When did you first recognize what race you are? - Jason
ok, we're back to grandpa stories on this one. being that i was brought six weeks old into a house on wellington way in san leandro in january of '61, you can be damn sure i never saw a person of another color for the first 3? 5? years of my life. we're back to oakland in '65 or was it '66, my grandparents' house on fairfax avenue, a pretty house so old the garage and the driveway leading to it was made for model t's with spindly wheels.
we're back to me being socially inept, and wanting kids to play with, and having none. and then nathan and lionel's parents moved into the neighborhood. it was our mutual status of outcast - them, race, me, whatever, that made us fast friends. i ask myself, looking back, why would i be so rebellious to my grandpa's obviously racist views? and i answer, the same thing that made me grab my grandma by her arthritic hands to drag her through capwell's basement to the toys. i didn't have that empathy yet, i had that obliviousness that i see in my son, who is that same age now. at five, you don't pay that much attention. at five, there is your own little world, hardly removed from babyhood when it really, really *was* all about you.
so it was all about me, lonely me. and i appreciated the friendship enough that it carried over my whole life, and i never really fell prey to the rampant prejudice around me. in 1970 there were 90,000 some-odd people in san leandro, and six black families. i looked this up on census data sometime back when, i was that fascinated.
i remember in high school or junior high, could have been either, foggy memory, that there were two black kids. either the photographer or the yearbook staff went to the trouble to either overexpose or do the 70's equivalent of photoshop to wash out the pictures. even the backgrounds, so they still stood out from the rest of the black-and-white/greyscale page. why? no answers on that.
but what i know from growing up, and why i am so very drawn to folks who are 'different', races, orientations, whatever, probably stems from the fact i was never a normal white straight person. i was never normal, period, and not particularly straight, but nevermind that now. and there is always a better chance of being accepted in groups that are generally unaccepted elsewhere, if you are willing to go vulnerable and reveal your own inner weirdo. not a problem with me, i can't get the weirdo to shut up long enough to be generally socially acceptable anywhere.
except here. and i'd like to take this moment to celebrate the diversity of blogland and the vulnerability of the folks here who reveal their deepest darkest most innermost, on the internet. i have a long-held theory that people who turn into serious bloggers have something about them. something different, they've held inside for a long time, out of necessity. probably a good many of us, majority or minority, are diagnosably *something*. some of us, myself included, have escaped detection, for the most part. i'm not saying we're all crazy. or i am, i'm not sure. but that's another rant.
there is still horrid racism in the world, the worst kind being the subtle, 'can't put your finger on it it's just there' variety. the stuff that can only be changed if we come out and disccuss this in the open.
i am committed to the continuing discussion.
Beautifully said, kd, as usual.
kd, a lot of this I think has already been discussed, I can't read Jason's post now, gotta go to work so later. I think you already know my views about racism are similar to yours!
You say that you are not normal. Well neither am I. Hooray for being not normal!!! And hooray for the wierdos, freaks and oddballs everywhere!
Howdy
I spent my teen years holding the saying "why be normal" close to my heart - and then was surprised in my midtwenties to find I'm really not "normal" whatever the hell that is. I do find your idea that bloggers/online journalers have all this inside they're letting out to ring true! And how wonderful that is! Writing has always been a way to get the crazy stuf out of my head - even if I'm just writing emails. In some ways, once the crazy thoughts are out of my head onto paper they're exposed as either crazy or not, it eases the pressure they had.
Anyway - I enjoy reading you!!
yes, Dr. D, lots of it has been said, but i keep thinking of more things to say, and Jason keeps writing things that make me *think*.
I'm trying to figure out how far into this discussion I want to get. My life offblog, so to speak, is entirely consumed in attempting to address racism on every level--personal and institutional and cultural...Yet here in blogurbia, I notice myself hesitating to strip myself open on this subject. It's the most important issue in my life, yet, I am sitting here unsure what I want to say if I were to join the conversation.
Okay, I just deleted about five more paragraphs of rambling. I might post it on my blog. I've got a boatload to say, and I think I am just reluctant to open the floodgates.
kd, thanks for being committed to the dialogue, and for introducing me to Jason's thoughts.
You know those times when you say, "Damn! I wish I'd written that!"? Well... "i can't get the weirdo to shut up long enough to be generally socially acceptable anywhere." Might the funniest truth I've ever seen!
And I agree, something about most of us is just a little "off"... =)
Do you honestly not see how offensive your equating normality with whiteness is? Jeez!
To further clarify, because I am sure you are going to post that that is not what you meant and so forth, what you wrote implied that to be white is to be normal. So people of color are not normal. This rests on the assumption that whites are the model of humanity or what a 'normal' human being looks like, in the same way that heterosexual people are considered the default standard of how 'normal' people express their sexuality. This is not true. The average human being is a person of color, with dark hair, dark eyes, and non-white skin. To be a person of color is to be 'normal'.
White people have forced 'whiteness' on the psyche of the world as being 'normal' through sheer brute force...you know, the whole domination, colonialization, oppresion of the world's people of color bit.
I have been approached by people like you in my life, either for friendship or dating, who didn't see themselves as 'normal' white people and felt some sort of kinship or affinity towards people of color because of this. Yeah, I've heard it all before from white people coming at me with Freaks unite! Oddballs rule! Hmmmph, as if I am inherently a freak or oddball or not 'normal' because I am black. This is insulting, on so many levels. It is condescending. It is rude. It is hurtful.
"White people have forced 'whiteness' on the psyche of the world as being 'normal' through sheer brute force...you know, the whole domination, colonialization, oppression of the world's people of color bit."
Personally, I find this to be incredibly insulting, because I've done no such thing, and I'm pretty damned sure that kd hasn't oppressed anyone lately, either. In fact, I feel pretty good about saying that a generalization like that is just as bad as me saying that "Gosh, all black people play really good basketball." Your quote above? It's just as racist as my quote.
Neither one of them is completely true and both of them are based on stereotypes.
You come here, and you flame someone who's trying to make a difference. Why? Because she's not saying the words that you need to hear? You read her blog, and you thought, "Oh, here's another condesending white girl", didn't you? Well, gosh. I can be a condesending white girl, too. (you spelled oppression incorrectly. THAT'S condesending) I'm pretty sure that you've got the condesending black girl thing down, too.
We can all be condesending if the time is right.
And I spelled condescending incorrectly. HA! Actually, that's what I get for being mean-spirited. It's a karmic thing. I get pissed and I go after the grammar. I do apologize for that. :)
i'm sorry.
and honestly that is *not* what i meant.
but here's the thing. i'm, or i was, referring to what they call 'marginalized' people. that black people in oakland in 1965 were indeed marginalized, is no opinion, and it is an unfortunate fact. the fact that i associated them marginalized me by association and i became the 'weird kid'.
there aren't many things i remember that clearly from my early childhood. this would be one of the clearest, apparently it was more memorable.
these are aspects of my own racism, which has its roots in my very earliests childhood, that i'm working on.
and i am learning. as i said, everything i've written on this so far hasn't come out right. i've changed a lot since blogging because it involves doing things like this, putting my words out in public for others to react to, and as such i do appreciate your comments.
i'm committed to learning more about this, and about the thoughts in my own head that are wrong. if i didn't get them out here, they might never change.
i keep writing these rambling things that don't even make the point i intended, because Jason gets me all fired up and i type too fast, think too fast, don't say all the things i want to. that's why this one was so damn similar to the last, because i was totally not done with that one.
maybe someday i'll come up with something coherent?
oh, and i like the word blogurbia.
kd, if I had TrackBack (soon enough), I'd be pinging you with this entry.
I finally got around to posting some memories in answer to the question!