Chrisco Spins

I know I write about race and class quite a bit, but that’s probably because it comes up so often in my life. Trust me, I wish that were not the case. And, yes, I have tried just ignoring it. I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. Take this morning, for example.

One of the parents at my kids’ school invited a group to her house so that the rising kindergartners would get a chance to mingle a bit before the first day of school. I admit that the whole thing made me a bit nervous. I live on the outer edge of their exclusive upscale neighborhood. I know that I can’t exceed the speed limit by more than 3 mph or the cops will pull me over. I know that if I take my children to play in the park there, I can be asked to leave at any time. The neighborhood association fiercely protects its borders from any encroaching threats to their property values. I understand. Just across Memorial Drive is the Dirty South. It’s all rims, grills, and baby-mamas. And me? I live smack in the middle, literally and metaphorically -a black, single, well-educated, poor, baby-laden, socially conscious, immigrant, upwardly mobile revolutionary philanthropist with bad credit. I am NPR’s Li’l Wayne album review. So, while I hesitated with that old familiar insecurity we often feel when we are asked to interact with our “social betters”, my inner Posdnous reminded me that “a diamond ain’t nothin’ but a rock with a name”. So I showed up.

You have to force yourself to attend as many social gatherings as you are invited to. It’s good practice to try things you don’t think you will enjoy. Yes, I was the only black person there. Yes, I was the only poor person there. Yes, I was both the youngest and the person with the most children. I could mention how surprised some of the other parents seemed when I arrived. I could try to decode the things they didn’t quite say. That would be paranoia talking, though. Truth is, for whatever might have been in their heads, they were perfectly nice people, and everyone had a good time. Sure, I had to pretend to give a shit about camping and hiking for a couple of hours but, hey, you can’t blame white people for the stuff they like.*

I hate having to admit to my social insecurity, but I’m glad I’m dealing with it. Most people I know escew the subject  or excuse their behavior as normal when they avoid being the only person of their race or class in the room. If I hadn’t made the effort, my children would not have had the opportunity to spend the morning scaling a backyard tree fort with their white and asian upper-middle class school friends, blissfully immune to the irrational fear that gripped me. Sure, I could be pessimistic and assume that they, too, would eventually grow into the fear, but I honestly believe that my children enjoy a higher than average freedom. Over the summer, I tutored a kid who had been raised on the other side of Memorial Drive and whose grandmother, incidentally, is the most beautiful crackhead I’ve ever seen. He is the same age as my oldest daughter, but he is baffled by the fact that she has white friends, has been overseas, and isn’t afraid of the police. He is already intimidated by life outside his neighborhood. He’s 8.

To a certain extent, I suppose this is the human condition. We are attached to the familiar, and we fear the unknown. It doesn’t have to be about race or class. It could be any type of categorization that divides us. Still, wisdom of my inner Pos granted, when we compare ourselves to others on the basis of race and class, the stakes are much higher.

At the end of the play date, I shook hands with the other parents and walked to my car, pleased with my personal progress, vaguely aware that a police car had been following me as I walked my children down the block. Turns out I was blocking one of the neighbor’s driveways, and she called the police to have my car towed. I explained to her that my host had told me to park there and that I had been led to believe that she had permission to use that area for guest parking. She stopped bitching at me and walked across the street to curse out my host about how “this used to be a nice neighborhood.” My attention was trained on the steely-eyed officer who I remember because he usually follows my car when I drive down that block. He stared me down, waiting for me to leave. The other parents stood awkwardly at their cars, unsure whether or not the moment for final goodbyes had passed. I just shrugged and said, “Oh well. Figures that when you see a police car around here, they’re coming for ME.” Nobody laughed.

I’m not insecure for no reason. I’m not obsessed with my place in the social mosaic. It’s just that sometimes these things do matter. No matter how much I’d like to feign obliviousness, these phantoms flash across my consciousness too often to be ignored. How could I claim a writer’s gift of observation yet fail to address the divisions that plague us? My study of race is not a masturbatory fixation. It’s social epidemiology.

* By the way, in two hours, I observed examples of post #’s 1, 5, 7, 9, 19, 24, 51, 53, 62, 78, 90, and possibly 104. To be fair, I have to admit that at least 25% of the posts on that site apply to me too, including #’s 19, 46, 77 (Flight of the Conchords son WHUT!), 84, and 99.

I didn’t plan to devote any time to analyzing the Gloucester, Massachusettes “pregnancy pact” debacle, especially since it’s questionable whether or not the sudden exponential rise in teen pregnancies at the suburban school is anything more than a cluster of teenage idiots. Frankly, I found the whole thing rather fishy. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. Having been a teenage girl, I can attest to the impressive levels of dumbfuckery that abound in high schools, especially when it comes to sex. However, I have a hard time believing that 17 girls could get along well enough to form a pact of any kind. It’s been my experience that if you put more that 4 girls together in any given situation, it will inevitably result in a cage match. In order to ensure peace among a group of young women, you pretty much have to establish a hierarchy, ranking them in order from “hot” to “fugly”. As long as the chubby one knows her place, it might be alright. In the rare case that the degree of cuteness is too close to call, start with the blonder girl and work your way down. At any rate, there’s no way that, at a coed high school, you can get a group too large to sit at the same lunch table to make major life decisions together. This is not the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Still, I do have a thing or two to say about teenage girls and sex. Entering puberty is like developing super powers. You’ve been going through life, a mere mortal child, knowing that you are just one of many, then one day, you wake up and you notice that you are capable of manipulating the minds of men. It’s impossible to control at first, so you tend to misfire - emabarrassing yourself in front of the boys you like while setting fire to the ones you don’t. When you finally do learn to focus, the power is intoxicating. Like  many of our favorite mutants, you don’t start out a hero. That heat vision, that that hip-swing that freezes time - how could you not be tempted to pull a Peter Parker and use them in the selfish persuit of  revenge, money, and love? Usually, a girl will realize the responsibility that comes with power before she does more than break a few hearts, but every once in a while, it’s too much too soon. These unseasoned hands foolishly unleash something too big for them to hold - they create life.

Like super heroes, mothers have incredible strength and can achieve extraordinary feats, but they pay the price, sacrificing their personal lives. They have to carefully craft this public identity to protect the ones they love. They can never really relax, ever vigilant of some hurtling meteor, foreign invasion, or madvillain. That constant struggle of want-to vs. must-do is probably too almost always too much for a young girl to grasp. But when you’re 15 and you find out you can fly, you can’t really see it that way.

It’s hard. It’s complicated. Adults usually aren’t helpful. In fact, most of them will only make it worse by sending mixed messages. Who do you think came up with the blondeness scale?

Both China and India are working to develop their own university systems, modeled on American universities, in the hopes that they can eventually retain more of  their brighter students with the promise of degrees nearly as prestigious as those issued in the U.S. While achieving that academic prowess will take some time, the less expensive option of local universities will undoubtedly sway some students. Over time, the overwhelming number of Asian students who come to the U.S. to study at universities like Georgia Tech and MIT will shrink, and the Master’s degree programs at these schools will start to feel it. This, I dare say, is an inevitability.

I wonder if the U.S. public education system  can provide the number of highly qualified American students needed to fill those seats.

I wonder if these smart kids will be able to afford to go.

I wonder if the emphasis on bringing in Asian students from overseas to stock U.S. tech schools is akin to the college basketball and football scouts’ clamoring for more black boys to stock their teams. In either case one could argue that the numbers support an intuitive sense that the students’ motivation due to cultural and social factors primes them for success in their respective fields. Or you could just write it off as a self-fulfilling myth.

Eh. I suppose it will be a while before these questions ripen, and some may end up moot in the end. I just thought I’d ask.

Yo… HomelessWorldCup.com . I am intuitively tempted to comment on the ludicrousness of this, but I’m guaranteed to be called elitist.

I think that much would be resolved if every time you killed someone, you were required to bury them in your front yard.

I don’t want to belabor what is fast becoming the most overblown story of the week, but something needs to be said. A keffiyeh is a scarf. It comes from the middle east and is primarily worn by Muslim men. It has no religious significance by itself, but culturally, Muslim men are known to wear them. As such, wearing a keffiyeh is like identifying yourself as part of that group. Think of it like wearing a red, gold, and green knit cap; people might take you for a rastafarian, or at least assume you to be declaring your affinity for the culture. If you wear an accessory that indicates a cultural or religious group of which you are not a part and to which you have no connection, you run the risk of offending the true members of that group. Hence, when Ricky Martin, Howard Dean, or Kanye West are seen sporting a keffiyeh, don’t be surprised if Muslims roll their eyes. It’s called cultural misappropriation. It is rude.

That being said, I’d like to address the latest flap about adorable little TV chef Rachel Ray’s latest drama. If you haven’t heard, Dunkin’ Donuts pulled an ad featuring her because she was wearing a scarf that resembles a keffiyeh, not because she annoyed Muslims, but because Americans were offended. Apparently, the cute black and white floral and checked scarf with long tassels is a symbol of radical Islamism, and by wearing it, she advocates blowing up Israel or something. Come ON.

It’s not the veiwers’ crippling ignorance that upsets me. It’s the irresponsible way journalists have spun this story. The members of our news media are supposed to safeguard democracy by holding our government accountable and keeping the citizenry informed about important issues so that they can make wise decisions. They are supposed to have the integrity to research their stories and represent the facts in as unbiased a fashion as possible. Even given their human flaws, they are supposed to at least be intelligent and thoughtful about what they write. Instead, we get days of inane discussion of whether or not celebrities support terrorism through trendy neckwear. We get no discussion of what a keffiyeh is, who should wear it, or how Muslims feel about the subject. Yesterday MSNBC.com ran a story that has since been removed which quotes Michelle Malkin who refers to the scarf as something worn in “beheading videos”. The author of that 4 paragraph article never once discussed an opposing viewpoint to Malkin’s, despite her obvious retardation. Click the link. Read the post. It’s very very stupid.

Ok, to be fair, I will do my best to cast her argument it the best possible light. I suppose that she and others like her find wearing a keffyeh offensive in the way it would be offensive if it suddenly became trendy to shave your mustache like Hitler’s. The mustache, by itself, is just a mustache, but everyone knowns that the imagery it evokes potentially communicates some upsetting ideas. Similarly, if tall, pointy white hats were in, people would probably be outraged by the clear Ku Klux Klan link. I get that. But the problem with analogizing these examples with the celebrity sporting a keffiyeh is that, while Nazis are obviously bad, and the Klan is obviously bad, Muslims are not. There is nothing about a keffiyeh that is meant to evoke violent or hateful imagery. It’s a scarf. I will even go as far as to say that it is a Muslim scarf, if such a thing can be declared. Islam is not evil, violent, or hateful. Islam is not terrorism. If Yasser Arafat or Osama Bin Laden wear a keffiyeh, that doesn’t mean that anyone else who wears one is like them. Hell, they wear pants too. Shall we abandon those as well? Shall all bearded men shave? I think you see where I’m going. This anti-scarf rhetoric is silly. It’s petty. It’s offensive. It is beneath you, American journalists. You’re supposed to be better than that.

My suggestion? Write about why celebs (or probably their stylists) feel the need to bring these scarves into the fashion mainstream at this point, when anti-Islam sentiments are so prominent. It has been alleged that this is a subliminal political stand of some sort. It might just be an attempt to be edgy. It might be an effort to incorporate Islam into the American consciousness, perhaps to attract Muslim consumers. It’s certainly worth looking into. So look into it, already! These are relevant and worthwhile questions, much more worthy of our newspaper pages than the trite, shallow sensationalism that’s being thrown around now. I suspect that there are plenty of journalists who have thought about all of this, but to defend a viewpoint that might be perceived as pro-Islamist, anti-Israel (because somehow, it will always come back to that) will hurt your reputation. Even a position of neutrality and an effort to tell an even-handed story might cause professional repercussions. I understand. It’s dangerous ground to tread. Grow a pair. You didn’t get into this business to tell people what they want to hear.

In the States, we talk about the rain forest like it was a mythical land, but where I’m from, it’s just part of the landscape. I suppose that’s how perspective works. Many  dream of visiting a real live rain forest. Most of my family hasn’t been into “the bush” despite the relatively easy access. There’s snakes in there. I have always been tickled by the disparity. Recently, though, the difference in perspective hasn’t been that funny.

I read this articlein the New York Times over the weekend. It’s basically an editorial lauding Guyana’s president, Bharrat Jagdeo, for offering the rights to the countries rain forest to be bought for environmental research and conservation in exchange for foreign aid rather than logging it and depleting the forest. I happened to read this article right after watching a Discovery Channel special about foreign efforts to conserve Guyana’s rain forest which aired the week before. Yay. Good for us, saving the Earth and whatnot. One question… who’s saving Guyana?

While Jagdeo has been firmly blocking efforts to exploit the forests, poverty, corruption, and racism to ravished the country to the point that most of the people with resources move away as soon as they are able, never to return. In a country rich with natural resources, cheap labor, and basically decent, well-meaning citizens, you’d think we’d be able to do alright. Instead were fending off Brazil and Venezuela’s efforts to encroach on our borders while begging England (the slave master who formed the country as a work colony in the first place) for support. We have some of the world’s highest waterfalls, perfect for generating cheap hydroelectric power. We have rich soil, prime for farming diverse crops in a market in which foreign merchants would subsidize farmers just to ensure a steady supply of certain products. We have the whole west coast, which could be converted into beaches with affordable hotels to attract tourism, which would in turn create jobs for the many thousands of underemployed people who live there. Why, then, are the people of Guyana more inclined to flee than to stay and build? So many reasons. Nothing is ever simple. I am willing to say, however, that it is the essential function of  to keep the peace so that its people have a system within which to prosper. This basic leadership and organization is lacking, so the people who would want to seize the opportunities to build up the nation don’t see the point in trying.

Now, back to the rain forest. I value the environment. I don’t want to see the forests destroyed. However, I see the way the country is being talked about like it’s all empty land to be divided up and assigned. It’s as if there aren’t people living there. The whole reason deforestation happens is the people to whom the land belongs need to support themselves. So, yes, let’s talk about conservation, but let’s not do it without keeping in mind that conserving the forest means removing a possible source of income from already impoverished people. If they are to sacrifice the revenue source so that the world can benefit, they need to come out better for it.

When I first heard of Ebonics (aka African-American Vernacular English) I was, well, less than thrilled with the concept. (Something bristling about white people studying black people on some Jane Goodall shit. I know it’s a somewhat paranoid thought, but we generally suffer from cultural PTSD.) I will admit that I was never really open to the idea of studying “how black people talk” in any serious academic sense. This is probably because, while studying how people talk is a legitimate goal of linguistics which does not necessarily single out any one group in a racist way, the fact that linguistics, one of the nerdiest of academic disciplines, was brought into mainstream discourse because of the study of Ebonics just reminded me that, in my lifetime, all intellectual pursuits will eventually be distilled into ammunition for the eternal pissing contest that is black-white relations in the United States. Also, I suspect that linguistics geeks need grant money, so making their work seem important by fueling the controversy doesn’t hurt.

Aaaaanyhoo… My disgust has recently abated when it comes to Ebonics because (as is often the case) I learned a little more about it. I owe my change of heart to the “habitual be”. The habitual be, in short, is when you use the verb “be” to express what the subject usually does, not what he is doing at a specific  time. In one particularly cute example, two groups of children, one white and one black, were used to illustrate the habitual be. They were shown two pictures, one of cookie monster sleeping and another of elmo eating cookies. When asked, “Who is eating cookies?” the black kids said Elmo. When asked, “Who be eating cookies?” they identified cookie monster. The white children pointed at Elmo for both questions. This, friends, is the habitual be.

My sister decided to try this on my children the other day. Ebonics isn’t their first language. My side of the family isn’t American, and their father’s side of the family is bourgie, so, you know. Still, we figured after the past school year in Decatur, they had to be fluent by now. As expected, the younger two told us that Cookie monster be eating cookies but that Elmo is eating cookies. They giggled as they answered. My oldest, who is 8, wrinkled her nose and said, “Well, do you mean to ask me who is eating cookies right now or who usually eats cookies? That’s kind of two different things if you’re talking in street language.” Love that girl. I haven’t had the nerve to grab a group of white kids to try this out on yet. I’m not sure how I would explain it to their parents. Also, I don’t sound convincing saying, “Who be eating cookies?” Honestly, I wonder how the interviewer in the original experiment pulled it off with a straight face.

Even though I loathe stereotyping, or even accurate simplifications of people, looking closer at linguistics is like watching someone do a spot-on impression of you. Some times you just have to say, “All right. You got me. Women do be shoppin.*” I definitely had that moment when I checked out wikipedia’s take on Guyanese Creole, which is supposedly the dialect of English spoken in my home country. I grew up here, so I sound like a regular old American, but most of my family speaks this way. I had never even thought about it. I just figured it was an accent that I understood but didn’t pick up. In Guyana schools, they write and speak the Queen’s English, and everyone seems to understand that that is the formal way of speaking, but at home, we often slip into something a lot more comfortable. I suppose everyone does that, usually without even realizing it. If you look hard enough, you’ll find that some linguistics nerd has chronicled your slang as well.

In retrospect, Ebonics had probably stuck in my craw because it seemed like a scientific way of proving that black people aren’t smart enough to speak well. At least two things are immediately wrong with that. First, where do you get off deciding what it means to “speak well”? Second, how dare you assume that not conforming to your pattern of speech is an indication of a lack of intelligence? A third but less certain problem is how can you say that this is how black people talk? Frankly, I had assumed that the speech patterns present in Ebonics were common to all southerners and that most black Americans had migrated from the south, taking their vernacular with them. I’m still not sure that I buy that southern white people speak that differently from southern blacks, though they may be more inclined to hide it in polite company. Clearly, there is a divergence now. Southern whites aren’t as country as they used to be, while black people all over the US have maintained more of their southern liguistic roots over generations even after moving north and west. Still, I feel like calling it Ebonics and labeling this as “black” assumes too much about what is natural to black people as opposed to white people in a way that will be misleading to most. I am inclined to reject not only the label but also the patterns of speech described by it, just for the sake of defiance. I think most educated black people I know feel the same way, regardless of how we talk in relaxed social settings.

Still, as much as we would like to break free of the stereotypes that seem to undo our individual achievements, Ebonics, I’m afraid, does exist. At least the way of speaking, however labeled, does exist and is prevalent among black people. Even if we don’t typically speak it, we know it. When someone uses the vernacular for effect, the point is clearly made. When we are comfortable among our friends, we nestle into it. For those of us who are educated and striving for upward mobility, we sometimes fear it. When we correct our children’s use of the habitual be, it isn’t just because we want them to avoid appearing ignorant. We’re probably also a little afraid that their tractionless little feet are playing dangerously close to the slippery slope that is niggerdom, and we know we can’t afford to let them slide.

What I’d really like to know, though, is what white people think about this. Honestly. I realize there isn’t a collective response forthcoming, but on an individual level, from people who have grown up with a white American point of view informing their opinions, I wonder how all of this sounds. Enlighten me. I’ve already said too much, and if I don’t come back with some useful intelligence, my community will think I’ve defected.

*Shout out to Dave Chappelle in the Nutty Professor!

So apparently I’m a hypocrite. For years I’ve been scoffing at my guy friends for being shallow. It seems that the inane reasons they come up with for dating certain women are surpassed only by the unconscionable reasons they cite for NOT dating others. I get that you can totally ignore a woman’s arrogance, bitchiness, and bad weave because she’s a 36DD, but when you meet a smart, funny, pretty girl but won’t go out with her because you don’t like her name? I can’t justify that. At least I couldn’t… until now.

It’s not my fault I can’t roll my R’s! I was raised in the US, before the advent of Dora the Explorer. When I say his name, it comes out so painfully gringa that I’ve actually resorted to calling him “babe”. Now he thinks I like him way more than I actually do, causing a whole other set of complications. I can’t effing win.

I think… I think it’s time to end this charade. I will just have to come to grips with the fact that I, too, am a little bit shallow. The Unettas and Shaquishas of the world will have to do without my indignant defense. If you don’t enjoy saying it, chances are you can’t date it either. 

I took down my MySpace page a few months ago, partly because I was being inundated with e-mail, blog posts, and articles warning students that future employers may be checking on their online personas for clues to unsavory personal details that would affect whether or not they hired us. It’s not that I’m ashamed of anything I’ve written in print or online, but I do see it being a minor inconvenience if I go in for a position at a conservative firm and they reject me because of the slide show featuring me and 2/3 of the rap group Binkis Recs doing the goofy pretend orgy pose. “Proof positive she is a member of a street gang!” Yeah. That would suck.

So I took down my MySpace page and I’ve been more careful lately about what I put out there, but one thing still bothers me. My emails and IM’s will always exist somewhere, waiting to be published and embarrass the hell out of me. If you think I’m being silly, you’re waaay too comfortable about that gmail.com privacy policy you didn’t read. How do you think we get our primary source documents to write history books? Publishing old letters, of course. Once you’re dead, there is nothing you can do about the fact that people will find your private conversations ever so fascinating. Oh, it’s all for the admirable aims of historians, I know. We NEED primary sources, and the more candid, the more credible. Still, while I admit that my later fame will justify biographers to probe into my personal life for a more in-depth understanding of my greatness, I’d really rather not be publicly credited with statements like, “dude, WTF, yo! i do not give a F*#K. i’ll slap a ho!”*

But in this age of technology, what am I supposed to do? Not talk to my friends online? Carefully craft my words in every simple hello? You expect me to drive across town to have a frank conversation every time I get too mad to hold my tongue? Seems unfair. I don’t even have any control over whether or not I get famous, and lack of fame now doesn’t mean that people won’t look my conversations up later to prove some other point, wholly unrelated to me. I may just have to accept that free speech comes with certain caveats. Hopefully, my own reckless words won’t come back to destroy some carefully guarded legacy one day in the future. Chances are, though, if I’m known, it will be for being a badass, so maybe people won’t be surprised.

*Taken from an actual conversation about Robert Mugabe’s refusal to concede defeat in the April 2008 presidential elections in Zimbabwe.