Reinvigoration comes from the most random places. I was talking to a keynote speaker that I am engaging for our student mini-conference in March. The conference focus is diversity, equity and social justice; our theme is imagining communities without walls. Our keynote is an esteemed scholar in Rochester; a woman of color, who captivated my students and I at a symposium she held with her students last fall. During the symposium, which was this amazing room full of women of color - academics, lawyers, doctors; I remember thinking this woman had changed my life. First, I had never been in a room full of brown women who were both successful AND welcoming. Second, she was just dynamic and engaging. When I approached her after her talk and told her how she had impacted me, because I am impulsive like that, she hugged me and welcomed me into her community. By the time I left she had given me her personal and professional contact information and offered her time and experience as I moved through my PhD journey. I felt blessed and tucked the information away. I felt I could never tell this black feminist scholar that I studied mixed race.
So... yesterday we were talking about the conference and she was letting me know that because of the immediate connection she had felt with myself and my students, she was doing our conference when she really didn't have time. She went on to tell me that she was teaching three NEW courses, something I would do to myself, and started to tell me about them. All of a sudden...WHAM (I have no better way to articulate the sensation I experienced in this moment) she is talking about mixed race. (Happy Dance by the Mixed Race Professor)
Save the fact that I became a babbling idiot, as I am want to do in the shadow of greatness, I was blown away. My own assumptions get me in trouble often; my assumption about black feminist scholars may be causing me more than trouble. My assumption that all black feminst scholars, save the few who have actually verbally attacked me in public places, reject mixed race identity is keeping me from engaging other academics and scholarship. My gift, the revelation and the validation of what I believed when I began this journey is that there is a community of scholars that not only believe in mixed race they are studying and teaching it. Our conversation continued as this amazing scholar graciously started giving me resources and pointed me toward other scholars doing this work. Then, she asked me for resources and suggestions for the teaching of her new class. This kind of peer acknowledgment always makes me incredibly giddy (and I became less and less able to communicate because of it) but I was able to fumble through the exchange.
I was up at 1:50 am this morning thinking about my dissertation. I won't admit to anyone how long it has been since I thought about my dissertation (or worked on it) but I am on fire. It is 4:37 am and I have been researching the possibilities she shared as well as a healthy jstor search for new articles. Thank you to the powers that oversee lost PhD candidates, I think I may be headed in a good direction.
More soon...
Newly Minted
Right after I was hooded
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Monday, December 28, 2009
Merry Christmas!!
Merry Christmas. I hope to do some final editing on posts that I have started but never posted. This past semester has been beyond busy, in a very good way. I am working on my dissertation over the break as well as thinking about how to incorporate all of the work I have done into the final dissertation. I am teaching the mixed race class next semester, which I hope to be the last semester I am writing. Several students have come to me resulting in a mixed race luncheon group. The next semester brings my first student led mini-conference, which is really exciting! The blend of administrator and academic is serving our campus community well and I was not spread so thin that I snapped. Getting this dissertation off my plate would be a really big weight off my shoulders. For now, I am headed in to spend a little more time with my baby girl! Enjoy the week! 2010 is upon us!!!!!!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Are you her mother?
My new job and finishing a dissertation have been murder on being a Mommy. I finally, after we survived a bout of "flu-like" symptoms, made it into my daughter's classroom on Friday. It was her Halloween parade. Parents were allowed to watch the parade and then were banned from coming in and being part of the students' party. It had become too hard for the school personnel to keep track of who was coming and going at these parties. So, access and family support had been cut off for all students who don't have stay at home mothers, fathers, or grandmothers who can commit to a year of being room parents. This is the first year I have not been a room parent. Normally I would have been in three or four times already to read, to help, and to make sure my child and my child's classroom community knew who we were.
I decided to limit the damage of class and gender performance discrimination by joining my child at lunch. I signed in and had my daughter's pitchfork confiscated "it is a weapon you know" the principal said. I saw three pitchforks in the parade, but you cannot frisk EVERYONE now can you. I got to the cafeteria late, because I had stopped to buy said pitchfork, and my daughter was still in line. As I stepped through the door the bell for "12 minutes left rang", my child's right to eat a healthy meal at a healthy pace is another blog at another time.
Anyway...I stepped into the cafeteria and several children yelled my name. I used to be a good mother and be there all the time so a lot of the third graders know me already. My daughter waved from line, because stepping out of line is a HUGE infraction in third grade and there is always an angry staff person there to remind you of that. I went over to my daughter and she wrapped herself around me. She was so very excited to see me. We hugged for a couple of seconds; and suddenly I realized children were staring at us. My daughters' new classroom is full of "new" students. She learns differently so her class if filled with other students who learn differently as well. This group includes a lot of students who move in and out of the districts around here for whatever reason. Many of them I had never seen. Finally one timid little girl poked me on the leg and said, "excuse me, are you her mother?" My daughter tipped her head up to look at me and declared, "of course she is". The other little girl stepped back into line with her fingers in her mouth and a look of wonder on her face.
We repeated this scene five different times with five different little girls. It wasn't until I was at Kmart that I realized what had happened. While processing with the supervisor at the layaway counter, I realized that those little girls had never seen a black Mommy and a white baby. That to me isn't the big a-ha here. I understand THAT. I never get used to people not immediately knowing I am her mother, but I understand it. What stood out to me as a new thought or realization was that these little girls knew that we had a mother/daughter relationship. They could see by the way my daughter and I were acting that we were mother/daughter. It was an intimate familial performance that, despite the aesthetic information provided them, led them to the possibility that we might be mother and daughter.
Yet, they could not TRUST that information BECAUSE of the aesthetic. They still had to ask, and seemed to remain a bit confused after they received the answer. It is a bit hurtful when even third graders question whether I am my daughter's mother. At least these encounters ended with confused stares from cute little faces. I have had this experience my whole life, and often it has ended with far more pain and anger.
I can remember being no older than my daughter. My mother and I were out getting fire extinguishers filled (they used to do that). The guy in the store asked my mother "isn't it a bit late for the Fresh Air kids to still be here. You keepin' yours?" My mother went ballistic. She was so angry that my step-father had to go back and get the extinguishers. I can remember one other time, aside from the same classroom scenario I shared at the beginning of this entry which occurred every year, where the aesthetic difference between my mother and I trumped intimate familial relation. We went to the local Denny's (or was it still Sambos...God that place irritates me no matter what you call it) and after waiting in line an inordinate amount of time; it was our turn to be seated. It was my mother, step-father, sister, baby brother, and myself. We had stood in line a good 10-15 minutes (yeah, to eat at DENNY'S) and had gotten yelled at for knocking over a stanchion. When the waitress went to seat us, the only people in line, she stepped in between my family and I as they entered the dining room and said something like "wait your turn". Are we kidding, I was no more than 10 or 11 years old and there was not another adult in line waiting. Who did she think I was with. My mother and step-father jumped ALL OVER that waitress. I don't remember the rest, but I know my family and I am guessing it was not pretty.
I have had black women on the street and at the bus stop me with both of my boys and comment on how light they are. The interaction with black folks is different in that they KNOW these are my children; they are simply disgusted that they are mixed. One black woman on the city bus looked in my front pack at my sleeping three month old and said "if I had one that light, I would never have kept him". Betraying my race by keeping my own offspring. Grand.
My final example of this kind of harm would be my son's fourth grade picnic. I had just had my daughter in April, the picnic was in June. I had parked away from the pavilion so I could nurse her; not because I am afraid to nurse in public, but because I don't have time to educate other people's parents. I got done nursing my daughter and walked back over to the pavilion when my son's teacher grabs me. She is laughing and says "you are never going to believe this. One of the other mothers just came over and told me that someone was WET NURSING in the parking lot and that she was offended." That mother was one of our born again christian mothers who was always passing judgement on others. But wet nursing, really? How does someone even come up with that? I guess if you will have sex with people of opposite races, you will do anything.
The good news is, as I was standing there theorizing at Kmart with this stranger, the answer to the racial divide IS the intimate. Familial relationships are the next wave of racial understanding. Long before this became about race, relationships - deep intimate loving relationships WERE how we learned about other cultures and other lands. Those brides from Japan, Vietnam, and Korea changed the face of the United States. My hat is off to those wives and mothers, because I don't know what that had to be like to raise that first generation mixed race children in a land where they and their marriages were as foreign as their children. Their mixed race children were not hidden inside the other, they were out there for everyone to see as mixed race. Those are stories I hope to capture and share soon.
More soon...
I decided to limit the damage of class and gender performance discrimination by joining my child at lunch. I signed in and had my daughter's pitchfork confiscated "it is a weapon you know" the principal said. I saw three pitchforks in the parade, but you cannot frisk EVERYONE now can you. I got to the cafeteria late, because I had stopped to buy said pitchfork, and my daughter was still in line. As I stepped through the door the bell for "12 minutes left rang", my child's right to eat a healthy meal at a healthy pace is another blog at another time.
Anyway...I stepped into the cafeteria and several children yelled my name. I used to be a good mother and be there all the time so a lot of the third graders know me already. My daughter waved from line, because stepping out of line is a HUGE infraction in third grade and there is always an angry staff person there to remind you of that. I went over to my daughter and she wrapped herself around me. She was so very excited to see me. We hugged for a couple of seconds; and suddenly I realized children were staring at us. My daughters' new classroom is full of "new" students. She learns differently so her class if filled with other students who learn differently as well. This group includes a lot of students who move in and out of the districts around here for whatever reason. Many of them I had never seen. Finally one timid little girl poked me on the leg and said, "excuse me, are you her mother?" My daughter tipped her head up to look at me and declared, "of course she is". The other little girl stepped back into line with her fingers in her mouth and a look of wonder on her face.
We repeated this scene five different times with five different little girls. It wasn't until I was at Kmart that I realized what had happened. While processing with the supervisor at the layaway counter, I realized that those little girls had never seen a black Mommy and a white baby. That to me isn't the big a-ha here. I understand THAT. I never get used to people not immediately knowing I am her mother, but I understand it. What stood out to me as a new thought or realization was that these little girls knew that we had a mother/daughter relationship. They could see by the way my daughter and I were acting that we were mother/daughter. It was an intimate familial performance that, despite the aesthetic information provided them, led them to the possibility that we might be mother and daughter.
Yet, they could not TRUST that information BECAUSE of the aesthetic. They still had to ask, and seemed to remain a bit confused after they received the answer. It is a bit hurtful when even third graders question whether I am my daughter's mother. At least these encounters ended with confused stares from cute little faces. I have had this experience my whole life, and often it has ended with far more pain and anger.
I can remember being no older than my daughter. My mother and I were out getting fire extinguishers filled (they used to do that). The guy in the store asked my mother "isn't it a bit late for the Fresh Air kids to still be here. You keepin' yours?" My mother went ballistic. She was so angry that my step-father had to go back and get the extinguishers. I can remember one other time, aside from the same classroom scenario I shared at the beginning of this entry which occurred every year, where the aesthetic difference between my mother and I trumped intimate familial relation. We went to the local Denny's (or was it still Sambos...God that place irritates me no matter what you call it) and after waiting in line an inordinate amount of time; it was our turn to be seated. It was my mother, step-father, sister, baby brother, and myself. We had stood in line a good 10-15 minutes (yeah, to eat at DENNY'S) and had gotten yelled at for knocking over a stanchion. When the waitress went to seat us, the only people in line, she stepped in between my family and I as they entered the dining room and said something like "wait your turn". Are we kidding, I was no more than 10 or 11 years old and there was not another adult in line waiting. Who did she think I was with. My mother and step-father jumped ALL OVER that waitress. I don't remember the rest, but I know my family and I am guessing it was not pretty.
I have had black women on the street and at the bus stop me with both of my boys and comment on how light they are. The interaction with black folks is different in that they KNOW these are my children; they are simply disgusted that they are mixed. One black woman on the city bus looked in my front pack at my sleeping three month old and said "if I had one that light, I would never have kept him". Betraying my race by keeping my own offspring. Grand.
My final example of this kind of harm would be my son's fourth grade picnic. I had just had my daughter in April, the picnic was in June. I had parked away from the pavilion so I could nurse her; not because I am afraid to nurse in public, but because I don't have time to educate other people's parents. I got done nursing my daughter and walked back over to the pavilion when my son's teacher grabs me. She is laughing and says "you are never going to believe this. One of the other mothers just came over and told me that someone was WET NURSING in the parking lot and that she was offended." That mother was one of our born again christian mothers who was always passing judgement on others. But wet nursing, really? How does someone even come up with that? I guess if you will have sex with people of opposite races, you will do anything.
The good news is, as I was standing there theorizing at Kmart with this stranger, the answer to the racial divide IS the intimate. Familial relationships are the next wave of racial understanding. Long before this became about race, relationships - deep intimate loving relationships WERE how we learned about other cultures and other lands. Those brides from Japan, Vietnam, and Korea changed the face of the United States. My hat is off to those wives and mothers, because I don't know what that had to be like to raise that first generation mixed race children in a land where they and their marriages were as foreign as their children. Their mixed race children were not hidden inside the other, they were out there for everyone to see as mixed race. Those are stories I hope to capture and share soon.
More soon...
Monday, October 19, 2009
Mixed Reflections
In the past week there were two events that critically impacted my life and my thinking both as a leader of color; and as a mixed race person in an interracial marriage.
Let's start with the negative event first. Really it would be hysterical if it weren't so damn tragic. Let's talk about Louisianna! "Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long".(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff) And based on this deep rigorous research and statistical data, our friend Keith has been denying interracial couples the right to marry for about 30 years. Bardwell appeared on CBS's The Early Show this morning and proudly announced that he did tell this couple where to get married "so I don't know what the problem is". Bardwell shared his "concern for the offspring" and then admitted that he also recuses himself from marrying drunk people..."who can come back when they sober up" - mixed race couples cannot.
When I teach my mixed race class, one of the very first things we talk about is that when my husband and I got married in 1999 it was still illegal in Alabama. Even though the federal government had repealed the anti-miscegenation laws that outlawed the marriage of interracial couples, many states took nearly 30 years to do so (and in Bardwell's world...still counting). These laws were not just an American phenomenon; they existed in Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa as well. These laws often banned not only marriage between people of different races, but they also banned living together and intercourse.
It makes me wonder, what are people afraid of? Are mixed race people taking over the world? Are mixed race people privy to secret knowledge, privilege and power? Are mixed race people depleteing our source of labor? Will mixed race cause our prisions to empty? Will mixed race cause black and white populations to disappear completely? What IS the threat? Could interacial couplings produce offspring capable of running the free world??? Oh, wait...THEY CAN!
Moving on...the really positive thing that happened to me this week was my leadership retreat. My office took 20 "underrepresented students" into the woods for two days. We had workshops, round tables, fires, smores, and adventure challenges. They taught us more than we taught them, and we walked away with a community. The biggest lesson learned is that diversity inside diverse populations is often overlooked and possibily holds the key to solidarity and community building at our campus. My students were shocked to find out how different they were from the participants that looked like them, and came from the same places as them. One young man proclaimed "I have more in common with the lesbians than the other latino kids". Amen.
The point that connects these two moments? Difference is an important and necessary part of moving any multicultural community forward. And in case it is not clear, based on current events, the world is multicultural. Multiculturalism, mixed race, interrace is unavoidable - feel free to embrace it. The recognition of and utilization of difference; as well as the intersections of difference, gives us the tools to respond to a diverse global community. Doing one thing one way only guarantees becoming obsolete. Here is to hoping that people like Bardwell are obsolete. Our student groups have become just that, even though they are seen as "multiculturalism" on campus, this retreat helped them see that being people of color is not the same as being truly diverse.
Congratulations to Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay on their recent marriage. I hope that this experience adds a dynamic of accountability to your community interactions. I also hope that the world community understands what happened here and starts applying the same outrage to issues of equity in marriage for all humans on the planet. Gay marriage, heteronormative marriage, international marriage, and interracial marriage are all connected...we cannot ban one without affecting them all.
More soon...
Let's start with the negative event first. Really it would be hysterical if it weren't so damn tragic. Let's talk about Louisianna! "Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long".(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff) And based on this deep rigorous research and statistical data, our friend Keith has been denying interracial couples the right to marry for about 30 years. Bardwell appeared on CBS's The Early Show this morning and proudly announced that he did tell this couple where to get married "so I don't know what the problem is". Bardwell shared his "concern for the offspring" and then admitted that he also recuses himself from marrying drunk people..."who can come back when they sober up" - mixed race couples cannot.
When I teach my mixed race class, one of the very first things we talk about is that when my husband and I got married in 1999 it was still illegal in Alabama. Even though the federal government had repealed the anti-miscegenation laws that outlawed the marriage of interracial couples, many states took nearly 30 years to do so (and in Bardwell's world...still counting). These laws were not just an American phenomenon; they existed in Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa as well. These laws often banned not only marriage between people of different races, but they also banned living together and intercourse.
It makes me wonder, what are people afraid of? Are mixed race people taking over the world? Are mixed race people privy to secret knowledge, privilege and power? Are mixed race people depleteing our source of labor? Will mixed race cause our prisions to empty? Will mixed race cause black and white populations to disappear completely? What IS the threat? Could interacial couplings produce offspring capable of running the free world??? Oh, wait...THEY CAN!
Moving on...the really positive thing that happened to me this week was my leadership retreat. My office took 20 "underrepresented students" into the woods for two days. We had workshops, round tables, fires, smores, and adventure challenges. They taught us more than we taught them, and we walked away with a community. The biggest lesson learned is that diversity inside diverse populations is often overlooked and possibily holds the key to solidarity and community building at our campus. My students were shocked to find out how different they were from the participants that looked like them, and came from the same places as them. One young man proclaimed "I have more in common with the lesbians than the other latino kids". Amen.
The point that connects these two moments? Difference is an important and necessary part of moving any multicultural community forward. And in case it is not clear, based on current events, the world is multicultural. Multiculturalism, mixed race, interrace is unavoidable - feel free to embrace it. The recognition of and utilization of difference; as well as the intersections of difference, gives us the tools to respond to a diverse global community. Doing one thing one way only guarantees becoming obsolete. Here is to hoping that people like Bardwell are obsolete. Our student groups have become just that, even though they are seen as "multiculturalism" on campus, this retreat helped them see that being people of color is not the same as being truly diverse.
Congratulations to Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay on their recent marriage. I hope that this experience adds a dynamic of accountability to your community interactions. I also hope that the world community understands what happened here and starts applying the same outrage to issues of equity in marriage for all humans on the planet. Gay marriage, heteronormative marriage, international marriage, and interracial marriage are all connected...we cannot ban one without affecting them all.
More soon...
Sunday, September 13, 2009
I have no other code to switch to and I am simply not Black Enough
I sent a panicked text to my colleague at Syracuse University: How old do I have to be, how long do I have to do this work, before I am black enough? He sent back a text with kind words of support. His institution had just hosted a speaker who had given a good lecture on this exact topic in regards to President Obama. My colleague also apologized for not remembering to invite me to that event.
I have spent the last two weeks, as I have many times in the last 40 years, authenticating my blackness. Let me clarify the allegation against which I am defending myself: I am simply not black enough. No, that is a simplification of the allegation. The allegation is that I don't like black people, that I prefer white people and that I think black men are idiots. Apparently even the way I introduce myself is uppity and deserving of physical violence. I am in desperate need of reprogramming in an attempt to correct my poor behavior around black folks.
Here is the deal: I have no other code to switch to. This is who I am, it is not a performance of any kind. This is how I perform blackness. This is the only way I know how to carry myself (too upright); introduce myself (with an accompanying analogy that helps people remember my name); dress myself (as if I am going to a meeting); do my hair (which is "natural" but apparently still not black enough because it is not "straigtened"); and speak (too proper for casual settings - too proper for any setting really). I have no other code to switch to.
Some of the other crimes attributed to my race traitorous behavior are the fact that I am married to a white man, the fact I do not try to hide that I was raised by a white mother, and the fact that my daughter has the audacity to have beautiful blond hair and light hazel eyes. And, if I try to speak slang (the urge overcomes me at times) I sound all the whiter and then I am accussed of making "fun" of people. Yet, it seems perfectly appropriate to level these accusations against me. It is great sport to share these judgements against me over a cup of rum. But I am always the one who is wrong. No matter what.
The reality of the situation: I crave time with black people. When I get the chance to be in a space where black people are willing to let me join them (or so I think, I often find out later I was unwelcome but too dumb to leave) I feel a sense of community and belonging. Apparently imagined community and belonging. Perhaps my inability to read the warning signs, the ones that suggest I don't belong, stems from always having been in situations where I basically did not belong and having learned how to negotiate those spaces. I keep talking, listening, and working until I am accepted. I am starting to realize that I have been using this skill alot in the converse (usually it is in an attempt to gain access to white spaces) lately. I am now hanging in there until, somehow, black folks decide I am okay and allow me to stay. Perhaps this is all a bit harsh and I shouldn't allow myself to abstract a few confirmed cases of exclusion, but each of those cases cuts so deeply I find my ability to recover and the will to keep trying are getting harder and harder to hang on to.
My girlfriend (our boys play football together) had a labor day party this year. Myself and my family were invited, mysels and two of my children were able to attend. It was the day of our first varsity football game of the season, a cause for great celbration here in Tiger country. With hard leomonade in hand and lot's of soul food; I was getting to capture a little piece of something I lost when my biological mother gave me away - loud, loving black folk. It was a moment to be around a family that looked like me and that is a want that cannot be expressed, it is not translateable to those raised with their biological family, only other adoptees understand.
My girlfriend's sister is a big, beautiful, black matriarch. She is what I imagine my biolgical grandmother to be. I had heard a lot about this woman and was excited to meet her. I introduced myself to her, she seemed a little cold, in hind sight, but nothing that prepared me for the realization five hours later that she had wanted to knock me out. While we were sitting in my lawn chairs, me with her grand child on my lap, she revealed to me that she had asked her sister to put up the rum "because I told her if I got drunk I was going to jack your uppity ass up". I was stunned. The pain in my chest and stomached stopped me from breathing. I was 14 again; that was how old I was the first time a black female rejected me based on how culturally white I seemed to be (except at 14 I didn't catch on until she "jacked me up"). I wanted to run and hide. Everyone was laughing; for them it was over. For me it was just beginning an endless loop of not belonging that I never seemed to be able to outrun. There I sat with the sun beating down on me, my hard lemonade buzz gone, wishing I could turn back the last five minutes. I would rather not have known. "It's okay" she said "I like you now" but it wasn't okay, it wasn't enough.
A few days ago, on 9/11, a student from one of our multicultural student organizations came to see me in the office. The night before I had brought concerns about the exclusionary behavior some of our freshman reported experiencing at the hands of our black females. I forget that my belief that what people are experiencing COUNTS regardless of other perspectives is not a universal belief. I asked the females in the Black Student Union, Carribiean Student Union, and La Familia Latina if they could be more welcoming to our new students of color in particular and new students in general. There was a near riot. The girls expressed to me that it was the job of the new females to approach THEM and introduce THEMSELVES. This totally goes against what I know about good social behavior and my belief is that being welcoming is a good social behavior regardless of what culture you are in or from. My students did not agree. There was yelling. We ended with hugs and I went home. The next morning one of my students came to tell me that she appreciated the conversation (yelling) the night before. She told me that she had learned a lot about me and that she owed me an apology for her misinterpretation of me. I, like a complete idiot (HOW I didn't know what the answer was going to be is BEYOND me), asked why her first impression of me was. She told me "honestly, that you didn't like black people, that you didn't want to associate with them, and that you would prefer to be around white people".
I asked her what gave her that impression and she told me that she misperceived some things I had said last semester about being more comfortable around white people because I was raised in white communities. At that time I was trying to get the point across how it was important that we love our sisters no matter how they perform blackness. I clearly needed to contextualize or provide more time and education before I tried to have that conversation. That moment, today, looks like my attempt to get the women of color around me to embrace me. My agenda...failed. She also said that it was more a feeling than any particular thing I said or did. I asked her if it was the way I spoke. She said "No, I am used to uppity females my aunt is a real bitch".
While I realize this young woman was APOLOGIZING to me, it still hurts because she was one of my favorites. Before that moment, I would have counted her among my supporters, among my sisters, and certainly on my side. Again, it is so painful having not even known she didn't care for me AND that she disliked me even, and she certainly didn't trust me... The conversation ended with "I like you now" and "I am going to tell the other girls how great you are". But again, it simply wasn't enough. I went to the 9/11 rememberance ceremony with a hole in my heart.
I will never be black enough. I will never be white. I am almost 40 years old, it is too late to think that someday I will be able to perform blackness in a way that will end this cycle of rejection or the demands for authentication. These two recent experiences really opened up some old wounds. I can intelletualize the interactions, and I question whether my shock and hurt stems from an unacknowleged priviliege that I have or am preceived to have. Right now i just feel angry, alone, and ready to quit. And I certainly don't feel Black Enough.
I have spent the last two weeks, as I have many times in the last 40 years, authenticating my blackness. Let me clarify the allegation against which I am defending myself: I am simply not black enough. No, that is a simplification of the allegation. The allegation is that I don't like black people, that I prefer white people and that I think black men are idiots. Apparently even the way I introduce myself is uppity and deserving of physical violence. I am in desperate need of reprogramming in an attempt to correct my poor behavior around black folks.
Here is the deal: I have no other code to switch to. This is who I am, it is not a performance of any kind. This is how I perform blackness. This is the only way I know how to carry myself (too upright); introduce myself (with an accompanying analogy that helps people remember my name); dress myself (as if I am going to a meeting); do my hair (which is "natural" but apparently still not black enough because it is not "straigtened"); and speak (too proper for casual settings - too proper for any setting really). I have no other code to switch to.
Some of the other crimes attributed to my race traitorous behavior are the fact that I am married to a white man, the fact I do not try to hide that I was raised by a white mother, and the fact that my daughter has the audacity to have beautiful blond hair and light hazel eyes. And, if I try to speak slang (the urge overcomes me at times) I sound all the whiter and then I am accussed of making "fun" of people. Yet, it seems perfectly appropriate to level these accusations against me. It is great sport to share these judgements against me over a cup of rum. But I am always the one who is wrong. No matter what.
The reality of the situation: I crave time with black people. When I get the chance to be in a space where black people are willing to let me join them (or so I think, I often find out later I was unwelcome but too dumb to leave) I feel a sense of community and belonging. Apparently imagined community and belonging. Perhaps my inability to read the warning signs, the ones that suggest I don't belong, stems from always having been in situations where I basically did not belong and having learned how to negotiate those spaces. I keep talking, listening, and working until I am accepted. I am starting to realize that I have been using this skill alot in the converse (usually it is in an attempt to gain access to white spaces) lately. I am now hanging in there until, somehow, black folks decide I am okay and allow me to stay. Perhaps this is all a bit harsh and I shouldn't allow myself to abstract a few confirmed cases of exclusion, but each of those cases cuts so deeply I find my ability to recover and the will to keep trying are getting harder and harder to hang on to.
My girlfriend (our boys play football together) had a labor day party this year. Myself and my family were invited, mysels and two of my children were able to attend. It was the day of our first varsity football game of the season, a cause for great celbration here in Tiger country. With hard leomonade in hand and lot's of soul food; I was getting to capture a little piece of something I lost when my biological mother gave me away - loud, loving black folk. It was a moment to be around a family that looked like me and that is a want that cannot be expressed, it is not translateable to those raised with their biological family, only other adoptees understand.
My girlfriend's sister is a big, beautiful, black matriarch. She is what I imagine my biolgical grandmother to be. I had heard a lot about this woman and was excited to meet her. I introduced myself to her, she seemed a little cold, in hind sight, but nothing that prepared me for the realization five hours later that she had wanted to knock me out. While we were sitting in my lawn chairs, me with her grand child on my lap, she revealed to me that she had asked her sister to put up the rum "because I told her if I got drunk I was going to jack your uppity ass up". I was stunned. The pain in my chest and stomached stopped me from breathing. I was 14 again; that was how old I was the first time a black female rejected me based on how culturally white I seemed to be (except at 14 I didn't catch on until she "jacked me up"). I wanted to run and hide. Everyone was laughing; for them it was over. For me it was just beginning an endless loop of not belonging that I never seemed to be able to outrun. There I sat with the sun beating down on me, my hard lemonade buzz gone, wishing I could turn back the last five minutes. I would rather not have known. "It's okay" she said "I like you now" but it wasn't okay, it wasn't enough.
A few days ago, on 9/11, a student from one of our multicultural student organizations came to see me in the office. The night before I had brought concerns about the exclusionary behavior some of our freshman reported experiencing at the hands of our black females. I forget that my belief that what people are experiencing COUNTS regardless of other perspectives is not a universal belief. I asked the females in the Black Student Union, Carribiean Student Union, and La Familia Latina if they could be more welcoming to our new students of color in particular and new students in general. There was a near riot. The girls expressed to me that it was the job of the new females to approach THEM and introduce THEMSELVES. This totally goes against what I know about good social behavior and my belief is that being welcoming is a good social behavior regardless of what culture you are in or from. My students did not agree. There was yelling. We ended with hugs and I went home. The next morning one of my students came to tell me that she appreciated the conversation (yelling) the night before. She told me that she had learned a lot about me and that she owed me an apology for her misinterpretation of me. I, like a complete idiot (HOW I didn't know what the answer was going to be is BEYOND me), asked why her first impression of me was. She told me "honestly, that you didn't like black people, that you didn't want to associate with them, and that you would prefer to be around white people".
I asked her what gave her that impression and she told me that she misperceived some things I had said last semester about being more comfortable around white people because I was raised in white communities. At that time I was trying to get the point across how it was important that we love our sisters no matter how they perform blackness. I clearly needed to contextualize or provide more time and education before I tried to have that conversation. That moment, today, looks like my attempt to get the women of color around me to embrace me. My agenda...failed. She also said that it was more a feeling than any particular thing I said or did. I asked her if it was the way I spoke. She said "No, I am used to uppity females my aunt is a real bitch".
While I realize this young woman was APOLOGIZING to me, it still hurts because she was one of my favorites. Before that moment, I would have counted her among my supporters, among my sisters, and certainly on my side. Again, it is so painful having not even known she didn't care for me AND that she disliked me even, and she certainly didn't trust me... The conversation ended with "I like you now" and "I am going to tell the other girls how great you are". But again, it simply wasn't enough. I went to the 9/11 rememberance ceremony with a hole in my heart.
I will never be black enough. I will never be white. I am almost 40 years old, it is too late to think that someday I will be able to perform blackness in a way that will end this cycle of rejection or the demands for authentication. These two recent experiences really opened up some old wounds. I can intelletualize the interactions, and I question whether my shock and hurt stems from an unacknowleged priviliege that I have or am preceived to have. Right now i just feel angry, alone, and ready to quit. And I certainly don't feel Black Enough.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Aggregation: An issue of social justice
Posted October 4, 2009...Started July 17, 2009
I was at a diversity training a couple of weeks ago. The facilitator, in response to a faculty participant's resistance to the phrase "people of color", suggested that we accept such terms in their ambiguity as positive aggregations. His position was that these are not stereotypes or broad classifications (isn't that what an aggregation is) rather they are aggregations (no further explanation given). As an African National, I found it unsettling that he would accept and advocatge for a system that ignored or denied his nationality. If I understood his position, he would no longer be African royalty (something he is rightfully proud of); he would be aggregated black. That makes no sense to me...
The first reading I offer my students in my prejudice and discrimination class is about labeling. In the first three paragraphs the authors talk about aggregation as a form of labeling - labeling in this article is portrayed as a kind of harm. The paragraph about aggregation goes on to talk about African-American and Hispanic categories being a harmful aggregation of many places of origin and histories of people.
Yesterday during our Alumni Weekend which was carefully scheduled so that current students had the chance to interact with alum, one of our Asian Pacific Student Union members was talking about her experiences on our campus. We had all been talking about racist or racialized encounters we had all experienced during our time here. Alum, staff and students were being very open and emotions were raw. This young woman had not spoken all day so when she raised her hand I jumped to acknowledge her. Like a lot of our stories, this student had experienced a white student who approached her and made fun of her by calling her Chinese. Part of her sadness came from the fact that the white student was with his black roommate who thought making fun of her was not only acceptable, he participated. "Instead of realizing I was experiencing what he (the student of color) experiences on this campus, he just made fun of me too". My student was more deeply upset, however, by this miscategorization of her race/ethnicity which she took as intentional. She went on to tell us how painful it is that America and our college not only wants to aggregate all Asians, South Asians and Pacific Islander's into one category; but that they want to aggregate them in to one category called Chinese. What stands out to me most is that at the end of her statement she said: "This causes me pain". And I thought, yeah it is painful when some one reassigns your identity. It is painful when someone tells you that you cannot be who you KNOW you are.
Through this student's story, a framework presents itself for me to better articulate some recent thinking around the right of self-identification as a matter of social justice. My assertion is that when a person is denied the right to self-identify (race, gender, orientation, nationality, etc.) they suffer a real harm. My guess is, once I have had the chance to spend some real time with this, I will find that identities that are "non-normative" or "non-binary" are cumulative identity structures. By that I mean, these are not identities that individuals come to through inheritance; rather, these are identities mediated by lived experience, politics, and social theory (in a non-academic sense). Denying these identities is akin to denying a persons experience, awareness of self, intelligence, and individual/familial history as valid. And, in defense of these identities, I would suggest that they are better thought out than those identities that seem accepting of aggregated categories and more important the PROCESS of aggregation. The process of aggregation is a process of negation, deletion, and erasure. We know in other historical and social contexts that processes and practices of negation, deletion and erasure have certainly been located as issues of social justice.
On a local level, these aggregated categories are the reason my students are unable to identify my performance of blackness AS black or African-American. I believe once an identy accepts it's aggregation, that category is immediately mediated by ones own performance of that category/race/ethnicity. My student's experience suggests that on our campus Asian-American has become Chinese. Similarly, for my students of color African-American has become urban New York City and other people of color who do not share that culture do not fit into that aggregated category. The conflict and harm come in when an identity that shares that aggregated category, or is forced to, frames it differently as mediated by their own cultural differences. This conflict has played itself out in my student interactions by students telling me that I am not black. At the same time, the government tells me there is not such thing as mixed race. I am clearly not white. What does that leave me? Where does an identity like mine fit in? Where does my non-chinese student fit in? Aggregation limits who we can be, rather it limits who other people will allow us to be. That is harm.
I have a lot of things to say about this, most of which I have not yet been able to think through. As this thinking evolves one of the things I want to flesh out is how I believe the aggregation of blackness helped formulate my mixed race identity. Aggregation seperates me from my family, from my mother, sister and daughter. They become white and I become black, we become culturally/ethnically/racially different and unrelated. If I were seperated from my family in another way, as I was through my transracial adoption, people perceive (and have legislated against) that kind of seperation as a harm. The Heritage Act of 1970 made the argument that transracial adoption severed a child from their heritage. This severing was considered not only a harm, but an issue of social justice. What I am suggesting is that aggregation generates the same severing, the same harm, especially for bi-cultural/bi-racial people.
I think I am done with this for right now. I would really enjoy hearing other people's opinon on aggregation. More sooon...
I was at a diversity training a couple of weeks ago. The facilitator, in response to a faculty participant's resistance to the phrase "people of color", suggested that we accept such terms in their ambiguity as positive aggregations. His position was that these are not stereotypes or broad classifications (isn't that what an aggregation is) rather they are aggregations (no further explanation given). As an African National, I found it unsettling that he would accept and advocatge for a system that ignored or denied his nationality. If I understood his position, he would no longer be African royalty (something he is rightfully proud of); he would be aggregated black. That makes no sense to me...
The first reading I offer my students in my prejudice and discrimination class is about labeling. In the first three paragraphs the authors talk about aggregation as a form of labeling - labeling in this article is portrayed as a kind of harm. The paragraph about aggregation goes on to talk about African-American and Hispanic categories being a harmful aggregation of many places of origin and histories of people.
Yesterday during our Alumni Weekend which was carefully scheduled so that current students had the chance to interact with alum, one of our Asian Pacific Student Union members was talking about her experiences on our campus. We had all been talking about racist or racialized encounters we had all experienced during our time here. Alum, staff and students were being very open and emotions were raw. This young woman had not spoken all day so when she raised her hand I jumped to acknowledge her. Like a lot of our stories, this student had experienced a white student who approached her and made fun of her by calling her Chinese. Part of her sadness came from the fact that the white student was with his black roommate who thought making fun of her was not only acceptable, he participated. "Instead of realizing I was experiencing what he (the student of color) experiences on this campus, he just made fun of me too". My student was more deeply upset, however, by this miscategorization of her race/ethnicity which she took as intentional. She went on to tell us how painful it is that America and our college not only wants to aggregate all Asians, South Asians and Pacific Islander's into one category; but that they want to aggregate them in to one category called Chinese. What stands out to me most is that at the end of her statement she said: "This causes me pain". And I thought, yeah it is painful when some one reassigns your identity. It is painful when someone tells you that you cannot be who you KNOW you are.
Through this student's story, a framework presents itself for me to better articulate some recent thinking around the right of self-identification as a matter of social justice. My assertion is that when a person is denied the right to self-identify (race, gender, orientation, nationality, etc.) they suffer a real harm. My guess is, once I have had the chance to spend some real time with this, I will find that identities that are "non-normative" or "non-binary" are cumulative identity structures. By that I mean, these are not identities that individuals come to through inheritance; rather, these are identities mediated by lived experience, politics, and social theory (in a non-academic sense). Denying these identities is akin to denying a persons experience, awareness of self, intelligence, and individual/familial history as valid. And, in defense of these identities, I would suggest that they are better thought out than those identities that seem accepting of aggregated categories and more important the PROCESS of aggregation. The process of aggregation is a process of negation, deletion, and erasure. We know in other historical and social contexts that processes and practices of negation, deletion and erasure have certainly been located as issues of social justice.
On a local level, these aggregated categories are the reason my students are unable to identify my performance of blackness AS black or African-American. I believe once an identy accepts it's aggregation, that category is immediately mediated by ones own performance of that category/race/ethnicity. My student's experience suggests that on our campus Asian-American has become Chinese. Similarly, for my students of color African-American has become urban New York City and other people of color who do not share that culture do not fit into that aggregated category. The conflict and harm come in when an identity that shares that aggregated category, or is forced to, frames it differently as mediated by their own cultural differences. This conflict has played itself out in my student interactions by students telling me that I am not black. At the same time, the government tells me there is not such thing as mixed race. I am clearly not white. What does that leave me? Where does an identity like mine fit in? Where does my non-chinese student fit in? Aggregation limits who we can be, rather it limits who other people will allow us to be. That is harm.
I have a lot of things to say about this, most of which I have not yet been able to think through. As this thinking evolves one of the things I want to flesh out is how I believe the aggregation of blackness helped formulate my mixed race identity. Aggregation seperates me from my family, from my mother, sister and daughter. They become white and I become black, we become culturally/ethnically/racially different and unrelated. If I were seperated from my family in another way, as I was through my transracial adoption, people perceive (and have legislated against) that kind of seperation as a harm. The Heritage Act of 1970 made the argument that transracial adoption severed a child from their heritage. This severing was considered not only a harm, but an issue of social justice. What I am suggesting is that aggregation generates the same severing, the same harm, especially for bi-cultural/bi-racial people.
I think I am done with this for right now. I would really enjoy hearing other people's opinon on aggregation. More sooon...
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
More Than Just My Browness
Post finished June 6, 2009...
So my organizational skills really stink! I keep swearing that I will blog daily, and I don't. An interesting result of my self-examination has produced two posibilities. First, at the beginning of my academic pursuits a particularly evil and jealous little woman told me that she "didn't care how smart" I was. She declared, "You're an organizational disaster". While that accusation is wholly untrue, there are moments. Second, because I have dedicated this blog to mixed race, it is really not part of my every day in a blogable way. So when life takes over, mothering, marriage, performing and exhaustion; blogging falls by the wayside. I have decided today, that is not a bad thing.
So... I am not new to conversations about wholeness and identity. I get that my race is not my whole identity. But I will say that because my socio-racial location, scholarship, and my job are all wrapped up in race and critical race theory; race often feels central to my identity. I don't think that it is, which is really really interesting to me and a little bit of a relief. When I interviewed from my new job, one of the things I asked the folks in the interview was whether they were hiring me because they thought I had something extraordinary to contribute to the institution or because they have always had a black person in the positon. It was really important to me that I was being hired for me and what I was bringing to the table not because I was black. I am more than a demographic. I am more than a particular race or gender. I am an amazing person.
This is not a new position for me. When I was a young girl, elementary school aged, I tried out for cheerleading with my catholic youth organization team. I made it. On the way out of the gym, elated, I overheard a mother say something like "she only made it because she is black". I was the only black child there so there was no mistaking who she was talking about. I was crushed. Here is the downside to transracial adoptions without cultural support; I had noone to process this moment with. I was ashamed and embarrased and I didn't tell my mother; I dropped off the team instead. I remember an overwhelming sense that I didn't want to be on the team just because I was black and they had to take me. I didn't understand affirmative action. I understood discrimination. I understood being a token. I understood not being seen.
Throughout my life I have avoided what felt like privileged spaces reserved for tolerable blacks. I really don't have an academic articulation or even a position about affirmative action. But, I can tell you what the application of affirmative action feels like on my body. It feels like privilege and maybe in my case it is. I know that without affirmative action initiatives I wouldn't have any access to these spaces, but there is something about my family, friends, and in particular my sister not having access in the same way that makes it feel like privilege. I never understood why I could go to school and receive one kind of aid and she couldn't get any.
My sister and I are 11 months apart. We were raised like twins, I don't know how old we were when my grandmother stopped dressing us alike. Because of that, the differences between us were very very apparant. Until the end of graduate school, with my fellowship which is for underrepresented populations and allegedly not race based, I never took money allocated for black or brown peoples. The way I understand this choice not to take racialized money is that I feel that, in comparison to other black people in America, I have had more access and privilege through my white family. I was raised and nurtured in the dominant codes of this society that are mandatory for mobility and access. I feel like that money and those spaces were reserved for particular experiences that I have not had.
I had a classmate in graduate school who had the same fellowship as I did. She finished her dissertation yesterday! I am so very proud of her!!!! Go Shay!!!!! She actually received her fellowship first. In a conversation, in which she was trying to get me to fight for a fellowship of my own, she revealed to me that her underrepresentation stemmed from her native americanness. I also, allegedly, have a maternal grandmother who was a south west native american who resided on a reservation. My classmate was taking me to task for not using my native americanness to get funding. I refused. I refused because, like my blackness, I felt like I had not had a lived experience that qualified as "native american". I find this a responsible behavior around racialized initiatives. I get a lot of criticism from my feminist and critical race cohort because I keep suggesting that we, the academics, really need to pay attention to our privilege. The conversation goes something like - we are privilieged just by virtue of being in the academy. To which they respond - we are oppressed people of color. Period. I think there is a middle ground, imagine that - I see a middle ground - where we move between those oppressed and privilege spaces. Maybe that will be my next dissertation. Maybe one dissertation will be enough.
I don't know if this is related to my mixed raceness or not. I have no other me to compare the possibilties to. I do know that my socio-racial location is part of me, but not all of me. I will honor that distinction, and live that distinction, for the rest of my life.
So my organizational skills really stink! I keep swearing that I will blog daily, and I don't. An interesting result of my self-examination has produced two posibilities. First, at the beginning of my academic pursuits a particularly evil and jealous little woman told me that she "didn't care how smart" I was. She declared, "You're an organizational disaster". While that accusation is wholly untrue, there are moments. Second, because I have dedicated this blog to mixed race, it is really not part of my every day in a blogable way. So when life takes over, mothering, marriage, performing and exhaustion; blogging falls by the wayside. I have decided today, that is not a bad thing.
So... I am not new to conversations about wholeness and identity. I get that my race is not my whole identity. But I will say that because my socio-racial location, scholarship, and my job are all wrapped up in race and critical race theory; race often feels central to my identity. I don't think that it is, which is really really interesting to me and a little bit of a relief. When I interviewed from my new job, one of the things I asked the folks in the interview was whether they were hiring me because they thought I had something extraordinary to contribute to the institution or because they have always had a black person in the positon. It was really important to me that I was being hired for me and what I was bringing to the table not because I was black. I am more than a demographic. I am more than a particular race or gender. I am an amazing person.
This is not a new position for me. When I was a young girl, elementary school aged, I tried out for cheerleading with my catholic youth organization team. I made it. On the way out of the gym, elated, I overheard a mother say something like "she only made it because she is black". I was the only black child there so there was no mistaking who she was talking about. I was crushed. Here is the downside to transracial adoptions without cultural support; I had noone to process this moment with. I was ashamed and embarrased and I didn't tell my mother; I dropped off the team instead. I remember an overwhelming sense that I didn't want to be on the team just because I was black and they had to take me. I didn't understand affirmative action. I understood discrimination. I understood being a token. I understood not being seen.
Throughout my life I have avoided what felt like privileged spaces reserved for tolerable blacks. I really don't have an academic articulation or even a position about affirmative action. But, I can tell you what the application of affirmative action feels like on my body. It feels like privilege and maybe in my case it is. I know that without affirmative action initiatives I wouldn't have any access to these spaces, but there is something about my family, friends, and in particular my sister not having access in the same way that makes it feel like privilege. I never understood why I could go to school and receive one kind of aid and she couldn't get any.
My sister and I are 11 months apart. We were raised like twins, I don't know how old we were when my grandmother stopped dressing us alike. Because of that, the differences between us were very very apparant. Until the end of graduate school, with my fellowship which is for underrepresented populations and allegedly not race based, I never took money allocated for black or brown peoples. The way I understand this choice not to take racialized money is that I feel that, in comparison to other black people in America, I have had more access and privilege through my white family. I was raised and nurtured in the dominant codes of this society that are mandatory for mobility and access. I feel like that money and those spaces were reserved for particular experiences that I have not had.
I had a classmate in graduate school who had the same fellowship as I did. She finished her dissertation yesterday! I am so very proud of her!!!! Go Shay!!!!! She actually received her fellowship first. In a conversation, in which she was trying to get me to fight for a fellowship of my own, she revealed to me that her underrepresentation stemmed from her native americanness. I also, allegedly, have a maternal grandmother who was a south west native american who resided on a reservation. My classmate was taking me to task for not using my native americanness to get funding. I refused. I refused because, like my blackness, I felt like I had not had a lived experience that qualified as "native american". I find this a responsible behavior around racialized initiatives. I get a lot of criticism from my feminist and critical race cohort because I keep suggesting that we, the academics, really need to pay attention to our privilege. The conversation goes something like - we are privilieged just by virtue of being in the academy. To which they respond - we are oppressed people of color. Period. I think there is a middle ground, imagine that - I see a middle ground - where we move between those oppressed and privilege spaces. Maybe that will be my next dissertation. Maybe one dissertation will be enough.
I don't know if this is related to my mixed raceness or not. I have no other me to compare the possibilties to. I do know that my socio-racial location is part of me, but not all of me. I will honor that distinction, and live that distinction, for the rest of my life.
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