Sardonic Sistah Says

A couple of years ago an ex-coworker and I had a moment.

It was his last day of work and the previous 3 years had been… verbally combative shall we say.   He is white; I am black.  He is conservative; I am oh so liberal.  He is stodgy and I am fabulous on many different planes.  He is a Leo; I am an Aquarius.  We are polar opposites that may be why we were attracted to one another.  But it was exactly those opposites that kept us from getting together.

We argued over everything but mostly politics and race relations.   Those debates could become really heated and sometimes other coworkers had to intervene and send us to our cubicles to cool off.   Race was the one thing we couldn’t see eye to eye on, no matter how much we fussed, discussed, and argued. 

His side: it’s not a perfect country, we aren’t perfect people, but dividing ourselves up by race and leaning on things that happened in the past will only further divide us.  African Americans should drop the modifier and just be Americans.  We should also forget multiculturalism and just go by what every other immigrant (white immigrant, I say) has done and try to assimilate into the greater culture.  To him, this is what divided whites from blacks.

My side: whites have divided blacks from them since the day we stepped into this country.  I could no more forget my cultural heritage than I can my name because it is something I carry with me everyday I step into the white world.  My being African American is a nod to the culture that was taken from me, which I gladly reclaim because before it was shameful to identify with Africa.  If I still had what was lost I could claim that I was Nigerian American or Ibo-Jola mix but I can’t so I claim the whole continent and it was presumptuous of someone who can say they were of German/English extraction to tell me to let go of my lost past.  Multiculturalism, I posited, was not in place of Americanism or anti-American.  On the contrary, multiculturalism enhanced American culture.

We were at a stalemate.

Today, in the aftermath of Obama’s more perfect union speech I sit and wonder what he thinks of it and what he makes of Obama (although I am sure he is a McCain supporter).  As I read and listen to the discussions surrounding Obama, his pastor, and the racial divide I find it interesting about where people fall.  Most praise the speech as being bold and clearly what needed to be said and then people fall into camps: the first camp: he didn’t do enough to condemn the black minister; second camp: he didn’t do enough to stress to whites their complicity in racism and the straits it has put black people in; third camp: Obama was on point, so now where do we go from here?

Those who don’t feel he went far enough to condemn the black minister are mostly white Americans who aren’t aware of the underlying sentiments of the black community (although I am sure there are some blacks who feel this way, too).  To get a full dose of what a lot of African Americans say among ourselves one should listen to black radio or read black literary thinkers (a good book to start with is Debra Dickerson’s “The End of Blackness“).  Whether we want to get reparations or we want to just move forward, most African Americans hold the white racist infrastructure accountable for the worst of what is happening in the black communities.  African Americans aren’t separatists, but history has taught us to be wary of white America. 

The second camp feels that Obama should draw the line on race and let white America have it.  Everything that we have been feeling and building up we would like Obama to say on a national stage.  This is why Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton do so well in the black community.  To many African Americans they are crusaders (although well paid professional boy-cotters at time) and to have someone like Obama point out what the egregious wrongs that have been long foisted and still plague African Americans.

I fall in the last camp.  Being African American, of course I am going to lean more towards the black sentiment, but I have often taken what some deem “the white side” in speaking with African Americans.  Just like I can’t be held accountable for what someone who is close to me does, it’s wrong to hold modern day white Americans accountable for their ancestors.  Some of them aren’t even their ancestors; some whites are only two or three generations deep in America.  Rich white Americans have long exploited race to get the underclasses arguing over crumbs instead of trying to get a piece of the pie.  During slavery it was blacks against poor whites.  In the antebellum south it was the Chinese vs. Blacks vs. poor whites.  In today economy we have Hispanic Americans thrown in to fight over the scraps.  Americans need to get beyond race and see what the real debate is, what is really holding us down and keeping us back.  Race is easily used to divide and conquer when poor whites are told that people of color are unfairly getting what should be rightfully there because of their skin color.   

I think we need a racial summit, something akin to South Africa’s race and reconciliation commission.  We need to get past race to see what are really the underlying causes of the race divide in America.

So, I know all this and I have felt all this for a long time.  And when looking into my coworker’s eyes, I thought he knew some of it, but he couldn’t understand all and he would never accept my position on things.  I knew I could never get over that he couldn’t see where I was coming from (I could see myself bleaching sheets and telling him I was getting them ready for his midnight meeting –yeah, I’m hateful).

So, instead of a kiss, which I had been anticipating for weeks on end for that exact moment, I opted for the hug instead.

“Good luck,” I said.  “I’m really going to miss you.” 

And I meant it.