Mulattos have rights too. Mulattos have a point of view.
Everyone else says it’s either this or it’s that, with nothing in between. But
I am tired of pretending I don’t see what I see. What’s wrong with in between?
My
father did not raise me to see myself as an amalgamation of all wrongs done to
the black race. My father is black. My mother is white. I cannot find it in my
heart to consider either race all evil or all blameless. People, life,
circumstances, conditions, and history itself are all just too complicated for
that. My father taught us to not to feel like victims. Though he has
experienced plenty of difficulties as a black man trying to make it in a
society biased against him (regardless that he is a veteran of both the Navy
and of the Air Force Reserves and has served this country well), living in a
society where he can tell his own sad stories if he so chooses but does not, my
father has nevertheless taught his children to think of themselves as
individuals first and as Americans. He did not train us to walk around with
chips on our shoulders. His attitude was What would be the good of that? He saw no point in dwelling on the negative. He told
us: Sometimes things will happen that you do not like. Just say oh
well and move on down the pike. Shake it off.
My
mother, who held her head high when treated as an oddity in public with her
three brown children trooping along beside her, had a bit of advice for us too.
Everybody is not going to like you, so what. Just ignore it. Just ignore
them.
This was our family’s philosophy about racial politics. These techniques
kept us floating in a pretty happy bubble all through childhood and I am
grateful for that. Around us there were white people, Asian people, Hispanic
people, black people. They are all just people my father would say. Case closed. I defy anyone,
regardless of current events and tragedies that have occurred or will occur, to
explain to me what is wrong with an attitude like that.
My
father also taught us to behave with consideration and decency for those around
us, as he actively demonstrated himself in his interactions with others. Oh,
and yes, he taught us to be proud of our black heritage, regaling us with tales
of black inventors, heroes from history and the dignity of his own family back
in Tennessee. We were taught to be proud of the positive strengths in our race
and to move on. Race was not our main identity. Race was not a religion to be worshiped to the exclusion of
all else. We were to strive to be Good People (yes, with caps). Neither my
father nor my mother were hippies or radicals when they got married in 1962 in
Portland, Oregon, where I was born and grew up. Interracial marriage was, at
the time, illegal in my father’s home state of Tennessee. So why did they do
it? And why did they never complain about their situation once it was done, not
in all the long years of raising three children in the face of whatever
difficulties had to be endured? They simply did not believe race must define
all social interaction. They were, first of all, individuals who fell in love.
Heretical as it may seem in the current social and political climate of our
country at the moment, the fact is: they did not care about race. For this I am getting into hot water over my opinions
with many of those around me, such as with the kind and well-meaning people
with whom I joined last night over pear tart and fresh fruit to say good-bye to
dear friends leaving the neighborhood. Instead of a focus on good times had by
all in the past and interesting details about plans for the future, the
conversation took an extended foray into the morass that becomes discussion of
the Ferguson shooting, with side stops into the deaths of Eric Gardner, and the
murder committed by Zimmerman.
Let
me be clear. In the case of Eric Gardner, I believe that going scot-free for an
officer that uses a chokehold and kills someone cannot stand. The issue is not
black or white: guilty as charged or completely innocent. Change the charge. I
believe in the power of grassroots activism pointed at political targets. Yes
they do care when enough people dog them about an issue and the people are
right. So in my mind, the Eric Gardner matter is not over. At the very least,
writing letters to the governor will not hurt. As for Zimmerman, well as I
said, he got away with murder. It happens. Look at O.J. So no argument from me
on these two issues but I have problems with certain elements of the Michael
Brown story, though I am sorry for the pain the loss of a child would bring to
any parent.
On
Michael Brown, my views do not suit the current norms, to the chagrin of not
only my kind neighbors at dinner, but also of basically anyone who brings up
the topic and expects me to join them. The behavior of my parents did not suit
norms in 1962 either. For me the greater question is, why do some people
transcend the prevailing winds of society while others are trapped or blown
about, unable to stand upright? It seems dust and debris is getting into
everyone’s eyes. We are having trouble seeing clearly all that is in the view.
In self-protection and in haste, we squint and narrow our focus to a tiny dot
and plow forward, looking neither to the right nor to the left for fear of
getting lost in the wilderness of all known pertinent facts. What are the facts
anyway? No one can even agree on those anymore. You are an idiot if you don’t
believe in the “right” facts. The news is all wrong; you have to listen to
people on the street. No look at this website. No, read this report, ad infinitum.
Where do the facts come from? But the witnesses said! No the witnesses lied!
Who says? There are new witnesses. There are no witnesses. This is what
happened! No this is. Who says? How about we look at the video. Let’s see for
ourselves. Who are you going to believe? In me, it, us, or them or in your
lying eyes?
There
are things I believe in my heart. I do not care what color you are. I care
about how you behave and about what you do. I believe in the difference between
right and wrong. In his famous speech Martin Luther King, Jr. looked forward to
that day when a man would be judged by the content of his character and not the
color of his skin. My family has always lived in that day, as have plenty of
others. What people overlook, however, is the first part of this piece of
King’s noble dream: the part about being judged by the content of your
character. The fact that your character matters is completely trampled in the
rush to focus on one thing: skin color. If skin color has anything to do with a
matter, nothing else makes any difference. Just follow that one thread. Get a
hold of it and pull and pull and pull, because if you pull long enough you will
find…what? A pot of gold? Sudden Nirvana? Everlasting peace on earth and an end
to all evil? I suggest that the
answer is this: you get a useless knot.
Untangling
the knot of racism is impossible unless you can learn to tease apart the
threads. Some you start to pull
and they do not un-do the mess. You often have to go back and re-do the un-do. Un-do
something else. It takes patience. It takes discernment. If you yank too hard
on one end too long, you ruin your chances of undoing the knot at all.
The
idea that a young man who cared nothing for decency himself, who had just
robbed a store and then was walking brazenly down the middle of the street, who
did not have the sense to step onto the sidewalk, who obviously believed he was
not bound to respect anyone else, yet is to be considered an angelic victim, a
slaughtered lamb, sickens me in that it patronizingly assumes that such
behavior is to be expected, condoned, and accepted--among blacks. He was only
behaving “normally”. Rallying
around this sort of role model fills me with dread for the disappearance of
common sense from society. Because
this person was killed, and we are expected to “speak no ill of the dead”, the
reality of his role in the incident disappears into thin air: poof! Mentioning
the fact that he actually had just robbed a store is treated as blasphemy. It
is hard to know whether this young man was mentally troubled, high on drugs,
just plain mean and selfish or just plain stupid. What I do know, is that
Michael Brown should not be raised on high as a symbol of all black youth or
all black men or all black people because he ended up dead in an altercation
with a policeman. The issue of blacks dying at the hands of over-zealous,
criminally negligent policemen, such as in the case of Eric Gardner, is an
issue to be addressed, with wrongs that must be set right, but not by revering
Michael Brown as a martyr in a noble cause. Did he deserve to die? Well no. In
fact, for the most part, nobody deserves to die and we have people fighting to
save other people from death out there toiling away day and night. But there
was nothing noble about Michael Brown’s behavior that day. He was not fighting
for a cause. His behavior was, in fact, criminal that day. It is demeaning to
all the people who gave their lives fighting for civil rights or the freedom of
slaves or the humane treatment of any oppressed people to shout out his name as
a rallying cry. It is a symptom of our time, the reduction to media sound bites
and slogans that simplify all issues into fast, fun, and easy to digest
segments that skip deep thinking and latch on to fast-moving, explosive
emotions which make for so much excitement and better viewing. Using his name
as a rallying point is simple and quick, but I think it is wrong. Michael Brown
is no Martin Luther King, Jr. His shooting was a flashpoint, but that does not
make Michael Brown someone to admire and that is the part my soul rebels
against in any conversation about Ferguson.
The
conversation on police brutality has slid quickly down two sides: you are
either for Michael Brown or you are against racial justice. The police are all
evil or you are a fool who does not believe that black lives matter. I say this
either/or stance is unproductive and just plain wrong. Maybe being bi-racial
means I am genetically incapable of seeing issues of race as either/or; black
or white. For me, reality comes in shades in between. I believe the middle is
where we all need to live if there is to be cooperation and peace among all
parties in this United States of America. People can choose. Be angry and
depressed or work for equilibrium and strive for happiness. People can choose
how to behave. Believing otherwise simplifies the human race to one driving
emotion: “I want” –no matter what the consequences. It means an expectation for
decency, on any side of any matter, will not prevail. Instead, the desire to be
completely right and everyone else with the slightest disagreement completely
wrong will carry us down an extremist slope like a fast sled to anarchy. People
who refuse any sort of compromise (current examples include Congress itself) or
modification to belief systems that have demonstrate visible flaws need to ask
themselves what the highest and best outcome can be from what they
believe. Is it a better, kinder,
more just world? Or simply being “right” or even more literally, getting what
they want no matter how.
What
about all the people who would never rob a store, never behave in the same
manner in which Michael Brown behaved that day? Some of them have died to, but
we are not chanting their names. Why are the personal choices, even the
personal hardships endured and overcome by disadvantaged people in
disadvantaged environments everyday in their struggle to stay on the path of
decency to be ignored? Why bother
doing the right thing when someone who bullies, steals, and acts in open
defiance of simple rules of courtesy is revered as a martyr? For every kid bent on criminal behavior
there are countless others who choose to make an effort to better their lives
and to contribute positively to society. Who decide at least that they do not
want to cause harm? Where no shame
and no remorse exist, no matter what one’s actions are, have we not lost a
large portion of humanity? Where is our sense of alarm? Did we not see the
girls fighting in Brooklyn and learn of their comments afterwards. Low
standards and low expectations will not uplift anyone. Making excuses for bad
behavior will not result in improvement of that behavior. Assuming it must be
accepted is what burdens me in any conversation about the Ferguson shooting.
“He only took a few cigarillos” as if that was fine and to be expected. Anyone
who saw the video of Michael Brown’s brutish, ugly behavior in that store and
still chooses to paint him as a slaughtered saint is as fanatical as the
opposite side, happy to see as many black people shot as possible. Neither
extreme will move our society forward to a place of equilibrium. I do not
believe that the vilification of all policeman and the sanctification of the
Michael Brown will improve race relations.
We
are suffering from a collective disconnect from reality. Maybe the 24/7 blaring
of media sound bites shaping every event into a compact, easy-to-swallow
package is to blame. No one looks at any issue in depth anymore. Every issue
becomes a matter of faith—you choose to believe one side or the other hook,
line, and sinker. It is easier that way. In our culture “fast, fun, and easy”
is the mantra. It is the marketing phrase of choice for the promotion of many
things that in fact take time and effort to complete or master because that is
the nature of reality and the real world. When everyone must believe the same
simplistic slogans and catch-phrases used by the media and our sound-bite
nation to discuss the scraggily mess that is the racial history of the United
States, profound insight and greater consciousness become impossible. A
discussion of race easily descends into frustrated rants that take the easiest,
least complicated route to the final pronouncement. This polarization is like
falling from a rooftop; each side slides quickly down the path of least
resistance, one side or the other. What we need, however, is the care, skill,
and finesse it would take to balance on the top.
