Month: August 2014

The African American from Jamaica who loves Kool-Aid

There is some serious shit happening in Ferguson. The serious shit isn’t really about this one black kid named Michael Brown being shot by this one white police officer named Darren Wilson. Truthfully, the serious shit isn’t even about a black kid being shot by a white police officer, or a kid being shot by a police officer, or, to be really truthful, anyone being shot. The shit in Ferguson is about racism and generation after generation of lip service to an ideology about racial equality that is nothing more than that: lip service. It’s about the difference between telling your child that the handicapped kid is just as worthy as they are and them believing it. Ferguson is the conclusion to a very long, very political experiment about whether you can force equality through legislation instead of education. 

Ferguson is also about white people like me, white people who are “totally not racist.” 

So you had a black friend in college, eh? Or maybe you had a black nanny or house keeper and y’all were totally tight and you loved her like a mother. You work with a guy who is black, right? I bet you’ve been to lunch and drinks once or twice. And you’d totally sleep with Taye Diggs or Zoe Saldana. Hell, even Djimon Hounsou gets your blood racing. Wait, fuck that. YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA. You’re a naturalized lover of the entire African American community. 

Except the part where calling someone African American references them being black by way of the continent of Africa, a general reference to American ties to slavery. Technically there is a ground zero ethnicity argument to be made, but it’s listed right next to “We’re all brothers from Adam” below the part about the Seven Dwarves. African American is a continental classification. Forget their country. Salma Hayek just became North American. Ryan Reynolds too. It’s not wrong, *technically* but it’s not exactly hitting the nail on the head. 

But putting aside for a moment the “totally not racist” white person’s inability to say the word “black,” or the underlying ignorance that fuels our nomenclature, or the fact that no one calls me European American hundreds of years after my ancestors left the continent (which, was actually the country of England….), TNR white people are actually a huge part of the problem. 

I read a great article on Quartz recently about racism, education, white people, black people, Ferguson– the entire cornucopia of buzzwords du jour was there. What struck me was how deeply my subconscious “me” vs. “them” feelings ran. Despite my “totally not racist” attitude towards the black community, I realized that I saw the entire Ferguson thing as another ignorant small town display of racism. Thank God I live in the city. Thank God I don’t have to worry about that shit here. Maybe I’ll go sit on a bench in Harvard Square and feel good about the number of white-looking African American kids I see roaming the Harvard campus! Yeah for me and my “totally not racist!” self! 

But then I had time to think about. (Because, as you may recall, I have taken temporary leave of my employment responsibilities.) I have this small boy, you know the one, and I am constantly thinking of the million and one things I don’t want to fuck up about him. It’s bad enough that he is showing unprovoked signs of being a sociopath, I don’t need him to be a homophobic racists too. But what does that mean that I have to do differently over the next 20, 30, 40 years? What does that mean the country has to do? 

Sometimes people of my generation celebrate the openness of the world we feel like we’ve helped to create for the next folks. We’ve fought for gay marriage and now my son can marry a boy and register at Bloomingdale’s and live happily ever after! THE END! But let’s take “the gay thing” and play it out like we did the “African American thing.” The constants are pretty much dead on. In addition to being “totally not racist,” I am also in the “totally love the gays” camp. 

So now what? Totally loving the gays is enough, right? Ehh… Nope. I don’t think it is. And that’s the problem. If thirty years from now I continue to introduce Author to men (or women) as gay, I’m putting a subconscious qualifier on my introduction and my feelings. As long as I tell a story and say “this black guy” when I would never say “this white guy,’ I am creating a division between people. If I refer to “the handicapped girl” instead of the “redhead” or “the girl who played the mouse in the Christmas pageant” I am subconsciously teaching my son to identify and objective people by attribution. A little by little he separates himself from them. If he is black, then I am white. If she is handicapped, then I am normal. And when he is asked to pick a team on the playground, he’s going to see that if he wants people “like him” he better choose white kids and normal kids. (Though to be fair, he’d have to be mature beyond his years to pick the handicapped kid to be on his kickball team, so I’ll let that one pass.) 

The Civil Rights movement (for blacks) marked an incredible advancement in theoretical social equality, but it didn’t mark an authentic chance in sentiment across the vast majority of “totally not racist” white people. We’ve continued to pledge our sincere devotion to anything that promises to eradicates racism, but we haven’t done the simplest things. We haven’t made an effort to confide in a black man or woman what we’re curious about, what fears we have, what we want to know. We’ve left questions unanswered and assumed that our differences are too great and our heritages too far apart. So while we are “totally not racist” we’ve created a divide so deep that we do nothing more than wave from a pedestal and feel intellectual outrage at a white cop shooting a black teen. 

And truthfully, I bet Darren Wilson was “totally not racist” until he confused his misunderstanding of the clothing, the walk, and the lingo of the unarmed African American kid with that of a thug. A dangerous gang banger. 

And he shot him. And it proved he was a racist. 

 

This is not about Robin Williams. It’s about you.

The husband and I talk a lot. It’s kind of our thing, the talking. Sometimes I am half listening while doing something else and other times I am completely focused on the conversation. It’s hard to slip the first one past him because if I don’t disagree completely, he usually gets suspicious and asks me to repeat back to him what he said. And then I tell him he’s being ridiculous and scurry off to a fake burning dinner. 

Sometimes his perspective on something is so daft that I refuse to listen any further. We recently had one of those. He shared a topic he wanted to discuss, gave me his point of view, and I responded that if he ever mentioned his perspective on that ever again we would divorce. Other times he can be cynical; it’s in those cases that I am less focused on the conversation and more focused on convincing him to be a little softer on humanity. 

About a hundred yards from our apartment is the bench from the famous scene in Good Will Hunting. Since the news of Robin Wiliams’ death broke, it’s become a memorial of pictures, words, and momentos to the late actor. Swarms of people are gathered at any point in the day, snapping photos or adding something to the pop-up alter. The husband and I walked by it on Tuesday afternoon and he made a comment about the absurdity of it all, commenting on how disingenuous it felt. I was going to let it go and allow him to remain the soulless, shell of a man that I have come to accept and love as my life partner, but I couldn’t. He needed the counsel of his wise spouse. 

I can’t speak for everyone and I know that. I realize that my perspective of this earth and this life is vastly different than someone–anyone– elses, but I do think we share a few very basic things. I think celebrity deaths and national tragedies awaken in us a desire to be in an emotional community and to be recognized as alive and feeling. I think that without even realizing it– often eschewing it, in fact, we crave that connection to other human beings. That reminder that we are each fragile, vulnerable beings. In the face of communal suffering, strangers hug and make selfless sacrifices and show that our basic instincts are what define us, not our premeditated and over thought actions.

We’ve become desensitized to the value we each have to one another and that’s the reason we become cynical. Yes, it is possible that a no one man in a nothing suburb of a normal city in a largely rural state was affected by the passing of Mr. Williams because one time, two times, five times– however many times– that actor gave that man a moment of happiness and laughter. And he remembered it. Maybe it was a point of reference. Maybe it was a turning point. Or maybe it was nothing more than a a few hours in an air conditioned movie theater, but that man had a moment’s worth of unexpressed appreciation that he carried with him. And he never got to tell anyone. And now he can. On the day that Mr. Williams died, that man could saddle up to the bar and look another man in the eye and start a conversation about his feelings and no one could bat an eye. Because remembering is the greatest form of appreciation. They could share their lives with one another through Robin Williams. 

So when I looked across the pond at all those people standing at an abandoned bench, together, I didn’t see a bunch of people standing there remembering Robin Williams, I saw them standing there remembering themselves. That made them feel something. Maybe it was a sadness at the loss of a catalyst in a world that continues to make it harder to be. Maybe it was the hard realization that someone had worked so hard to lift them up when no one could do the same for him. Or maybe it was that feeling that in saying goodbye, Mr. Williams had given back all the laughter he had ever brought to this world so that we could play it all again and remember how much we loved…