Hello my name is Jef and I am a gratefully recovering racist. I need help. A lot of it.
Yes, the opening lines are meant to be provocative. Those who know me would never think I have these horrible feelings. But I was born in raised in the United States of America. How can one grow up here and not have that awful sense of 'otherness'. This week a sick man was acquitted of murdering a young unarmed black man. I'm having feelings on this subject. I feel terribly sad for that young life and terribly angry that this very sick man gets a pass and terribly frightened by all of what I have seen on Facebook. Trayvon, I get it. I've been followed and harassed myself. Maybe you came to this Earth this time around to die so we can have the opportunity to discuss and heal. But, why look for reasons in a world where there is no reason.
I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, the first integrated town in the USA. My parents were married in 1966. It was illegal to be 'black' and 'white' and married at the same time. That wasn't even half a century ago. I consider myself lucky to have grown up there for Baltimore along with many other US cities was burning after Martin Luther King was shot.
My skin was fair but my hair was kinky, I had a bright red Afro growing up. This confused the other kids and there wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't informed that I was different. Most of the black kids didn't approve of me and some of the white kids let me know my mother was left in an oven too long. It's not possible to kick 5 other kids asses so I withdrew. The only household I really felt safe in besides my own was a family called the Livingston family. They were truly open and it was a mixed household, or, they had one adapted child who was black. "Undoubtedly there were other mixed kids around right? What about them?" The boys, I didn't get along with. They wanted me to choose between my mother and my father, or specifically, they wanted me to hate my father who was white. Truth is I love and more importantly, like both of my parents. So I chose to lead a quiet existence in between and not mess with those kids.
Kids do what their parents teach them. They think it's normal to say such things if that is what they are taught. This stuff doesn't just come from nowhere.
I read recently a book called "The Zone" by Colson Whitehead. It's a zombie saga that takes place in lower Manhattan. I was expecting a fun book with lots of gore and bones crunching but instead found myself crying a few times. The protagonist, Mark Spitz survived the new terrifying world the same way he survived the old dull world, by just being invisible. Mediocre. And now that the world became more mediocre than himself, he is now excellent. This is what racism does. It keeps us in a perpetual state of mediocrity. Maybe better yet, this is what violence does, keeps us invisible. I learned to survive by being invisible. I had friends who were white and didn't know my background. Every once in a while I'd hear some horrible stuff about black people. I seldom reacted cause I was already so isolated and sometimes these situations spelled possible harm to me. So I learned to be quiet and not say anything. My next door neighbor Tommy Tucker who was black called me Nigger one day and we wound up on the ground in a senseless fight. See, that was a word that would get me in serious trouble in my house. I could not understand a black kid using it. It hurt more than when a white kid called me that. It hurts to hear it today in popular culture. Why focus on that word? The low is the high I suppose.
Confusion and safety. See, the house I grew up in was a row house. Stage left was the Tucker family, black, single mom. Stage right were the Conovers, white, parents still together. At night you could hear the horrible beatings through the walls from both sides. Both families were abusing the children. In between was my home, relatively stable. I thought the world was insane. I could hide out in between but couldn't drown out the suffering these families dished out. I was disturbed by all of this.
In 1977 my family moved to Germany. I was fascinating to the German kids but I recall no racist jive from any of them. When I was transferred to a US school on the grounds of a military base, that old racist bs showed up. My mother hid the terrible stuff she and dad faced from me, like going to one party with the other parents and when they walked in the room went silent. Then a few of them start talking about how they used to string up coons from trees back in the states. What is it about this country that has this peculiar brand of racism? Why do we still need to check the race box on forms here? Is that necessary? In Germany if you are born there you are German. Here you are "White box, Black box, Asian box, other box". This needs to end if we are really to move forward.
I could go on through the history of my childhood but will save that for my support groups. Let me talk now about the absurd stuff I've heard as an adult.
"Oh, so you're half black, at least you have some soul" said a musician friend of mine who is 'white'. "Is that how you feel about yourself?" is what I thought. I don't think I said anything cause I was waiting for the punchline. A joke right? No punchline. Man, everyone has soul. We just believe this silly idea so we don't learn to access it. And this guy can play his ass off. He played in a soul band for years and killed it! I have half a soul? Piss off. Sad to say this put a barrier between my friend and I. I don't appreciate being an image, i just want to be a human.
"So you are the son of a slave owner and a slave?! What's that like?" said one young African American kid on the bus to me one morning in Portland Oregon. "I don't know what that is like, my dad doesn't own my mom". Was my reply. Piss off kid, you don't know me. You formed an image so you will never know me. Your loss.
"So what side do you identify with more?" Neither. Culture and society are inherently fucked up to me. I like some things about culture, but society is monstrous and feels largely away from the truth. Music? I have more music by black artist than white, but I listen mostly to music from all over the world. Middle Eastern music is the bomb for me. And okay, I'm not down with the Beachboys. Does that make me racist?
So what is it like living in between? There is a brilliant book called 'One Drop' by Bliss Broyard. Her father was Anatole Broyard. He was a writer who could never finish his biography and died without telling her that he was a black man who passed for white. She tells one story about getting a job at some office. Her dad had connections there. She was required to do a personality test to get the job, she got it and over the years had to take more personality test every time she moved up in the company. One day a woman in human resources told her, "you know, if it weren't for your father, you would never have gotten this far in the company". She was hurt by this and the lady said to her "here, let me show you something." She showed her the results of her personality test and year after year the results were exactly the same. "Impostor". I cried when I read that. That's exactly what it can be like. You don't ever feel like you belong. It creates a nasty compulsion to prove when you crave company and acceptance.
So for me, I never could allow myself to be angry. I understand Obama. If he showed anger he'll become "the angry black man" in this stupid media culture and lose ground. Hell, if he smoked Newport Lights instead of Marlboros he would never have been elected. Even to this day though, I hear people say "well, he's not completely black anyway." What does that even mean? So tired of hearing stupid comments like this. It's hearing noise like this for 45 years that has at times created an equal opportunity hater in this body. It's my soul sickness that needs healing.
A week after 9-11 I was subbing on bass at a poetry reading in Portland. A black dude got up and talked about the top 10 terrorist acts the United States committed, which I agreed with, we have serious atoning to do for our sins as a nation. But then this guy starts on this Holocaust denial trip. The room got so agitated. One Jewish rapper said "if that shit didn't happen, what is that tattoo on my grandfathers arm?" The stupid reader said "I have the books to prove it!" So this kid has some books and that proves it? I wanted to beat this guy in the head with my bass and in that moment I also realized in my experience I could hate EVERYONE but, I don't actually hate anyone and that is the truth. I decided I just wanted to listen to this fellows pain and try to understand where it comes from. Maybe even pray for his pain to be lifted. At this point the guy starts comparing the Holocaust to the Middle Passage with numbers and stats. The Jewish rapper said "man, why are you comparing pain to pain? Pain is just pain, mine is mine and yours is yours. It's personal, there is no comparison. Why can't we talk about healing our pain instead?"
mmm hmm. Why can't we talk about healing our pain instead of comparing?
Maybe that is the root of the problem. We are always insisting on division when we can be insisting on intergration. Humans.......
xoj
Yes, the opening lines are meant to be provocative. Those who know me would never think I have these horrible feelings. But I was born in raised in the United States of America. How can one grow up here and not have that awful sense of 'otherness'. This week a sick man was acquitted of murdering a young unarmed black man. I'm having feelings on this subject. I feel terribly sad for that young life and terribly angry that this very sick man gets a pass and terribly frightened by all of what I have seen on Facebook. Trayvon, I get it. I've been followed and harassed myself. Maybe you came to this Earth this time around to die so we can have the opportunity to discuss and heal. But, why look for reasons in a world where there is no reason.
I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, the first integrated town in the USA. My parents were married in 1966. It was illegal to be 'black' and 'white' and married at the same time. That wasn't even half a century ago. I consider myself lucky to have grown up there for Baltimore along with many other US cities was burning after Martin Luther King was shot.
My skin was fair but my hair was kinky, I had a bright red Afro growing up. This confused the other kids and there wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't informed that I was different. Most of the black kids didn't approve of me and some of the white kids let me know my mother was left in an oven too long. It's not possible to kick 5 other kids asses so I withdrew. The only household I really felt safe in besides my own was a family called the Livingston family. They were truly open and it was a mixed household, or, they had one adapted child who was black. "Undoubtedly there were other mixed kids around right? What about them?" The boys, I didn't get along with. They wanted me to choose between my mother and my father, or specifically, they wanted me to hate my father who was white. Truth is I love and more importantly, like both of my parents. So I chose to lead a quiet existence in between and not mess with those kids.
Kids do what their parents teach them. They think it's normal to say such things if that is what they are taught. This stuff doesn't just come from nowhere.
I read recently a book called "The Zone" by Colson Whitehead. It's a zombie saga that takes place in lower Manhattan. I was expecting a fun book with lots of gore and bones crunching but instead found myself crying a few times. The protagonist, Mark Spitz survived the new terrifying world the same way he survived the old dull world, by just being invisible. Mediocre. And now that the world became more mediocre than himself, he is now excellent. This is what racism does. It keeps us in a perpetual state of mediocrity. Maybe better yet, this is what violence does, keeps us invisible. I learned to survive by being invisible. I had friends who were white and didn't know my background. Every once in a while I'd hear some horrible stuff about black people. I seldom reacted cause I was already so isolated and sometimes these situations spelled possible harm to me. So I learned to be quiet and not say anything. My next door neighbor Tommy Tucker who was black called me Nigger one day and we wound up on the ground in a senseless fight. See, that was a word that would get me in serious trouble in my house. I could not understand a black kid using it. It hurt more than when a white kid called me that. It hurts to hear it today in popular culture. Why focus on that word? The low is the high I suppose.
Confusion and safety. See, the house I grew up in was a row house. Stage left was the Tucker family, black, single mom. Stage right were the Conovers, white, parents still together. At night you could hear the horrible beatings through the walls from both sides. Both families were abusing the children. In between was my home, relatively stable. I thought the world was insane. I could hide out in between but couldn't drown out the suffering these families dished out. I was disturbed by all of this.
In 1977 my family moved to Germany. I was fascinating to the German kids but I recall no racist jive from any of them. When I was transferred to a US school on the grounds of a military base, that old racist bs showed up. My mother hid the terrible stuff she and dad faced from me, like going to one party with the other parents and when they walked in the room went silent. Then a few of them start talking about how they used to string up coons from trees back in the states. What is it about this country that has this peculiar brand of racism? Why do we still need to check the race box on forms here? Is that necessary? In Germany if you are born there you are German. Here you are "White box, Black box, Asian box, other box". This needs to end if we are really to move forward.
I could go on through the history of my childhood but will save that for my support groups. Let me talk now about the absurd stuff I've heard as an adult.
"Oh, so you're half black, at least you have some soul" said a musician friend of mine who is 'white'. "Is that how you feel about yourself?" is what I thought. I don't think I said anything cause I was waiting for the punchline. A joke right? No punchline. Man, everyone has soul. We just believe this silly idea so we don't learn to access it. And this guy can play his ass off. He played in a soul band for years and killed it! I have half a soul? Piss off. Sad to say this put a barrier between my friend and I. I don't appreciate being an image, i just want to be a human.
"So you are the son of a slave owner and a slave?! What's that like?" said one young African American kid on the bus to me one morning in Portland Oregon. "I don't know what that is like, my dad doesn't own my mom". Was my reply. Piss off kid, you don't know me. You formed an image so you will never know me. Your loss.
"So what side do you identify with more?" Neither. Culture and society are inherently fucked up to me. I like some things about culture, but society is monstrous and feels largely away from the truth. Music? I have more music by black artist than white, but I listen mostly to music from all over the world. Middle Eastern music is the bomb for me. And okay, I'm not down with the Beachboys. Does that make me racist?
So what is it like living in between? There is a brilliant book called 'One Drop' by Bliss Broyard. Her father was Anatole Broyard. He was a writer who could never finish his biography and died without telling her that he was a black man who passed for white. She tells one story about getting a job at some office. Her dad had connections there. She was required to do a personality test to get the job, she got it and over the years had to take more personality test every time she moved up in the company. One day a woman in human resources told her, "you know, if it weren't for your father, you would never have gotten this far in the company". She was hurt by this and the lady said to her "here, let me show you something." She showed her the results of her personality test and year after year the results were exactly the same. "Impostor". I cried when I read that. That's exactly what it can be like. You don't ever feel like you belong. It creates a nasty compulsion to prove when you crave company and acceptance.
So for me, I never could allow myself to be angry. I understand Obama. If he showed anger he'll become "the angry black man" in this stupid media culture and lose ground. Hell, if he smoked Newport Lights instead of Marlboros he would never have been elected. Even to this day though, I hear people say "well, he's not completely black anyway." What does that even mean? So tired of hearing stupid comments like this. It's hearing noise like this for 45 years that has at times created an equal opportunity hater in this body. It's my soul sickness that needs healing.
A week after 9-11 I was subbing on bass at a poetry reading in Portland. A black dude got up and talked about the top 10 terrorist acts the United States committed, which I agreed with, we have serious atoning to do for our sins as a nation. But then this guy starts on this Holocaust denial trip. The room got so agitated. One Jewish rapper said "if that shit didn't happen, what is that tattoo on my grandfathers arm?" The stupid reader said "I have the books to prove it!" So this kid has some books and that proves it? I wanted to beat this guy in the head with my bass and in that moment I also realized in my experience I could hate EVERYONE but, I don't actually hate anyone and that is the truth. I decided I just wanted to listen to this fellows pain and try to understand where it comes from. Maybe even pray for his pain to be lifted. At this point the guy starts comparing the Holocaust to the Middle Passage with numbers and stats. The Jewish rapper said "man, why are you comparing pain to pain? Pain is just pain, mine is mine and yours is yours. It's personal, there is no comparison. Why can't we talk about healing our pain instead?"
mmm hmm. Why can't we talk about healing our pain instead of comparing?
Maybe that is the root of the problem. We are always insisting on division when we can be insisting on intergration. Humans.......
xoj
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