Readers Respond

I have fielded some remarkable comments on this blog.
I'm going to share two of them here, because the whole point of this thing is to confront the unspoken weirdness that we harbor about race.

A friend I've known for a few years, who grew up in the Midwest and who travels internationally on a regular basis, said:  "It never occurred to me that you were black. I figured you had something multiracial or multicultural going on, but I've never thought of you as black."

Someone else, who has known me for most of my life and who has spent time with me and my mother said:  "I never thought of your mother as white. Isn't she Spanish? And Jewish?... I think of Anglo-Saxon people as white."


I'm not going to tell you the race of either of these speakers yet.
Because I should explain what my mother looks like, and what I look like.
My mother has long white hair, which she wears in two braids. Her complexion is brunette/Mediterranean. She has a strong nose, cheerful brown eyes.
She lives outside of Woodstock, NY and looks the part.
I look Puerto Rican or Brazilian, I'm told. Light brown skin, very dark eyes, dark curly hair.
My style these days is casual-artsy-mom. Can you see us?

At the time of this posting, I am looking forward to making time for a serious chat with speaker #1, who happens to be white. Here I am again, wondering where my blackness has gone. Is it me? Or has there been a radical shift in our labeling system?

The second speaker is black, born to parents whose families have been in the US for generations. Her tight scope of the white label has my head spinning. It's true that my mother, being the daughter of immigrants, has no personal connection to the legacy of slavery, or the mistreatment of blacks in this country. Is that what makes her non-white? Is Spain a non-white country of origin? I've been all over Spain, and it was pretty darn white. I was considered Cuban there! Maybe it's the Judaism that's not white? But all the Jews I know are white.

Yes, my head is spinning. How about yours?

Southern Blues

Thank goodness my husband has enough time on his hands to notice that The New York Times ran another piece in their fantabulous Race Remixed series last Sunday. That's right, I'm just getting to it. Well, I officially launched this here blog this week, and have been overwhelmed in every way by the experience of going public. It's like running naked through a family reunion. My people thought they knew me!!

Anyway, this time the Times chose to focus on the South. Very brave. The big point of the article is that race mixing is going on more than ever down in Dixie, and that across America, the rates of multicultural marriage and birth are growing. States with historically high rates are keeping on, while there seems to be a marked boom in places you might least expect. Seems we're everywhere.



Here's a little story about my experiences traveling around this massive American country I call home. In a past life (ie before motherhood) I worked as a tour manager for various musicians - mostly rock bands - on the road. I figure I have circled around the entire country eleven times. Yes Alaska, no Hawaii. Sound strange? It's true, there are very few women tour managers, very few black tour managers (even in hip-hop, y'all), and well, in my ten years out there, I never came across a non-caucasian female tour manager. It was a strange career choice, and I really loved it for the most part. I worked with a lot of interesting and talented people. NONE of these artists played music that would be classified as Black. With very few (ok, 2) exceptions, I was traveling around the US or Europe via van, bus or airplane, the only brown person in a motley entourage of 5-15 musicians and crew. And I was the one in charge. I handled the money, I negotiated travel crises, I managed guest lists, and made sure everyone was fed their requisite favorite foods, to the best of my ability. The gigs were of every shape and size: bars, mid-sized rock clubs, grand theaters, outdoor music festivals, and sports arenas. And because this blog is not about my life in the music business, I'm going to resist listing the names of the artists I worked with. I will say this: The audiences were not black. The promoters were not  black. I have driven through places, and worked in spaces where I was the only representative of brown. In retrospect, it's possible I went undetected.

Augusta, Georgia was the only place the road took me where I felt unmistakable racism.
I was with a very fine rock trio, living in a van, chasing their CD sales on a two-month national tour. We were a troop of five, including our soundman, Jacques, a bald-headed, tattooed German national who topped off at six-foot-six. He was smart, funny, kind, and quite capable. But if you were casting the role of a Nazi Skinhead, he'd be your man. We pulled into what was probably the big rock bar in Augusta, and got to work unloading gear and sound checking. Early on, I got the feeling the place was a popular watering hole, regardless of who was playing. There was a scene of regulars, and a lot of friendly banter lubed by free-flowing cheap beer.

I was sitting in a booth with one of the band members off to the side, when a tall guy in a swastika-emblazoned "SS" t-shirt walked by. He was tall. His shirt was long and tight-fitting, and the swastika across his back was probably fourteen inches across, red ink on a white background. The "SS" was in the jagged style made popular by Hitler, as you might have guessed. I was floored. My companion noticed, and said something like. "Ew. Yuck." I said, "I gotta get outta here." And I walked quickly past the dude in the shirt, straight outside to the van, which I quickly opened and shut behind me.

No one came out to check on me. Then Jacques came out to get something out of the van, surprised to find me there. "Why aren't you inside?" he asked, in his casual Schwarzenegger monotone. "Did you see that guy with the swastika shirt?" I asked. "What guy?" "The one with the fucking SS t-shirt." "Oh. Yeah. Well." he said.  "Well?! I'm not going in there. I am not spending the night in there." I was uncharacteristically hysterical.  "He's just one guy," says giant German Jacques. I explain, "I have never been in a place where that kind of bullshit would be tolerated. It makes me sick." "You have to get past it. Don't make such a big deal," my friend said, turning his back and going back into the bar. My heart hurt. My ears burned. And I wanted to get away from that shitty bar more than anything. But I had to stay. So I lurked by the front entrance, then hid backstage during the show.

Later,  on route to the hotel, we all talked about the shirt, the guy in the shirt, and the crowd, who really enjoyed the music that night. I was still upset. The others thought I should stop worrying about it. We were leaving Augusta behind, headed for Atlanta in the morning.

That was seventeen years ago.
I hadn't thought much about Augusta, Georgia since I stopped working on the road. Until I heard a woman sing, a woman named Sharon Jones. She's a black woman, not much older than me, from Augusta. I hope you've heard her. If you haven't, you must. She sings with a Brooklyn-based act called Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and they are American soul music, like Etta James and the Stax Records catalogue. Her voice is so real it just might make you cry.

So I guess Augusta's not all bad.

Both Sides, Now

This post is not about Joni Mitchell. It's about Barack Obama, and how unfortunate it is that so many  people are so disappointed in him.

After writing the title of this post, I had a freaky flashback to an embarrassing elementary school moment, when my 5th grade music teacher made us sing "Both Sides, Now" - by heart - at a school assembly. We had no idea what the lyrics meant. It seemed very hippy dippy. And our performance was sappy like a maple tree in April.  I admire and respect Ms. Mitchell greatly, but I have only bad feelings about this song. It's about clouds, and love, and ice cream castles... Let me take a moment to find the song:  here it is. Careful. It's going to lodge in your brain, and you just may spend the rest of the day regretting having listened to it.

Anyway, I'm trying to get to a real point, which is all about our President, Barack Obama. And I will get to other points about him in future posts, but today's point is this:

I am proud to have voted in a president who is thoughtful, intelligent, and open-minded. I don't always support his decisions or actions. But I believe that he consults his Cabinet, weighs opposing arguments, and  has a gift for deriving reasonable compromise, in areas where most of us can not see past our own strongly held opinions. How would you get us out of Iraq? Rectify Guantanamo? Reverse the deficit? Undo the damage of No Child Left Behind? Fight terrorism?

Obama's ability to compromise, to generously consider both sides of an argument, is so f*cking important! And I for one attribute this ability to his being biracial.

I wrote a piece about this theory of mine, on the morning of his election. Our local monthly magazine published it, as follows in its entirety. I haven't made any changes. It already has a time capsule quality, ripe with optimism, only three years gone. Like to read it? Here ya go:

++++

It’s 10am. My five-year-old is embroiled in kindergarten gym class antics, her three-year-old sister is nestled into the cozy confines of her preschool, and I have been crying intermittently for hours.

Barack Obama is the President Elect of the United States of America. An African American. A man of mixed heritage – black father, white mother, like me. A man whose parents’ marriage was not recognized by Virginia state law at the time of his birth, he won the electoral and popular votes in that same state last night. The achievements of his campaign have taught us so much about ourselves. Our new public image, of our country as a whole, will serve to empower nations of people, and speaks volumes about the state of the American dream. Because he won, our children are living in a new world. 

This crying jag started at 11 o’clock last night, after the girlies were finally asleep. We had reveled long past bedtime, at a neighborhood gathering where young children watched animated blockbusters on one screen, and adults sat glued to the rolling returns on another, surfing the cable and network news stations, accepting the early projections with cautious optimism; the children periodically asking, “Did he win yet?” with excitement fueled by a sugary buffet, as much as by the auspicious indicators on screen. 

At about 10 o’clock, Pennsylvania and Ohio turned blue on the big maps. I deflected the glassy-eyed exchanges of friends and neighbors. The pundits declared that McCain would need a mathematical miracle to win, but I was not about to believe it was a done deal, not after what happened the last time. It was too early to celebrate. 

At 10:45, we dragged our pajama-clad babes up to their beds, while visions of Victory Cupcakes danced in their heads. Their little brown bodies fell limp, free of tension, anxiety, and the anticipation of a New Day. 

At 11 o’clock, I sat in the big chair across from our living room TV, watching, while Husby disappeared behind the internet. Then a voter alert flashed: Obama is the projected winner of the presidential election. Could it be? I scrolled madly through reporting channels, MSNBC, CNN, even Fox, and found them all in agreement. McCain was about to deliver his concession speech. IT WAS REAL. Jesse Jackson’s tear-streaked face, “(his) heart overflowing with joy and hope”, conveyed the immense swell of emotions so many of us shared. Remembrances of the countless martyrs, and survivors, who had brought us to this place. The generations of black Americans who were now witness to the unthinkable, in the best possible light: A black family is headed to the White House. 

While some folks feel that Obama isn’t black enough, it seems to me that he’s precisely black enough. The diplomatic practice of living biracial in America is great leadership training. Owning family on both sides of a nation’s internal battles, life itself embodies a volatile junction. Commanding the tenacity and self-reliance to sustain a successful career in public service on these terms, Barack Obama is uniquely qualified to run our complex polyglot nation with compassion, empathy, and calm. He has spent a lifetime collaborating across the aisle. 

My five year old knows that we supported the Obama campaign. We explained to her that he was the smarter of the candidates, that he had the best ideas for fixing the problems in our country. The topic of race never entered our little chats, until this morning, on the drive to school: I pointed out to her that our new president is African-American, and that I am, and that she is too. And suddenly we were thrown into a dialogue about racial identity, somewhat reminiscent of conversations I had with my own parents, but in the context of a completely unfamiliar reality. I’ve spent thirty-plus years responding to society’s demands that I define my ethnicity, decode my own racial identity, decide which race labels of the day best suit my mixed-race status. My children are so young, they don’t know that people judge, and are judged, according to skin color. They see that people look different, and they really don’t care. 

This election presents the possibility that we, as a people, are capable of seeing with those eyes, and acting with that mindset. I want to believe that we, as individuals, are free to define ourselves through our actions, our words, and our combined efforts, exempt from prejudice. Any parent would want that for their children. Today, it feels very possible.

Nov. 5, 2008

chapter/ Color Coated

The day I stopped being a Black Girl is unclear to me now.

I do know that I felt it, for a while, before I let on. It must have been a slow transition. I would be able to name it better, had it been a single moment that brought the change. I don’t think it was anything I said or did; the label changed, and fell away, as other people saw fit.

My mother had always told me I was black.

“You’re black, like your father. My beautiful black girl.”
Not white, like her. Because where I come from, if you have any trace of brown in your skin, you’re not white. You’re the other thing that made you brown. The choices were clear: black and white. That’s how we were seen. A white woman with a black child.

I accepted what I was told.

I was definitely black through elementary school and junior high. It helped that I went to an independent school all those years, where the student body was small, and its diverse cultures were recognized with equal weight. But none of the other black kids had a white parent. Or white cousins, or grandparents. “Black” felt clear, and strong, even though it didn't define my place in the world.

In ninth grade, I transferred to an enormous public high school.

I was one of seven hundred freshmen, each of us craving acceptance into the vast fold. I quickly befriended a tall, beige-skinned girl named Lisa, whose gingery afro and grey-green eyes gave her away. Together, we wrestled the challenge of devising a label we could comfortably wear.

We agreed on the following:

BLACK kids came from black neighborhoods, had uniformly black relatives, and spoke about white people from the outside. 

HALF-BLACK sounded half-baked. Not whole, not representative of a complete story. 

MULATTO was totally out-dated. It conjured the illegitimate offspring of slave and master, long ago and far away. And was inevitably tied to “tragic”.

HYBRID came up during biology class. We liked its scientific slant and modern sound. But the word had yet to enter the common vernacular, and failed to convey any relevance to racial identity when applied to self. 

MIXED worked. But it begged to be clarified. And that loosed a torrent of internalized defenses. Why do you need to know?  Is my ethnicity really any of your business? How would you like to tell me about your parents’ lineage, and their parents – wouldn’t it be weird if I demanded that information from you?

Resentment beat enlightenment, and “Black” beat “Mixed” because it was just easier.

Most people were just curious, I guess. When kids asked, “What are you?” I knew what they meant. I tried to keep it simple.

“I’m black.”

“You don’t look black.”

“Well my mom is white.”

“Oh.”

Versus:

“What are you?”

“I’m mixed.”

“Mixed? What and what?”

“My dad is black, and my mom is Russian and Spanish. And my dad is also Irish and Native American.”

“Really? Wow. So what’s that like?”

“I don’t know. It’s just how it is.”

“Yeah, but - blah blah blah blah blah…..” 

Lisa and I were marked outcasts, adrift in a cafeteria teeming with culturally connected cliques - the Greek Club, the Korean Club, Italia, etcetera – until the kids at the punk rock table mercifully reeled us in. They were one of the few groups whose identity had no relation to the ethnicity of its members.

We were an angry lot, disenfranchised and disconnected - from our families, and in some cases from society at large. My anger was all about my father. I needed his attention, but couldn’t figure out how to get it. The more rebellious I became, the farther away he stayed.

On one of our rare visits during those strained high school years, I coyly mentioned that I had earned a National Merit Scholarship. The prize was an annual stipend that would put a substantial dent in my forthcoming college tuition. Appropriately impressed, he asked for the backstory of the award, and how I had come to win it. I explained that it was based on the scores of my achievement tests, and that it was specifically designated for black high school students.

“You’re not black!”  My father said, with complete authority. “Your mother has you filling out applications for those things?”

“Yes,” I answered, quietly, and unapologetically.

“Well, you’re not black.”

“I’m not?”

“No. You’re not.”

“But you are,” I said, as objectively as I could.

“And you’re not.” He didn’t look at me when he said it. He was that certain.

I didn’t look at him either. Instead, I stared out the window, at my reflection in the side view mirror. The girl looking back was about sixteen, her eyelids heavy with black liquid eyeliner and too much mascara. An asymmetrical, frizzy bob of pink and black hair completed her post-apocalyptic front. If I didn’t know her, I would have assumed she was Puerto Rican, and a real badass.  She was into clubbing, and staying out all night, and playing bass guitar in a loud band. Her mother allowed all of it, as long as the grades didn’t suffer. Her father aired his impotent disapproval with the tired refrain: “You’ve made it this far without any input from me. I suppose you’re too old for me to start interfering now.” She had come to expect very little. But his DNA was hers, and his repudiation of that bond left her broken. 

                                                              +++

It was August, the month of savage tans: one week past my fortieth birthday, and time for my annual mammogram.  Mom’s history of breast cancer put the fear in me. I would not follow her down that path. Any other, but not that. She loves her doctor, a breast specialist with a thriving practice in a small Westchester hospital. So I go there too, every year, like clockwork. And every year, the hospital paperwork seems so excessive. So many in-take questions, robotically posed and answered through a thick plexiglass partition, designed to quantify my chances of wellness.

My name was called, and I was directed to a closely walled cubicle, the domain of a highly groomed, twenty-something-year-old male clerk with a muscular build and very long eyelashes. I sat facing him, directly across his tiny desk. He half smiled, eyes glued to his computer screen. He struggled with my name, then proceeded without looking up.

“Height?”

“Five-four.”

“Weight?”

“One-forty.”

“Eye color…” - he glanced at my face for a split second, then answered for himself, “... dark brown. Hair, dark brown.” His were the same, his eyes an almost vacant black. I observed him intently, waiting for his vapid expression to reflect even the slightest interest in my personal details. He typed with superhuman speed, making eye contact with me only twice during the interrogation, probing my physiology with the curt efficiency of an alien abductor. Waxed eyebrows, straight gelled hair and a clear polish manicure completed his android persona.  Finally finished, he returned my insurance card, handed me the forms in duplicate, and sent me down the hall, through a poorly disguised construction zone. 

I sat alone in Mammography Reception, a temporary vestibule with three sad chairs and none of the basic niceties: no ventilation, not even a magazine. Hot and bored, I resorted to scanning my outpatient stats in shaded blue fields. That’s when I discovered I was White. My android friend had checked WHITE in the race field. All those tedious, stupid questions, and he didn’t even ask. He just filled it in, as he saw me.

I had been re-defined. And my new identity was documented.

I was my Russian grandmother, a teenaged refugee, at Ellis Island circa 1920.    

Documented.    

I was an African ancestor, human chattel in chains.   

Documented.    

I was a lost Indian cousin, subsisting, stranded on the rez.   

Documented.    

A strange white man with a desk job strikes again! 

I took out a pen and scratched out his checkmark and the word WHITE. Then I checked the box next to OTHER, daring somebody - anybody - to look at me and ask.  Maybe the mammography technician would notice. Maybe she would ask. He hardly even looked at me when he checked that box.
He was that certain.

Rosario Dawson Speaks Up

Rosario Dawson is an interesting young actress. A fellow browngirl, from New York City, a scant 10 or so years my junior. She's involved with a number of respectable charities, and apparently is not afraid to act up.

She grabbed Paul Rudd's "package", because he grabbed Eva Mendez' "boob" and wouldn't let go (above photo grabbed from The Huffington Post). Get the full story at Racialicious.com, and see/hear Ms. Dawson defending herself in this clip courtesy of Access Hollywood.


Once you get past her unfortunate overuse of the "like" modifier, she says a lot of worthwhile things about feminism, art, independent film, and the importance of promoting all of the above.
Her clarity of purpose is so refreshing, in light of the rampant absurdities frothing from the mouths of Charlie Sheen, aka Carlos Estevez, and John Galliano, to name a few...

Bigot Mothers Suck!

I suddenly feel compelled to share a story that popped into my head as I was digging for a NOTABLE QUOTE for the sidebar of this here blog.

It was a parenting situation, which haunts me still, four years after the fact.
Instead of correcting the ignorant and hurtful comments of a fellow parent, I sat quietly - numb, in fact.  The remarks were made in the waiting room of a ballet class for toddlers. Picture a suburban New York children's dance school: A florescent-lit hallway the size of a McMansion walk-in closet, crammed with rickety folding chairs and a video monitor on which we could view our prancing darlings, over take-out lattes. We sat together, the mommies and I, for an hour every Saturday morning, the summer my big girl was four. Let me explain that, out of fifteen ladies, there was only one with whom I felt some connection. Her name was Jackie. She was Korean, her husband was Italian American, their little girl was sweet and lovely. They had moved from the city to nearby Bergen County, NJ, to be closer to grandparents. The rest of the ladies were pretty unremarkable. Except for one: I'll call her Crissy. She was fancy, with an impeccable French manicure, blown out long dark tresses, and a pearl white Escalade, in which she drove her two princesses with soap opera star names to every extra-curricular activity imaginable. We heard all about it, every Saturday, with no means of escape.

One Saturday, Crissy chooses to regale us with the details of a day she had recently spent in the city, taking the girls to see The Lion King on Broadway. Front row seats.
"After the show, the girls were so wiped out they fell asleep in the car. And as I'm driving toward the West Side Highway I almost got into an accident with this black guy driving a Porsche Cayenne. The fucking guy almost killed us," she says. "He probably had his radio on so loud he couldn't tell what was going on... The drug dealers are taking over the city, I tell you. I hate going in with the kids anymore. It's so dangerous!"
Do I need to mention that there are no distinctly black women in this mommy crowd?
Jackie jumps in: "What makes you think he was a drug dealer?"
And Crissy replies, "Well, how else could he afford that car? He must've been a drug dealer."
Jackie glances at me sideways, stunned. No one says a word. Not even me, the daughter of a successful black man who proudly drove around the streets of Manhattan in a lovely little Porsche 911 (circa 1971) which he worked his ass off in order to afford. What I want to say is: Hey Crissy, maybe the guy was a professional athlete. Or an entertainment industry mogul. Or a neurosurgeon. DUMB ASS.

But I let her get away with it. Caught up in my own confusion. Had it never occurred to her that I might be black? Did she not care whether she insulted me? Where the hell was she coming from?

I will always regret not having spoken up when it happened. Maybe putting it down here will help.