Being human while black

I know this diary has nothing to do with Roberts, Plamegate, Cindy Sheehan, or the Iraqi Offensive, but I needed to get it off my chest.

I have been educated at two of the best universities in the world. I enjoy fine wine and organic produce. I have a degree (soon to get another) in biology and a minor in anthropology. I worked in a Senate office for a year. I drive an electric scooter, and I speak English, some French, some Spanish, and some ASL. I'm not as well traveled as I'd like to be but I've lived on both coasts and visited a couple of other countries. I have worked hard and I've become an intelligent, highly functional member of society. I have a great life, and a great love with beautiful blue eyes who has far less melanin than I. You see, I am black.  Black people don't usually do all those things I just said, though, right? So why did I? Well, it's obvious ---- I've secretly wanted to be white all my life.

Sound ridiculous? It should.

This post has two points.  But first you're going to have to listen to a couple of anecdotes and a story.  

When I was a kid in school, I got tripped by the other black kids in the hallway.  I was called names.  "Oreo" very occasionally, but more often they just came out and said "Why you always trying to act white?"  The internalization of negative stereotypes evident in this statement, I have come to realize, is very profound.  If making good grades and speaking with correct grammar is "acting white" then what, pray tell, would you call "acting black?"  

But it's not just the black kids at school.  I've read posts here on racism where commenters talk about trying to reach blacks on issues like gay marriage and indicate that outside of the small number of "assimilated" black Americans, liberal messages are lost on the (poor, uneducated, church-going) black community.

This is the flipside of the same worldview.  The message is the same.  If you are black, do everything that, stereotypically, you are supposed to do.  If you don't, you're either pretending or have been hoodwinked into being something that you're not - you only get to choose between "assimilated" black and "real" black and there is no in between or other option.

I've got news.  Us "assimilated blacks"?  We are not non-entities, who have given up our individual uniqueness to melt unnoticed into white society.  We are people too.  Just as human, just as capable, vibrant, and important as anybody else.  We do not forfeit our ethnicities at the door of the spa or the country club.  So stop trying to categorize us in your either-or, black-and-white world.  I don't eat sushi because I think my skin lightens a few degrees when I do.  I eat sushi because it tastes good (and I didn't even have to start with the California roll, a.k.a. "the gateway sushi").

So that's my first point.  "Assimilated" is just as insulting as "Oreo."  It gives permanent wannabe status to any black person exceeding what you have decided is "normal" for blacks to be.  Any definition you can come up with for any group of people is going to be incomplete and judgemental.  So stop trying to define me.  And for that matter, stop trying to define what "normal" blacks are, too.

On to my story:

A couple months ago I took part in a scientific conference, attended by probably a thousand or more faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from across the country and in many cases, the world.  I was one of ~10 blacks in attendance.

After a horrendous day of travel (picture 5:30AM trips to the airport, cancelled flights, leaving keys at the security checkpoint and not realizing till you're on the ground at your destination... bad) I finally arrive in St. Louis, chosen by the conference organizers as a "great meeting place" because of -I'm not kidding, this is what the website said- affordable hotel prices and it's an American Airlines hub.  

I hadn't realized before this trip that a lot of cities in the Midwest suffer from "burnout" where the downtown areas are basically vacant - no businesses, and maybe a very few drifter-looking types wandering around.  So depressing.  St. Louis, demographically, is about 51% black, but all of the aforementioned drifters I saw are part of this slim majority.  So here we are, in this town where the only visible people are sad-looking black residents and visiting well-dressed, well-educated conference goers, who are 99% not black.  I've been uncomfortable all day traveling and now I'm feeling uncomfortable in my own skin.  By the time I reach the hotel, I've missed all the day's sessions and could really use a drink.

After talking with a very helpful hotel person about St. Louis nightlife, my labmates and I eventually decide to head to a bar that is supposed to have a dance floor and be fun on Wednesday night.  Walking there from the hotel, empty buildings loom out of the harshly lit darkness of the humid St. Louis night.  A drifter, perhaps hopeful for something unspecified, meets us coming from the opposite direction.  We exchange friendly but guarded greetings after his offer to help us find the establishment we're looking for, and try to extricate ourselves.  We continue on our way, and he turns around and starts following us.  I should say at this point that both of the people I'm with are male (I'm not), and white.  I am the right-most of our threesome and the drifter is to the right and a couple steps behind me.  I don't know whether he wants change, my whole purse (which is on that side) or something more primitive than money.  In any case, I'm vaguely annoyed that my male friends aren't doing more to ward this guy off, as has been the status quo in similar situations with other friends in the past.  I speed up, and get to the bar about half a block ahead of my compatriots.  

On the walk home, I inform them that if that situation were to arise again, I would appreciate a little better defense on their parts.  I'm not a small person, but I'm somewhat smaller than the drifter, and definitely smaller than one of my friends, let's call him `Nick.'  At which point, Nick says

Nick: What do you mean?  If anything, I think I was in more danger than you.  

Me: <skeptical, questioning look>

Nick:  After all, I'm the racial minority here.

Me: WHAT???!?

Okay.  There are lots of excuses that I would've accepted and shrugged off for his not wanting to be any closer to that guy than I did.  He could have said, "Hey, I thought you could take care of yourself and I totally had your back."  He could have said "Sorry, I didn't even think about it."  But instead, whether it was because (as he admitted) he'd recently watched the movie Crash, or maybe due to latent racism I'd never seen in Nick before, his excuse was that the drifter wasn't going to hurt me because he and I were both black.  

I will spare you the details of the ensuing conversation.  Let's just suffice to say Nick wouldn't back down, and his argument still doesn't make any sense.  I maintain that if I had been blond instead of brown, things would have been different.

It was the perfect ending to the perfect day.  I spent the next 48 hours (not an exaggeration) feeling miserable and self-conscious and the next 4 weeks working through it.  Because Nick was (and is) a friend of mine.  Racism from strangers is much easier to ignore.  I've swallowed the incident with Nick since then, but I haven't forgotten.  He hurt me more that day than he realizes --- that was part of the hurt, actually, that he has no way to understand how much remorse he should have felt.  As a white male living in the U.S., he will probably never understand how hurtful it can be when you are reduced to the sum of your skin pigment, especially by a friend.

And now we have reached my second point.  A lot of us, especially in the liberal neck of the woods, strive for and compliment ourselves on our lack of prejudice.  By this we mean our ability to meet someone and say, "Oh, s/he's black/Hispanic/Romulan/other but I'm not going to judge based on that and I'm going to keep an open mind."  This is obviously way better than many alternatives, but we shouldn't consider it to be the ideal.  What we actually should strive for is real colorblindness --- the not-noticing of skin color at all, which is too absent in the States.  (Want to know what it looks like?  Go visit Toronto - in my experience, they've got it about right.)

The moral of these stories, and countless others as bad or much worse that every member of a racial or ethnic minority has endured, is that we've all got to try a little harder.  Prejudice is really good at finding hiding places in your world-view, and today, somewhere, people are hurting because of it.  I'm hoping for the day when I can make a first impression by doing something, rather than just by being something.  I'm hoping for the day when I will not be judged as an Oreo, as assimilated, or as anything else, simply for being black and simultaneously being all the other things that I am.