Passing Strange

The term "passing" is loaded.
No matter which way you use it, or hear it, the implication is that someone is trying to be perceived as something they are not. You understand I'm not working in the context of test scores, right?

Growing up in the 1970's and 80's, I never thought I was passing. I was black. When people asked me what I was - which happened often - I answered "Black." If the listener responded with "You don't look black. You look Spanish," which also happened often,  I might have bothered to explain that my mother is white, and that my grandfather from Spain made me part Spanish, but probably not the kind of Spanish they meant. Or I might have shrugged them off and carried on my way.

As an adult, I've rarely been asked about my ethnicity.
But it's come to my attention that more than one of my adult friends had no idea that I was in any way black at all. When I explain that I self-identify as "mixed," the black part sometimes comes as a surprise. This freaks me out! Because I'm not doing anything different as a mixed person than I was as a black person, as far as I know. A societal shift has happened. And through writing, I'm trying to explain how I see it...

The topic of passing came up a few days ago, in an unexpected place.
My mother and I were sorting through one of her last moving boxes, marked Mementos and Newspapers. We remembered hastily packing it, almost exactly a year ago. Among the D-Day clippings and Victory!! headlines, we found her three-ring binder from eighth grade, loaded with every essay, quiz, and math sheet, neatly preserved. She delighted in reading each yellowed looseleaf page aloud, and I enjoyed sharing her trip down memory lane. Until she got to a page that began, "The immigrant has been a problem to the United States because..."

This was a Social Studies essay test.
Her articulate answer explained that the "immigrant problem" brought tenement crowding, cheap labor, and the challenge of educating children of different cultures. The year was 1950. And the orator was my mother, herself the child of immigrants. Born on an anarchist commune in  upstate New York in 1939, but enrolled in a public high school, she was declaring the ways in which the immigrant had been a problem.

I had to ask.
"Mom? Do you remember what you thought of your parents when you wrote that?"
She looked up from her papers.
I said, "Your parents were immigrants!"
She thought about it for a minute. "You know, at that time, in that school, it was important to not be perceived as an outsider. I guess I didn't think of my parents as immigrants."

I couldn't help what I was thinking: that my mother was stuck in an upstate high school, being indoctrinated against the people who raised her. She was twelve, earning a "Very Good"grade on her essay test. And unless someone directly asked her what she was, she was passing.

My mother, the daughter of immigrants, the wife of my black father, always taught me to be myself, and to value authenticity and diversity. But in post-war upstate New York, her Judaism and her parents' immigration histories were muted facts.

Seventy years later, about twenty miles south of my mother's old high school, my family and I are thankfully living in a different light.

Ferguson, MO Fallout

I was sitting in a local deli eating lunch with my children when I got my first taste of the Ferguson, Missouri police brutality fiasco. A muted TV above our heads showed CNN's Wolf Blitzer standing in front of night-vision video of a rioting crowd, under the attack of what looked like grenades. I first assumed it was footage of a recent civilian uprising in some far-off land. And then the caption finally clarified: it was a place I'd never heard of, here in America. In the Mid-West. Ferguson, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. "A predominantly African-American neighborhood."

I hadn't heard about the shooting of Michael Brown. In these last days of summer, I've been wrapped up with my kids, taking long breaks from the grim news of the day. And suddenly I'm watching unidentifiable armed forces attacking American civilians, and I can't imagine why. It's terrifying. The civilians, all of whom appear to be black, are fighting back. It's unclear whether they're fighting the police or the National Guard. But it's not footage from 1965. It's obviously happening right now.

I told my girls, "I don't know what's going on. It looks like people are rioting somewhere. And they're being attacked. Don't watch, OK? Don't look at the TV. We'll go home, and we'll find out what's going on." But I continued watching, and the closed caption eventually provided the back story. 

Days of media discourse followed, about the shooting, the reaction of the local community, the actions of the local police force, and state and federal reactions. Again, it's one in a long list of cases of American young black men being killed by armed, trained police officers. It keeps happening, all over this huge country. If Michael Brown's neighbors hadn't rioted, and the police hadn't reacted with force, would news of the shooting have reached New York? Would we have ever heard of Ferguson, Missouri?

My children understand that racism exists, but they don't feel threatened by it. They feel safe in our diverse community. They know adults and children of every color, and they don't fear people according to skin color. What luxury!!

While many of us believe we're living the promise of racial equality, I'm convinced that we are the true minority. In an attempt to get some clarity about the unseen fallout of the shooting of Michael Brown, I came across two powerful bits of journalism:

1. Mother Jones printed comments left by participants in the fundraising campaign to finance the legal defense of the offending police officer. Please note, I don't disclaim the officer's right to a fair trial or a defense fund; it's the sentiment voiced by his supporters that is so deeply troubling.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/darren-wilson-donors-racist-ferguson#disqus_thread

2. The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof contributed an opinion piece last week that enumerated some mighty strong statistics, supporting the point that American race relations deserve more attention.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-after-ferguson-race-deserves-more-attention-not-less.html?_r=0

The problem is inequality. Sustained by racism, unchecked.

Sensitivity Training

A friend recently alerted me to the fact that my casual use of the word “retarded,” in reference to some shallow remarks left by strangers on a Facebook page, was hurtful. Her two-sentence email was a slap in the face. Shame on me.

I used the “R word,” as she put it, in my Facebook status update. For all my friends to see.  Even as I sit here, maintaining this blog about identity and labeling and racism and human misunderstanding, I’m guilty.

My friend, the one who outed me, is a writer and activist. She is practiced at speaking up and speaking out. She and I know each other through our joint participation in a long-standing writing workshop. She knows my work, and shares my compulsion to write personal narrative non-fiction as a means to broaden the collective understanding of our core topics: hers is Autism.

The term “R word” out of context doesn’t have the universal weight of “N word.” 

But that’s not the point. Or maybe it is.  I don’t use the R word in front of my children. But I now see that in my adults-only Facebook circle, I use a pretty light filter. And I’m having trouble explaining that. I didn’t think I had a filter; I thought I was conscientious all the time.

I’ve been called plenty of names; names that are labels, and are hurtful.

Here’s a short list:

Oreo

Nigger

Brill-o Head

Half Breed

High Yellow Bitch

Mutt

Kike

Freak

I’ve survived the hurtful names. I haven’t had to struggle through a hard life of repeated persecution by bullies or cruel siblings or a fascist dictator. I’m just a privileged, educated American who’s been called shitty things a bunch of times, by jerks of every size, sex, and color. And until my recent misstep with the R word, I was feeling pretty righteous. But I haven’t forgotten the hurt.

So I’m grateful to my friend, Liane Kupferberg Carter, for calling me out.

Thanks, Liane!

You can read Liane's piece on the R word here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liane-kupferberg-carter/the-r-word_b_443627.html

I'm published on Lifetime Moms.com!

It's crazy, I know.
This week, instead of posting here I've contributed to the website Lifetime Moms.com.
I have my dear friend Laura Grimm to thank, for sharing this blog with the powers that be. They liked my writing, gave me an assignment, and now it's live!
THANK YOU, LAURA!

I want to take a breath and welcome any new readers who may have found me via Lifetime Moms. Please take a look around...
I hope you get something positive out of this brainchild of mine. If you do, please subscribe and/or leave comments, so we can keep the conversation going.

I'll be back with a fresh post as soon as I recover from all this excitement.
Meanwhile, if you haven't already seen it, check out:

http://www.lifetimemoms.com/in-the-news or
http://www.lifetimemoms.com/in-the-news/my-kids-arent-impressed-that-keke-palmer-is-the-first-black-cinderella

and see my piece on Keke Palmer, Broadway's newest Cinderella.

Cheers!

Race & Beauty

Earlier this week I caught an interesting piece on WNYC, my go-to public radio station. The host, Brian Lehrer, was discussing the topic of Race & Beauty, with journalist Maureen O’Connor, whose recent article is the current cover story in New York Magazine.

It seems that black, Hispanic, and Asian women are seeking the services of cosmetic surgeons like never before. Statistically, non-white women are enjoying the power of more disposable income these days. The big question was, are women going under the knife in deliberate pursuit of a Western/white beauty ideal?

I’m in my forties. I’ve birthed two children. I can say without hesitation that there are things about my body that I wouldn’t mind changing.  I didn’t realize how content I was with my body in my twenties, until that body morphed into my current one.

I’ve been body conscious as long as I can remember. At sleep-away camp, where my bunkmates and I freely took off our clothes in front of each other simultaneously, comparisons were unavoidable. Who was the most developed? Who had hair in embarrassing places? Who had a bubble butt?

That was me: bubble butt. No bathing suit could fully cover the roundness.  In dance classes, my leotards were either loose through the middle, or giving me a wedgie. Most blue jeans were huge in the waist if they fit over my hips. My mother assured me that my “hourglass shape” would be fully appreciated when I got older. “Look at Marilyn Monroe!” she said. “She’s arguably one of the most desirable women ever! Look at her curves.” But I didn’t want to be curvy. I wanted a small, flat butt like the models in magazines, and most of my friends.

Then there were the lip comments. At some point in middle school, someone came up with the term “b-j lips”. The “b” stood for “blow”… get it? It was decided that most black girls had b-j lips. The boys acted like it was a bad thing, and those of us who bore the label really wished we didn’t. But by high school, a couple of the white girls with full lips were earning locker room praise for their “b-j lips”. It turned out the boys liked girls with b-j lips!

And then came the Tyra Banks photo on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

I repeatedly overheard grown men debate whether or not Tyra was white.

It was as if their hard-ons obstructed the link between their eyes and their brains.  Tyra had the bubble butt, and the full lips, and the glowing bronze skin of a beautiful (albeit very fair) black girl. All that beauty made her race debatable.

Now, in 2014, we have Anjelina Jolie and Scarlett Johansson with their famously full lips representing the beauty ideal. The Kardashian sisters are trotting around some pretty “ethnic” booty enhancements. And the US Military is restricting black enlisted women from wearing their hair in natural styles.

It’s all very confusing. Are we consciously moving toward a diversity-based ideal of beauty? A melding of many ethnic attributes into one gorgeously ambiguous form? If we’re becoming more accepting and more diverse, why is the plastic surgery rate among non-white women ballooning?

Ballooning. Funny choice of words, as I sit here on what was once a pretty cute bubble butt.

chapter/ Camp

Here it is, late July. My girls did not feel ready to try sleep-away camp this summer. Some of their friends have already begun to return home with tales of great camp adventures. So I sit around, fretting about how my children are spending their time this summer, and I catch myself comparing their "now" to my "then". 

For this week's post, I looked to my memoir manuscript and pulled out the chapter titled "Camp", thinking I'd tighten it up and post it. Then I remembered that I had already posted an old version of it, long ago. Turns out it was back in August, 2011: titled "Summer Camp". 

Indisputable proof that my writing life has taken on a scary spiral form, in which essays become posts, and posts become chapters, and chapters become posts. 

The good news is that this new version is better than the old one.  

I hope you'll pardon the indulgence... 

chapter/ CAMP

“You’ll love sleep-away camp. I promise,” my mother said. “There’s not enough to do around here once school’s over. I’ll be teaching the first month of summer session. You’ll have a much better time in the country. Trust me. It’ll be fine.” 

I don’t recall the anxiety I must have had, knowing I would be separated from my mother for four weeks. I don’t remember feeling unloved or rejected. But at five years old, I’m sure I had some serious reservations about going to sleep-away camp.

My mother grew up in the country, on an anarchist commune outside of Peekskill, New York. Raised among radical intellectuals, artists, and activists in a rustic atmosphere, the natural world was the backdrop of her rich childhood memories. It was important to her that she get her urban child “up to nature” whenever possible. So it was decided: the summer I was to turn six, I would be spared a month of babysitter days stuck in our Bronx apartment. Up to nature I went.

My mother chose a Jewish Y camp for my first sleep-away adventure. Which didn’t strike me as strange, because I knew that we were technically Jewish. My mother’s mother was a Russian Jew, and after she died, my mother had been raised by a Jewish family. According to Jewish law, we were absolutely Jewish. But I didn’t think of us as really Jewish. My parents were atheists. At home and at school, I was taught to respect all religious traditions with equal weight, without having to subscribe to any. It didn’t occur to me that camp would be any different. I trusted my mother’s plan. But she had read the brochure. The one that described the weekly Shabbat services.

As instructed, we packed “four nice white shirts” along with the shorts, halter tops, bathing suits and towels, underpants, and ankle socks with my name tags sewn in, and shipped them ahead in an old trunk. At camp, everything got shoved into cubbies except the white shirts, which were hung on hangers in the bunk closet. And everyone noticed: my shirts were too fancy. Not plain, like the shirts the other girls brought. The lace bits and pearly buttons stood out, along with the rest of me.

I was one of the youngest kids at camp. And one of the very few black ones. A couple of dark-skinned girls stayed in much older bunks, way out of my reach. Surrounded by friends their own age, they seemed unaffected by the fact that their beaded braids and dark complexions made them different. On that first Friday night, they knew what to do for Shabbat. They seemed right at home. I watched and wondered, while I fumbled through the pre-dinner service in my nice white shirt. Four weeks of Fridays, with the unfamiliar rituals of challah bread and candles, and prayers to God in a foreign tongue. I mumbled along, hoping no one would single me out to light the candles or break the bread. I was sure they all noticed: I was that new little girl who isn’t even Jewish. 

I don’t recall any specific unkindness, or mistreatment. And I don’t remember having made any friends there, either. What I remember is my lost, brown self, in a sea of white shirts, in the soft glow of candlelight, praying over shiny, puffy, braided loaves of bread. And that lonely feeling of wanting to fit in, not knowing how to shed the Outsider skin. 

Although I withheld the details of my lonely Y Camp summer from my mother, she must have recognized my ambivalence about the place. The next year, we rented a bungalow in the Catskills and spent a solid month together. The following summer, we discovered Blueberry Cove, a small, artsy, back-to-nature summer camp in Maine. It was the ideal respite from the noise of the city and the structured school year. Blueberry Cove Camp became my summertime home away from home, filled with friends from all over the country, who came back, year after year, like I did. We ran around barefoot, embraced our mandatory farm chores, and swam in the frigid waters of the Atlantic. We connected with the earth, and the animals, and developed a common empathy for the natural world and each other. My mother, confident that I was happy and secure, was able to spend her summers traveling, or teaching part-time if she so chose. Summertime offered her a break from the single-parent pace of our lives. 

And I got Maine. Shoeless, godless, and free.

The Ease of Blending In

I recently had the strange experience of traveling to a far-away island and being mistaken for a native.

It’s much more usual for me to be mistaken for a “foreigner,” with my light brown skin, black eyes, and unruly, curly hair.

Growing up in New York City, I was regularly presumed to be of Latin American descent. Which made sense, since my mixed heritage includes African, Spanish (from Spain), Russian, and Native American. I look like the product of multi-generational miscegenation. Because that’s what I am.

But my high school Spanish classes didn’t prepare me to respond capably to the rapid-fire queries of all those pretty brown people, lost in the city subways, expecting me to help them find their way. I tried: “No comprendo. Habla usted inglés? (I don’t understand. Do you speak English?)” Which would meet with a dejected “No.”

Did they think I was trying to pass? Disavowing my native tongue?

Late last month, my family and I traveled to Puerto Rico.

In preparation, my husband tried to scrape together some key Spanish phrases. His favorite: “Pregunta mi esposa. (Ask my wife.)” Our daughters claimed to not know any conversational Spanish, in spite of five years of elementary school study. So I tried to brush off the buried remnants of the Spanish I once knew, the native language of my beloved Grandpa Juan. We figured we might be mistaken for Puertorriqueños, and I wanted to be prepared.

In the taxi to the airport, I practiced my Spanish with our Ecuadorian driver.

My family was shocked, never having heard me converse in anything but English before. The driver and I discussed our children, their relative ages, and how they would each be spending the summer break. It was hard work, but I did all right.

Landing in San Juan, we were no longer tourists.

We blended seamlessly into the sea of brown faces. Nearly everyone we encountered addressed us in Spanish. Not text book Spanish, but the fast Puerto Rican flavor, with lots of dropped vowels and English slang. By the end of our week, our ears were well tuned to it, though we were grateful for the ease with which most of our contacts could switch to our native tongue.

The big thrill for me was how well we fit in.

The people of Puerto Rico come in all shades of brown. And for this brown girl, it was the first time I have traveled anywhere and not felt “other”. I’ve been to every state in the Union, except Hawaii, and have often felt like an obvious outsider; in a quiet, clear way, like a visitor from somewhere else. Not white. Not black. Possibly not American. I’ve been called “exotic” a few too many times.

In Puerto Rico, I found an unexpected comfort, for myself and my children.  It was the ease of blending in.

Which must be hard to fathom, for those who’ve always known it.

Browngirl Returns!

I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while.

A lot has happened in the world, and in my little life, since my last entry, dated January 28, 2014. I have a long list of topics, craving exposition. But like I told you before, I decided to finally hunker down and finish the manuscript project that has been occupying the better part of my brain for the past let’s–just-call-it-fifteen years. Since last October, when I stole five days in a tiny cottage in Woodstock, swearing I would come back with real progress made, I stayed the course. The shit is done. And let me tell you it was one giant effort.

When I realized I was really finished, I gleefully alerted “my agent,” who signed me to a representation deal ten years ago. She shopped an older version of the book back then; no one bit, but several publishers offered encouraging feedback. So I thought that if I worked hard at the revisions, it would sell this time. I was stunned to discover that said agent is just not that into me anymore. She’s a rock star agent, corralling a pretty fancy herd of rock star writers. The fact that she ever took interest in my writing was a blessed surprise. I let myself think that she would stay interested forever. 

So I’ve been mourning the loss, in my own quiet way.

I might decide to self-publish, if only to get the giant beast off of my plate and out into the world. I swore I wouldn’t go that route. I’d really like to hand it over to a publishing house and gain that seal of approval. I think the book is pretty damn good. My ex-agent only read twenty pages before she passed on it. I probably sent her the wrong twenty pages. I’ll show her.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me yesterday, when I decided I was done feeling depressed about this latest rejection, that my next move is obvious: it's time to get back to this here blog. Honestly, this is more fun that shaking out 400+ pages of memoir that I’ve read and re-read too many times.

On to freshness!

Expect to hear from me more often.

I’m back :)