Dear White Guy

Dear white guy,

I know you think it is funny when you make jokes about serious things. By serious I mean anything unhappy that doesn’t, in your view, affect you directly.

Things like rape, racism, foreign countries, urban poor, are best dealt with by saying something negative and pithy. Negative because if you say everything is stupid then you aren’t being racist. Because you hate all stupidity equally. There is a lot of stupidity out there, everywhere really, and you hate it all.

I get it. You are right, a lot of things are not as they should be and a lot of those things, we created. I understand you are a hard working guy who probably has kids that whine and the last thing you need is adults who do the same. You wish those grownups would heed the advice you give your own, “shut up and get back to work.”

I get it. I get it and please understand I mean this sincerely-

You are jack-ass.

I do not normally name call and that word is not one I ever say out loud, but I thought it the best word to most concisely and accurately communicate to you, in words that you appreciate, how you are acting.

First, let me say that condemning everything accomplishes nothing. No. That isn’t true. It accomplishes the annoyance of all who come within earshot of your wisdom. Even worse, and more troubling is that such an attitude makes you completely tone deaf to issues that are in fact important. To you.

Let me illustrate with a story.

When my oldest kid was four she whined a lot. Every night at bed time we had argument and tantrums. Every meal was a negotiation. Every morning getting dressed was a display of dramatic energy, noise, anger, and trouble. It was more than annoying and my wife and I did our best to not only resist giving into ridiculous demands but squash their genesis.

On one evening my child launched into a screaming fit because the world had conspired against her and the clock had actually struck 8:00. Bed time. What injustice! She kicked, screamed, complained, and I ignored it all. I sent her to bed. She got back up asking for water. I sent her to bed. She yelled down the stairs that she needed a night light. I responded, “go to bed.”

“I feel sick.”

“Go to bed.”

“I need medicine.”

“Go to bed.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Go to bed.”

She was persistent and she was loud. She began really holding onto this I can’t breathe thing, but I ignored it as she was yelling I can’t breathe in between blood curdling screams. Around midnight, because my softy of a wife made me, I took little miss I can’t breathe to the emergency room. The nurse at the desk didn’t ask a single question, just looked at the child and rushed us to the back room.

We spent three days in the hospital trying to get my daughters newly diagnosed asthma under control. We now travel with an inhaler and have to use it regularly.

Sitting next to that little girl for three days was humbling. The kid spent hours telling me she couldn’t breathe and I not only ignored it but resented it. I was quite the jack-ass.

The whole time my daughter was yelling things I assumed she was making things up. I ignored her. I bet if she would have yelled, “Dad, your laptop is in my bed,” I would have rushed upstairs just to make sure it wasn’t. If she would have screamed, “Wow I found a 100 dollar bill,” I would have rushed upstairs to reclaim it. Because to me and my life money and laptops matter. Going to bed at 8 and one little glass of water are silly.

Racism isn’t silly. Neither is rape or poverty. Many of you can go a whole lifetime without visiting the proverbial ER on these things because you aren’t black, a woman, or poor. Maybe you have never seen someone raped, surely never done it, never said the N word, and you work hard for the little money you get, so of course those things aren’t as big a problem as those whiny four year olds say they are.

How arrogant and selfish is it to assume that you know best in other people’s lives? How, when others are explaining, or screaming, about their experience, do you come to the conclusion that you know the truth about them better than they do? Why when someone is speaking or explaining about hard truths, would you mock and belittle?

Stop it.

Listen.

Stopping and listening is harder than ignoring and mocking. Because ignoring and mocking is stupid. The stupid thing is always easiest.

Mummers

It was the fourth of July our first year in Philadelphia. We went downtown to watch the parade and saw the strangest thing, a band of men wearing sequins from head to toe, carrying parasols, and playing instruments. The marched while playing saxophones, banjos, and even upright bases. I had never seen such a thing, and then a few floats later, there was another band just like the other. What was this madness?

“Oh those are mummers,” we were told . “What exactly are mummers?” we asked. “Ummm. Well, they are just, well THOSE are mummers. It’s that right there.”

That sort of non-explanation is the norm for mummery. They exist in Philadelphia and not so much anywhere else. There may be some variations in other places, but in Philly they are in every parade, have a long road filled with Mummers club houses, and every New Year ’s Day since 1901, there is the Mummers parade.

We went and watched the Mummers. They are above all else, fun. Watching the Mummers you will see kids, babies even, dancing down Broad Street, hundreds of people not associated with a high school or getting paid playing live instruments, and lots and lots of bearded men is sequined dresses. We loved it.

Our curiosity piqued we took a trip down to 2^nd st. and Washington in South Philly to visit the Mummers Museum. The art deco building housed costumed mannequins from parades past and some explanations for this Philadelphia oddity.

It is thought that the traditions grew out of the British Isles’ mummers plays. There are reports of mocking mummer plays being held in President Washington’s honor while he resided in Philadelphia. In the early 1800’s it was normal to find roving bands of men dressed as clowns causing a ruckus during the holiday season. The tradition was formalized into the parade in 1901, making it America’s oldest continuous folk parade.

I learned these things by reading faded signs on dusty displays in a museum whose heyday appeared to be at least a decade ago. In one corner of the museum I was able to try a costume on. I pulled on a long glittering skirt with feathers around the hem, donned a sparkly vest, and placed a tall multicolored feather crown upon my head. I danced and posed for my wife as she took pictures. Wearing this fine regalia I squinted to read a faded sign off in one corner. As I did I removed my crown and began feeling sick.

The sign explained the origins of the Mummers signature dance or “strut”. The dance is a variation of the cake walk, a dance or strut popularized in black face minstrel shows in the very early 1900s. The Mummer strut is traditionally done to the tune Oh Dem Golden Slippers, a blackface standard. The sign also explained that from day one, till a city order in 1964, the parade was done in black face.

Standing there in sequins and feathers I felt betrayed.

It was in a back corner of the Mummer Museum when I realized that in this very black city, I had never seen a black Mummer. It is possible one exists but I think the academic term for them is “statistically insignificant”.

I have met plenty of Mummers. Since reading that sign I have asked, and listened, to what Mummers say Mummery is all about. I have talked to people who have never read a thing I have written or have a clue to whom I am married, and not once has anything remotely racist been uttered. I hear lots of talk about tradition and fun. I have heard and read about music and family.

I like all of those things.

I have never read anything about black people or hate. It is as if anything racist was scrubbed off along with the black makeup. I have never even heard a mummer bring up the black face past. I am even willing to wager that most all of the Mummers under the age of 25 have no idea of the racist history or know what a minstrel show ever was. So in a very real way to them, and to most everyone, the Mummers are very much just family, tradition, music, and fun.

What a great object lesson about race in America.

The Mummers parade is fantastic, it is also very deeply and firmly sprung from racist roots.

So what is it now?

I am watching the parade now as I write this. I love it. I just saw a brigade perform a skit where a mass of commoners used a giant gold dollar sign to lure a donkey and an elephant into a trap where they could both be struck over the head by the liberty bell. I would encourage anyone and everyone to attend. It is guaranteed fun no matter who you are.

But were I ever invited, or had the opportunity to become a Mummer, I do not think I would do it. I cannot escape the memory of what I felt when all bedecked in glitter I read that faded sign.  Watching the parade today I have not seen a black face, painted or otherwise. The bands and brigades are formed as clubs and other organizations. Many are tied up in family traditions and bloodlines. Black people need not be barred for these sorts of things to stay all white. The white people need not really be racist for a black person to not feel comfortable or welcomed.

So in this way the parade is like most everything.

Does what something used to be, forever taint what it is now?

How do we enjoy today when maybe yesterday isn’t all the way gone yet?

Happy New Year… I’m spending the rest of today enjoying the parade.

Motherhood is Nuts

So why would anyone take the type of job that when the entire industry is honored, it is done so by allowing a person the luxury of not having to do that job?

Such is motherhood.

It is a sorority with the most severe initiation ritual ever devised, so much so that millions have died while pledging, yet a fresh new batch of applicants sign up every day.

If the initiation ritual for admittance to motherhood were replicated as a sort of guaranteed gateway to a million dollars, we would likely have less millionaires than we do now.  It just wouldn't be worth it. Yet not only do people sign up without the promise of a cash prize, but many pay huge sums to get in the club. Medical science has devoted some its best minds to the cause of allowing women the joy of enduring huge amounts of pain for little to no thanks, other than that one day a year when they are honored by being allowed to act like they aren't in the club for a day.

Now parenting is another story. One need not go through this initiation ritual to gain the title of parent. No, instead the intense pain of birthing labor is stretched out over 18 years in the eyes of the law, but in reality will likely last till you finally graduate into the grave.

There are those who join motherhood but decline to continue on to parent, there are those who never gave birth who then elect to parent, and then there are those who do both. Those who do both are insane, illogical, and the world owes them an inexhaustible debt.

I’m glad I hit the mother lottery. Come to think of it. I hit the lottery twice.

Law School, Palm Trees, and Pirate Treasure

Question:

What do you do if you are a slightly heavy ‘tween’, who despite his usefulness in finding hidden pirate treasure and fending off strangely friendly monsters named Sloth, but is constantly ridiculed and called “Chunk” by the likes of Rudy?

Answer:

You go to law school and become lawyer.

The first part happened on a movie set. That last part happened at UCLA.

That’s right, Chunk from the Goonies went to the UCLA School of Law and can now sue the pants off of anyone who clowns his girth. Though word on the street is he no longer matches that childhood nickname.

According to the data about 80% of the people who went to UCLA’s law school are capable of suing people’s pants off so be careful.

Better yet, don’t fight them, join them. There are palm trees, the beach, and at one time George Mastras the writer and creator of Breaking Bad. If you are a little less Hollywood you may appreciate that the former provost of Dartmouth, who then went on to be president of Occidental, was UCLA Law alum. Not too shabby.

I’m sure it is mostly due to Chunk, but the school does boast a top twenty ranking in US News and World Report. It’s lot cheaper thanYale. It snows a lot in New Haven. Just sayin.

I myself have no desire to be a lawyer, but in the event I need one, I know where to look.

 http://lowellmilkeninstitute.law.ucla.edu/

My Privilege

I am having an online “discussion” with some loose acquaintances over whether or not white privilege exists. I of course believe it exists but I fear I am not doing so well convincing the others.

 

I think they think I’m a left wing extremist who has drunk too deeply from the pools of white guilt  and become fully indoctrinated with a terminal case of liberalism. As I said before we are just acquaintances.

I am told that the idea of white privilege is simply an idea pushed forward to perpetuate a victim mentality and entrench a sense of racial division. It is argued that racism as an obstacle for black people is a myth and that the best course, the one supported by God and truth, is that we should all just be one people, work hard, and stop complaining about the past.

Stop complaining about the past. I hear that a lot. “How can we move forward if people refuse to forgive?”

Forgiveness is a hard thing to give; especially when it isn’t asked for.

Not only is it hard to give, it has nothing to do with the discussion. It has nothing to do with white privilege.

White privilege is not about the past, it is about the now. I didn’t learn this by reading it. I did not learn about this in some liberal college. I didn’t even learn about it by the name “privilege”. I learned about it when I was a Mormon missionary.

I learned it when for the first time I lived in a place where all the faces on billboards didn’t look like mine. I learned it when  I walked down the street and everyone would stop and stare at me. I learned it when people I had never met, including police officers, would stop me and ask what a white boy was doing in this neighborhood. I had my motives questioned at every turn. I couldn’t have one single solitary conversation without first addressing and justifying my race. After two months of this I was deeply and fundamentally worn out. I was tired after two lousy months. After two years I was callous.

There was more to it than that, and that was only the first half of my nonacademic education.

More than two years after those two years, I watched as my black wife experienced the very white world of Salt Lake City.

None of the faces on billboards looked like her. As she walked down the street people would stop and stare at her. People she had never met would always lead by asking where she was from and wanting to know how a black girl ended up in Utah. She couldn’t get anywhere with anyone without first explaining or justifying her race. People asked her to repeat herself, not because they didn’t understand what she said, they were just amused by the way she talks. After a couple months she was tired. After two years she wanted out. So we left.

Two more years after that came the real lesson. Two years after we retreated from Utah’s white world we were in South Carolina. I walked from one world to another, white to black and back again, and only occasionally was I questioned. My race sort of disappeared… unless my wife was around.

Her race never went away. She never brought, nor brings, it up. She doesn’t have too. Everyone else brings it up for her. She doesn’t focus on it. She just lives her life. But I bring it up all the time.

Why?

Because when I walk into a restaurant to have lunch with a client or my employer, they simply smile and shake my hand. When I don’t warn these same folks that my wife is black, there is a very tangible elephant in the room with us. They smile at me, then pause at her. The head tilts sideways just a little, confusion passes across their face, and they don’t really say anything for a minute. Once our lunch dates, our fellow church goers, our neighbors, or anyone we meet gains their composure it isn’t on to business as usual but rather the start of the side show. I am never as fascinating or entertaining when I am by myself, but with her in the room there is electricity.

Now make no mistake, she is quite electric, but when I walk into a room with my sisters or any coworker who looks a little more like me; nothing.

She does not complain. She does not act the victim. It is just her life. It is a part of her life that I never have to deal with unless I choose to. She cannot choose. For her it is as permanent as both her American-ness and her black-ness.

My white-ness doesn’t even exist unless I say something about it. Even then most treat it like it is only pretend.

How fair would it be for me to tell my wife that it is all in her head? How fair would it be for me to tell her that our experiences are alike and the same? Do I tell her to forgive and just move on?

Move on from what and go where?

She has to deal with something that I do not. Neither of us are dwelling in the past nor placing any blame. That has nothing to do with our differing experiences. Our parallel realities. This is what my privilege is.

She has to deal with something in life that I do not. I enjoy a privilege in comparison.

Why does this matter? Why is it important for me to acknowledge? Because  she is my wife. If the two of us are to have any sort of relationship, to live in the same house, to work together, we have to understand each other. Acknowledging our truths does not drive a wedge between us.

It is the only thing that can remove the wedge that already exists.

The Head and the Heart

The head and the heart while inhabiting the same body, don’t always seem to be connected. I live in my head. It receives messages from my extremities, wraps them in context, makes sense of them, and charts a course of action. Happy, sad, pleasure, or pain, all filter in, get experienced, logged, and filed away for future reference.

 Day to day, or rather every day, I know racism is real. I know White people as a body murdered, raped, and humiliated Black individuals in an effort to do the same to the Black community. Every day I know this, but rarely do I feel it.

When I can see it, I feel it. When I see it there is a glitch in my head. A message has come in from my eyes but went somewhere before reaching my brain. I felt it before my mind could register it. I know what it is, I know where the mental file folder is in which it will soon be filed. I know the context and the history; I even have several cross-references come to mind. I have all this and it still doesn’t make sense.

 I don’t really understand it. I’m not sure it can be understood, and in that gap left by not fully knowing is left only feeling. I often wish I could feel more, or at least feel more often. The older I get the more I have to fight off the slide towards being cynical and jaded. I know myself. I know that feelings come slow and fear that if not nurtured, they may stop coming at all. I know this is not just me, but most people.

 When it comes to race, we White people don’t normally feel it. Most of us don’t have a mental file folder for it, and when a mental message of racism shows up, it normally gets discarded, or maybe sent to some unreconciled “other” bin. Till we see pictures like this. When we see pictures like this, it is an idea no longer, it’s real. It isn’t “lynching”, it’s a two dead Black men hanging from a light post. It is crowds of White murderers laughing, pointing, and being proud. It’s a little boy beaten to death lying in an open coffin. It is systematic racism come to fruition, it feels evil, it goes right to your gut, then your heart, and if your head isn’t spinning by the time it reaches there… it’s too late for you.

 Some time ago I learned a lesson. It was black history month and I was enthralled by the series of programs on PBS. I was motivated, I was horrified, I was feeling. While I was experiencing this I realized my normal partner on the sofa was gone. My ever TV watching wife was not watching black history month. It was not just once but every night. I asked her why and she brought home a message I think I knew, but needed to hear. She said, “you need those shows to learn and to feel. That’s good. I don’t need those shows, I feel it all the time.”

“If you knew your history, Then you would know where I'm coming from, And you wouldn't have to ask me, who the H... do I think I am.” Robert Nesta Marley in Buffalo Soldier

The turn of the century, the one before the one we just had, is referred to by historians as the “nadir” of Black history. To the rest of us that means it was the worst period for Black people since the end of slavery. This was the period where White people mailed post cards picturing women and children grinning beneath Southern tree's strange fruit. This was the period in time when Black Americans were generations deep in being American but still generations from being legally allowed to be American. Think for a minute how that would feel. In 1900 the principal of Jacksonville Florida's largest public school wrote a poem. The school was the largest because it was for Black kids, Florida had a lot of those, but Florida did not have a lot of schools for “them”. The poem was to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's birthday and a visit to the school by Booker T. Washington. A few years later the poem became a song, and the song soon became an anthem. People over time sang it in churches, on busses, while marching, and in prisons. The song has words of hope, of liberty, of God, and patriotism. Patriotism. A Black song in 1900; patriotic. In or around 1812, America was attacked. From the vantage point of a ship in the harbor, a poet wrote a poem that then became a song, and later an anthem. At that time Black people were 3/5ths a person and 100% percent property. As American's first put hand over heart and sang of bright stars and broad stripes, they did not intend that the song would be for Black people, because “those” weren't Americans. It took more than one hundred years to change that. During those hundred years there was that other song. During those hundred years there were nooses, blowtorches, marches, murders, legislation, military occupation, sit-ins, speeches, there were tears and there was music. “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way, Thou who hast by thy might, led us into the light, Keep us forever on the path, we pray,” were the principals words way back then. Later they were also the words that opened the prayer that followed a Black man raising his hand to be the leader of all Americans. Times change. Times change but human nature does not. Neither does history. These truths, together, next to each other, make up what, and who, we collectively are. Who makes up this “we” is important. Are we a “we” yet? When the White we learns that there is a Black national anthem, how do we react? When the Black we realizes the younger half doesn't know the song, how do we react? When we realize “we” aren't, do we react at all?