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I'm sitting in my favorite coffeeshop, procrastinating writing a final. My heart is as heavy as the skies outside, and thank God it's raining so hard, I don't feel compelled to cry.
I am one of those people who grew up just past the Civil Rights Movement. I'm privileged to have never grown up with any kind of overt and pressing segregation, nor any legal overtly racial discrimination policies (Reagan doesn't count). And my mom, trying to give me a better life, sent me to mixed schools and encouraged me to affiliate with all the students in my classes. Especially in elementary school, I had a rainbow coalition of friends. I knew we had differences; my friend Jennifer was black, but had a white mom, long, silky hair, and lived with her grandmother; Aine's dad was a nurse; and David's mom taught us Chinese customs and gave us chopsticks for Chinese New Year. My mom was a single parent. Differences, but-who cared?
High school was more difficult; we began to pull apart a bit, more balkanized by activities than race, although I did learn that it wasn't cool to be smart to some of the black kids at school- athletics were cooler. Band was so uncool as to render me largely invisible. But again, I had friends across the spectrum; fellow nerds in black and white, a tenuous alliance with tough black girls on drill team, and a huge crush on a cafe au lait boy whose ethnicity defied us for years. We called him Arab, Latin, mixed...turns out he was Dutch and Cruzian (St. Croix), by way of Aruba. OK...
But we all hung out, and danced to similar music mostly, and had similar goals. Yeah, there were only a few interracial couples around, but at the school for nerds, not that many people were dating at all. I even had a white, guy friend who, like me, thought all the race conflict we heard about (rarely saw) was stupid. When we'd pass each other in the hall, he'd yell loudly to me, "Whassup, Honky!" and I'd reply, "Wassup, Nigga!" Like smoking or getting pregnant, we thought being racist was just plain dumb. Culture was cool and being proud of your ancestry was awesome, but why waste time hating someone because they were lighter or darker than you? Dumb.
When I got to Cornell, I realized what I had been sheltered from. Vitriol and rhetoric of entitlement, violence and resentment, and this from kids who could buy and sell their way to a college degree! Here I was, this kid from Cincinnati, trying to sing Kuumbayah and hold hands, while the revolution started to televise itself. To say I wigged out is an understatement. I lived in the black dorm, had almost all black and brown friends (although they were Trinidadian and Nu-Jamaican and Puerto Rican), but I secretly penned a novel about two fish-out-of-water freshmen forging an interracial relationship amidst campus conflict and violence.
Coming home to Cincinnati didn't help. I was disappointed, angry, and scared; plus, I had discovered how hard dating was, and all the new rules that came along with sexual politics in America. I felt ugly and ostracized, from black men and white, and the only haven I had was the campus diversity organization, where freaks like me from all walks of life, countries, and colors came together, voluntarily, to talk about race and reconciliation (to be glib). I think RAPP (the last P is silent) saved my life. It turned me from an angry militant to a much more reasoned adult, no longer sheltered and naive, but also, not mad at the whole world for things outside my control.
Adulthood has largely been a mellowing period. I laugh at how little younger people think about race when forging friendships, but I cringed tonight when I saw a doe-eyed young black girl inviting a handsome white boy to her house for dinner. "Be careful!" my heart shouted, just in case... he wasn't as evolved as she. Projection? Hell yes. Rejection kills; disappointment only maims. Call me the Phantom of the Coffeehouse.
Anyway, to my heavy heart- Barack and America. Race and 2008. Resentment and anger. Halle Berry as the beautiful version of black women. Subprime borrowers getting a bailout vs. No Child Left Behind. And me, sitting alone in a coffeeshop, wishing I had some friends around me to tell me that it's gonna be ok. Because today...today, I wonder how the hell I'm gonna survive in Boulder.
Today has been a day of rants, but...I miss writing, and I miss hope. I had it; I guess I just misplaced it. Send me some if you see it, ok?
I am one of those people who grew up just past the Civil Rights Movement. I'm privileged to have never grown up with any kind of overt and pressing segregation, nor any legal overtly racial discrimination policies (Reagan doesn't count). And my mom, trying to give me a better life, sent me to mixed schools and encouraged me to affiliate with all the students in my classes. Especially in elementary school, I had a rainbow coalition of friends. I knew we had differences; my friend Jennifer was black, but had a white mom, long, silky hair, and lived with her grandmother; Aine's dad was a nurse; and David's mom taught us Chinese customs and gave us chopsticks for Chinese New Year. My mom was a single parent. Differences, but-who cared?
High school was more difficult; we began to pull apart a bit, more balkanized by activities than race, although I did learn that it wasn't cool to be smart to some of the black kids at school- athletics were cooler. Band was so uncool as to render me largely invisible. But again, I had friends across the spectrum; fellow nerds in black and white, a tenuous alliance with tough black girls on drill team, and a huge crush on a cafe au lait boy whose ethnicity defied us for years. We called him Arab, Latin, mixed...turns out he was Dutch and Cruzian (St. Croix), by way of Aruba. OK...
But we all hung out, and danced to similar music mostly, and had similar goals. Yeah, there were only a few interracial couples around, but at the school for nerds, not that many people were dating at all. I even had a white, guy friend who, like me, thought all the race conflict we heard about (rarely saw) was stupid. When we'd pass each other in the hall, he'd yell loudly to me, "Whassup, Honky!" and I'd reply, "Wassup, Nigga!" Like smoking or getting pregnant, we thought being racist was just plain dumb. Culture was cool and being proud of your ancestry was awesome, but why waste time hating someone because they were lighter or darker than you? Dumb.
When I got to Cornell, I realized what I had been sheltered from. Vitriol and rhetoric of entitlement, violence and resentment, and this from kids who could buy and sell their way to a college degree! Here I was, this kid from Cincinnati, trying to sing Kuumbayah and hold hands, while the revolution started to televise itself. To say I wigged out is an understatement. I lived in the black dorm, had almost all black and brown friends (although they were Trinidadian and Nu-Jamaican and Puerto Rican), but I secretly penned a novel about two fish-out-of-water freshmen forging an interracial relationship amidst campus conflict and violence.
Coming home to Cincinnati didn't help. I was disappointed, angry, and scared; plus, I had discovered how hard dating was, and all the new rules that came along with sexual politics in America. I felt ugly and ostracized, from black men and white, and the only haven I had was the campus diversity organization, where freaks like me from all walks of life, countries, and colors came together, voluntarily, to talk about race and reconciliation (to be glib). I think RAPP (the last P is silent) saved my life. It turned me from an angry militant to a much more reasoned adult, no longer sheltered and naive, but also, not mad at the whole world for things outside my control.
Adulthood has largely been a mellowing period. I laugh at how little younger people think about race when forging friendships, but I cringed tonight when I saw a doe-eyed young black girl inviting a handsome white boy to her house for dinner. "Be careful!" my heart shouted, just in case... he wasn't as evolved as she. Projection? Hell yes. Rejection kills; disappointment only maims. Call me the Phantom of the Coffeehouse.
Anyway, to my heavy heart- Barack and America. Race and 2008. Resentment and anger. Halle Berry as the beautiful version of black women. Subprime borrowers getting a bailout vs. No Child Left Behind. And me, sitting alone in a coffeeshop, wishing I had some friends around me to tell me that it's gonna be ok. Because today...today, I wonder how the hell I'm gonna survive in Boulder.
Today has been a day of rants, but...I miss writing, and I miss hope. I had it; I guess I just misplaced it. Send me some if you see it, ok?
depressed