gumbo

So I said to the med student next to me, after the fourth fully segregated band marched past, "So, in NYC, are all the schools segregated like here?"

Before she could answer, a native intervened. "You are new here. You don't understand the subcultures."

"Oh yeah, I know about the racism and resulting segregation."

"No, not that. Those Black people."

"I understand that the only people I hear saying and doing racist things are white. Not all white people, of course, but enough to cause problems. What subculture are you talking about?"

"Those Black people. They have this subculture. It's not about skin color, it's about their SUBculture."

"Really? I don't know that subculture I guess. Is that the music and art and food that we all want, and just reject the rest and call it wrong and substandard?"

Don't get me fucking started. What was she going to tell me next, that Africans begged to be enslaved and it was their own damn fault because that was their culture?

I'm not denying there are significant cultural differences - I'm well aware of it. But MY culture ain't hers. And different isn't wrong. I just remember loud and clear that time at my old middle school where we got a kid from LA, a very large kid, a Black kid, a very sweet kid who tried hard. And it was his very first day there that a teacher started gunning for him, insisting that he was trying to physically intimidate her and tried to get the asst. principal to expel him just for showing up and being Black. I know I wasn't there, but I got to know that kid well enough to know that the only way that would ever happen is if she crossed the line - if she pushed him into anger, which wasn't easy to do. My point is that she looked at him walk through her door and made an assumption, and she was wrong. Even if she weren't wrong - every kid deserves a chance to prove who he or she is before we put them in a box and prove ourselves right. I could probably prove any kid to be a failure - that's what we do to them. But I also know how to prove a kid a success. But time and again research has shown how racist institutions and people within them are, and how exactly those kinds of situations eff up somebody's life for good.

Ah crap. Somebody just started a party with loud crappy music. I know it's lundi gras, but couldn't you play something good?

Don't get me wrong - I do like the south and New Orleans. But there's some major bullshit here that I ain't gonna be nice about. I'm gonna be that really obnoxious person who points out the obvious, what everybody seems to keep hush-hush. What, there are racial problems here? Surprise.

So I went to a dangerous part of town for gumbo just to make my damn point. If one more person tells me that "the Black part of town" is "so dangerous" I just want to do the smackdown. This whole town is mine, and if there's a street that I can't go get gumbo on because it's dangerous, then that's my problem and their problem too. Instead, I got to share beads with a drunk guy out front. The cool beads from Proteus with sea horses on them.

I like chocolate and I like a chocolate city. And no, I didn't get the damn gumbo by myself - I went with another guy.

This "subculture" woman tried to convince me that sooner or later I'd have a bad experience that would change my mind. I just looked at her for a minute. "I'm almost 40 years old and have lived all over the world. Are you thinking that I haven't had bad experiences with all kinds of different people? And good? If I go home tonight and somebody mugs me, it isn't their ethnicity that is mugging me, it's one jerk. We can all get stuck on what bad things are done or we can move forward and realize that's not all there is. Moving past it is what gets us to our humanity, and where things can get better. Until then, we are small-minded petty miserable excuses of people."

And then I got off my pulpit and caught me some seahorse beads and a fish and some guy in a mask called me over to the Proteus float and thanked me for all the Red Cross does (i was wearing the vest).

Maybe I'll just always be the damn Yankee, but that's better than being like them, when I say I'm going to the Zulu parade and they say, "You have to be so careful then, because of those kind of people." What kind of people is that? Seriously, a woman today to that question answered "Black people." "Really?" I responded. "Well, mostly I hang around with Black people, and I feel safer anywhere with them then I do here right now."

I don't like being strident, but there are some things I'll be Super Strident about. I will be impolite and ungracious. Of course I don't care if people have different beliefs and politics than me - but racism isn't acceptable, flat out. Maybe I'm using my teacher voice too much, and maybe they aren't listening - but maybe they are. And maybe I'm giving voice to what somebody else wanted to say.

But what I want to know is - where is safe for my Black daughters to be? Where can they go and not have to pretend to be white to be "acceptable"? Where will people not judge or try to change them into some white trash ideal? I won't send them to a crappy public school, where our society is failing Black kids at a horrifying pace, and I won't send them to a private school that is all-white, because I will not expose them to the pressure of conformity when nobody looks like them.

I don't want to live in a world where all my friends and neighbors look like me. That's a pitiful world, lacking depth and flavor. Gumbo without any okra or flavorings. Sad.