People don’t always recognize racism. My friend “Molly” and I, in high school, always joked about her relatives – I had to joke, because I was so horrified at the, “your people” comments that laughing seemed to be the best way through it – we always joked that her aunt was a benevolent racist. As in, “Gosh, look how nice I am, to put up with your shortcomings as a spokesmodel for your race!” Here I come to find out that there’s a sociological descriptive for it – benign. Scientific American explains it for benign sexism. And I am backwards applying it to my high school self for benign racism.
Okay, honestly, there’s no such thing. Racism is corrosive internally or externally, there is no benign. And, when I hear things like, “You’ll have such cute babies,” I can understand how people think they’re saying something nice. Still, though… Dear, People, let me be clear: YOU ARE NOT saying something nice.
Number One, my metaphorical babies are MY business. Please see to your own, and stop talking about my reproductive organs/issues/choices as if they are yours. What if I’m not having babies?? Number Two, the assumption that my babies will be spectacularly beautiful JUST because they’re biracial is …wow, so troubling. Is it the civilizing Caucasian influence alleviating the savage animalism of African Americanism? Is it the perky jive and Soul Train divaism alleviating the oppressive white-breadedness of being Caucasian? Are you possibly building a race, and trying out the idea of hybrid vigor?
Oh, don’t answer. Just… think before you speak.
Not So Adorable
If I had wanted
My baby’s looks to suit you,
I would have had YOURS
call me ishmael
“I like a little
chocolate,” he said, and I
thought of homicide
she meant no insult
“Perfectly toasted.
Means not burnt, and not too raw.”
Man lives not by bread.
the test
as long as brown girls
still pick out the whitest doll
we still have issues
I like the bite in that second one. Actually, I would love to hear you blast all of them!
BTW, you have won a Hilary McKay Lulu book in my blog tour giveaway. Just exactly where are you living now my dear? Please send me your addy and I will pass it on to the publisher! Congratulations!!
Oh goodness, that is a hard (as in heavy) topic….
I spent the last two days thinking about rascism, in the context of a conference about best practices for finding, and then making descisions about, submerged terrestrial sites of the ancient Native Peoples who lived out on the Continental Shelf. Half of us were Native American, half of us weren’t, and the point of the whole exercise was to make a space in which we could all speak frankly, and feel our way toward working together. Pronouns were fraught, and good intentions didn’t always mean that people weren’t hurt.
Staggering forward, we kept talking…
Your job – just staggers me. There really does have to be so much discussion about what we do with what we have that we think we’ve found that was only lost because it belonged to someone else from whom we stole… I heard about these Hopi folk finding out their stuff was on auction, and shuddered.