My first and only experience as a racial minority came during third grade, and lasted about a week.
Don’t get me wrong. As you can see by my mug shot floating just inches from your face, my skin is white, and has remained invariably so for my whole life. But for that one week in the third grade something about the way I looked felt different. I spent that week at a public elementary school in Atlanta where, in my class of nearly 30 students, I was one of three who were white. It’s obvious that single isolated experience brought me no closer to the “black experience” than any other culturally conflicted white liberal. But in the midst of Black History Month it’s interesting for me to remember the way I felt sitting at that desk in Atlanta. I very nearly drowned in 20 foot waves of my own self-consciousness. Was everyone looking at me because I was new? Or was it because I was white?
Probably, and fairly, it was varying levels of each. After all, there’s not much to race relations in the United States that hasn’t already been said, whispered or shouted from a pickup truck. If America is a melting pot, then racial tension is the grime stuck on the bottom that won’t go away no matter how hard you scrub.
Take the newest attempt of overcoming racism: The ‘colorblind society’ theory, where race is ignored and people are judged solely on their character, or their drive, or their love of the free market or something like that. It’s a real romantic kind of notion, suggesting we can all just get along in spite of the rough patches we may have gone through in the past.
But how would you implement such a ‘policy?’ Would you say, “Hey everyone! Start respecting other cultures right now!” and expect everything to change? The idea has never really been advanced beyond just that: an idea. Besides, we’re all in some part the legacy of our history; just because it took 400 years to figure out the whole black rights thing doesn’t mean 40 years of progress has warranted turning a blind eye to it.
Now that’s not to say we haven’t made significant gains in the state of our race relations. After all, who would have thought once upon a time that our generation’s two smartest, funniest and most provocative social commentators would be black men? Of course I’m talking about Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle.
Some of you may be wondering why – at a time when an increasing number of people seem prepared to elect the country’s first black president – these two comedians are particularly significant. It’s because they’ve helped pave the way. The greatness and importance of their craft comes from how they’ve pushed racial stereotypes into our face, forcing us to confront them and, therefore, confront our nation’s past.
At first they shock us. “Do you know what the good side of crack is?” Chris Rock asks in his HBO standup special Bring the Pain. “If you’re up at the right hour, you can get a VCR for $1.50. You can furnish your whole house for $10.95.” But once the initial discomfort fades, they offer insights into a world white people like myself can’t ever fully identify with.
They are the worst enemy of the likes who would advocate for a colorblind society. They teach us it’s OK to see a white person and think, “That is a white person,” or to see a black person and think, “That is a black person.” It’s that white elephant sitting in the dark corner of your head. They simply pull it out from the shadows so that it can be laughed at or ridiculed, then discarded so we can all move forward.
As it turned out, that fear I felt in Atlanta was a product of my imagination. And it didn’t even matter because by the time we’d finished playing kickball at lunchtime I was everyone’s friend. I was too young then to understand the centuries of history that had fueled my perception of blacks, and how I thought they perceived me. There’s a lot to it I still don’t understand. I guess the years that followed have taught me no one’s closer than anyone else to ending prejudice in our country. But at the very least, putting it out there for us to talk about is a whole lot more effective than simply pretending it doesn’t exist.
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