Saturday, October 07, 2000

1:35 AM
thinking about racism a lot this week and jumping from The Bluest Eye into Because it is Bitter and Because it is My Heart isn't helping matters.

I am thinking quite a lot about past wrongs and how I was, as Fang put it, so flabberghasted and paralyzed that I did not act at the time. Here are just a few of them from the first time I went to college:

Senior year in Spanish class:

I'd always been an "A" student in Spanish. The grammar showed a logic that English and mathematics never held for me. My teacher was young and enthusiastic. I switched from the older Spanish teacher, who was from Spain and made you learn Vosotros conjugation (and probably that damn 'Barthelona' listhp), to the new, young Spanish teacher, well, because he was a babe (or so I would've thought and said at the time).

I always liked his class and choose him all three years I took Spanish. He was nice enough and could be silly and got embarrassed as hell when someone said something dirty in Espanol. We started each class by singing a song in Spanish, which explains why I had to buy both ABBA Gold and ABBA Oro. "Chiquitita" remains one of my favorite songs. I even find myself thinking on Mondays, "hoy es lunes...lunes queso...todos tienen hambre...vamos a comer!" and often get through Miercoles (Wednesday), before I realize it and stop myself.

One day late in the year, I had a run in of some sort with the star wrestler. I'd never liked him. He tended to talk too loudly, and arrogantly for his abilities (his mouth wrote checks his brain couldn't cash). The previous year I'd had to drop out of AP History when the instructor told me that my writing was unacceptable, while holding up this wrestler as a paragon of prose. Oh, did I mention the AP History teacher just happened to also be the wrestling coach? That's to be expected from such a poor writer as myself.

I can't honestly remember what led up to the incident in Spanish class. I talked to that guy as little as humanly possible. Perhaps I made an error in conjugation or disagreed about how to analyze the annual showing of El Cid or Man of La Mancha. Mr. Half Nelson piped up, loudly enough for me to hear on the other side of the room and thus for the entire class to hear, that "Of course she [referring to me]'s not very smart, she's black."

My Spanish teacher did nothing. He didn't tell him to be quiet, didn't reprimand him, didn't send him to the principal's office...nada.

I don't want to receive a single letter about that media-construed , blame-the-victim-for-defending-themself whinefest that is the Myth of Political Correctness. I don't want to hear that he has the right to be a racist and to make racist comments.

First of all, we were minors and thus not accorded full rights of citizenship under the U.S. Constitution at that point (note that student newspapers were at the time open to censorship in most states). Students are daily reprimanded for speaking out of turn at any time, regardless of the content of their speech. Public schools are not halls of open discourse, they are dictatorships.

Secondly, had I exercised my free speech right at any time and dared to call him the slope-foreheaded, slack-jawed moron that he was, I doubt the teacher would hesitate to send me to the principal's office.

My first semester of college:

I, of course, promptly signed up for the newspaper. Technically, I was supposed to have taken either English 1A or a beginning newswriting course before signing up, but I was eager to begin. Besides, I'd tested out of freshman English entirely (the irony of being verbally gifted is I haven't read much of the traditional English canon).

I did well that first semester. In the spring, several editors went off to four year universities, world travel and other pursuits. I was promoted to Features Editor. At 18, I had my own office (it's been all downhill from there) and managed a staff of 5-12 reporters. One of the perks was a key that opened the elevators and staff bathrooms and lounges all over campus, I really miss that.

I didn't especially care for features. I'm one of those hard-asses who would rather not have sports or trivial crap, just politics and news and lots of them. Still, I figured it was a stepping stone.

One day early that semester, I walked into the newspaper office to check my mail. The advisor was in his office, talking with the man who I later realized was the new Editor-in-Chief.

I heard my name and started to pop my head in to say hello, but he continued. "...she's a black girl, but she can write." Until that very moment, having always been the best writer everywhere I'd ever been (with the natural exception of journalism camp), it had never once occured to me that anyone would consider for a moment that my ability to write was or could potentially be hampered by the color of my skin. This, after all, was 1989, not 1959.

College graduation:

I had no idea how or where to look for a job. I'd majored in Political Science, so there were many options. I spent my first year at the four year university I'd trasferred to working for the first Clinton/Gore campaign. I loved campaign work, but wasn't especially interested in the off-year elections. Only the big show for me, I suppose.

A poli sci degree isn't like a law degree, where you get out and know what you're going to be. I took that major planning to be a writer or a lawyer, but had eschewed writing for politics and hated my law classes completely. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and I had to figure something out, but quick.

I asked around for ideas, consulting several professors, my department head and even the Vice President of Academic Affairs with whom I'd been acquainted when she arranged a meeting upon reading my biracial I-dentity paper.

I realized I'd missed the obvious choice, my academic advisor. He'd guided me as to which courses to take both before and after I transferred to that school and I'd even taken one of his seminars. I explained that I was a bit directionless and wasn't sure of what kinds of jobs the degree qualified me for right out of school. His response?

"Well, why don't you just get pregnant and go on welfare?"

Somehow, I don't think that he'd have said the same thing if I'd been male or 100% white.

All these years later, I see how incidents like these crept into my subconscious. I had no idea at the time -- when I made small, short-sighted decisions (like not bothering to pursue scholarly publication, as I'd been urged, of the biracial paper, when a pre-bac publication at the age of 22 in a cutting-edge field would have been a gigantic feather in my cap), took dead-end jobs I didn't care about and otherwise went on auto pilot -- how I was wasting myself, how much better I could have done, how many options were open to me.

I am fully aware that these were my decisions and mistakes to make. However, when these things happen in the cocoon of academia, it's impossible not to extrapolate from there and assume the big, bad world is even worse.

I hate to be told I shouldn't care what other people think. It's not that I am basing my self-esteem on these incidents. However, since no one in my family is running for President at the moment, nor do my relatives own any newspapers or web portals -- I have to impress upon potential employers and clients that I am far more competant than the next Joe. The irony is that, for reasons beyond my control, so many of them assume I could not possibly be merely competant, let alone skilled.

Listen to any debate on affirmative action and the words are so often repeated, they've become almost synonymous with one another. Unqualified minority. The phrase is thrown around as if there could be no other kind. No one says "nigger" anymore -- God forbid racists behave like racists. There is no need.

No, somehow we've built a better racist -- one whose smooth tongue never belies a seething hatred, nor sneering contempt. Instead, our blame-the-victim culture has gone full tilt by suggesting, "Hey, we know it and they know it -- they aren't as good as you and me." It's the same tune, though the lyrics have been prettied up. I'll take the W.A.R. anyday over Bill, Vice-President of holding me back. At least I know where they stand.

The insidious thing about racism in this country is that it is at once everywhere and nowhere at all. The stories I've related above weren't about raging, cross-burning sociopaths. These were intelligent, educated men. They didn't address me with racial epithets day in and day out. Without exception, they were mentors to whom I'd looked up and from whom I learned valuable skills and sought advice.

That's the worst of it, really, when you consider someone a friend, look up to them as a teacher or seek their counsel as a mentor, but suddenly their inner racist slips out and you don't know where to go from there.

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