Saturday, October 22, 2005
Race...
aaaA few blogs I frequent are currently discussing the topic of race. This has me just overflowing with many thoughts and feelings that I have been holding in for too long.
Being a white woman who's life had been just filled with white privilege has forced me to look inside myself and acknowledge just how extreme this issue really is and how deeply these feelings are ingrained.
Prior to meeting my partner(7yrs ago this Dec.) my experience with AA's was always very superficial. I grew up with my father in the military and there were always atleast 1-2 black children in my classroom at school(insert eye roll here) In highschool I organized a rap group called: Coalition to stop cultural diversity and racism in schools. In college I shared a dorm with 200women, I was one of 3 white girls in the entire dorm, a handful of Asian and another handful of Hispanic, the vast majority were AA. Living with an AA roommate, and a dorm full of women of color made me incredibly defensive. I was fighting and fighting to prove that I wasn't the racist white girl who's life was just so full of privilege based solely on the color of my skin. I cried myself to sleep many nights, I wasn't racist, I wasn't how could they say that about ME??? HOW??? Look at all the good I did in highschool, I never saw "color" I only saw people, blah blah blah. Shortly after this I met Shana. We became fast internet loves. We had yet to share photos with one another, wed spent hours(sometimes all night talking on the phone) After sometime she sent me a photo, a photo of her with a group of college friends. I naturally looked for the "white" girl in the photo and assumed that must be her. Then came the second file, a picture of herself with a white guy. HOLD ON A MINUTE!!! Was she a GUY? Nope. So let me go back to the first picture...Oh wait look, this BLACK girl was in both photos. That must be her. I was shocked and scared and confused and overwhelmed, was this really happening? Could I talk to her about this? No no I must just pretend I an unphased and go on. So I did. As things became more serious we began having more conversations about race, I was still completely unaware of the real issues surrounding this well erm "issue" and I was still incredibly defensive. As we moved forward we began spending more time together IRL(in real life) I for the first time in my life was seeing and hearing things that while were always there I had managed to deny existed. Were we turning heads because we were two women? No that couldn't be I walked places with other women everyday. Did that women really just lock her car door as we crossed the street? Did we really just watch 2other white couples get seated ahead of us at this restaurant? Did we really just receive our check WITH our meal? I also began to notice that while in my white as wonder bread town Shana was almost ALWAYS the only black person in the store, restaurant, on the bus etc. Me: We have to get away from this, we need to try and find more black lesbians to spend time with. WELL NOW HOLD ON JUST ONE SECOND!!! WAS this REALLY happening????? The amnt of discrimination we endured from the AA gay and lesbian community was more than I could fathom. The glares the stares, the comments....You could never satisfy your BLACK woman, Shana was now a sell out, a disgrace to her race, I could never love her or make love to her as another black woman could. It was vile and hard, was this really happening, where could we turn? It forced us both to look within ourselves and begin to admit to eachother how deeply these issues affected us, and how differently we were equipped to deal with it. We noticed that white ppl were very PC, and black ppl were very quick to admit how uncomfortable it made them. My family, just "took her under wing" and if they were uncomfortable with the fact that she was black it certainly was NOT talked about.
Her family lashed out. Her mother asked if that white girl was "funny too" and told Shana that she needed to keep "black" friends.
I was called such things as the white devil. Shana (and I) was told that my coming over to Shana's fathers house and cleaning for him(hes elderly and Shana mom had passed away by this point)was putting her whole family at risk, did she not realize that I could just say he'd rapped me and the whole family would lose everything and her father go to jail?
We spent the next 3years essentially alone. We didn't really have friends, but had eachother. Mitchell(Olivias godfather, who happens to be AA) was really our only friend to speak of. We looked high and low to find a community where we would be accepted. We began visiting various (gay friendly) churches, Id sit in and look around and 9.9-10times again Shana was the only black person in the room-building. Well we certainly weren't welcome at the "black churches" and while we were the only AAfamily in the church atleast the white folk were "polite" to us.
As time went on we began talking about having a family. Using a black donor (to us) was the only option(as I was going to carry). We selected and donor and stood in line to get on the ttc roller coaster. As we proceeded I began having a LOT of anxiety about the situation. I suddenly became VERY VERY VERY aware of my "white privilege" I feared I would be looked down on, be seen as one of "those" girls who hava black baby daddy. Would ppl even believe this was "my" child? Would ppl assume I was just babysitting? Would my baby look anything like me? Would my child hate me, and grow up telling me I wont for a day understand what its like to be them? Would our children wish I stayed in the background and Shana attend sporting events etc? What would my family say/think? would Olivia be as loved as my cousins/siblings children? Would Shana's family accept a child I birthed? The day we were inseminated with Olivia I had a (funny now) dream(seen Look who's Talking???) the begining scene where the sperm is swimming through the tubes etc and all the "white" guys were talking laughing/racing to get to the egg. Well imagine that only now all the sperm were big black guys. I woke up drenched in sweat and crying my eyes out. I WAS AFRAID OF BLACK MEN!!!! WHY?!?!??!?! What if I had a boy? How could I even fool myself into thinking I would be capable of raising a black MAN in our society????? A black MAN? His sperm were inside me, what had I done? Could I do this? How can I think even for a second that I capable of raising a black child? I am still so naive and SO WHITE. Shana was able to talk me down, my fears were still very real, I however felt that acknowledging them and getting them out-there gave me the space to begin working through this.
As my pregnancy went on I began falling more and more in love with my baby. Her race seemed of such little importance at this point, I just loved her and I didn't give a RIP what anyone was going to "think"
Then she was born, she was perfect, and I had never been so in love. It didn't take long for me to be snapped back to the reality of the situation. Countless times Id be in line at a grocery store and have women lean OVER ME looking past my child to oogle the bald blued eyed baby behind me. Seemed that if ppl were uncomfortable they just pretended she didn't exist. While I realize having a baby to get the "OMG she's soooooooooooo cute attention" is not the point it still STINGS like you wouldn't believe that as a young baby not one person EVER said that to me, not once. But amazingly it was OK! I was SO PROUD to be this gorgeous babies mom, that I realized worrying about the reaction Id receive for society was just (at that point) a waste of my time.
As she got a little older(read darker) I began getting a LOT of attention from the black community. Questions shouted across the produce dept. : That babies daddy black??? Ohhhhhhh she's gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous! Now wait a minute I did NOT expect this...Wasn't it the black community that so obviously opposed our relationship to begin with? Now why this? If I go to say the grocery store alone, I am basically unnoticed by say the black woman waking down the aisle where as the white woman may stop me and ask me if I've ever tried this brand of xyz. I go with Olivia I have a 5minute conversation with the black woman walking down the aisle and the white woman keeps her eyes on her task and I go unnoticed. Now yes I am obviously generalizing here...
If say a white woman is to comment on my child I hear: Oh look at her hair, how CUTE(and shell just HAVE to touch it) If say its a black man or woman commenting on her I hear: She is just GORGEOUS!
If another white woman is to comment she might say: Oh she must look just like her daddy.
Black woman would say: She really favors you, isn't she just the cutest thing.
Its all just SO MUCH. And SO SO SO hard to translate here.
Ok Im drained: To be continued.....
5 comments:
I have no clue, nor will I ever, what kind of challenges face you.
However, I would never touch another kid's hair in the grocery store. That's creepy.
When Jean's cousin Jericho was born, his mom (unmarried... already a BIG sin in this devout Catholic family) didn't bother to tell anyone (including her parents, whom she was living with) that his father was black. It was a surprise to everyone. Including her racist (not everyone can escape their upbringing) father. Eventually, they got over it. When Sarah was born a few years later, it was so unnoticed. I know that it bothers you for it *not* to be noticed, and I don't understand why. I would NEVER refer to Jericho and Sarah as our black/biracial relatives. And I would never treat them any different that their 40 some blonde/blue eyed cousins. Neither would anyone else in the family (and grandpa loved them too. He just needed time).
When I see a black child with a white mother, I do not assume that the child is adopted, or that the mom is the babysitter, or anything like that. Why would I? Yes maybe I am naive but I don't care what color a child's skin is.
I remember being in first grade and there was a girl named Keisha (sp?) in my class. She was black. Her mom came to get her one day. Her mom was WHITE. I did NOT understand that AT ALL. I asked my dad about it, and he told me point blank that if one parent is black and one is white, the child is black. He also told me that that doesn't make that kid any better or worse than anyone else and I should treat her just like any other friend. Maybe he oversimplified it (I was six) but that was my first exposure to biracial children.
In my classes, I've seen many biracial kids from many different situations. Some have one parent of each, some are adopted, etc. But I don't treat them any differently. I don't treat people like black people or white people. Perhaps you find it difficult to believe that there is a white person in society that doesn't care, but it's true. And I don't know how you can call me on 'white privilege' (whatever the hell that is) for feeling this way either.
I'm sorry that people treat you, and Shana, and especially Olivia, different than any other person on the street. It's not right. You do not deserve more or less than anyone. No one does. Olivia does not deserve to be treated like a black child, or a white child, or even a biracial child. I certainly wouldn't, if I knew her.
I am having a hard time putting all this into words in my VERY long comment... so maybe I should just stop. I don't care how you do Olivia's hair either. I still think BOTH of you are great moms, and I wish that I could do half the things with Charlie that you do with and for Olivia.
Thanks for the comments!
(Estelle) I had to laugh at the part about assuming a child was adopted. That's one comment I have received numerous times that I didn't include in my post. It had to be one of my favorites(not that this is something to laugh about but I am human and really a sense of humor is sometimes my only reprieve) I had a woman tell me my daughter was gorgeous and asked me what COUNTRY I adopted her from! HA!
Renee, this was such a powerful post. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. I sometimes feel like a moral coward in respect to race. I grew up in a fairly "integrated" area, i.e., there were the white neighborhoods and the black neighborhoods and we all went to school together but didn't really live together. I had black friends as well as white friends and as a young child I don't remember thinking anything about it. I remember in junior high and high school when it did start to become an issue, when the kids who used to be able to easily be friends began to self-segregate. And I did become self-conscious about being with my "black" friends, for the first time being consciously aware of what I said and how I said it. I hate that that happened.
What I really hate though, is that it's only with african americans that I felt this way. I still felt that comfortable with my asian or hispanic friends in a way I don't think I ever felt with my black friends again. I dated pretty indiscrimately in terms of race, except that I never really felt attracted to boys who were black (when I was still toeing the hetero line when I was a teen) or later women. I did date one woman who was biracial, but that was about it. I hate that I felt/feel this way. I could always say, hey it's just that I'm not attracted to black women the way I'm not attracted to extremely butch women, but I know it's not really the same.
Even when it comes to children, I'm very open to adoption, but if I have to be perfectly honest, if I were to adopt intraracially, I'd be far more comfortable adopting an asian child than an african american child. And I consider myself to be an extremely open person, extremely liberal, but I guess so much of this is so deep that it takes alot to overcome. I have the utmost respect for you for dealing with this and looking it in the face.
This is Babs, I decided to pop on over and check up on you the way you did on me.
This is a really powerful entry. I read every word. Where I grew up was FAR from intolerant in any way, but we literally had maybe 3 african american people in a population of thousands. I remember thinking that seeing a black person was so out of the ordinary to me, and I found everything about another race from hair to skin to be so stunningly beautiful, that I was afraid this meant I was somehow racist. I wondered this for a long, long, LONG time.
My partner and I are an interracial couple (white & af/american), with a child due this summer. My partner--who is white--is expecting and like you and your s.o., we chose a donor with racial characteristics similar to my own. Sometimes I wonder if my partner will face alot of the same issues that you do. Its certainly given me food for thought.
Thanx for the post.
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