Discussions of racism among corn fields and Applebees

I’ll be honest: I arrived in the Midwest with the expectation to observe and document blatant racism. What surprised me, though, was not the presence or absence of racism; it was the absence of the discussion of racism.

Interviewing people in big US cities has been empirically easy, because evaluating the way race and racism has affected their life is often an issue that had been considered before, even if only briefly. Washingtonians commenting about the social geography of Washington DC took little analyzation, as it’s not a taboo discussion topic of dinner parties and Metro public service advertisements.

I interviewed people at the University of Indiana at Bloomington which, to me, was farmland. It was corn field, corn field, corn field, general store, cornfield, cornfield, university. But to several that I interviewed, Bloomington was a dynamic big city with a wealth of ethnic diversity and equality challenges. The majority of interviewees were students coming from even smaller towns in Indiana, towns where all residents know each other on a first-name basis and Friday nights are spent gossiping at Applebees about the new family who just moved in.

When asked “what’s your experience with race and racism in the US?”, the most common response I get on the east and west coast is equivalent to “oh boy, where do I start?” In Indiana, without deviation, every oral history started with the outright denial of the existence of racism in their hometown. One angle was “my hometown is so diverse that everyone gets along and we never have any trouble.” When asked about the diversity, one informant regaled the various high schools that boasted Irish, Italian, and Jewish attendees. Where larger cities assume racial tension implies a color variation, these towns in Indiana fall back on former delineation of racial categories reminiscent of the US censuses of the early 1900s. The other angle was “my hometown has no diversity, so when we get the occasional Asian person or Black person, we don’t even know how to racially stigmatize because that’s not what we do.”

I am, in no way, intending to belittle or reject my informants’ evaluation of the situation. What’s interesting to me is not the existence of racism in small towns; it is the insistence that racism did not exist to a significant enough degree to warrant a discussion. Whereas past informants have often been quick to tell tales of personal victimization- or observations of structural discrimination in their city- or even times when they may have done or said something for which they feel ashamed, these informants were equally quick to defend their hometown. People reacted as if the question of perceptions of racism in their home town was an offensive attack, putting them in a position to fight back; as if the mere question was an outright accusation.

I think part of the defensive response arose from hometown pride- this gut reaction to protect and uphold the dignity and good name of their home. I think part of it was unfamiliarity- with racial tension, but more so with the discussion of racial tension. Bloomington, for me, was illuminating not for the stories gathered but for the difficulty I had in the process of collecting stories. People, although always friendly, wouldn’t speak to me for long or in much depth. This project is necessarily asking for personal stories and few people offered any without sandwiching it between the insistence that racism does not exist. These interviews were difficult to obtain, sift through, and analyze, because most of Bloomington’s racial story was told in the words that were left out. 

On the Road: Memphis, Tennessee

Having lived in only big cities for the last several years, rural America is something of a mystery to me. I feel more comfortable in downtown Mumbai than I do in farmland Illinois- and that level of discomfort and curiosity made this particular interview trip, from Dallas to Bloomington, Indiana particularly special.

I think people who live in big cities can easily forget what the racial make-up of most of the US (land mass-wise) looks like. At least, I know I forget. Stopping in small towns in Indiana and Tennessee, where friendly people didn't hesitate to inquire where I came from ("No, not Dallas. I mean, originally, where's your family from?"). It was multiple layers of othering- the city girl and the brown girl- when I'm often only geared up to deal with one at a time. 

I stayed overnight in Memphis to break up my 16 hour drive to Bloomington. While chatting with the front desk reception, she commented, innocently, "You speak English really well!" Completely confused, I thanked her...reluctantly...and walked up to my room before realizing (what will seem obvious to most of you, I'm sure) that she assumed I wasn't a native English speaker. She assumed I moved to the US from a different country and had learned English surprisingly well. 

I think the most jarring part of this experience, for me, is that I know she wasn't being rude. On the contrary, she actually believed she was complimenting my fabulous language abilities. 

This, as with several if not most moments of discriminatory practices, can be attributed to ignorance. But not the branch of ignorance that intentionally neglects to learn about peoples and cultures, the kind that aims to stay in the dark in order to justify their practices, that believes they know everything they want to know about a particular issue or group of people and no new information could ever change their mind. No, she was part of a more pure group, that truly just didn't know. Cloaked with unfamiliarity instead of stubbornness. 

I want to clarify that I don't believe this type of ignorance is endemic to Memphis, to Tennessee, or to the Midwest. But nevertheless, here is where I encountered it, and made sure to mention the next morning that I enjoyed visiting Tennessee because "I was born and raised in Texas and rarely make it to the MidWest." 

Big Issues in the Big Easy

First of all, thank you for everyone who shared their opinion on our recent blog poll! The statement was: “If the worst hurricane-affected communities in New Orleans were mostly white, the government would have responded more quickly.” 16 percent disagreed strongly, 8 percent said they disagreed, 37 percent agreed, 33 percent strongly agreed, and four percent weren’t sure.

I had some pretty disjointed ideas about my time in New Orleans. Any joints or transitions would have come out pretty contrived, so here we go on a rockily-written ride….

NOLA Nostalgia

New Orleans does a great job of selling nostalgia. It’s one of these cities whose walls are covered in black and white photos and ancient advertisements framed sentimentally, whose colorful souvenirs herald to a time when the city boomed with a unique energy. Jazz musicians, kings and queens of their time, are convincingly made synonymous with New Orleans and crafted into glazed statues. You can sit your very own Mississippi steamboat complete with big red paddle-wheel right on your home bookcase. Or you can purchase the memorabilia of America’s racial past- reminders of the darker side of this indefinite time period we are made so nostalgic for. A framed label for “Mammy’s Authentic Recipe New Orleans Pralines” with a full-figured black woman in a red handkerchief and yellow apron, or figures of jazz-players painted jet black, with rounded red lips smiling ear to ear.

Mixed Messages at Mardi Gras

Hard to believe, but true—I didn’t realize I was going to New Orleans during Mardi Gras until long after I booked the ticket. And I had never heard of the Zulu Parade at Mardi Gras until I was preparing to leave for New Orleans, but as soon as I saw that there would be a procession of people marching through the streets in blackface and that it was more than socially acceptable, I knew I had to check it out. How many situations are there in this country in which painting on blackface, historically such an offensive and disparaging act, is not only accepted, but celebrated?

Not that the parade hasn’t had its share of controversy, specifically during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s when many in the movement condemned the Zulu’s use of blackface, grass skirts and other undignified stereotypical gear. Today it seems to be most commonly defended as tradition, but there is some public disagreement about how that tradition has evolved. Some say it’s a send-up of vaudeville and the people who actually believe in those stereotypes, some say it developed as a cheap and creative way to celebrate Mardi Gras, where black people have historically been excluded.

If there is so much confusion among the people of New Orleans about the practice of donning blackface for the Zulu Parade, you could imagine the mess of ideas among visitors. As a performer passed, dressed in a grass skirt, Afro-wig and blackface, dancing provocatively, the extremely enthusiastic Alaskan woman crushing my ribcage against the barricades declared, “Oh, that’s so Zulu!” It occurred to me that “Zulu” could be substituted for some other racially-defined words and the statement still have a similar meaning. Clearly, I don’t know this woman or really what she meant by that, but it struck me that individuals watch this type of event with very different eyes and very different understandings. What does being “Zulu” mean… to her, to the performer, to other observers?

The Zulu parade is very popular, and there is a lot information out there about it. What I couldn’t find any discourse or analysis of were the white-skin-colored masks some people in different parades wore. It seemed mostly to be white people wearing these plain soft plastic masks with baroque green, gold and purple suits. They seemed almost to be like a subdued “white-face” in answer to Zulu’s blackface. But honestly I don’t know how to read these costumes, so if anyone knows anything about it, please email us at RaceMonologues@gmail.com!

Reverse Racism or Racialized Discrimination?

Having trouble finding anyone out and about to interview on a rainy Sunday, I treated myself to an IMAX movie my last day in town. The film, “Hurricane on the Bayou” severely juxtaposed the images of the streets I’d been walking for the past two weeks against footage of the city during and directly after Hurricane Katrina. It really brought into focus the incredible recovery New Orleans has made in four years, and the work there still is to be done.

And although the film’s concentration is on the human toll of the destruction of the wetlands, it doesn’t venture into issues of environmental justice, and just how disparate these effects are on different communities. As one of the people I interviewed said, “there weren’t a lot of white people waving for help from their rooftops”.

Which certainly isn’t to say there weren’t any white folks affected—please don’t misunderstand. That’s another recurrent theme I’ve seen around New Orleans—white folks asserting that they, too, are victims of racism. In other parts of the country, it was a lot more common when I interviewed a white person and asked them about racism that they’d shrug and say they didn’t know much about it because they were white.

So is there more hostility toward white people in New Orleans than in some of the other places where I’ve done interviews this year? Or have whites down there been chastised for what’s seen as pervasive racism in the region for so long that there’s a backlash that has them flipping the script and claiming victimization? Or was it chance that I bumped into unrepresentative individuals who felt this way?

I was left thinking that these individuals had over-stated the case for white victimization in the South and wondering how this idea has developed. But one narrative in particular definitely gave me pause—Charlie Sooner (an alias). I interrupted a very cozy-looking guitar lesson a teenage white boy was giving his female classmate in Auduon park. Charlie told me energetically he thought racism was worst against white people because he, one of the only white kids in the school, was always being called cracker, and (in a rather graffic description) told me about recently getting his head stuffed into a toilet by black kids and being barred from sitting with black kids at lunch. He was certainly prone to exaggeration in the presence of the cute guitar tutee next to him, but the point is still worth considering in the context of the little world of Ninth Ward high school he described.

“Reverse racism”, or discrimination against whites, is not racism per se, but racial discrimination, a distinction that may sound fussy, but links to what I believe is at the core of race issues: power. In the United States, white European-Americans are in the majority, and more importantly, have disproportionate power in our society. White people are the majority of the CEOs, owners, partners, senators, proprietors… of just about every industry or decision-making body. The concept of race that currently operates in our society was (and is still constantly being) constructed out of power struggles. “Race” is a categorizing system we’ve come up with to divide people into neat taxonomies, to name, to order and to impose hierarchy. So racism is the reinforcement of this oppressive system by discriminating against people based on notions of what people are and what they are capable of according to characteristics assigned to racial categories.

Saying the bullying and abuse Charlie suffers isn’t racism doesn’t belittle the pain or difficulty it causes him. But if Euro-Americans aren’t the majority at this Ninth Ward school, why don’t we say that they experience racism when they are targeted for violence because they’re white? As teenagers, a lot of us felt that our high school world was a microcosm of the wider world, that what happened there was pretty much the end-all. So it’s somewhat understandable that Charlie thinks that white people experience the worst racism today—that’s what he sees in his school, and perhaps his community.

That’s the thing about white privilege, though. It’s pretty hard to see, especially when you’re in the middle of it. High schools don’t operate in a vacuum. We’re all still affected by cultural norms-- stereotypes, standards of beauty and disparate expectations, and even at his school, white privilege shapes how we view the world and how the world views us. There is a greater likelihood that this boy’s teachers will subconsciously expect different results from him than his non-white classmates, and in subtle ways this will affect the way they treat him and the ways he thinks about his own possibilities. And the fact is, once he leaves high school, assuming he leaves his immediate neighborhood to work, live or entertain himself, he will have the benefit of white privilege.

Don’t buy it? Have something to add? Comment on my blog entry down here! 

Changes to the Race Monologues Blog

Hi everybody. We decided for simplicity's sake to divide our Race Monologues blog into two-- a Travel Blog (this one), and a News Blog. So, when all of the sudden half of our archives disappear, that's where they've gone-- the News Blog. I hope you'll keep up with both!

Until the News Blog is linked to our website, you can access it here: http://racemonologuesnews.blogspot.com/

Also, I'm going to work on posting more photos with my blog. New Orleans during Mardi Gras seemed like a good time to start!

Bienvenido a Miami!

On my first day venturing out into Miami, I took the metro to Jackson Memorial Hospital to troll for interviewees in the courtyards. I was interested in looking at disparities in healthcare access, and thought folks around a hospital might have something to say on the topic. Many of the people I talked to did have something to say about healthcare, but I immediately encountered a problem that I definitely should have foreseen. I had trouble talking to a lot of people because they didn’t speak English, and my Spanish is, well, lacking. Certainly there were some people who were just brushing me off, the way I would escape would-be solicitors on the streets when I lived in Spain by smiling and shrugging, “Lo siento! No hablo Español!” 

When I first arrived in Miami, it threw me off balance a bit and I would continue on my way, looking for easier prey. (I’m pretty timid when it comes to approaching people at random for interviews, so just about any hesitancy on their part is enough to scare me off.) But eventually I had to admit that people with limited English may have a unique story to tell about experiences of race, and I couldn’t possibly limit myself because of my uncertainty about speaking Spanish. As it turned out, once I exposed myself and showed my own insecurity with Spanish by over-apologizing after just about every phrase I eked out, many people eventually switched to English and had successful interviews. Only one person did their whole interview in Spanish, and frankly I couldn’t follow most of what he said, so I have to just hope that when I transcribe it he was actually answering the questions I wanted to ask.

A large majority of people I interviewed in Miami linked questions about race to issues of language, whether they felt discriminated against for speaking imperfect English, excluded because they didn’t speak Spanish, or had other experiences involving language barriers. Certainly language isn’t the only factor at play in race relations in Miami, but maybe because of the history of immigration, and the large numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants from all over Latin America, it does seem to be more tightly tied to race and racism than in some other parts of the country. I’m very excited to do more research on the city, its history and the (lucky) people who live there. 

Dallas Casino Night Fundraiser: Donate a Buck and Try Your Luck!

Thank you to everyone who attended our Dallas fundraiser! It was a small and rather last-minute affair, but it really just felt like a house party in which people gave us money (the best kind of party!) But what was probably best about it (other than getting to wear a feather boa for our “Casino Night” theme) was that we put together a fundraiser that is very low-cost and easily reproduce-able.

Aditi’s parents magically produced a bunch of gaming equipment from their garage, but if we were to do this particular fundraiser again, we could easily improvise the blackjack table, poker chips and “Jeopardy” board (Ok, so “Jeopardy” isn’t exactly in keeping with our casino theme, but it was a lot of fun.)

I’ll go into some detail here in case anyone who happens across this wants to put together their own fundraiser. We held it in Aditi’s parents’ family room and invited all of Aditi and her sister’s high school friends, family friends, friends of friends and friends of family friends via Facebook, email and a flurry of text messages. All of the family’s old board games and playing cards were pulled out of storage and put to use. A suggested donation of $5 bought you $500 in Monopoly money to play the various games or to buy poker chips. For an additional $1, you could enter our raffle to win a “Race Monologues™” poster and a gorgeous painted scroll Aditi bought in Singapore.

We were lucky in the prizes department—Aditi had lots of inexpensive souvenirs from the places she’d travelled in the last couple years that hadn’t been given away as gifts. I suppose in other circumstances the “prize wall” would also be a great opportunity to “re-gift” or “redistribute” things packed away at the back of your closet. Other than the raffle, we had a prize for a game in which people guessed how many beans were in a jar (although the game was inconveniently located and only one person guessed… so even though Sandip wrote down 500 as his guess and the actual amount was 1004, he was the proud winner of a Thai plate set) and an array of different prizes with various prices people could “buy” with their winnings.

We bought a couple of bottles of cheap red wine, citrus soda and fruit to make sangria, which was much cheaper than buying other alcohol. One bag of popcorn lasted the whole party.

Card games were set up in one half of the room and board games in the other. As guests began arriving, they seemed to naturally distribute themselves among the games. We had the movie 21 playing in the background, and it magically ended just as both of the games of “Outburst” and “Trivial Pursuit” were finishing up, making for the perfect opportunity to pause the party for our little speech. We got everyone’s attention and talked for a few minutes about our project, and then segued into a whole-group game of “Jeopardy”. All the questions were on the subject of race and racism, and we had categories like History, Science and Movies. The game sparks some interesting debates. Afterward, we played another group game, announced our raffle winner, and slowly the party came to an end.

Well, I don’t know how this blog turned into an article on how to throw a cheap fundraiser, but I’ll be blogging again soon about the actual field work we did in Dallas and Miami. I’ll just say now that I’m sorry for bringing New York’s weather with me to Texas and Florida… record lows in both places. I guess I’m taking it home with me though-- Miami is supposed to pop back up into the mid-seventies the day I leave. 

DC Fundraiser Photos

This is a bit belated, but here are a few photos from our DC Fundraiser, where our fabulous volunteers read some sample narratives from the preliminary research:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Delivered from West Virginia

I must admit that Morgantown, West Virginia surprised me. I had never been to the state before last month, and while I had more nuanced expectations than the images from the film Deliverance, as a New Yorker I had prepared myself for some serious culture shock. As I began to talk to different people and hear about their experiences of race, I got a much more discordant and interesting view of the place.

I drove with some family from Washington, DC to Morgantown on a Friday night, and after checking into a hotel near the university’s football stadium (a bit of luxury compliments of my aunt and uncle before a week of “roughing it” on my cousin’s couch). We all went to dinner on the outskirts of the town at a chain seafood restaurant. It was hard to get much of an impression of the town initially in the dark, but the area where we went to eat had that suburban plaza familiarity. Our dinner spot was one in a line of national and regional chain restaurants, banks, gas stations and grocery stores.

The clientele seemed to be mostly, if not exclusively, white, but there was a bit more racial/ethnic diversity among the restaurants’ large front-end staff. Our waiter was a friendly young man from nearby Gaithersburg, Maryland who had spent five years at the West Virginia University and stayed in Morgantown looking for work after graduating. My aunt’s family lives near Gaithersburg also and began chatting with our waiter about restaurants and schools in the area. Our waiter got to talking about his high school. When he attended, it was a “really good” school, he said. But now, well, things had deteriorated. Yes, my cousin agreed, he’d heard that some of the schools in that area were having trouble. Our waiter looked very concerned, and told us about how much his alma mater had changed, and how upset all his friends were about it. He lowered his voice just a little and stood closer to our table.

           

“When I was there,” he said, “it was almost all white. But now, it’s majority black and there are lots of Hispanics, it’s a mess.” He gave a commiserative look around the table.

           

“There are so many problems at that school now, you know?”

I was stunned… not necessarily by the sentiment, but by the candor. Because we all appeared white, he felt confident enough that he could share his view on this with strangers and that we would, first, understand that an increase in the number of ethnic/ racial minorities corresponds to an increase in “trouble” at the school, and second, agree with the assessment.

So, I thought, this is what West Virginia is going to be like. This was a pretty silly and premature generalization, of course. I felt uncomfortable and fell back on my stereotypes-- not at all dissimilar from what my interviewees later did. An example I was given twice was something to the effect of, “If I’m in bad traffic, someone cuts me off, and I look over and see an Asian person, I think, oh, of course.” I hear what I considered a fairly racist statement, but when I’m in West Virginia, I think, oh, of course.

It’s just not as simple as all that, no place is. Certainly there are areas where racism is much more socially acceptable than others, but we can’t call out whole states or regions. Morgantown, West Virginia has been shaped in recently decades by the university that contributes some 30,000 students to its population. Many people I interviewed told me that Morgantown was a very tolerant place because of the presence of the university and the diversity it attracts. But, almost all qualified, go outside of the town and it’s a very different story.

           

Honestly, it was a little difficult to find local Morgantowners to interview. To hunt down the locals in a thriving college town, I figured my best bet was to ask professionals, shop-owners and employees, as well as folks on the street and in cafes. This turned out to be pretty hit or miss, but I did get some really interesting interviews (which you will be able to read on our website soon!) from both people who had grown up in West Virginia, and those who had come for the university.

I met a young white woman who had had trouble finding a place to live with her black boyfriend, because, she believed, landlords couldn’t accept a biracial couple. During a very brief interview at a bus stop, I heard from a former coal-miner who had not been allowed to ride “whites only” buses or attend white schools. I also talked to the head of the Muslim Student Association who had grown up in West Virginia and said racism wasn’t a “major issue” for him. 

I wish I had been able to spend more time in Morgantown and had the opportunity to talk to more people. I felt unsure at times that I was really getting a feel for the town, not just the university campus. The voices I did hear, however, were an interesting cacophony. They reminded me how easy it is to fall back on stereotypes, whether of a group of people, or a place, and how useless those stereotypes can be.

Sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in Race Monologues in Morgantown. Your stories will help to patch together our understanding of how race is experienced in this country today. And a special thanks to my cousin for dousing his futon in Lysol before letting me crash there.