Unlike some people, I’m not at all troubled that race has been an “issue” in the current election. I prefer to think of it as a Racial Election Process that we’re currently going through because we’re being forced to process information like never before. This part of our daily lives isn’t so much an “issue” because that implies that it’s something to be dealt with, yet I’d like to offer another perspective: one in which we LIVE with those very real things before our eyes every single day. Sometimes we see it clearly, other times it is pointed out to us, and still others, like the faux-controversy surrounding the LeBron James and Giselle Bundchen magazine cover, are shoved in our faces. We’re told, “Be offended! Be upset! THIS should be causing you discomfort!”
No, thank you. There is enough of it that is real and felt every single day that I don’t need one more.
Race comes up these days as if it’s just another topic of conversation like healthcare and education. Those issues are separate and distinct and don’t even affect every person. If you have healthcare, you don’t tend to engage in conversations about it unless you’re feeling passionate about those who don’t have it, but mostly you go to your doctor and pay your co-pay and get seen for things that don’t take more than an hour out of your work week. Educational issues come up when we’re disgusted with the fact that 4th graders can’t do long division and we wonder who will be the future engineers and bank tellers and computer gurus. Those who don’t have children in school or even public school will weigh in on their repugnance of the state of education and will look to those of us in positions of influence for hope, but few will offer up their time to come into that 4th grade classroom for an hour a week and run through flashcards with James and Marquan and Denise.
Race, however, affects us every single day. Most of the time, we are choosing not to see it.
Don’t be mistaken: I want you to see my color. I want you to embrace my cultural being, not just my “heritage”, but who I am today and who I will be tomorrow and who I’m shaping my own children to be. My fair-skinned red-headed son gets asked weekly, WEEKLY, about being “black”. When his friends see me as I’m picking him up from basketball or taking him to youth group, they wonder. It’s a topic of conversation for these unworldly minds who are accommodating their intellectual reasoning in order to make sense of it so they can LIVE IN IT EVERY DAY.
Why must we adults compartmentalize it and treat it as an “issue” needing to be dealt with? It’s not a rash that requires a salve or a broken dish that needs some super glue.
Don’t deal with my race. Invite me in and get to know me underneath this mocha-colored skin, these odd green eyes, this “interesting” hair. Wonder about what makes me tick, ask what prompted me to make a purchase, inquire about how I came to a conclusion.
But don’t, just DON’T act like you will figure it all out and lean back in your chair while stroking your chin and let out an breathy, “Aaaahhhh” as if you now understand people of color. See my color, please, but love me as a human. View my humanity, but know that I’ve come to This Place in living with these experiences every single day. When you take them apart and try to file them under Cocktail Party Topics I become small to you. Insignificant and unworthy of real examination.
The point is, I’ve been examining you for a long time. I’ve watched you and made note of who you are. The breadth of your experiences get to make up who you are and you’d be horrified to hear me utter, “Aaaahhh” as if I’ve figured you out after one intense conversation.
This election has become a process for Americans and it’s rather painful to go through. For instance, what I thought would be a fascinating dialogue on Professor Kim’s website has sadly, and predictably, become a one-sided conversation once again.
Perhaps what people didn’t like in hearing Rev. Wright’s sermon are such because they are things said in black conversational circles every single day. As way of disclosure, though, I’d like to point out that during this highly political time I have stopped going to my own church because of the stranglehold they seem to have on the Republican Right. It’s not even thinly veiled and I’ve chosen to attend a black church for the time being (and yes, other factors are involved, I’m not that one-dimensional) and when and if that becomes a place where I feel the pulpit is being used to sway my vote, I will leave there, too. My intentions of connecting with God don’t always have ties to my politics. I believe I am influenced by my time with God, but I won’t be led by the convictions of the person happening to stand on the stage.
What I can understand, nevertheless, doesn’t always seem like much. What I can wrap my brain around is a minuscule bit of life, yet I am experiencing it every day. I may walk around the store with my typical white mother, share a steak dinner with my typical white mother, or hold tight to her when she is getting ready to leave on a trip but I am still black every single day. I may walk around with my typical black father and share a meal with him, too, and I am still black. My sisters are still black. That won’t change.
So since live with it and joyously so, can you stop treating it as an “issue” and deal with my blackness? Can you do it every single day?
I do.
Let’s have real discourse about race in all it’s messiness and aches and irritations.
Let’s do it every single day.
March 28, 2008 @ 8:26 am | Filed under Lessons I'm Learning | Permalink |
Cait Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 9:23 am
There are just so many points you make that prompt me to comment, so this may be a little all over the long. I just think these are great things to discuss! The two main ideas I responded to are real vs. imposed racial discomfort and your experience with your son’s friends.
I really respect your words about living with these supposed “issues” every day. I find this election personally challenging because I’m reacting to it differently than I anticipated I would. I’m a 26-year-old, ethnically Jewish (how’s that for a loaded phrase?), strongly opinionated feminist of Polish and Russian descent. According to the hype, I’m currently supposed to be struggling with my feelings about the possibility of a Black leader. But in reality, I just can’t seem to care about Obama’s race. I mean, I clearly see that he is Black, and I just can’t get worked up about it. Mostly, I’m shocked by my feelings about Hillary. I find myself judging her very harshly, especially when she shows emotion. It’s interesting how ingrained these gender roles are, even for someone who tries not to see the world through them.
I also experience the attempted categorization you mention, though probably differently than someone who can be visibly categorized. I’m not religious, but I identify strongly with my Jewish heritage. I often find myself educating friends about the culture or traditions and the response is almost always, “You’re Jewish?!?” This drives me crazy. It’s as though they are completely shocked that 1) I don’t “look Jewish” (don’t even get me started on that) and 2) they now have to somehow re-categorize me. It’s so strange. I’m still the same person I was ten seconds ago. But the brain categorizes. That’s how it learns and understands the world. It must be even more common with your son.
It’s difficult to accept others’ need to categorize but we must, so that we can address it and hopefully discuss these “issues” with them. Like you said, let’s learn to live with it, every single day.
Mocha Momma Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 9:45 am
Cait, wouldn’t you love to respond to them, “Wow! You don’t look Episcopalian!” so they could hear how asinine that sounds? But I understand completely about your being ethnically Jewish. Probably because I grew up with it (to completely murder the phrase) every. single. day.
You’ve also explained well how I’m feeling about Hillary as well - it shocks me that I’m judging her the way I am.
But you also helped me see clearly one of my own points: if we were bothering to live and deal with race daily we wouldn’t be told to examine our “feelings” about having a Black leader. It would be a much more organic experience.
Liz D. Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 10:22 am
We need to talk to each other, we need to listen.
Out here on the internets, there’s space to talk and listen, sometimes.
As a largely unchurched white woman, I didn’t get why Clinton’s Philadelphia comments about Rev. Wright (”He would not have been my pastor,” and her comparison of Rev. Wright to Don Imus) got some folks so riled up until I read what Rikyrah wrote at Jack and Jill Politics (http://jackandjillpolitics.blogspot.com/2008/03/hillary-tonya-harding-clinton-on-wright.html)
“Church isn’t some simple place where you go on Sunday to listen to the pastor for 30 minutes.
Church, in the Black Community, is all about COMMUNITY.
It’s why, it’s literally an all-day affair.
Black people do not change churches like they do purses. I am in my 30’s, and outside of school, I’ve had exactly 2 church homes in my life. It took nearly 2 years to find the second one, but I found it. Commitment to a church isn’t something that’s done fly-by-night. It’s not some fleeting commitment. It is a given that you will find something that you don’t like about any church you attend; which is why it is the general COMMUNITY that will ultimately make that decision.”
She had a lot more to say but that really caught my attention. Now, the importance of church may not be true about all black folks, but it was a feature of black life that was heretofore invisible to me.
I have to learn to pay attention.
Elizabeth Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 10:34 am
Maybe I’m naive, but I think it’s fantastic that we are living in a time where a black man or a woman could be voted into the presidency. That tells me, as a whole, that people’s perceptions are (rightly) changing. I would hope that people make their decision about who to vote for strictly on policy and not gender or race.
Raquita Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 11:16 am
I have such a girl crush on y ou right now - I swaer I would wrap Common up and leave him in your bed room holding your favorite bottle of wine you never heard of yet, a platter of starwberries and whipped cream and very explicit instructions to listen to you and do what ever you say…
Can I say amen and what she said and I wish I had said that!!!
MAN..
GROUPIE moment for me RIGHT here!!!
smtwngrl Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 11:19 am
Amen! I found myself breathing a sigh of relief when both Obama and Clinton tossed their hats in the ring. In a conversation with my mother soon after I said, “Now maybe race and sex (meaning the disparity between races and sexes and the “isms” that go along with all that) won’t be such taboo topics. Maybe now people will start having real conversations about these things.”
Isn’t it about time?
Karoli Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 11:56 am
I think you’ve hit several nails on the head with one hammer. The most frustrating part of the dialogue (if you can call it that) around race isn’t the ‘issue’, but the automatic rejection of others that occurs on a daily basis.
My mother-in-law is a ‘typical white woman’. Her instinct is to start with a negative when it comes to people of color and wait for them to convince her otherwise. This is what Obama meant when he talked about typical white women. It wasn’t racist, it’s real, and it’s not just a black/white issue. It’s a Middle-Eastern, Asian, Mexican issue, too. Until her daughter started dating an Iranian guy, she was afraid of them, too.
So when you call for folks to get to know you, to *really* know you, to find out who you are and why you like coffee and why you’re passionate about your job, etc., that’s exactly what needs to happen.
I had a commenter say that after the Rev. Wright blowout, he had decided not to vote for Obama despite his belief that he was the best candidate in the race. He was afraid of the “Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan associations”. (Personally, I really like Rev. Wright — I think I’d be going to any church where he was preaching even if I were the only white woman in the crowd). That comment made me sad, not because he’d opted out of voting for Obama, but because he really thought there was something extreme about standing up and shouting out that black folks are just as real as anyone else, with faults and futures just like ours. Moreover, it told me that he was ‘overlooking’ Obama’s race in order to vote for him.
It shouldn’t be overlooked; it’s part of who he is. It’s a part just like his white heritage and his upbringing in Indonesia. There’s nothing wrong with any of that; in fact, I’d argue that it makes him more interesting and multi-faceted.
If I had any message for my white sisters and brothers it would be to stop automatically rejecting and fearing people who are different from them, and take the time to, as you say, love them and know them.
Daisy Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
I can’t help but think of the first Muppet Movie and the line, “They don’t look like Presbyterians to me.”
But seriously, “…real discourse about race in all it’s messiness and aches and irritations” is a worthwhile goal. Let’s get there.
Belinda Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 2:50 pm
Dangit. JUST when I was leaning back in my chair and stroking my chin, too!
Everyone should read Jason Whitlock’s piece on the LeBron James Vogue cover: http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/7955740
I’ve missed you. Where’ve I been?
Kerri Anne Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
I love this post. Also: Cafe Du Monde coffee. We have two containers on our shelves at home, from a trip we took to New Orleans in January. I still laugh to myself about how awesome everyone looks with their faces joyfully coated in powdered sugar.
Big Mike In Oz Said,
March 28, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
You’re a powerhouse of a woman that I am honoured to draw strength and inspiration from.
MommyWithAttitude Said,
March 29, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
Nothing intelligent I want to add to your excellent post, but I just wanted to say that I was unable to comment on your “typical white woman” post and had wanted to say that I was SURE that I had seen pictures of your mother and that she is black. Absoulutely sure. But now I’m wondering if I’m just a typical white dumbass and assumed she was black from that amazing macaroni & cheese recipe or something… NO! I’m not! I’ve seen pictures here, but apparently I just thought they were your mother.
Heather B. Said,
March 29, 2008 @ 3:06 pm
God, you know how completely ineloquent when speaking about race but here goes: I’m re-reading this and watching The Original Kings of Comedy and you’re correct that people are upset with what Rev. Wright said even though it is stuff WE have heard before. We talk about being black and we do so very honestly and openly. So while we’re used to it many others aren’t all that comfortable with discussing it. It really is a shame. My favorite of course is when people are visibly frightened by the topic. I say something about being black and the response is nervous eyes looking around like “Can she say ‘BLACK’?” Yes I can, thank you very much. Now watch me do it again. Now I’m going to go write an epic post about my hair, living in upstate NY and how much I love watermelon. BECAUSE I CAN.