2005-03-01 - 00:53

Everyone's a Little bit racist, its true--Avenue Q

So, on the last day of Black History Month, I’m sitting in my bedroom drinking gin and listening to Etta James sing the songs of Billie Holiday. This month has been a month of classical revival for me. My normal rotation is a little The Used, a little Bury Your Dead, maybe some Chevelle or a little Soundgarden or some Manic Street Preachers, but recently I’ve been getting up in the morning and putting in Miles Davis or Thelonius Monk or Etta or Nina Simone and picking through the morning’s news to the sounds of music made be people who aren’t misanthropic or disenchanted with life. Its been pretty awesome (although, I can say that its not contributed to a lightening of my mood in any way. I myself and still the same little misanthrope I’ve always been.) Etta can sing. Ms. James sings, “I don’t stand a ghost of a chance...” and her voice stretches kind of harshly across the top of the phrase and I’m amazed. We’ve all felt that, that, “Ya, I don’t know what the point of this is, because it’d be easier for me to walk through a fire than for the two of us to ever work out.” But, as I sing along, I just sound flat and emotionless. I don’t sound smooth or relaxed or even at peace with the emotion. In fact, I don’t sound at peace with anything at all.

Last night, prior to the Oscars, my roommate and our friend E made dinner. They’d had a goodly amount of wine by the time I’d gotten home. Now, what happens with the three of us when we get together and start drinking is that we get increasingly irreverent as time goes on. I looked up the word “irreverent” to make sure I was using it right and the phrase in my dictionary that is the example of how its used was, “irreverent scholars mocking sacred things”. That’s us. My roommate is a history student and E studies Classics and I study linguistics. We’re all people that should know better. Yet, Martin Scorcese walks on the stage and in my apartment could be heard, “Marty! Represent my nigga!” Immediately followed by the sentence, “And, that was the last of my racist freebies.” E is a very conscientious person. She goes out of her way to be sensitive to the issues effecting people around her. I almost choked on my wine I was laughing so hard. But then, I used up all my freebies somewhere between the Holocaust jokes I know and the week I spent referring to my downstairs neighbors solely as the “Dirty Mexicans.” In my defense on the last one, they woke me up at two in the morning by having a screaming match so loud in their bedroom that I could hear and could understand every word they were saying. At two in the morning. That said, there really is no defense for fixating on one feature of a human being and then bludgeoning them with a stereotype. Although my neighbors are in fact Mexican, they aren’t “dirty” and when they’re not shouting at each other or playing Spandeau Ballet at 8 in the morning they are nice people. And, “nigga” as a word has such a dark and twisted history that its hard to imagine a situation where its actually an appropriate word coming out of the mouth of a white woman. When Jamie Foxx won for best actor, we all looked at E who did in fact say, “Represent!” before she shook her head. “I can’t follow that up with...I mean, its just wrong. I’m already going to hell. I just...its wrong. I have too much respect for Jamie Foxx,” she said.

This got me thinking about freebies, about the times when crossing the line is forgivable. E really likes Martin Scorcese. She wasn’t meaning to be disrespectful to either Mr. Scorcese or to African American culture. In fact, in a way she was paying tribute to both. Its been said that imitation is the highest form of flattery. When you’re representing the ‘hood or in Scorcese’s case, representing the Art, you’re literally standing there as a physical representation of something that you believe in or that you love. And, as for the other bit, its like, “he’s my boy.” Or my homie. He’s part of my crew. You’re claiming something as your own, as something you’re proud of. But, being white kids from the suburbs, we’ve been taught that some words are wrong. The words themselves are just wrong and using them is disrespectful and degrading of everyone involved. “Nigga” and all its forms and derivatives is on that list. Its so much on the list that I know people that can’t refer to Dick Gregory’s autobiography by its name and who call Randall Kennedy’s book not by its name but by its subtitle. I mean they honestly, physically can’t bring themselves to say a word. Here’s the thing, I don’t think words are our problem, I think our problem runs a lot deeper than mere speech. Censoring what we say doesn’t change our attitudes.

But, as far as changing attitudes go, having months devoted to one specific thing doesn’t really help change attitudes either. It’s a token, a drop in the bucket, it’s the “see, look, honestly we’re trying to do something about this,” answer to whatever the problem is. Its superficial. For at least twenty eight days every year we go out of our way to point out the cool things African Americans have done. This is supposed to raise awareness. We’re supposed to learn from it and feel more connected by it. But, all its ever done for me is say to me that, “This is a subculture that you’re not part of. This is American art and these American accomplishments that you can’t claim.” I may be more aware, but I’m more uncomfortable in my awareness. When I listen to Nina Simone or Mos Def or when I read Langston Hughes or Dick Gregory I’m connecting with something that is above and beyond all the rhetoric and bullshit. Good art stands on its own and is open to a myriad of interpretations. These people are artists of such a high caliber that coming from a completely different place and a completely different time what they have to say still resonates with me. It makes what they do not just an achievement belonging to a subculture, but an achievement belonging to the whole culture. An achievement that belongs to humanity. Their contributions to African American society, and through that to American society make America whole. We get to be who we are because they got to be who they are. And for their achievements, they should be celebrated, not just during one month of the year, but all the year.

I know I’m getting a little Christmas Carol here, and I also know that if anything the whole process of writing this essay has just served to highlight, at least in my own eyes, how far I still have to go in my own personal journey against prejudice. Yes, I am a racist. Yes, I have a problem where I judge people based on their appearances and I don’t give them the benefit of getting to know them before writing them off. Yes, this is something I have to work on. When Dr. Martin Luther King, who is one of my favorite American heroes, marched on Washington and he gave that fantastic speech where he told everyone that he had a dream He said, “ I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” What is so amazing about this is that we can all connect with it. Dr. King was talking about a day where we can overcome our racial divide, but we all want on some level to live in a world where we are given a chance and are judged by who we are instead of what we are. Dr. King was an amazing American. Etta James and Miles Davis are amazing artists. Rosa Parks challenged the way that we, as Americans did things. For that I have to say, "Represent!" And, its not that I want to claim them as my own, they are more than a commodity to be claimed. They contribute to an America that I want to live in. They are part of a culture that I'd like to be a part. A American culture that is bigger than what I knew growing up. A culture that knows things I don't know and that's seen things I've not seen. And, that's something I'd like to celebrate about America.

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