Years ago, I loved a boy. As with all stories that begin thusly, it is a very long tale. The long and short of it was he didn't love me. And I went through a few months of deep, bottomless despair during which I would often find myself lying prostrate on the floor of my room, wondering what the hell was happening to me. He's gone now, thank the universe.
But lately I have found myself stuck on the same emotional Mobius Strip I was on back when he was around. I lie awake in the moments before I fall asleep asking myself why my life is where it is, and if there is anything I could have done differently. The focus of my angst is not some guy, but my job, and its implications for my activist identity, and the person I am trying to be in the world. I tell my friends and my partner that one day out of the five days a week I am at work, I have a hoot laughing at some of the truly ridiculous things that happen when a group of people decide that they know how to best define activist conversation on a particular issue. The other four days, I just want to cry. I want to cry because I am actively participating in something that I feel will end up doing more harm than good. I am spending my days, 9 to 5, aiding and abetting acts of 'social change' I don't believe in. I am actively helping people who I believe are perpetuating the racist, sexist assumptions that got this country to where it is in the first place.
I want to cry because I am afraid of what this job is doing to my voice. One of my colleagues wrote a moving essay about how she has had her voice taken from her during the time she has spent at this place. I told her that I believed that even in our measured, carefully regulated silences (that are broken only on anonymous blogs and in private conversations) there is voice. Silence is resistance. I absolutely believed that when I said it to her a few days ago. But there are days like today, where I'm not so sure anymore. It took every ounce of strength I have to muster the courage to make a point (not a controversial or original one, mind you) in a staff seminar the other day. The minute I opened my mouth, I started shaking, and I was sure I would not be able to finish a single sentence, let alone a thought. But I did it. And, man, was it liberating! It hit me this morning that surely I should be able to speak without shaking, surely I should take for granted my freedom to interpret data and report it without fear that I am not towing a particular line? If I do not exercise my voice, in spite of the restrictions placed on it, where will it go? If you are in an environment where your voice is subsumed, and you can only ever use it on anonymous blogs, and in private conversations with your friends, or yourself, does it disappear? Are you guilty of not using it?
The only immediate answer available is to be silent in loud ways. I have decided that, no matter what it looks like on my CV, no matter how scary it is going to be to literally halve my salary as I am on the cusp of starting a life with my partner, I am going to leave my job at the end of next month. It's not the loudest of protest; in fact, it is tantamount to silence. But I expect that it is silence that will be loud enough to restore my voice.
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
On white maleness
I have been away for a few weeks. It's a very long story - one which I am hesitant about telling - but it needs to be told. At the end of last year, I got a new job. Dear reader, this was a partly maginificent ego boost for me, but mostly, it was a veritable lifeline. Hitherto, all my work experience had been gained within the restrictive walls of the university world, and for the last part of that journey, I laboured under a fairly abusive boss. Add to that the terrible job market (forty plus job applications submitted, three rejections (not counting the people from whom you never hear back - where do unread CVs go to die, I wonder), only three call backs) and you can see why by December, I was quite near nervous exhaustion. The new job was an oasis in a desert of self-doubt, self-loathing and deep despair.
And so, with such promise, it began this year. Less oasis-like than I thought. There are several things making my work life difficult; some of which I remember claerly but cannot share for fear of reprisal if my anonymity were ever compromised, others that are minor irritations, exercises in the absurd that are easily laughed off. But then there are those which make my skin crawl, they are so dangerous and evil. The place where I work is a civil society organisation, aimed at addressing a key social issue facing South Africa's young, fledgling democracy. I work with many young people who come from working class and poor communities. I also work with many young people who come from middle class communities. We are all united by a need to change what we see happening in this country; we are all united by our love for this country, and this continent.
Here's what I object to. Over the last few weeks, I have noticed, and it has been confirmed in conversations with some colleagues, that there's a certain pecking order that permeates the life and the operations of the organisation. At the proverbial 'top' of the organisation (civil society does not like to admit its hierarchies are formal, hence the quotation marks), you have mostly middle class, and, yes, mostly white people. In the 'middle', and at the (regrettably) 'bottom', you have mostly working class, black people. Now, I hear you: I myself am middle class. But by virtue of my 'newness', and, my disillusion, I am not at the 'top'. I am (regrettably) one of the many 'not at the top' middle class people recruited by the top, because they 'need' our skills and our middle class educations. Here's the thing though. The people who I refer to as the 'top' are not evil, and overtly racist. They are not even subtly racist. I believe, with much respect, that they love their country, they see injustice, they are determined to act.
But here's where true colours show for me: what kind of action is needed? The 'top' believes in raising awareness: getting their constituents together, educating them about the problems they (constituents, mind you) are facing, and organising them into awareness-raising action, largely conceptualised by them (executed, of course, by the 'not at the top', and the 'middle' and 'bottom' folk). The results of this are constituents who are called in to meetings to be told of their problems, and of the solutions someone else has worked out for them. I attended an awareness-rasing meeting (in lieu of a planned action) where one of the constituents asked me to explain something she was painting on a placard to be used in the aforementioned planned action. Neither the placard, nor the action are her idea, neither involved any substantive input from her. So, what really are we doing? Going into communities that have been disempowered and victimised countless times over and doing...what exactly? Telling people what their problems are, and what has been decided for them? How is that any different from the disempowerment and victimisation experienced during Apartheid, experienced at the hands of the new administration?
Why is this happening, though? As I said earlier, I do not believe the intent of my bosses is malicious. But here's the thing about white maleness (and note, dear reader, I use white maleness here as a proxy for privilege - not everyone at the 'top' is white or male): it cannot be evaded, it cannot be shrugged off. In spaces where liberal, progressive, anti-racist white maleness takes up residence, it still operates from the assumption that it knows best. I watch it at work, telling people what they need to care about (in the midst of a myriad of social problems), and precisely how to care about it. It's why I got my job, even though there are many people in the organisation far more qualified to speak and research and write with authority about the problems facing their communities. White maleness, even when it is well-meaning, is still white maleness. It cannot recognise the value in world views that have not benefitted from the feeling of being central and normative all their lives. How can it? It has been central and normative for time immemorial.
I am not saying that because of white maleness, or, more broadly, privilege, the people at the 'top' and the countless other people like them cannot work in civil society, or make a difference in their country. What I am suggesting is that in order to do the work they want to do, the work that needs to be done, it is necessary for them - for me - to stare the ugliest parts of our privilege in the face every single moment. What are the things we take for granted in our engagements with people who are not privileged? What are we assuming about what they understand, and what they need 'help' with? How are we implicit in the constant - nay, daily disempowerment of people whose identities are not normative or centred?
If we go into change work thinking that we have these answers - or worse, not even asking these questions - we run the risk of not only reproducing the problems that brought us to this work, but of becoming a worse evil than that which we assume we are fighting against.
*Gratitude and love to a friend whose insight and bravery I have borrowed heavily from to write this post.
And so, with such promise, it began this year. Less oasis-like than I thought. There are several things making my work life difficult; some of which I remember claerly but cannot share for fear of reprisal if my anonymity were ever compromised, others that are minor irritations, exercises in the absurd that are easily laughed off. But then there are those which make my skin crawl, they are so dangerous and evil. The place where I work is a civil society organisation, aimed at addressing a key social issue facing South Africa's young, fledgling democracy. I work with many young people who come from working class and poor communities. I also work with many young people who come from middle class communities. We are all united by a need to change what we see happening in this country; we are all united by our love for this country, and this continent.
Here's what I object to. Over the last few weeks, I have noticed, and it has been confirmed in conversations with some colleagues, that there's a certain pecking order that permeates the life and the operations of the organisation. At the proverbial 'top' of the organisation (civil society does not like to admit its hierarchies are formal, hence the quotation marks), you have mostly middle class, and, yes, mostly white people. In the 'middle', and at the (regrettably) 'bottom', you have mostly working class, black people. Now, I hear you: I myself am middle class. But by virtue of my 'newness', and, my disillusion, I am not at the 'top'. I am (regrettably) one of the many 'not at the top' middle class people recruited by the top, because they 'need' our skills and our middle class educations. Here's the thing though. The people who I refer to as the 'top' are not evil, and overtly racist. They are not even subtly racist. I believe, with much respect, that they love their country, they see injustice, they are determined to act.
But here's where true colours show for me: what kind of action is needed? The 'top' believes in raising awareness: getting their constituents together, educating them about the problems they (constituents, mind you) are facing, and organising them into awareness-raising action, largely conceptualised by them (executed, of course, by the 'not at the top', and the 'middle' and 'bottom' folk). The results of this are constituents who are called in to meetings to be told of their problems, and of the solutions someone else has worked out for them. I attended an awareness-rasing meeting (in lieu of a planned action) where one of the constituents asked me to explain something she was painting on a placard to be used in the aforementioned planned action. Neither the placard, nor the action are her idea, neither involved any substantive input from her. So, what really are we doing? Going into communities that have been disempowered and victimised countless times over and doing...what exactly? Telling people what their problems are, and what has been decided for them? How is that any different from the disempowerment and victimisation experienced during Apartheid, experienced at the hands of the new administration?
Why is this happening, though? As I said earlier, I do not believe the intent of my bosses is malicious. But here's the thing about white maleness (and note, dear reader, I use white maleness here as a proxy for privilege - not everyone at the 'top' is white or male): it cannot be evaded, it cannot be shrugged off. In spaces where liberal, progressive, anti-racist white maleness takes up residence, it still operates from the assumption that it knows best. I watch it at work, telling people what they need to care about (in the midst of a myriad of social problems), and precisely how to care about it. It's why I got my job, even though there are many people in the organisation far more qualified to speak and research and write with authority about the problems facing their communities. White maleness, even when it is well-meaning, is still white maleness. It cannot recognise the value in world views that have not benefitted from the feeling of being central and normative all their lives. How can it? It has been central and normative for time immemorial.
I am not saying that because of white maleness, or, more broadly, privilege, the people at the 'top' and the countless other people like them cannot work in civil society, or make a difference in their country. What I am suggesting is that in order to do the work they want to do, the work that needs to be done, it is necessary for them - for me - to stare the ugliest parts of our privilege in the face every single moment. What are the things we take for granted in our engagements with people who are not privileged? What are we assuming about what they understand, and what they need 'help' with? How are we implicit in the constant - nay, daily disempowerment of people whose identities are not normative or centred?
If we go into change work thinking that we have these answers - or worse, not even asking these questions - we run the risk of not only reproducing the problems that brought us to this work, but of becoming a worse evil than that which we assume we are fighting against.
*Gratitude and love to a friend whose insight and bravery I have borrowed heavily from to write this post.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Dreams from Obama
Finally, after four months of hand-wringing - and a detour in the form of a quick re-read of Eat, Pray, Love - I finished reading Dreams from My Father! As excited as I am about finishing the book, I think I may have to revisit it at least once more as I journey through my own race, space and place. The book is a rich and thick description of Obama's struggles with belonging, or the lack thereof. And it is well-written and compelling, with just the right amount of schmultz and zero politicking. I loved it! And yet I trudged through this book: I sped past the 'Chicago' section, where he details his efforts as an intrepid community organiser, but I slowed to a complete stop (enter Liz Gilbert, who is also an amazing author and speaker - check her out) when I hit 'Kenya'. In 'Kenya', Obama tells the story of his father, his father's father and what it was like going to the place from whence they came with his brothers and sisters. He does not sugarcoat Africa. The story is told in plain speech, and his descriptions of a country not quite recovered from the ravages of that centuries-old evil, colonialism, conjures images of my own Africa. In short (before I begin to gush), he manages to go into details (including an episode of gastric misadventure) without sounding like a 21st century travelogue writer.
So, why did it take me four months to finish this impressive book? Well, maybe it was that it was that good (yes, alright, that may have been slight gushing). The honesty about Africa, and the psychosocial effects of socioeconomic, cultural imperialism was difficult to swallow. The story contained in Dreams from My Father, and particularly in 'Kenya', is not just Obama's, but is the story of most Africans struggling to eke out a coherent identity on a continent crippled by structural racism. In the following passage, he describes what he now understands about his father, and his father's father:
"I see my grandfather, standing before his father's hut, a wiry, grim-faced bot, almost ridculous in his oversized trousers and his buttonless shirt. I watch his father turn away from him and hear his brothers laugh. [...] And as his figure turns, I know that for himthe path of his life is now altered irreversibly, completely.
"He will have to reinvent himself in this arid, solitary place. Through force of will, he will create a life out of the scraps of an unknown world, and the memories of a world rendered obsolete. And yet, as he sits alone in a freshly scrubbed hut, an old man now wiht milky eyes, I know that he still hears the clipped voice of a British captain, explaning for the third and last time the correct proportion of tonic to gin. The nerves in the old man's neck tighten, the rage builds - he grabs his stick to hit at something, anything. Until finally his grip weakens with the realisation that for all the power in his hands and the force of his will, the laughter, the rebukes, will outlast him. His body goes slack in the chair. He knows that he will not outlive a mocking fate. He waits to die, alone.
"The picture fades, replaced by the image of a nine-year-old boy - my father. He's hungry, tired, clinging to his sister's hand, searching for a mother he lost. The hunger is too much for him, the exhaustion too great; until finally the slender line that holds him to his mothernsnaps, sending her image to float down, down into the emptiness. The boy starts to cry; he shakes of his sister's hand. He wants to go home, he shouts, back to his father's house. He will find a new mother. He will lose himself in games and learn the power of his mind.
"But he won't forget the desperation of that day. Twelve years later; at his narrow desk, he will glance up from a stack of forms toward the restless sky and feel that same panic return. He, too, will have to invent himself. His boss is out of the office; he sets the forms aside and from an old file cabinet pulls out a list of addresses. He yanks the typwriter toward him and begins to type, letter after letter after letter, typing the nevelopes, sealing the letters like messages in bottles that will drop through a post office slot into a vast ocean and perhaps allow him to escape the island of his father's shame.
"How luck he must have felt when his ship came sailing in! He must have known, when that letter came from Hawaii, that he had been chosen after all [...] He had almost succeeded in a way his father could've never hoped for. And then, after seeming to travel so far, to discover that he had not escaped after all! To discover that he remained trapped on his father's island, with its fissures of anger and doubt and defeat, the emotions still visible beneath the surface, hot and molten and alive, like a wicked, yawning mouth, and his mother gone, gone, away..."
This is who we are, Africa. Constantly running, trying to escape the fear, the humiliation, the anger of our continent's demons. As hard as it is to read about, it is almost impossible to live it.
So, why did it take me four months to finish this impressive book? Well, maybe it was that it was that good (yes, alright, that may have been slight gushing). The honesty about Africa, and the psychosocial effects of socioeconomic, cultural imperialism was difficult to swallow. The story contained in Dreams from My Father, and particularly in 'Kenya', is not just Obama's, but is the story of most Africans struggling to eke out a coherent identity on a continent crippled by structural racism. In the following passage, he describes what he now understands about his father, and his father's father:
"I see my grandfather, standing before his father's hut, a wiry, grim-faced bot, almost ridculous in his oversized trousers and his buttonless shirt. I watch his father turn away from him and hear his brothers laugh. [...] And as his figure turns, I know that for himthe path of his life is now altered irreversibly, completely.
"He will have to reinvent himself in this arid, solitary place. Through force of will, he will create a life out of the scraps of an unknown world, and the memories of a world rendered obsolete. And yet, as he sits alone in a freshly scrubbed hut, an old man now wiht milky eyes, I know that he still hears the clipped voice of a British captain, explaning for the third and last time the correct proportion of tonic to gin. The nerves in the old man's neck tighten, the rage builds - he grabs his stick to hit at something, anything. Until finally his grip weakens with the realisation that for all the power in his hands and the force of his will, the laughter, the rebukes, will outlast him. His body goes slack in the chair. He knows that he will not outlive a mocking fate. He waits to die, alone.
"The picture fades, replaced by the image of a nine-year-old boy - my father. He's hungry, tired, clinging to his sister's hand, searching for a mother he lost. The hunger is too much for him, the exhaustion too great; until finally the slender line that holds him to his mothernsnaps, sending her image to float down, down into the emptiness. The boy starts to cry; he shakes of his sister's hand. He wants to go home, he shouts, back to his father's house. He will find a new mother. He will lose himself in games and learn the power of his mind.
"But he won't forget the desperation of that day. Twelve years later; at his narrow desk, he will glance up from a stack of forms toward the restless sky and feel that same panic return. He, too, will have to invent himself. His boss is out of the office; he sets the forms aside and from an old file cabinet pulls out a list of addresses. He yanks the typwriter toward him and begins to type, letter after letter after letter, typing the nevelopes, sealing the letters like messages in bottles that will drop through a post office slot into a vast ocean and perhaps allow him to escape the island of his father's shame.
"How luck he must have felt when his ship came sailing in! He must have known, when that letter came from Hawaii, that he had been chosen after all [...] He had almost succeeded in a way his father could've never hoped for. And then, after seeming to travel so far, to discover that he had not escaped after all! To discover that he remained trapped on his father's island, with its fissures of anger and doubt and defeat, the emotions still visible beneath the surface, hot and molten and alive, like a wicked, yawning mouth, and his mother gone, gone, away..."
This is who we are, Africa. Constantly running, trying to escape the fear, the humiliation, the anger of our continent's demons. As hard as it is to read about, it is almost impossible to live it.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Storing up my anger
In between Christmas and New Years, I got busy with moving, family functions, more moving, more family functions... Also, after the first post, something weird happened, and all of the things I had been bursting to say all seemed to have been said. All the anger and pain and everything that had to come out (on the internet, where else) disappeared. Or so I thought. New year, same questions, and (for today, anyway) some of the old anger. At breakfast with my friend (let's call her Siphokazi - she has a Xhosa name, but is white), I mused out loud about what I would write about: the white people in the pretentious cafe where we had breakfast who seemed unable to serve me or to stop staring (simultaneuosly), or my partner's mother's white middle-aged friends (mostly female) who all appear to love me so much that I sometimes wonder if it isn't part 'we love you' and part 'you're black and/but we're totally fine with it'. All of it relevant and current, all of it tearing down my writer's block.
But when the universe gives, she sure does giveth. When I got back to my flat for my scheduled visit with my family, one of my new neighbours - she is old and white, as most of my new neighbours are (I suspect this shall ward off any future writer's block) - mistook my brother for...well, I guess a burgler. Let me explain: the intercom button one has to press to let me know they're at my gate is not accessible to someone sitting in a car seat. One has to get out, ring the bell, get in and drive in before the old automatic gate closes prematurely and leaves a mark on your car (as it did last week, when Siphokazi visited). So my brother just didn't get back in the car after he rung the bell, and instead chose to walk in after my dad's car. Which is how he came to run into Old White Neughbour Lady who kindly asked his parents if 'they [knew] this gentleman'. She was very polite; in fact, she stopped and chatted and laughed with my parents whilst I watched on, appalled. Anyway. My parents - and my brother - laughed it off. They are glad I live in a building with such security-conscious neighbours. The visit was fun and short. After they left, I thought more and more about what had just happened, I got angrier and angrier.
And just when I was at my angriest I - you guessed it, people in interracial relationships - called my partner. This is something I do often, when I am in this kind - or any other kind - of distress. He is my best friend, you see, I call him about everything, good, bad, unflattering. So I called him and told him about it. We had a standard phone conversation, which I read as 'he was offish'. This may have just been my own relationship stuff (and that is a whole other blog, believe me). But part of it is this: I started thinking about how he has no idea (through no fault of his own) what it is like to have his sibling mistaken for a criminal, how that kind of thing, even when your family laughs it off and subjects are duly changed, seeps into the air so that your family can't even stay for one cup of tea in your new flat that you're so excited to show them. He doesn't know. He can't know. I also started thinking about all the other things he and other white people don't and can't know: walking into a cafe and having the entire place watch you (not exaggerating), never being able to trust the outward kindness of people of another race because they could be overcompensating, never seeing faces like yours at the front of lecture theatres (or names like yours on office doors in university corridors), having to go by a shortened version of your name because the people in your world who are all white (how in the hell did I let that happen) cannot - for love or money - say your full, given name... The list goes on. As I listed, I got madder and madder.
And I just spewed out some of my anger to and on my partner. I am not proud of it. He is not the genesis of whiteness and its attendant hysteria. But if I am in a space where - and I am hovering there right now - I hate white people, what does that mean for the person whom I love who is white? How can I say to him (which I just did) 'I hate white people', and expect my relationship to remain whole and affirming and loving? But on the other hand, how can I swallow this anger that bubbles up from deep within me, corroding my insides? It needs to come up, I need to let it out. So, my question is this, where do I put my anger and my pain? Where will my brother put his when he goes home? Where does my partner put it when I let it out at him?
But when the universe gives, she sure does giveth. When I got back to my flat for my scheduled visit with my family, one of my new neighbours - she is old and white, as most of my new neighbours are (I suspect this shall ward off any future writer's block) - mistook my brother for...well, I guess a burgler. Let me explain: the intercom button one has to press to let me know they're at my gate is not accessible to someone sitting in a car seat. One has to get out, ring the bell, get in and drive in before the old automatic gate closes prematurely and leaves a mark on your car (as it did last week, when Siphokazi visited). So my brother just didn't get back in the car after he rung the bell, and instead chose to walk in after my dad's car. Which is how he came to run into Old White Neughbour Lady who kindly asked his parents if 'they [knew] this gentleman'. She was very polite; in fact, she stopped and chatted and laughed with my parents whilst I watched on, appalled. Anyway. My parents - and my brother - laughed it off. They are glad I live in a building with such security-conscious neighbours. The visit was fun and short. After they left, I thought more and more about what had just happened, I got angrier and angrier.
And just when I was at my angriest I - you guessed it, people in interracial relationships - called my partner. This is something I do often, when I am in this kind - or any other kind - of distress. He is my best friend, you see, I call him about everything, good, bad, unflattering. So I called him and told him about it. We had a standard phone conversation, which I read as 'he was offish'. This may have just been my own relationship stuff (and that is a whole other blog, believe me). But part of it is this: I started thinking about how he has no idea (through no fault of his own) what it is like to have his sibling mistaken for a criminal, how that kind of thing, even when your family laughs it off and subjects are duly changed, seeps into the air so that your family can't even stay for one cup of tea in your new flat that you're so excited to show them. He doesn't know. He can't know. I also started thinking about all the other things he and other white people don't and can't know: walking into a cafe and having the entire place watch you (not exaggerating), never being able to trust the outward kindness of people of another race because they could be overcompensating, never seeing faces like yours at the front of lecture theatres (or names like yours on office doors in university corridors), having to go by a shortened version of your name because the people in your world who are all white (how in the hell did I let that happen) cannot - for love or money - say your full, given name... The list goes on. As I listed, I got madder and madder.
And I just spewed out some of my anger to and on my partner. I am not proud of it. He is not the genesis of whiteness and its attendant hysteria. But if I am in a space where - and I am hovering there right now - I hate white people, what does that mean for the person whom I love who is white? How can I say to him (which I just did) 'I hate white people', and expect my relationship to remain whole and affirming and loving? But on the other hand, how can I swallow this anger that bubbles up from deep within me, corroding my insides? It needs to come up, I need to let it out. So, my question is this, where do I put my anger and my pain? Where will my brother put his when he goes home? Where does my partner put it when I let it out at him?
Saturday, December 25, 2010
SBF seeking...
Ok, so here we are. Why start this blog, why now, what exactly am I looking for? Mostly space and place. For the last two and a half years, I've been in a relationship with a white man. He is plenty of other things, of course, all of them complicated (oh, we'll get to that), but for that last month or so, his race, and mine, have been foremost in my thoughts. My partner belongs to a small, loving family, who have a large network of friends who serve as a kind of extended family. What this often means - especially right now, during the festive season - is that I find myself the only black face in a sea of white faces. This has happened to me before. In fact, I have kind of made a career out of being The Only Black Person At The Party. I've never had a problem with it before. It's not that I claim to 'not see race', or that I've never encountered racism. I have just always had the tools - courtesy of my class identity and maybe, possibly, my identity as a black person living in a foreign country where the majority is black (more on this later, for sure!) - to be in white spaces, and make white people in those spaces entirely comfortable. I am deeply embarrassed and pained and filled with self-loathing at the thought that I only just, at the age of almost-25, almost three years into my relationship, discovered how much I hate that I can facilitate white comfort in those ways.
It began at one of the aforementioned functions, for a daughter of a friend of my partners (it's complicated, it always it). I felt grumpy and ill-tempered most of the afternoon. In hindsight, I can now admit that I was grumpy even before we'd left. The weather was crap, I was underdressed for the weather, overdressed for the function, and irritated at the prospect of not seeing my partner for another god-knows-how-long period. All this, combined with the fact that someone unwittingly served me a foodstuff I am allergic to (I can't tell you what it is, it's too weird an allergy, people can identify me by it), which led to a scene that ended in me running to the bathroom and inducing vomiting (I kid you not), did not a happy SBF make. So it wasn't that there was anything different about the event, or about the sea of white faces in which I found myself immersed once again. I was in a crappy mood, and this allowed me to look at where I was, who I was with, what in the hell I was doing.
In the weeks that followed I started down two dangerous paths: I began Noticing Things and Asking Questions. I noticed, for example, that I was always the only black person around at parties etc., regardless of whether or not my partner was involved. I noticed that at such events, especially where older white people are present (and this one's on my partner), white people rarely talk to me in any great details about myself. I asked why. Why am I the only black person? Why are white people ok with me being the only black person? What is it about me that facilitates their complete comfort in totally white - and wealthy - spaces, where the only other black people are those serving us, cleaning, looking after the dog etc.?
Something like four months later, the questions aren't getting any smaller or easier. In desperation, after one of those gut-wrenching sessions/fights/intense discussions with my partner (oh, people in interracial relationships, you know the ones - I cry/scream/snap, he apologises for something that is not his fault, retreats into his guilt, we make up, forget, until the next event...all of which leaves me wondering if the future of our relationship lies in a life behind locked doors???), I turned to The Interweb. The results have been disappointing. To be fair, I haven't looked all that long, or all that hard. But an initial survey reveals sites of two kinds. Firstly, you'll find reams of heartbreaking stories from men and women whose families are repulsed at the thought of the person they love. They detail their confusion and pain and heartbreak in the face of unrelenting, blatant racism. Secondly, (and I got these sites, when, in tears of frustration, I Google-searched "i am disappearing into my interracial relationship") you'll find sites decrying the scourge of miscegenation and the disappearance of 'pure' races. Neither of these kinds of sites are my story. The latter for obvious reasons, the former because my pain is different. I have not faced outright opposition of the racist kind. But I worry about a different kind of racism. The racism that refuses to recognise me, with my private school accent, my hair extensions, my social ease in a room of white people, as a black person. The racism that refuses to allow my blackness into rooms where I am present so that after a lifetime of living, learning, playing in these rooms, I am no longer clear on what it means to be black. And I am in search of a space to speak of that racism, if I may. I am not offering up a full-proof meditation on blackness, or middle-classness, or interracial relationships. I am rather seeking a place, because I cannot find one in the physical and virtual spaces I currently occupy.
So here we are. I hope this blog connects me to people who have and are experiencing variations of what I am. Or that it attracts halfway decent, non-offensive comments. I'll certainly be watching this space.
It began at one of the aforementioned functions, for a daughter of a friend of my partners (it's complicated, it always it). I felt grumpy and ill-tempered most of the afternoon. In hindsight, I can now admit that I was grumpy even before we'd left. The weather was crap, I was underdressed for the weather, overdressed for the function, and irritated at the prospect of not seeing my partner for another god-knows-how-long period. All this, combined with the fact that someone unwittingly served me a foodstuff I am allergic to (I can't tell you what it is, it's too weird an allergy, people can identify me by it), which led to a scene that ended in me running to the bathroom and inducing vomiting (I kid you not), did not a happy SBF make. So it wasn't that there was anything different about the event, or about the sea of white faces in which I found myself immersed once again. I was in a crappy mood, and this allowed me to look at where I was, who I was with, what in the hell I was doing.
In the weeks that followed I started down two dangerous paths: I began Noticing Things and Asking Questions. I noticed, for example, that I was always the only black person around at parties etc., regardless of whether or not my partner was involved. I noticed that at such events, especially where older white people are present (and this one's on my partner), white people rarely talk to me in any great details about myself. I asked why. Why am I the only black person? Why are white people ok with me being the only black person? What is it about me that facilitates their complete comfort in totally white - and wealthy - spaces, where the only other black people are those serving us, cleaning, looking after the dog etc.?
Something like four months later, the questions aren't getting any smaller or easier. In desperation, after one of those gut-wrenching sessions/fights/intense discussions with my partner (oh, people in interracial relationships, you know the ones - I cry/scream/snap, he apologises for something that is not his fault, retreats into his guilt, we make up, forget, until the next event...all of which leaves me wondering if the future of our relationship lies in a life behind locked doors???), I turned to The Interweb. The results have been disappointing. To be fair, I haven't looked all that long, or all that hard. But an initial survey reveals sites of two kinds. Firstly, you'll find reams of heartbreaking stories from men and women whose families are repulsed at the thought of the person they love. They detail their confusion and pain and heartbreak in the face of unrelenting, blatant racism. Secondly, (and I got these sites, when, in tears of frustration, I Google-searched "i am disappearing into my interracial relationship") you'll find sites decrying the scourge of miscegenation and the disappearance of 'pure' races. Neither of these kinds of sites are my story. The latter for obvious reasons, the former because my pain is different. I have not faced outright opposition of the racist kind. But I worry about a different kind of racism. The racism that refuses to recognise me, with my private school accent, my hair extensions, my social ease in a room of white people, as a black person. The racism that refuses to allow my blackness into rooms where I am present so that after a lifetime of living, learning, playing in these rooms, I am no longer clear on what it means to be black. And I am in search of a space to speak of that racism, if I may. I am not offering up a full-proof meditation on blackness, or middle-classness, or interracial relationships. I am rather seeking a place, because I cannot find one in the physical and virtual spaces I currently occupy.
So here we are. I hope this blog connects me to people who have and are experiencing variations of what I am. Or that it attracts halfway decent, non-offensive comments. I'll certainly be watching this space.
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