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Date Machine: Have you ever been experienced?

Posted by airheadgenius

 This is not an ode to Jimi Hendrix though - it's a follow on from some issued raised by fishnets...

I grew up in a predomantly white town (and it remains so) then spent 6 years in Leicester and London in neighborhoods where I was the minority - the former city had a majority of Indian and Pakistani and the latter, predominantly West Indian. I've lived for the last 6 years in a black neighborhood, although of course gentrification is changing that. My perspective has shifted dramatically through the years, although it happened by degrees, due to living amongst people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, being in a number of mixed race relationships and living as an immigrant, but it's been changed most of all by my experience of parenting mixed race kids and seeing people's reactions to them.

I wrote on my old blog about people making conscious choices about who they will and won't date based on ethnicity, and I might repost it if this thread goes anywhere. A man named Taldarhan made a pertinent point back then about white people dismissing black opinions in discussions of racism. Ironically, his point of view caused quite a stir. There are plenty of people proud to be racist and they can be found in amongst any ethnicity, but it seems that the most discomfort from the topic is experienced by white liberals. Many white liberals feel uncomfortable engaging in the discussion because they feel they are not racist, but very often the biggest evidence of deep rooted racism comes out of the mouths of white liberals. Those comments tend to be subtle, but they expose a deep seated mistrust of "the other".

I dated a Belizian man for a while and we would have debates about social politics all the time. He would describe an experience and I would parallel it with my experience of prejudice as a woman. This drove him crazy. After a lot of arguments about it, I was able to identify a couple things--

First, I believed that I was expressing empathy and that my experience was similar, if not so far reaching, but I was in fact undermining his experience.

Second, that I felt somehow blamed because my people had wronged his people.

The more enmeshed I am with this subject due to my own experience of mixed race relationships, my extended family of black and white people and my mixed race children, the more I have learned to listen. To listen to someones experience. That's all. I can't negate it and I am not responsible for it - there's nothing worse than a self-hating white liberal. But, I have a responsibility to that person to hear them and try and be cognizant of their experience going forward.

I have heard many white people say "I don't see color". And, whilst I understand the point they are trying to make, I find it to be disingenuous. You *should* see color because it shapes a person's experience. Maybe in another few hundred years, there will be a level playing field and at that point, not seeing color will be an option. But for now, it isn't.

Very often, if I speak of racism with another white person, I hear "well, they are racist too" as if this is justification for prejudice.
And yes, *they* are. Where I used to live in Brixton, London, the biggest source of racial tension was between Africans and West Indians. I am the "fucking white bitch" and the cracker at least once a week and just a few weeks back, my son and I got attacked by a child. People are uncomfortable with those different from them and prejudice flows in all directions. It is equally disingenuous of people of color to claim that white people don't experience prejudice, because some of us experience it on a very regular basis. (Interestingly, I was never called names living in Brixton)

One major difference between the black experience and white experience is that, for example, if a white person gets heat in Bed Stuy, they can move to Westchester. If they can't stand the heat, in other words, they can get out of the kitchen. But not everyone gets that option. I don't have that option because I am responsible to my children and would not expect them to live in a place where noone looks like them. (In truth, I'd move them to Fort Greene if I could afford it since being mixed race there is practically a requirement)

I am nervous about tomorrow. Nervous that too many white liberals won't be able to follow through on the day. Nervous about my friend's black father that won't vote for a black man and my Guatemalan friend's father who won't vote for a black man either. I am nervous about raising my mixed race sons in a country that fails to acknowledge that such a thing even exists... the list goes on.

So, nope, I don't see anyone being color blind. Not here.

 

A psychologist friend of mine thinks that mixed-race kids are the way forward. They give rise to a blending of experience that doesn't seem to happen any other way. To quote Bob Marley "I don't have prejudice against meself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white."    I am with him right up until the God bit...

 

 

 

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Posted Nov 03 2008, 11:30 AM
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Comments

recycledbrooklyn said:

There's nothing I can add to what you've already said.  There's nothing I can take exception to.  My own experience is too limited to disagree with anything you've said but my observations tell me you're spot on.  

I've witnessed my sons getting deferential treatment in so many circumstances, but especially in public schools, and from teachers and administrators and parents of all colors and backgrounds.  Raising children here has been a real eye-opener.  Then working in the schools and organizing educational programs took it farther... and then doing community service jobs and so on.  There have been long periods where I've felt I live in the Bizarro World.

With regard to the elections tomorrow--I'd be thrilled to see the current administration ousted, just on principle.  Yet I'm not all that hopeful that we're in for any major changes.  I close my eyes and listen to Barack Obama and hear just another Democrat toeing the party line.  I remain hopeful for more.  Now while I never thought that I'd never live to see a black president in my lifetime, and it's certainly not insignificant by a long shot, I'm not going to sit back and smugly proclaim how far we've come as a nation and a world.  Not yet.  It would be more significant to me if equal opportunity truly existed at ever level of the spectrum.  It doesn't.  It's not there.  We are a white and black and brown and yellow and male and female and gay and straight, and us and them world.  We are not one people.  

And I don't want to sit and listen to a bunch of giddy white liberals celebrating the mythology that we are and that everything is getting better.  

November 3, 2008 6:54 PM

acamil said:

worrying we should be, and hopeful as well, its not about color, its about ideas and good ideas ALWAYS wins. i think this country is ready to look at ideas (i hope). if not its time to move bc it will suck like it never sucked before.

November 3, 2008 8:20 PM

agentgary said:

I personally find the idea of dating a black person abhorrent. I am white, and I freely admit that I am racist. I have dated men and women, mostly white, but also Venezuelan, Japanese, Persian, and Native American. I do not consider myself close minded. There is just something in American black culture that repulses me. I have black acquaintances, with whom I am able to be polite, but I have never felt even the smallest shred of attraction for a black person. Perhaps it is, as in the Marley quote, an issue comparable to that of caste. I make no excuses. I am who I am. I guess I just wanted to say my piece.

November 3, 2008 10:58 PM

voneberhorst said:

Greetings from Sesame Street.  South of Sesame Street to be exact, as Elmo usually hangs out at the Hollywood & Highland complex.

On a side note the BBC tells me Barack Obama has won 338 electoral votes to McCain's 155.  Progress by any definition? I like to think so.

Miss AHG, it was very kind of you to recall your personal story and to relate it to the topic at hand.  I am taken aback reading your descriptions of life in New York, as my own memories of the area are a bit different.  

I am hesitant to relate some of my own personal history, not wanting to engage in a tiresome excercise of 'ticking the box' or playing a a game of 'more integrated than thou'

Having said that, I will elaborate on an earlier disclaimer.  Some years back when I took to looking for a wife, I set four criteria: that she be smart, strong, loving and lovely.  All else were details of no consequence.  The former Mrs Von Eberhorst possessed those qualities in abundance, having had a proper English education.  She also happened to be black.

I feel it is tremendous progress to have married her and not been subject to the miscegenation laws of the recent past, to have very different families embrace each other with enthusiasm, and to live in a neighborhood sufficiently diverse as to preclude any negative consequences whatsoever. If there were I would have heard about them, and promptly.

Interracial children are very common here, and over one-third of those I work with have interracial relationships or marriages.  

Color blind?  Certainly.  It is perhaps not a coincidence that I no longer live in the south, the east coast or the midwest.  

I am sure you know the reason why.

November 5, 2008 2:01 AM

askmeanything said:

I voted for Obama and I'm thrilled he one but I still don't get why the media refers to him as African-American.  I'm not blind, I get that his skin tone is brown, but that doesn't make him African-American.

He was born to an African national who returned to Africa and raised by a white woman and (later) an Indonesian stepfather.    He is mixed race, true, but he does not have the experience of growing up in a black community or experiencing Africa-American culture.

Same thing with Tiger Woods and Hollywood types like Alicia Keys (although at least she grew up in the "hood").  

It seems like an insult to the diverse backgrounds of people and to the tolerance for interracial relationships to say that having a drop of black blood makes you black.  Isn't that the same argument used by slaveholders who got their slaves pregnant to justify enslaving their own biological children?

November 5, 2008 10:35 AM

recycledbrooklyn said:

Askme--Barack Obama is an African American by definition.  It's really that simple.  That he didn't grow up in "the hood" doesn't change that.  That he may or may not have had a few more advantages than some people doesn't change that.  What remains is that his skin is brown and he will always be considered "the other" because of that.  

How "black" does he have to be to satisfy your definition?  How disadvantaged does he have to be?  

November 5, 2008 6:34 PM

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