Oh Dear God, Not Another Talk About Racism: Dispatches from the Post-Racial Era

These were the words running through my mind at a recent brunch with some old friends as the subject of racism came up - well, actually, it didn't start off as a discussion about racism, it started off as a discussion about the possible lynching of Sandra Bland and why I don't take long-distance solo drives through certain areas of the United States, so really, it was a discussion about logistics and the shortcomings of GPS maps that may give you turn-by-turn directions, but are silent as to whether or not persons of color, like myself, might want to bypass certain routes in order to arrive at our final destinations ALIVE! Come to think of it, I guess it WAS a discussion about racism. 

The friends are a married couple and the wife and I met while in college. The husband was a later edition. My friend and I are like sisters. We've been there for each through the questionable hair decisions of our college days, job searches, still more questionable hair decisions, boyfriends, marriage, parental illness and death, and the birth of children. When our husbands are with us, she and I still talk a thousand miles a minute as our spouses try to get a word in, here and there. On issues of religion and social justice, she and I are in sync, but her husband is more conservative in his stance on certain issues. While he and I don't always agree, I was shocked when he responded to my fears and concerns around traveling to certain potentially hostile places with the following statement: I don't see it. The "it" he was referring to was racism. And that, my friends, was when the "it" hit the fan!

Let me walk you through his argument: Racism exists now because we (meaning minorities) keep talking about it. If we stopped talking about our differences, then we'd all just get along and racism would end.

But, there's more: The nine African-American church members murdered in Charleston, SC died not because of the actions of the racist shooter, but because minorities keep talking about racism and the media continues to cover minorities talking about racism, so much so that WE minorities have created the construct that fueled the racial hatred in the shooter. Oh, and, of course, President Obama is responsible for everything that's wrong in this country.

So there you have it - finally, I now know how to eliminate racism from this country. Dr. King must be shouting Hallelujah in that heavenly kingdom: let's just stop talking about it! Who knew it was all so easy!!

Racism is like your childhood imaginary friend, I guess. Like that movie "Drop Dead Fred" where the heroine reunites with her imaginary friend as a psychological crutch as she navigates the tough stuff of adulthood, including her divorce from a philandering husband. I'm so glad that I got whitemalesplained about racism before it was too late. Maybe, if talking about racism only perpetuates racism and NOT talking about racism ends racism, then maybe we should stop talking about rape or about suicide or about genocide. Don't you all feel great now that these burdens have been lifted from our shoulders??

I was offended, as you can tell. The intellectual in me was offended. This college educated professional whose own Italian American family had dealt with racism when they first came to this country seemed to be either ignoring or ignorant of how racism affected his own family. But the emotional side of me was just plain hurt. After almost 20 years of friendship, I was blown away by his inability to empathize with his friend sitting across from him. I wanted to cry because "I don't see it" means that he doesn't see ME. 

It's hard when your friends disappoint you, and it's harder, still, to forgive them. But the hard way is, unfortunately, the only way to break through someone's ignorance. I'd love for racism to die, but its death won't just happen because we've silenced the conversations about it. It's disheartening to think that Trayvon, Charleston, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner haven't been enough to move this man into "seeing" racism.  But, maybe the issue here is scale. It's easy to push platitudes and axioms pulled from political talking points and applied to large-scale stories that have grabbed international headlines. It's an easy thing to debate the issues, but how do you deal with an actual someone and not a some thing? This is the hard work and it can only be done one person at a time, and one conversation at a time. 

Microphone Check: On NPR, Race, and Code-Switching

When my husband emailed the link to an NPR news story last week, I rolled my eyes, as I usually do when he shares all things NPR with me. I'm not a fan of NPR. And it's not because I worked on commercial radio in a market where the local NPR station was competition for us. OK, it's not just because of that. No, NPR has always irritated me because of the vocal delivery of the on-air hosts and reporters. Their measured, vibrato-less speech, the vocal equivalent of wrapping oneself in a warm, but not too warm, blanket for a nap in your perfectly shabby-chic fixer Craftsman house with the assurance that everything is alright. The NPR voice has always been, for me, the voice of smugness. And so, I've rejected the NPR worldview as they report from war-torn ports of call around the globe while putting a reassuring hand on your tummy, rubbing gently and cooing, "There, there. It's OK."

So, back to the link forwarded to me by my husband. Well, the title sounded promising - "Challenging the Whiteness of Public Radio".  The author, Chenjerai Kumanyika, an African American man who is an assistant professor at Clemson University, had been putting the finishing touches on the script for a piece he'd done about fishermen, but as he was doing a final review of the piece before he recorded it, the only voice he could hear internally was what he considered to be the kind of white voice typically heard on public radio: "Without being directly told, people like me learn that our way of speaking isn't professional. And you start to imitate the standard or even hide the distinctive features of your own voice."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Throughout my life, I've been ridiculed by other African Americans for "talking white." My mom had always "talked proper", which I think was code back in the day for "talking white." Mom had been a studious child, and a voracious reader at one of the top schools in the area during segregation. Mom had occupied the hours of her childhood taking piano lessons, and watching great Hollywood movies, or visiting with her school teacher aunt who loved reading out loud. By second grade, I had transferred to a predominately white school and was also spending my free time at the piano, reading, and watching old movies with my grandmother. And so like other children, my vocal patterns mimicked my environment. 

So I wasn't aware that there was a problem until high school. My high school was about 70 percent African American. This was the first time since first grade that I was in an environment where most of the people looked like me. But, not everybody sounded like me, and so I learned that this could be a problem. I became socially isolated. It was a small school so you knew everybody, but friendships were rare for me. Mom was still over-protective and I wasn't allowed to socialize with anyone beyond the school day. So no parties, no Friday nights at the movies with my girlfriends, and definitely no sleepovers. I was missing out on first-person interactions with black culture. I relied on cable TV to educate me, with shows like "Rap City" and "Yo!MTV Raps." There were the trips to the beauty parlor and the ready supply of Ebony, Jet, Essence and Black Enterprise magazines. But even among the black women gathered for our relaxers and press and curls, my manner of speaking was either cause for laughter or alarm, though they all seemed to excuse me when they saw one of my textbooks tucked under my plastic cape, and then they'd all cluck that I was getting my education and so "talking white" was just a way of getting by and getting ahead. 

By the time I'd made it to undergrad, at another predominately white school where I was a super-minority, my fluidity in "talking white" was more muscle memory and no one made mention of it, not even the ladies at the hairdresser. All was well until just a few years after grad school when I took a job at a classical music radio station and listened to my voice on my first aircheck tape. In my head, my voice sounded deep and assertive but on-tape, it sounded leaden and overly formal. My boss coached me to smile more, get conversational and more friendly, to sound like the other women DJs on my station. Did I mention that those other women were white? What he failed to understand was that part of my on-air problem was a continual inner dialogue on race that I was having every time I opened the mic: Did I sound too black? Would the white listeners reject me for sounding black? And so I dug in, trying to hone my voice into a listener-friendly level of whiteness. This, in the days before we talked about things like code-switching. 

In the end, I failed. Anonymous listeners posted nasty comments about me, wondering if I was black and, if I was, what I was doing on a classical music station. The constant anxiety of trying to keep my black from showing distracted me from loving my job. Scrubbing every script so that my cultural references weren't too...exotic. Carefully crafting on-air smalltalk that embodied the smug familiarity of public radio. I had enough!
I remember one conversation with my former boss before we called it a day, where he was critiquing my on-air performance. He wanted me to get more comfortable, more relatable, to share my authentic self with the listeners. I didn't have an answer for him that day, but I do now. It's hard to give your authentic self when you've been suppressing so much of it for so long. I don't actually know what I really sound like. Writing this makes me so sad because that part of me - my voice - is gone and I can never reclaim it. Maybe that's why I don't listen to NPR. Maybe it's the realization that one of those highly-educated people of color reporting across the airwaves had to black-check themselves before they did their job. Maybe it's knowing that there is a cost to that behavior. 

These Little Boys: On Life and Death and Race

This past Saturday a 13 year boy became a Bar Mitzvah, an occasion marked by the gathering of his family members and cherished friends, from camp, preschool, Sunday school, and junior high. Dressed in their finest, guests ate well and danced to everything from that old classic "Shout" to "YMCA" and the latest hits by Nicki Minaj. There were ice cream dessert bars for adults and kids alike, and amped up versions of childhood games like musical chairs and Coke and Pepsi. There were glow sticks, blinking plastic novelty rings, and plenty of smiles and laughter, all celebrating the greatest accomplishment, so far, in a boy's life. Maybe this doesn't mean anything to you, this religious ceremony that welcomes teenage Jewish boys into assuming responsibility for their actions and for their Jewish faith. But for these boys, and the girls who become Bat Mitzvahs, these occasions will help to prepare the ground for their future accomplishments as adults. 

I am not Jewish, but as a photographer, present for these important life events, I have often wondered about the lives of these little boys compared to the lives of my three African-American nephews and their friends of color.  Two of my nephews, ages 14 and 12 and attending struggling public schools, are already experiencing the frustrations of being left behind academically. And we're trying, my family and I, we're trying and praying with all of our might to right this ship, to protect these boys in their boyhood and, yet, prepare them for an adult world that is forced on them all too soon. Try as we do to give them ice cream filled Saturdays, and happy family times, on a night like this, I feel powerless, but not hopeless. My nephews, these 3 little boys, are my little boys, and your little boys. So for tonight, before I feel discouraged, I'm going to look at a photo of my little boys, and I'll keep on, we'll keep on, loving you and protecting you, and all of these little boys.

My beautiful three nephews

Why I Hate "The Help"

Well, it's finally here, a day that will live in infamy, the day that the motion picture adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's insufferable novel, "The Help", is released. As you might have guessed from this first sentence, as well as from the title of today's blog, I am not a fan of "The Help." I hate it and my hatred of it began on the Merritt Parkway, somewhere around Trumbull, Connecticut. My husband and I were on our way to visit family, and the local NPR station was airing an interview with one Kathryn Stockett, author a brand new novel that was causing a stir. The NYC-based Stockett had loosely based this period piece on the black maids who had worked for her Mississippi family and her family's friends. The NPR reporter went to great lengths describing the blond and beautiful Stockett, and, within the first 5 seconds of hearing Stockett herself, I gleaned that she shared this opinion.

The story of "The Help" is a memory tale, told from the perspective of the character, Skeeter, a young, white southern girl at a crossroads in her life - follow the traditional path of other southern white women towards marriage and family or embark on a new path as a writer. Helping Skeeter along the way is her black maid, Aibileen, who shows Skeeter the painful world of black domestic workers in the Jim Crow south. The novel's subject matter isn't all that earth-shattering as other, less commercially successful works of fiction and nonfiction have described the exploitation of blacks employed as domestic servants. But, Stockett's little ole book was making waves, mostly due to the author's decision to employ vernacular for the black characters. Stockett admitted that this particular choice had generated a great deal of consternation among publishers as she shopped the book around, but she defended her use of it as an authentic characterization, and then, it happened - she began to read passages from her book, complete with the "you is" and the "yes'ums." Are you kidding me??!! It was like audible black face! Stockett's little Minstrel show went on for what seemed forever and by its conclusion I was in full stew and had resolved to never read that book.

Until last summer, when I was asked to take part in a discussion of the book. My grandmother had worked as a maid for a white family and when I was in college, a black woman named Mrs. Proctor, cleaned our Honors' Program dormitory. Add to that that the fact that I'm a black woman and you've hit the trifecta! I read the book in one day, forcing it down in big gulps, meeting Skeeter and Hilly and Minny and Celia and, of course, the Magical Negro of Aibileen. Those first blossoms of hatred that bloomed on the Merritt had now become a bumper crop! My anger wasn't just because of Stockett's use of vernacular, or because this white woman was attempting to describe the interior lives of these black women, or because all of the novel's characters - black and white - were so one-dimensional. No, my anger was why this tale, so lacking in profundity, was garnering so much attention and racing off of bookstore shelves.  Why the hell were so many people reading this hot mess of a book??

I got some answers at the book discussion, which was attended by sixty or so black and white people from multiple generations and regions of the U.S. There were some people who, like Stockett, grew up in the south with beloved black servants. For them, "The Help" conjured up rich memories of happy times with people whom they considered members of their family. But, there were also black and white discussion group members for whom the system of black servitude was foreign. For this group, Stockett's heroic tome of friendship across the great race divide was inspiring. I came away from the event irritated, as I seemed to be the only person whose anger was directed towards the author and her shallow, self-congratulatory attempt to talk about racism. Here we are, a country with a President who is black and white, but yet the only way we can discuss race relations is to flee back to the ample bosom of the black mammy!!??

Right now, London is on fire with the worst race riots its seen in decades, and on the eve of the dedication of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s monument on the National Mall, the racist chatter against the President is at an all time high. Now is not the time to smugly slap ourselves on the back and say that we have overcome prejudice, if anything, it's time to go deeper. I'm just saying.

 

The Birth and Death of Chocolate City: A New Perspective on Washington, DC

Last weekend, my husband and I took my mom and dad on a field trip down memory lane. Our destination was Ben's Chili Bowl, the eatery made famous in recent years by a visit from a certain White House resident who goes by the name of POTUS. But Ben's Chili Bowl already had established a warm spot in the hearts of the citizens of the Nation's Capitol, and not just because of its chili and cheese Philly half-smokes! Ben Ali and his wife, Virginia, opened Ben's Chili Bowl in 1958 on U Street. The street was dotted with clubs where legendary black entertainers performed, earning the area the nickname of the "Black Broadway". U Street was a part of the Shaw neighborhood, and it was into this neighborhood that my dad and his mom settled upon their arrival from rural southeast Virginia.

To my dad and others like him, DC was the land of opportunity, where a black man could own his own home, start a business, and eat a hot dog seated next to stars like Ella Fitzgerald or Bill Cosby. He was a frequent visitor to Ben's Chili Bowl, in good times and in bad, and the bad times came with the riots of 1968. The riots tore through the city, leaving city blocks in tatters. In the first few days after the riots, while the streets of DC were still smoldering, Ben's Chili Bowl was one of the few restaurants open to feed the exhausted firefighters and volunteers who were working to restore order. The aftermath of the riots would bring about some of the most profound changes in DC. The city's white population fled to the safety of the suburbs in large numbers, and in the years to follow, Washington, DC became Chocolate City.

My dad considered himself one of the lucky ones, having forsaken his adopted city shortly before the riots to take up his role as husband, and later as father in the suburbs outside of DC. However, he made frequent return trips to the old neighborhood to visit his mom. By the 1970's, seven out of ten of every Washingtonian was black, but those numbers don't really portray the state of their existence in those sections of the city that had been leveled by the '68 riots. The city block on which his mother lived had been the epicenter of the riots, and was several bus rides away from all of the necessities one needed for life. It was also turning exceedingly dangerous as open air drug markets and violent crime took over the landscape. There was a growing divide between the blacks who "made it" and were living the suburban dream of manicured lawns and thriving children, and the blacks who were "stuck" in the city.

While last week's release of the latest Census data - showing an 11% decrease in Washington, DC's African-American population - made for blaring headlines, there is a much more intimate narrative at work here. Sitting at a table at Ben's Chili Bowl, and listening as my mom and dad and Virginia Ali spoke of old times, I was suddenly struck by how profound a loss is the loss of a community of shared experience. But I was also struck by how these new residents will erect their own communities of meaning.

I'm just saying.