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This guy walks into a bar and says... - Apr 1, 2006 - Printable Version
- "I don't want to have to watch my words!"
(Gray Like Me: Part 3)
by Ken Shade
"I don't want to have to watch my words!" That was Carmen, the white lady, early in episode three of "Black. White." She was upset because it had just been pointed out to her how egregiously she screwed up at the end of episode two, when she spoke to her daughter's poetry group.
She was speaking for herself, but I know what she said must have connected with a lot of white people. Many are sick of having to worry about whether they have said or done the right thing.
White America has been giving black America conflicting orders for one-hundred and thirty-one years, now, since the end of the Civil War. On the one hand, they say "Assimilate!" On the other hand, they say "Stay down there on the bottom of society." Well, you can't have it both ways. You can't insist on people remaining separate, marginalized, and still expect them to assimilate. You can't deprive them of education, opportunity and access, and rationally hope that they'll become like you. People are social and creative. They will always develop and cherish traditions of their own if forced to be on their own. I don't speak Russian. I do not observe Russian holidays. I do not know how to make borscht, and I have only eaten it once. I like Russian novels, but I read translations, one removed from the essence of the originals. I do not have a Russian heart because I am not part of that culture. I am American, and I have an American soul.
In the same way, black Americans have given birth to a culture different in many ways from the pervasive Euro-American one they're not a part of; that they've never been fully allowed to participate in. African-American culture has its own musical, linguistic, culinary, familial, religious, social and artistic traditions. It is a hearty stew that has nourished generations. My life is richer for having the opportunity to be part of it.
Whites are largely ignorant of it, even though they have borrowed liberally from it.
All dominant cultures tell their minorities to assimilate, and they all do it for the same reason: Assimilation delivers them from having to go to any effort to accommodate, or even understand, their minorities. They want the minorities to do all of the work.
Before any of you start ranting about how your people assimilated quite nicely, so the blacks can too, allow me to point out this difference: If I have to hear your last name in order to be able to tell that you're a minority, then your minority status is not the same as that of African-Americans. If your ancestors came to this country by choice, your history is different. It was not official government policy to *prevent* you from assimilating for generations.
Anyway, Carmen had used words that connoted more to her black listeners than they did to her, and she didn't know why they took offense. She was frustrated, so she cried. Carmen cries a lot.
When I was a child, I was taught never to use the word "nigger." One member of my extended family used it all the time, in very hateful ways, but my parents taught me never to say it. It was the worst word in the world, next to "fuck." I had my mouth washed out with soap, once, for calling my brother a "jackass." God knows what would have happened to me if I had used what we now call "the 'N' word."
No, I was taught to use proper sixties terminology. These people I only saw on TV were "negroes." "Colored," I was told, was an expression that was only used by old and unenlightened people.
One day in fifth grade, Mrs. Alcorn, seemingly without provocation, suddenly announced to the class that the new proper term was "Afro-American," which I thought sounded pretty cool.
By the time I graduated high school, "black" was en vogue. That was fine with me. It was easy to say, and it was no skin off my white nose.
"African-American" didn't go down as easily when it came along. It was, and is, quite a mouthful. (It has made this series more difficult for me because I type with two fingers, and any other name would be less time consuming.) Still, I adapted. I learned that this new name for an old category was "politically correct," as were "Asian," "Native-American" and a few others.
Almost as soon as somebody first uttered the words "politically correct," people rebelled against it. It has become a term of derision. People now identify what mavericks they are, how "outside the box" they are, by bragging that they are politically incorrect. I understand some of this because some of what is labeled political correctness is pretension and obfuscation. Much of the remainder, though, is common courtesy. If some person, or some group of people, decide to be identified by a different name, how does it hurt the rest of us to honor that? Why do we fight so hard to avoid simply being polite and respectful?
When Cassius Clay legally changed his name, for religious reasons, to Muhammad Ali, people for years absolutely refused to call him by that name. They didn't insist that Rock Hudson answer to Roy Scherer. Nobody refused to call Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko Natalie Wood. People only resisted when an "uppity" black man did it. Of course they did this out of the darkness in themselves, and it's easy to look back from the standpoint of 2006 and feel superior to people of the sixties. But, if we can't bring ourselves to call homosexuals, Asians, African-Americans, Native-Americans or anybody else by the identifiers they have chosen, then we're no different. It's impolite and disrespectful, but something more sinister than rudeness lies beneath.
So much of the racial war has been fought on the field of language. Our language can edify or harm. The words we use to identify and describe people; the words we elect to be identified by, tell a thousand things about where we stand on complex political and social issues. It's a form of shorthand. My late wife was a high school teacher. At the beginning of each year, students ran through the traditional "feeling out" processes with the new teacher. They were usually a little surprised to walk into Japanese I and see that the teacher was African-American. A few of the A-A students were additionally wary of the way she spoke. (African-Americans usually have what they call their "white voice," and use it whenever it is necessary. Karla taught in her "white voice," which some younger people consider a sellout.)
One year, an African-American freshman asked her straight out: "Mrs. Shade, just how black are you?"
He didn't want to know her skin tone, which was readily apparent. He wanted to know where she stood on dating, politics, music and education. He wanted to know how she felt about white people. He wanted to know if she was militant. If she had said "really black" or "kind of," he'd fill in all the blanks himself. Her answer: "Black enough to shut you down." told the kid that she would not be messed with.
There, in thirteen words, volumes were spoken; an understanding was reached.
Racial language is a powerful thing and, in episode three of "Black. White." Carmen and Bruno were hurt and confused by it. Once again, the African-American couple were not confused. Everywhere they go in this country; every time they turn on a television, they hear white people talking to them, and to each other. They know the terminology and nuance of white speech much better than whites understand black speech. They know most of our vernacular, but we don't know much of theirs.
Will all guilty white liberals who are about to accost me as racist for asserting that there are idiomatic difference between the races please just shut up and listen! If you can't bring yourself to do that, just ask yourselves what the following expressions mean:
"kitchen"
"CPT"
"bluebird"
If you don't know what they mean, then don't tell me there are no differences. If you do know, then you're probably not white.
Carmen and Bruno didn't know why calling a young black woman a creature would hurt her feelings, or at least make her uncomfortable. Bruno correctly pointed out that white women are frequently described as "beautiful creatures."
For all of you "Brunos" out there, let me attempt to make the difference clear. The difference is not in what you mean when you say it. The difference is what the listener hears. When you call a white woman a "beautiful creature," you are implying that she's some sort of angelic vision from a Renaissance painting. You elevate her to a higher plane. You imply that only God could make something so wonderful. It means all that to her because of the way our culture has depicted white women. They are objects of beauty and desire. When you say the exact same thing to a black person, they hear something negative because of generations of ugly, demeaning racists depictions of Africans. To African-Americans, "creature" doesn't mean anything like angel. It means "monster" or "animal." If a person has been taught that they look a certain way because they bear the curse of Cain, or because they are an evolutionary link, more akin to gorillas than white humans, then the word "creature" is likely to be a real punch in the stomach.
A lot of pain and misunderstanding could be avoided if we could look at the present through the lens of history, and understand how that history continues to shape who we are. After all, events that happened in my grandfather's life, long before I was born, shaped his world view. His view helped mold my father's, and my father's influenced mine.
Cruel people will always use words to hurt others, but the rest of us can become more historically and racially literate, and make the world a little kinder in so doing.
Another feature of This week's "Black. White." was the difference in the way Bruno and Carmen reacted to two contrived situations. First, they were taken, in black make-up, to a red neck bar, complete with the Confederate "Stars and Bars" on the wall. Carmen was not allowed to run a tab without showing a credit card, and she had never had this happen to her as a white woman. They spent the entire evening being glared at. Carmen said she felt unwanted, and Bruno pretended that it wasn't happening. He was ignoring the elephant in the room because of his unwillingness to admit the legitimacy of any opinion except his own.
Next, they are taken to an African-American neighborhood. This time, Bruno is black and Carmen is white. The people there are giving them the same dirty looks that the whites in the red neck bar gave them, but this time they become afraid. Their "guide" tells them that people are being negative not because of anybody's whiteness, but because the BM/WF combination offends their Pan-African, nationalistic sensibilities. (Those are my words, not the guide's. It's what she meant, but I shortened it.)
Bruno wants to believe that people are staring at them because he is white, oblivious to the fact that everybody there doesn't know that. He wants to believe that because his point is to prove that it is blacks who are hateful, not whites. He really thinks he's onto something here, and he hammers away at it. All the while, though, he shows more about himself than I'm sure he'd really care to. He can't point out a single thing anybody there said that was at all rude or threatening, but he feverishly insists that his life is in danger. Carmen says he's wrong, but she still says she doesn't feel safe.
Anybody who has ever been in a cowboy bar knows that these people were in just as much danger as black folks there as they were as a mixed couple in the 'hood. Still, the whites make one of them feel "unwanted," while the blacks make both of them feel "in danger." The only difference, really, was the complexions of the people around them. Feeling more threatened among African-Americans tells more about Bruno and Carmen than it does about the races.
Carmen sometimes displays growth, and sometimes just acts foolish. When the "guide" says to them "Welcome to black life. Some of us have to live with this feeling every day," Carmen asks why they have to feel this way every day. "Because I can't change my skin color," says the guide. She resists the urge to add "DUH!"
At one point in the show, Bruno spills the beans about the reason, or one of the reasons, for his resentment for black people. He tells of a time when he, as the best player on the basketball team, was nevertheless denied the ball by four black teammates. He says it was incredibly frustrating, and he clearly still carries the pain. Carmen tries to use this as a way to get him to understand black frustration, but he insists that they should "move on," like he did. He clearly hasn't moved on, but let's suppose he has, and that he's completely over it. He still doesn't get it. It's a heck of a lot easier to move on when something happens to you once, and you can leave it behind as you blend into the advantaged larger culture. I wanted to reach into the TV and shake the idiot yelling: "You can't move on when it happens to you every goddamned day!"
I have heard countless white people complaining about how African-Americans make everything a "race issue," but it isn't the A-A's that are doing it. It is the white people who can't see past pigment, who establish primary identity for everybody in society by virtue of their numbers.
My son has a lot of white friends. Billy is known as the gentle boy. John is known as the responsible boy. Alex is known as the funny boy. My son is known as the black boy. Yes, his friends and their parents see my son's other virtues and failings, but they see them as secondary to his most important identity: BLACK. No matter what he does in life, to many people, that will remain his identity. Until I married Karla, I really had no idea how many times a day white people mention a black person's color, or make it an issue in some other way. It's truly astounding at first, them numbingly predictable after a while.
If you do this to people, you can't fairly get annoyed when they start to notice it, and react to it. You can't be offended by black suspicion and assert your innocence in all matters of discrimination if a million people with faces like yours have made them have to constantly wonder if that door slammed because of the wind, or because they were standing behind it.
It isn't fair. It isn't smart. It isn't racially literate.
The Sparks family, the black family, is having trouble which may not appear to have anything to do with race, but it does. Their teenage son considers himself a "G" (gangster) and so doesn't see the need for education, or even self preservation. He wants to be a "G" because he has apparently bought into an image of what it is to be a black male that is being sold to him by fringe elements of the black community. His father wants to teach him to be a man, but this thug image is a powerful one for a guy his age.
When I was young, I liked to imagine myself as hard and tough. Most boys do to one extent or another. I did a lot of things to create that image, and to make myself believe I deserved it. I committed a lot of crimes in the name of becoming appropriately masculine, and it seems that this kid in the show is headed down the same road. There is one major difference, though, which he is not aware of. All the while I was acting out, I was also living with the understanding that I would someday change my ways, and become a productive adult. I knew that society would allow me to make that decision. I knew I'd get a lot of second chances. Young Mr. Sparks can't afford that illusion. Nobody's going to cut him any slack. He is ten times more likely to be charged with a crime than I was. He is eight times more likely to be sentenced to prison time for the same offense as a white kid. He is infinitely more likely to have youthful indiscretions held against him is his adult life. My mistakes are something I look back on with a certain nostalgia. His may well me a millstone around his neck.
I once saw a cartoon entitled "A Concise History of Race Relations in the United States," or something very close to that. It began with a white man telling an African: "This is for your own good." The white man proceeds to climb on the black man's back. He climbs all over him, stepping on his head, using him as a human scaffold to get to a higher platform. Once he is on the platform, over the African's head, he apologizes to him and professes that he "isn't like that, anymore." The black man says thanks, and asks "Now, can you give me a hand up?" The white man says that he can't bring himself to do that because that would be reverse discrimination, and therefore wrong.
That cartoon said so much!
We may not want to choose our words. We may not want to adjust. We may not want to see life through anybody else's eyes. We may, like Bruno, not want to acknowledge another man's insight. We may not want to admit that we were born on that higher platform. It is so romantic to see ourselves as survivors. It threatens this image to admit that others might have had to work harder to get to the same place. It's so much easier to claim that all of these issues are behind us so we don't have to adjust, or lend a hand. But, we do so at our peril. We separate ourselves not from the experience of another race, but from the human experience. Trying to ignore our differences only forces us to focus exclusively on them, making us miss our more numerous similarities. We make ourselves alien to our brothers and sisters. We miss out on the blessings of kinship. We break bread only with the ghosts of our past, not with the friends and neighbors of our present.
I heard Garrison Keillor once say that we can sit down to talk about politics, and quickly learn to hate each other. However, if we spend a day working side by side, we build an affection, a trust, an understanding that is strong and durable. I believe he was right. I also believe that working side by side with our fellow Americans in the causes of justice, fairness and understanding is a noble way to build that understanding.
This is part 3 of the continuing series "Gray Like Me".
To read part one, "I Am The White Sheep Of My Family.", go to:
http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/GuyWalksIntoBar/1012.html
To read part two, "I Was Illiterate", go to:
http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/GuyWalksIntoBar/1013.html
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