My family isn’t racist, exactly; we’ve got a pretty diverse racial background. My father’s father is half Cherokee, my father’s mother is Mexican. On my mother’s side, they’re pretty white-bread, but my uncle married a Vietnamese woman, so we’ve got a whole branch of Asian descent. I remember when I was very young, and unthinkingly used the “N-word,” my mother firmly corrected me.
There are, however, two places where what she said didn’t match with her behavior, and I notice its effect in my own worldview.
First, although my mom verbally expresses racial views that are firmly in the progressive mainstream, neither she nor anyone in my family actually has any black friends. She certainly meant well in what she tried to teach me, but there were never any African-Americans around, whether it was from her job, or my school (the Pacific Northwest is fairly white, and the smaller town I grew up in is more so), or her social circle (she’s a square dancer; if there’s a whiter activity I don’t know what it is). It’s the old “do as I say, not as I do” thing; she was saying the right words, but wasn’t fully backing them up.
Second, she could be casually patronizing about other minorities. Back when I was in my early teens, she spent a fair amount of time going clubbing, i.e. drinking and dancing and socializing and basically trying to have a “normal” life after she divorced my father. I have a clear memory of one conversation, where she was talking about how much fun she was having; she described going to one place (Lee’s, now long closed), sitting in a corner booth, and watching “the gay guys” kissing each other. I was thrown for a loop: The way she talked, it was like she was going to the zoo or something. I called her on it, too, because it rubbed me wrong. Being a dumb kid, I probably wasn’t very clear; I couldn’t express why her description seemed off to me. She got defensive, and I dropped it, and that was the end of it. The topic has never come up again.
Put these two together, and you get a subtle “they” and “them” attitude that subconsciously undercut all the well-meaning lessons she had attempted to impart. Although on the surface she was trying to teach me what she knew was right, there was still, deep down, a separatist lifestyle that I picked up on. When I moved to Seattle, I noticed some race-based judgements creeping into my own world, primarily because my upbringing had never given me any alternatives, and I had to work really hard to identify them and root them out. Even now, if I’m walking downtown late at night, and a couple of young black urban-outfitted guys turn the corner a ways off and come walking toward me, I still get an instantaneous flash of “uh-oh, them” before I’m able to grab a hold of the feeling and toss it away. It embarrasses me to admit it, as much to myself as on the board, but I have to be totally honest if I want any hope of positive evolution.
I knew I had made progress when someone a couple of years ago challenged me on this, and asked me if I had any minority friends. I blinked, and said, in all honesty, “I don’t know.” After I thought about it, I recalled that a good friend in my college graduating class, with whom I still exchange e-mail occasionally (he’s moved away from Seattle), is black, and my best friend in Seattle, my regular moviegoing companion, is a black Puerto Rican. I felt justifiably pleased with myself at not having remembered them as being black right away, because it meant I’d made progress from the unfortunate place where I had started. Then I remembered that I myself am a quarter Hispanic and an eighth Cherokee, and I realized I should have answered, “Yeah, I know a minority – me.” Then I felt stupid for getting trapped into a stupid line of conversation, and not realizing it.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and although I would hardly claim to be perfect, I do know this – When I get to raise kids of my own, the lesson will be very simple: "There is no them."
but I married a Jew.