Who is what?

It's going to be a busy weekend, with not much writing time, so I'm offering the following piece I composed and performed for a workshop production at the University of Illinois in October 2006. If the subject interests you, I recommend a new book by an old friend. You can read about it and order it at http://www.storiesofracialhealing.com/. 

Whatever else we can say about racism and race relations in the U.S., outside of all the confusions and conclusions and the psychic contusions that the subject causes, leaving aside the causes espoused by various groups and factions, and the questions of what is fiction and what is fact, beyond all that at least one thing is clear and self-evident – that we know who is who, me and you, who is White and who is Black.

Don’t we?

I say I am White. My six year old grandson, looking at me without the aid of bone-deep knowledge of our skewed history, says I am peach. Each of us on this stage tonight is a different color, a different shade on the spectrum from light to dark, from peach to brown, yet we choose to simplify and amplify and defy reality by calling ourselves, merely, Black and White.

If only it were that easy.

A neighbor, a woman of color – in her case a mellow, slightly reddish brown – and a woman whose sympathetic and empathetic brown face attracts trust and confidence – this woman once told me that she often meets others, clerks in stores, for example, men and women with light complexions, who suddenly lean in to her and tell in her low voices, in careful whispers, after looking around to make sure they can’t be overheard, that actually, really they are Black, but no one else here knows that.

“It’s amazing,” my friend says, “how many people are passing.”

“Really?” I say, amazed. “I’ve never met one.”

Not one of the smartest statements I’ve made in my life.

But what do these people mean when they call themselves Black? They don’t mean skin color. Theirs doesn’t qualify. They must mean something else, or maybe a lot of somethings else, a shared history, a group membership, a heritage, an assumed set of characteristics? All that and more seems to be inherent in the simple color name, Black.

White, on the other hand, means what? When I hear that designation, do I hear a shared history, a group membership, a heritage, an assumed set of characteristics? No. All I hear is Not Black. And that only if Black is nearby, to be compared against.

I met a young man on a bus one day. We started talking, about who lived where, who worked at what, that kind of thing. He was a fair-skinned man, with straight brown hair, unremarkable features, just an ordinary, everyday sort of White guy look. Then he mentioned – and I don’t remember why, it was just a comment that fit in to the conversational topic of the moment – he mentioned, in a casual way, that one of his parents was White and one was Black. In the twinkling of an eye, faster than it took Cinderella’s coach too turn back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, that man changed right before my eyes. He became Black. Just like that.

Not one of the proudest moments of my life.

What do my eyes see? What my grandson’s eyes see, simply skin color? No, I see categories called Black and White regardless of the colors that are actually in front of me. I see a light-skinned friend of African ancestry as Black, and a dark-skinned friend with Mediterranean genes as White, because I place significance on those designations. Significances that I’ve learned through growing up in a society shaped and defined by those man-made, self-serving, economically useful significances.

A Chinese girl came to the university department where I work, looking for Dr. Anderson. We had three Dr. Anderson’s on our faculty, which one did she want? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t know his first name. His. OK, that narrowed it down to two. Did she know what he looked like. He’s tall, she said. No help there. Finally after a little more prodding, she came up with a descriptive characteristic that worked. He’s very dark, she said, his skin, very dark. Aha, mystery solved. She didn’t want any of our Dr. Andersons at all, she wanted the one who is head of another department in our college. The Black Dr. Anderson. I directed her to that office, one of hundreds of students I’ve seen and served, but one I’ll never forget. Because she saw the same dark skin I saw, but she didn’t see the same significance of that color, so his skin tone was way down on her list of identifying characteristics.

And what of my identifying characteristic, and that of most of my fellow Americans? The characteristic that defines us, the one that limits us and shames us and enslaves us, is our persistent, pervasive, unshakeable insistence on seeing everyone in terms of the meaningless, erroneous, and simply untrue categories we call Black and White.

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