This is Not the Race Card; On Dialogue with Others in the Diaspora, Part 1

Coming from Nigeria, I felt I owed no one an explanation for my existence, nor did I harbour any sign of a paralysing inferiority complex. What was apparent was that most Americans I knew and met were actually not worldly at all, but utter provincials in a very affluent but unjust society…
~ Okwui Enwezor

I dated a Ghanaian man who was thoughtful and sweet in college. My first week at Oberlin, he helped me set up my computer. The next week I saw him at a dance and he walked me home. We were inseparable after that. We studied together, ate together, went for walks in the vast north field and held each other through the cold Ohio winter. We were together off and on for seven years. Towards the end we were fairly lousy partners and the relationship suffered for several reasons. However, ours remains my most powerful and hardest worked for to date.

One particular habit of his that stung was his just barely restrained condescension of Black Americans. That's not to say he didn't have friendships with Black Americans. He did and they were loyal, deeply committed friendships. However, he could not bring himself to understand the self-conscious, deeply conflicted relationship that many American Blacks have with White Americans or the double consciousness that DuBois described and which American Blacks wrestle with daily. Whenever the topic came up, usually in the car driving through Santa Clara or on the freeway back to Oakland, he would scoff dismissively and then proceed to offer a statement on the pointlessness of being obsessed with race. Why did we spend so much time talking about it? He couldn't and wouldn't be the one to engage in dialogue with me.

On the night that Obama was elected to his first term, we gathered in Berkeley at a friend from St. Lucia's apartment. She, her husband, another Lucian couple, two other Black Americans who had voted, myself and him. As we watched the numbers roll in we became increasingly giddy and when our new president, shinning in all his victory, flanked by his beautiful girls and powerful wife, I, along with the other Black American's and Lucians in the room, wept openly. Ghanaian ex remained stoic, even as I clung to his leg. As we drove home that night, there were impromptu parties at every major intersection. Throngs of dancing, instrument playing, dancing on cars, cheering, hugging strangers made me giddy and I begged to stop at each one. As we drove through the large crowd of students near campus who were high-fiving drivers in every car that passed "Wow" was his mildly stunned  reaction. Several months later he apologized for not being able to be there that night for me in my tears and revelry. 

i understand that for many Black Americans like me, race is a primary personal identifier. Along with being a woman, a student, an educator, a 60's do-wop lover, a yoga head and a hopeless romantic, race informs nearly every interaction I engage in. In my neighborhood, the ism's that I participate in with fellow Black Harlemites is like a well blocked play that I rely on for refueling after a long week of exhausting double consciousness on the upper east side where I teach. Code-switching is a well oiled machine that I shift back and forth. The way that I relate to my co-teachers, my children, my neighbors, the police at my subway station, the clerk at the organic supermarket, the bank representative, my pew mate at church and my zumba instructor are all informed by race and more specifically, how I'm viewed as a result of my race. It is highly self conscious. The ex could not relate and seemed to not tolerate conversations about these admissions from me.

I long to dialogue with those from the continent who are now abroad and willing to have conversations about their experiences with race in their home countries. I want to know more about the absence of this self-conscious way of living. The saying goes that everybody's got their something. What was there in it's stead? Class? A more global identity tied to economics? If the desire to go back home exists, what fuels it? And why the impatience towards American Blacks when we talk about race? As Joan Rivers so gaudily asked, can we talk?

On almost letting loose a shout

I almost jumped out of my seat in church today. We were talking about when Jesus was being tested in the wilderness and the devil told him to throw his body from the highest point in the city and Rev. Williams warned “There ought never be anything about the way you interpret the word or talk about God that drives people to such a point of desperation or level of depression that the only option they feel they have is to jump off a roof.” The man admitted that people are killing themselves because of the way the bible has been misinterpreted!

Thanks be to God for truth telling. 

Now, do we have the courage to identify who those people are and what they’re being told…?

On White Parents and Lessons in Privilege

Walking home from work on Friday I became aware of a conversation between a White dad and his (I think) six year old daughter. As we turned the corner and passed a Black man on his phone, she asked why he used the n-word in conversation on the phone in a friendly way. He dad replied "The N-word? It's all about intention. Sometimes people use words to hurt someone. When that word is used to hurt someone, it's wrong. But the way he used it, it meant 'hey what's up friend'. It's intent. Words are just a combination of letters put together. It's the intention we have when we use words that make the difference." Thoughts? Clearly the little girl was aware of the loadedness of the word and it caused some confusion in her mind. Did dad explain it well enough? What did he leave out that should have been said? What did he say that could have been said better? What is a 6 year old capable of understanding about race, privilege and the history of this word?

It was refreshing to see a parent actually address the questions as opposed to either blowing it off or redirecting the question. It's a hard one. I wonder if he couldn't have gone a step further to contexualize the word, even if it was to vaguely acknowledge "we can't use the word because...". My concern is that he left this part out and she, understanding only that the word is ok when used in a positive context, goes up to a friend, and uses that word in a well intentioned way. The child she speaks it to will be highly traumatized/embittered/confused. And she will certainly be traumatized by the backlash she receives. What more can be done?

I was thinking about whether her dad would elaborate at all once they got home. I was especially attuned to the conversation walking home from the train in Harlem where gentrification means that more and more young middle class white families are residing side by side with working class and middle class black families and how that affects the exposure on both sides. 

Despite intentions, the person speaking this particular word determines how the word is received precisely because of the origin and history behind it. I think he stopped short of saying "we're not allowed to use that word." And by leaving that out while highlighting that sometimes it's ok to use it but not specifying for whom, he taught his daughter an early lesson in privilege. "I'm not going to tell you that there are certain things that are off limits to you." How poignant to be walking through Harlem teaching your little girl that sometimes using the most charged of racial slurs is ok. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it.