What We Are

I've been more reclusive these past few years than I ever have been. I am normally friendly and open with people and I make lifelong friends easily. I like talking to people. Well, I used to. It hasn’t been that way lately.

I’m used to discussions about race. I kind of like them actually. I like it when white folks and black folks can sit down and discuss a subject without ducking and running or backing off when the going gets tough. We see the world in two different ways most of the time and the only way we can understand each other is to talk about it. So it can get uncomfortable. So what? If you get past that part, you can find that we are more alike than not.

I used to think that too.

Most of my reclusiveness has been because I have been battling a severe bout of depression. I know there are some who don’t believe that depression is real. I have them in my family. But most folks know that it is real and that it can be crippling and physically harmful. I feel like I am coming out of it because I am feeling better about a lot of things. I understand who is in my corner and who is not. I know who I can reach out to and who I’d better leave alone. And I’m feeling stronger on my own two feet most of all.

But I’ll be honest; a lot of it is because I don't want to deal with some of the difficulties you have to face now. Like when I get a friend request from someone I don’t know on Facebook, I am hesitant to accept it. I used to think it was just folks eager to make new friends but I learned my lesson about that. I haven’t had to block/delete too many people but by far, the ones I have have been over our different political views. I've had a few I had to cut loose because of inappropriate sexual comments, but mostly it’s been because they hated that I am a liberal.

I friended a man I’d been talking to and he saw a post about the President on my page and he went completely insane. He spewed hate and vitriol and wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to quietly talk about it. He ranted and raved and called us names and made silly accusations until I had no choice but to block and delete him.

I will never forget a post I saw from one man who said he hated black men (but he loved black women) and he expected his mate to agree with him on everything and turn her back on her blackness. I told him that I don’t date conservative men and he smugly told me that the majority of white men are conservative and that I needed to change my attitude if I wanted a date.

In all my life I don’t think I have ever dated a conservative and I’ve dated a lot of white guys. A lot. And if I did cross paths with one who was, we usually didn’t get past the talking to each other point. But the fact that he thought most men were as controlling and patronizing as him was amazing to me.

So yes, politics and race have really been difficult for me to digest lately. Do I think there is a rise in racism? No. It’s always been there. It’s just that some folks are in total denial as to what it means and refuse to get that some of their comments, opinions and gestures are racist.

“It’s just a joke!” “I didn’t mean it that way!” “You’re playing the race card!” That’s all a load of hooey. I think a lot of folks need to really look into their hearts and what they really think and even if they don’t like what they see, they need to own it. That’s the only way they will overcome it.

I similarly don’t associate much with political conservatives. We just don’t see the world the same way at all and the gulf between us is way too deep to overcome easily.

I don’t like to argue. I don’t see where it makes much sense. You rarely can change the other person’s mind so what’s the point? You say what you say to me and I either agree or not. Same with what I say. If we can agree to disagree, ok. But I confess I will pull back from a person once I know they think that way.

I remember when it wasn’t like that. I remember when we could say, “Ok, you’re a Republican and I’m a Democrat. Our votes will cancel each other out.,” and we’d laugh and keep it moving.

But then came Rush Limbaugh and his divisive speech on his radio show. Karl Rove and his “ratfucking.” (His word, not mine.”) Lee Atwater and his campaign against the Democrats. Fox News and their never ending war against sensibility. And then the Tea Party.

Let’s not forget the Bombastic Blondes, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. All of them spewing lies, half truths and hate, all aimed to those folks who have never been around anyone of a different color for more than 5 minutes in the line at the grocery store.

You know, those folks who live out in the rural areas. They look at the news and soak up seeing black folks as criminals, “thugs,” they like to say. The media gives them a lot to think about and they make up their minds pretty quickly. They don’t like anybody who isn’t like them. They go to church on Sunday and praise Jesus and then turn around and treat “others” like crap. That’s one reason why I avoid religious folks too. Like they say, I have nothing against God, it’s his fan club that I can’t take.

So now their enemies are people of color. People who left their country to come here and find a better way of life. Oh, not the ones from Europe! Just the brown ones from Mexico or Haiti and places like that. Gay people who only want the right to live as married couples and to adopt children and have lives full of love. People who are poor and can’t afford to feed their families, or can’t afford decent healthcare.

They turned out to vote against anything that helped those folks they consider their enemies, even if it meant to vote against measures that would enrich their own lives. I just don’t understand the reasoning.

Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t hate white people. Not at all. I date and married a white man. But I know this – and maybe it’s unconscious on my part, but I don’t really have anything personal to do with folks who tend to be racist or conservative. The men I date pretty much think the way I do. They are open to understanding how black folks feel and to what makes us hurt. They might find a discussion about race uncomfortable, but they will brave it cause they want to know why I feel hurt.

I also co-created a group against racism over 20 years ago. I wanted to have a forum where folks could come together and talk and get past all the ugliness. Eracism has become a popular vehicle in New Orleans and I am proud of that.

I know a lot of people were disappointed with the response of some of their white friends after Trayvon Martin. After Michael Brown and now after Eric Garner. We feel like our lives don’t matter and that we have targets on our backs. There have been many black girls that have been murdered or gone missing and there’s little or no media attention. There can be a video that proves the man was unarmed and pleading for relief but was killed anyway and the grand jury says it was justified.

Of course we feel there is no justice for us!

And then you get the ones who want to sit you down and talk down to you as if you were stupid and explain that your eyes didn’t really see what your eyes did and that it was totally justified to kill that child/girl/man because that officer/person was frightened for their life. You know how scary big black men are! And those tempers that you black women have! Tsk!

I have been thankful that I haven’t had to engage folks like that in any meaningful discussion. I’ve read their posts and commented a few times but I always saw the futility of it. They are too wrapped up in “what is right” to see how we feel and we are too wrapped up in our pain and outrage to understand where they are coming from.

I used to pray that if I had a child that he would not be a boy. I know how this world regards black boys. They are cute until they are about 8 or 9. Then they are loud, threatening and must be punished. That’s about the time white folks start getting afraid of them. They get punished at school more than similarly loud and boisterous white boys and are often pushed into special education or disciplinary schools and often get labeled for the rest of their lives.

I know they get pulled over by policemen for little or no reason and they are twice as likely to be shot reaching for their wallet – or pills – than white boys.

I know there are young black men in prison who are innocent and have been falsely accused and railroaded simply because they are black. And I know there are many who are sleeping in their graves for the same reason.

I didn’t want to be sitting up at night wondering where my son was, waiting to hear his key in the lock, or to hear his laughter when he came home. My nerves couldn’t take that.

I have nephews and grand-nephews that I worry about now. So far we have been all right but I keep my fingers crossed.

I am similarly perplexed at the black folks who blindly agree with them that we have too many thugs and welfare queens and that we’ve been led down the yellow brick road by the liberals and that we should turn to the conservatives. The very ones who consistently vote against our well being and make patently horrible racist remarks about us…yes, we should suddenly decide to agree with them. That would be a no. Never. I’m not going to ever celebrate when a black person who is a Republican wins anything. NEVER. They don’t represent anything that I am or care about so why should I be happy? Just because they are black?

And then the comments, “…it’s not about race…”

You know what? Let’s be honest. We live in America. EVERYTHING is about race here. You can’t escape that. Not many people look at black people and see them as merely people. And then there is the truth of white privilege. Folks can deny it all they want but it is the reality of the world we live in.

You know why so much hinges on race? Because folks don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to admit to their true feelings or they are in deep denial about them. We can’t talk about it because black people are so raw and hurt and angry and white people are terrified of our rage. So we all walk around muzzled trying to ignore the 800 lb. gorilla sitting in the middle of the room.

We need to have this discussion. We need to take the gloves off, sit down to the table and be honest with each other. We need to get it out in the open. We need to beat it. We need to know the ones we can trust and the ones we can’t.

They need to know that for the most part, we want the same things they do. We think the same way they do about a lot of things and they need to stop seeing us as some foreign presence living among them here. We are all Americans and we need to look at each other that way.

Just as Americans. That’s all.

How hard is that?

“She Loves You…”

I still get that twinge when I hear the guitar at the beginning of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I’ve been getting that twinge for 50 years and it’s never gone away.

I was 13 years old when the Beatles came to America. We needed them so badly! We’d been through some kind of collective nightmare and we  needed something to bring us out of it. They were the perfect cure.

Three months before their arrival, President John Kennedy had been murdered in Dallas. We were still reeling from that. We couldn’t fathom how that had happened and it seemed that it had been rainy and gray and dark since that day.

I wasn’t really aware of it, but things were escalating in Vietnam. I had heard the name but what folks were really talking about in my circle was civil rights.

Black folks had just about had it. We were sick of having to step off the sidewalk, ride the back of the bus, not be able to vote, not be able to eat where we wanted, all that stuff that folks take for granted.

There were protest marches and folks getting hosed and beaten and like other little black kids at that time, the image of what had happened to Emmitt Till had never left my mind. I think all our parents made us look at that so that we would never underestimate the hatred we faced or what it could do to us.

My parents were both Southern and they had grown up with Jim Crow’s foot firmly on their necks. They moved to Illinois so us kids wouldn’t have to face that same thing and we pretty much hadn’t.

But anyway, things were pretty ugly for us in the USA right then. Not to mention our music had taken a turn for the worse. Suddenly we were listening to numerous songs about kids that had been killed. We called them “dead teenager” songs. Johnny Tillotson and Brian Hyland and Bobby Vee were tops on the charts then.

Oh yeah, that’s when my favorite song “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance came out. That was the first record I bought. The R&B was sounding good. The pop music not so much.

Things were even cloudier in my little world. My Mom and Dad had been fighting a lot. Mom had never been really happy about moving from Chicago to Galesburg and we went back every chance we had. Mom started getting sick and even more moody than usual and one day, they sat us down and told us that she had to go to the hospital and that they were taking her to Chicago. Weren’t there hospitals in Galesburg?

No, they said, she needed a special kind of hospital and she had to go there. I remember the tense and quiet ride when we took her there. We kids sat in the car while they checked her in. We didn’t know what was going on and we were playing around like kids did. Dad took us to see his brother Opra and we ate White Castle and then we went home.

We asked how long Mom would be gone and nobody really told us. She was still sick they said. We went up there to see her once and I remember the blank eyed look she gave us. No hugs or anything. A wan smile and that was all. Now I realize she was drugged up but all I remembered then was that she didn’t seem glad to see us even though we missed her.

I woke up one night in a pool of blood. I didn’t know what to think had happened. Mom had always been very secretive about her period. She hid her Modess pads and while I had kind of peeked at the box, I wasn’t really sure what they were for. Mom had believed that old wives’ tale that if she was late developing that her daughter would also be. She didn’t start her period till she was 17 and she assumed the same would happen for me. No. I started that fateful night in November, alone and scared.

I got up and wrote a will leaving my stuffed animals and three 45’s to my brothers and I went to school in tears.

Later that day after I had bled through my clothes, I went to the office and the school nurse realized I didn’t know what had happened and she sat me down and explained it to me and gave me a starter package with some pads and that hideous belt we had to use to wear them.

She called my father who called a friend who took me shopping for my “big girl” stuff and I came home feeling a lot better knowing I wasn’t going to die.

To compound life, my grandfather died. I had loved my Grandpa Jackson. He was a smart remarkable man with a great sense of humor and he could make you laugh even if you were so down you couldn’t see straight.

And then Dallas.

It seemed the whole country was as depressed as I was. The only thing that made it better is that my Mom came home from the hospital the week after Thanksgiving. We had a late turkey dinner and it seemed things were going to be ok and then the worst news of all for a 13 year old girl.

We were going to move.

We had two junior high schools in Galesburg. Junior high school was 7^th, 8^th and 9^th grade. If you lived on the east side of town, you went to Lombard. We had lived on that side of town since we moved there and I had finally settled into going to Lombard. It had been tough going. I was still rather an outsider and I was kind of brainy and I didn’t fit in with any of the local kids that much.

When you’re a kid like that, not fitting in was possibly the worst thing that could happen to you. I was just beginning to find myself and understand that being different was really all right. But now I was going to have to go to a different school and go through all that all over again.

I was going to have to start the new semester at Churchill Jr. High. That was where all the “rich” kids went. And I couldn’t walk to school like I had been. I had to ride a school bus and that meant I had to walk 4 or 5 blocks to the bus stop. I didn’t really know anyone at Churchill. I was broken hearted. I cried like a baby my last day at Lombard.

And so, halfway through my 8^th grade year, we moved to a bigger house on the other side of town. And it was during that time that I first heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

It didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before. The guitar was different. The vocals were different. The words were not about some kid dying in a car accident or breaking up after a summer love.

It was a happy song, a lively song and it made you feel good. I couldn’t believe it. I was caught off guard by it but I smiled and I was singing along with it.

When I went to the record store to buy it, it was in a black and white cover. 45’s had covers then and this was perfect. Those four guys were sitting together, smiling, holding cigarettes, wearing those gray suits with the black trim and shirts and ties. Their hair was longer and hanging down to their eyebrows. No more of those tall pompadours with the duck tail in the back. They had long bangs and it looked great.

They were all so cute but I couldn’t take my eyes off the one on the left, the one with the big bright eyes and the smile and he was holding a cigarette in his hand. His name was Paul McCartney. My poor little heart started pounding.

I was in love.

I didn’t think that perhaps I shouldn’t be falling in love with a long haired musician from England. Or that he was white and I was black. That didn’t enter my mind. All I knew was that I was in love.

I played that record over and over and put the cover on a stand by my bed so I could look at it as much as I wanted.

I took it with me my first day at Churchill. I needed the distraction. I felt lonely and out of place those first few days there. I had showed the record to some of my black friends who looked at me like I had grown a second head. Why was I listening to that “white” music and looking at those white boys?

I wondered why I was enthralled and why they weren’t. It was one more thing to make me different than everybody else. I couldn’t say why they got to me they way they did. They made me feel good. I hadn’t had much that did that for me so it was a welcome feeling.

I was just starting to notice boys and that was a definite problem for me. The boys were not noticing me. And I realized something then that would be with me the rest of my life – the boys I was noticing were white boys. I didn’t really want to go out with any black guys. I wanted to be with white boys.

Uh oh.

I had never seen any interracial couples then. Logically, I knew folks had to be crossing that line but I had never seen it and it really didn’t happen in that little Midwestern town I grew up in. That was just not done in the early 60’s. So I kept my preference to myself.

I didn’t know till later that the Ronettes had been on that plane with the Beatles when they first came here. I didn’t know that Phil Spector was there too, keeping a close eye on his wife in case she was tempted by one of those beautiful British boys. I didn’t know that they had to wait till the Beatles had deplaned before they did so it wouldn’t be an incident. And I really didn’t know that George was dating one of them. They were all mindful of where they were and kept it cool.

I saw the picture of George sitting with them and read that a reporter had asked them if they would go out with a black woman and they looked at him like he had grown a third eye and said of course they would!

My heart leapt out of my chest. I realized at that moment that there were white guys willing to go out with black women and I just hadn’t met them yet. While I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell with any of the Beatles, it opened a door for me. Somewhere there was a guy who would not be ashamed of me or think he was better than me.

I wasn’t pretty enough for the black guys and the white guys would never have considered me for a mate. That was all right. I wasn’t going to stay in my hometown all my life. I was going to leave and go see other places and other people and somewhere along the line, I would find someone whose mind and heart was open to someone like me. 

I was no longer ashamed or afraid to admit what my preference was. I didn’t care if folks didn’t like it. I liked it and that was all that important to me. So I was a black girl who liked rock music and liked rock musicians. That was who I was….and who I am.

The Beatles helped me find myself and accept myself. I will always love them for that.

So yes, she DOES love you….yeah, yeah, YEAH.