as it relates to their kids?
BASZILE: You know, I think, in the case of Nora, the wealthy, third-generation San Franciscan who has really known nothing but privilege, I think Nora comes into this thinking that love and kindness and openheartedness and her wealth can almost lift Nathan, her adopted Black son, out of race - right? - into class. I think that she goes through life thinking, you know, that there's very little that money can't buy. And when this eruption happens, I think that Nora really hopes that that kind of openheartedness will be enough to protect her son.
Meanwhile, Babs knows that for all of her and Nora's relative privilege, there are certain things that the world just is unforgiving about, and that is what she really brings to that friendship, and that is what she is trying her hardest to tell Nora - is, listen, you may have all the money in the world. You may love this child to death, but there are certain lessons that the world is going to teach this young man that your wealth and privilege cannot shield him from. And that's what she so desperately wants Nora to understand. And ultimately, it leads her to make a series of choices when she realizes, you know, maybe Nora's not going to get it.
SUMMERS: This might be a question that's hard to answer, and I don't even know how I would answer it myself, but do you think that white Americans and Black Americans can be in full relationship with each other?
BASZILE: Ooh, that's tough. You know, I want to say yes. I want to say yes because I look at the friendships that I have with both white and Black women, especially, and I do think that there is a lot of trust there. There's a lot of intimacy, but I think it requires a level of vulnerability, and I think that, you know, especially in the last couple of years, the last few years, that has become harder. Those relationships are tested more, and I think very - you know, fewer and fewer of them survive.
But I think, at the end of the day, I need to be optimistic. I need to believe that, you know, there are people out there in the world who want authentic connections, who might make mistakes, who might say the wrong thing, but there's no malice there, because if I give up on that, that makes my world smaller. So although there are frustrations at times, I do think that, you know, friendship - real friendship - is possible, but it takes work.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Natalie Baszile. Her new book, "Friends And Family," is out now. Natalie, thanks.
BASZILE: Thank you so much. This has been great.
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