because there is someone who needs to be parented first, before he can take care of himself. Whether he's white or black.

Yes. I was thinking not long ago that working with him was sort of like working with a student, that I had an expectation that he'd learn and go on. And I've seen students fail several times and eventually get the idea and pass, but that doesn't always happen. And one way the echoes, at least, of racism creeep into it shows up in some less important but still real parts of our relationship. He calls my husband Bill, but me "Miss Nancy"--a form of address that I've mainly only heard from students who didn't want to pronounce my strange last name and couldn't feel comfortable with calling me just Nancy. Little things like that, but each also a little complicated.

I don't see that I have any choice about helping him, ethically. I'm just interested in seeing my own self more clearly, if that makes sense.