Category Archives: Race

Limited Visibility

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Sunday, waiting for a bus in the New York City Port Authority’s (poorly lit and oppressive) waiting area, a scruffy young man dragging a long-handled suitcase approached me to ask for money. I turned him down. “Happy Mother’s Day,” he sneered. “Thank you very much. Have a nice day.” And immediately walked over to another woman and went through the same routine; so did she.

After he’d moved on, a third bus traveler who sat next to the second woman—from her accent I’m guessing this third woman is Haitian—spoke up: “He only asked you two,” she noted. “He didn’t ask anybody else.”Just the two white women in the waiting area, she meant.

Reader: I hadn’t seen that.

Last night, as a potential ally,* I sat in on a parent meeting at Mystic Housing, a Somerville public housing complex, to listen as a racially diverse group of mothers grappled with the best way to begin recycling at their complex. (Single-stream recycling bins available to households throughout the rest of the city had not been distributed at public housing. After much pressure from Mystic residents, especially children from the Mystic Learning Center, the housing authority agreed to begin a pilot project there, starting this summer.)

Reader: I’d forgotten what it means to live in public housing ( For many years, back in the day, I’d taught GED classes at Mystic Housing’s community center). I’d forgotten how debilitating, how oppressive it could be if your neighbors scrawl graffiti onto freshly painted walls or defecate in the hallways—stories told last night. I’d not anticipated how a bright and shiny idea like “Let’s recycle!” might land on poor, overwhelmed, working-multiple-jobs mothers.

Sadly, how I “see” race and class sometimes looks a lot like last Friday at Brooklyn Botanic Garden: my daughter, two grandchildren and I sampling different scents from different lilac bushes on a pea-soup foggy and drizzly afternoon as La Guardia-bound jets flew right over our heads, close, loud—yet invisible.

 

* Somerville’s Mothers Out Front wish to connect with the women in public housing; I embodied that wish.

 

Branded # 7: Amity*

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Last night I attended a reading at Porter Square Books by Debby Irving, an attractive, personable, and righteous Cambridge resident, re her brand-new book, Waking Up White And Finding Myself in the Story of Race.

Reader, I was upset. And jealous. Especially when Irving flatly stated that after taking a course at Wheelock College—where I went, for heaven’s sake!—and awakening to race matters, she couldn’t find any memoirs by white people on the subject! So decided to write one, herself.

Still stewing, I came home to find an e-mail from my dear friend, Delia, with this link. “Apparently I’m not the only one who’s been thinking about this poem first thing in the morning lately!” she wrote. As Delia knows,  Robert Hayden’s incredible “Those Winter Sundays” introduces Chapter 2 of my memoir re awakening to race in this country. How grateful I was to be gifted with such loving—though inadvertent—support of a dear friend when I needed it! How lovely to again contemplate, “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” !

My memoir’s entitled Way Opens: A Spiritual Journey. That journey continues. So when, ahem, I woke up this morning, I realized I’d heard something else last night: How there’s another, little-known narrative in this country about people of color and white allies. (And, yes, although although our record has been definitely checkered, Quakers have historically been counted among those allies.)

Post Way Opens, here’s where Spirit had led me: To be, as best as I am able, a criminal justice ally. And here’s what I believe I am led to explore: how best I can support Jobs Not Jail. (Not completely clear; need more discernment for sure.)

Reader: care to join me?

PS: Upon reflection, I realized that the above was clumsily written. Let me be clear: I commend Debby Irving and the wonderful and important work she’s done. There can’t be too many books on this incredibly important and difficult subject!

* “Friendship, peaceful harmony; mutual understanding and peaceful relationship.” My alma mater runs a National Center for Race Amity; who knew?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Branded # 5: Shadows, Ghosts

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Usually, when I post about “Community/Interconnectedness” (my # 1 topic, apparently), I write from a place of deep, deep gratitude. And, yes, how grateful I was on Sunday to attend this “The Somerville I Didn’t Know” lecture in the presence of some dear friends. Fifty or so people, many of whom I know, gathered on a hot summer afternoon in the un-air-conditioned Somerville Museum to look squarely at slavery. Its evil. To take in that slavery was “the engine” that powered all* Industrial Revolution industry.  And slavery’s pervasiveness—even in Somerville.

But to acknowledge that yes, this pernicious institution was right here in the ‘ville is, sadly, to also acknowledge its shadow. Evil doesn’t fade away, does it. It’s like an offshore oil spill: the dark, gooey crap just keeps washing ashore and sticking to our feet.

An odd experience I’m not sure I can adequately explain: On Sunday, I realized in a new way that, “Ohmygod, slavery’s shadow still haunts us” when historian Alice Mack mentioned Nathanael Greene, Revolutionary War hero**—who’d briefly been stationed in Somerville—as a Quaker! (Apparently the cotton gin had been invented on his plantation.) That a noted historian didn’t note the disconnect between Greene’s religious faith and being a celebrated general and brilliant war strategist made me feel as though my sect, like slavery, had become ghostlike. (But, obviously, still haunts us.)

It’s not a stretch for me to connect the dots between slavery’s long shadow here in MA and, say, our punitive CORI laws, which make getting a job or finding a place to live so incredibly hard for ex-offenders.

And while I know in my heart that the Bay State’s Quakers’ peace witness also endures, just not feelin’ it at the moment.

 

*All. That sprawling, nineteenth-century Somerville factory pictured above was known as The Bleachery—where cotton was bleached.

** Coincidentally, Greene and another infamous Quaker, Charles Lynch, fought together at Guilford Courthouse. In fact, the word “lynch” derives from this battle’s backstory: When Lynch, a judge in western VA, discovered that Tories had stolen supplies for the upcoming battle, he exceeded his backwoods authority and punished the perps. Thus: Lynch’s Law.

Present Moment

 

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Sunday morning I walked to Friends Meeting for a 9:00 meeting. Much of Friday’s heavy snow had melted the day before and Sunday was also supposed to be a gloriously sunny, early-spring day. Later, that is. Later it would get warm; melt would melt. NOT at 8:15 as I gingerly made my way over icy sidewalks.

Although I’m slowly getting better at settling into the present moment, ignoring my To Do list and listening to that timeless, small, still voice, on Sunday a scared sixty-eight-year-old inner voice begged the Universe, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Hurry up, sun. Hurry up, future. I don’t want to fall.”

Later that morning, safe and warm, no bones broken, I sat at meeting for worship and considered that morning’s walk. And how I need to remember that those zen-imbued words, “present moment,” can be fraught. I thought about my own future and how my intentional settling into the Here and Now most likely will begin with the acknowledgement of pain.

Warm and healthy and blessed, in Sunday’s silence I remembered this: That I was recently eldered to remember that I am privileged. I’m afraid I did not receive this eldering well! I was defensive and indignant; “I really don’t need you to lecture me!”

But apparently I did. And do. Because although on some level I am aware of my privilege, there’s way more to understand. Like how how much easier it is for me to settle into silent worship and that wondrous, timeless, Light-filled present moment because of my easeful life.

Oh.

 

 

May 7, 2012: (Let’s hear it for Cut & Paste!)

On Wednesday, Howie Carr, a conservative talk radio host wrote an offensive column for The Boston Herald entitled “White and Wrong: On the reservation with Elizabeth Warren”. Here are just a couple of the unbelievable quotes from the column:

“The race card—like so many others, Barack Obama never leaves home without it. ”

“Maybe someday [Warren will] even smokum peace pipe with Tim Geithner. ”

See the article here: http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061128614

Carr’s article insinuates that President Obama and Elizabeth Warren did not earn their positions at Harvard Law. Also, that it goes so far as to infer—that any person who identifies themselves as a person of color and holds a position of power, that they only did so by playing the “race card”.

We all know that political campaigns get ugly. We shouldn’t expect the contest between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown to be an exception. But dragging out despicable stereotypes and denigrating whole groups of people goes way too far. Instead of stoking the fires of this hate-filled story, the Brown campaign needs to focus on the issues.

That’s why Patricia C. Watson created a petition on SignOn.org to Senator Brown, asking him to make it clear that he won’t give silent approval to these kinds of attacks.

That’s why I signed a petition to Sen. Scott Brown (MA-2), which says:

“Senator Scott Brown: We urge you to publicly condemn Howie Carr’s offensive Boston Herald article “White and Wrong: On the reservation with Elizabeth Warren” for the blatant racist stereotypes throughout, along with the insinuation that President Obama and others have achieved their positions only by playing the “race card.””

Will you sign the petition too? Click here to add your name:

http://signon.org/sign/sen-brown-condemn-howie?source=s.fwd&r_by=528804

Thanks!

May 4, 2012: Speaking Truth to Power

Don’t get me wrong: Chen Guangcheng’s plight is deeply moving. That this blind activist has been imprisoned, tortured, his wife beaten, his family harassed for merely speaking out against forced abortions in China is, of course, appalling. My prayers for our gal Hillary and the State Department and the Chinese government to resolve this latest USA/China flap.

But when I watch a smuggled video of Chen directly addressing the Powers That Be re his horrific treatment—and demanding that the officials who beat him and his wife be held accountable—I can’t help but feel uncomfortable. This intense media coverage is so damned smug, isn’t it!

I also can’t help but wonder what would happen if a young Black man sat in front of a camera and  recorded this:

“I wish to speak directly to the President of the United States. My name is EveryAmericanEighteenYearOldBlackMale—I live in Harlem, in Roxbury, Detroit, Chicago, I live in every community of color in this country. And every day, simply because I am a young, Black male, a police officer stops me and frisks me. Every day. This is what the War on Drugs is really about, Mr. President. That cops, needing to fill their quota, troll the streets of my ‘hood. Hoping they’ll get lucky. Sometimes, they’ll plant drugs on me and my peers, then arrest me.

“This is a human rights violation, Mr. President. I have names, dates; I have written down every encounter. I keep track.

“Please do something.”

The only difference between such a video and Chen’s? One of them doesn’t need to be smuggled.

 

August 28, 2011: Random Reading, Musing

True Confession:  Every winter, I randomly pull down a Dickens novel from a set my grandmother once owned. This past winter I read—with some gritting of teeth—my least favorite: Martin Chuzzlewit. So I read this past week’s Jill Lepore article in “The New Yorker” re Dickens, which gave deep background to much of the writer’s oeuvre, including MC, with great interest.

Another confession: I’d like to believe that I dislike MC for its tedious structure, its weak plot and the unconvincing redemption of its main character. But maybe Dickens’ novel, in which he unabashedly and vigorously bashes the United States, makes me very uncomfortable. (Go figure!)

Curiously, although Lepore, as usual, wrote a fascinating article, she only peripherally elucidates one of the most compelling reasons why Dickens was so disgusted with this country. Slavery. (Not difficult to understand that, is it?)

Last confession: Sometimes I fear that the toxic and soul-killing effects of slavery will destroy this country.

But as Hurricane Irene pounds my windows with rain, I again muse on how we collectively and metaphorically wash ourselves clean. And again am reminded of this poem:

Empire

by Susan Lloyd McGarry

Guaman Poma, native to the Andes, wrote to the King of Spain in 1615: If you knew what they are doing

in your name, you would cry such tears, enough tears to cleanse the world, to start again.

The King did not reply.

Brothers and sisters, friends and children, neighbors: if you only knew what is being done in our name, the suffering, the hunger— but you do know and so do I. But we don’t know how to stop. And now there’s more talk of war.

Maybe if we really heard the stories, let them into our bodies, we could let our tears fall and fall, we

could be clean, there might be a way to start again.

August 5, 2011: Random?

Wednesday afternoon I needed to do errands in Porter and Davis And Union Squares (distance ultimately walked–three, four miles) so got to pass a series of Somerville/Cambridge summer scenes at a leisurely, on-foot pace. It had poured the night before, a glorious thunder and lightning show, which had driven off the heat and mugginess; being outside on an August afternoon proved joyful.

In my travels, however, I witnessed three people of color in terrible shape: Two men, one on Summer Street a block of so away from where I was walking, another in front of the T station in Porter Square as I passed by on the other side of the street were, apparently, having psychotic episodes. They screamed, cursed, yelled, roared, paced; the man at Porter Square was so upset he kicked a sign over. The woman, in a straw hat and cotton dress, sat motionless on the sidewalk across the street from Central Hospital—half a block up Central Street as I walked past on Somerville Avenue—while a slew of para-medics and firemen swarmed around her.

What’s going on, I wondered. (Things in three always seem significant to me.) My astrology-touting friend had told me that Mercury would go into retrograde Tuesday— the day before. So my first attempt to make meaning of these events was, shall we say, something Shakespeare might have wondered about? There’s something in the stars, perhaps? My second  attempt to make meaning of this trinity was ridiculous—and when I say ridiculous—well, judge for yourself: “Oh,” I thought. “Their behavior is a delayed reaction to yesterday’s debt ceiling drama!” (See what I mean?)

But maybe I had to think stupid before I could think smart. Because I finally realized what was really going on (and, surprisingly, the debt ceiling drama does play a role.): Right now, the incredible mess this world is in environmentally and economically is most felt, most experienced in communities of color. Ditto: violence and mayhem and incarceration. Black people are truly suffering. Some are going crazy. Some sit motionless on the sidewalk. If lived in Roxbury or Dorchester I would witness that suffering daily. But Wednesday, simply because I was in more neighborhoods that I usually walk through, I had more opportunities to witness my brothers and sisters.

Random. And yet not.

April 10, 2010: Ain’t Necessarily So

In Way Opens, I talk about a much-needed history lesson on the back of a segregated bus in 1961. But, like everyone else, these Oh-My-Goodness/You-Mean-What-I’ve-Always-Thought-To-Be-True-Ain’t-Necessarily-So? lessons have continued. In an American History class in college a couple of years later, for example, I first learned how, in the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Quakers had been brutally persecuted by the Puritans.

Really? Who knew?

These lessons have taught me, like the bumper sticker advises, to “Question Authority.” Much as I fight it, however, like many white Americans, I frequently lapse into a blind acceptance of what the mainstream media, dominated by other white Americans, tell me.

But when The Boston Globe reported this week that Manny “Junior” daVeiga shot himself in the head while struggling with Boston police, even I, so often clueless, muttered, “Yeah, right.”

The Globe’s unequivocal support of the police and the Suffolk County district attorney’s version of what happened continues: In a classic blame-the-victim piece, the 19-year-old DaVeiga’s mental health history and his association with a Cape Verdean gang made the front page of the “Metro” section the day after his death; an ominous photo of a tanked-up Hummer  now being used by the police in that neighborhood appeared the following day.

My dear friend Lynn Lazar is asking white people to stand in solidarity with the Cape Verdean community—bless her.

This blog’s my way to do so.

April 5, 2010: “Most things are colorful things—”*

The current controversy regarding the use of the word “Negro” on the US Census forms reminds me of an exchange I had with Chauncey Spencer, now deceased, in June of 2002. Son of Harlem Renaissance poet (and Lynchburg resident) Anne Spencer, ninety-six years old at the time of our meeting, Chauncey Spencer had been a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, our country’s first African-American fighter pilots. In fact, he’d help to found the Tuskegee Airmen (with a little help from a guy named Harry Truman).

” ‘People! We’re all just people!’ My mother always said that,” the World War II hero noted re whether or not to use the word “Black” or “African-American.”

The word “Negro” wasn’t mentioned—I think even to a ninety-six year old African-American, that word was passe.

Our conversation continued: I’d felt compelled to amend Anne Spencer’s statement.”White Americans need to understand more of African-Americans’ experience, first,” I said, before we can all agree that such words don’t matter. And the former Tuskegee Airman readily agreed.

* from “White Things” by Anne Spencer: Most things are colorful things—the sky, earth, and sea /Black men are most men; but the white are free!

February 8, 2010: New York City Story # 3

  1. [Note: These stories happened while I was staying in Brooklyn for much of January. As with much of this blog, these stories deal with race.]

January 9, 2010, Brooklyn Museum:

My dear friend Lynne has taken the train from Boston early this morning so that she and I can go to the Brooklyn Museum—she especially wants to see Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” part of the museum’s permanent exhibit since 2007.

It’s a Saturday; the place is packed. As so often happens in NYC, I am again struck by how many more people of color are here (the same thing happens on the subway, in the supermarket, etc, etc.) . That we’re in a museum begs me to consider how often I see anyone except white people in Boston’s cultural institutions. Answer: very, very few.

After Lynne and I sate ourselves on Chicago’s sumptuous banquet (Overhead: a little girl, wisely held in her mother’s arms, asks: “Can I sit there?” “We can all sit here,” her mother tells her.), we wander through other exhibits, opting out of the “Who Shot Rock and Roll” show because it’s so packed.

We find ourselves in a large exhibit hall adjoining a glass and steel storage area containing shelves and shelves of beautiful stuff. Already reeling from taking in so much—”museumitis”—although I’m curious to see what’s in this sort-of-displayed-but-not-really gallery, I don’t walk in.

But I reflect, as I did re the treasures I’d once found on Lynchburg’s Legacy Museum of African American History shelves: What gets displayed in any museum? And who decides?