CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Africa is a Million Miles Away

Saturday, June 18, 2005

this entry brought to you by the white stripes, "blue orchid"


I was talking to Michelle the other day about race. She has been talking to me about this book she's been reading, and the part of the book she was telling me about on this day involved the writer, a mulatto, heading off to Africa on a mission of soul-searching.

It's not that I don't understand national heritage as personal identity, but it frustrates me when a black person wants to go to Africa to feel connected, because the black American is so far removed from Africa. Some find this to be a travesty, and while I certainly understand why one would feel this way, I think focusing on what the black race has lost is less than productive than what the black race has earned: 200 years of a rich, fascinating, completely unique history. Look how far the black race has come-- you could argue that they've evolved and matured much more rapidly and come further than any other race in America. Africa doesn't have that. The past 200 years of Africa's history is completely different, the different countries in Africa have different histories from one another. And I started to think about this, and how I feel about race, my place within it.

I'd like to visit Africa some day. But not any more than I'd like to visit Europe or Japan or Brazil. I'm sure it would be an insteresting experience, and if I went there and had some sort of racial identity epiphany, then fine. But I wouldn't go there looking for anything other than an adventure. For me, being of white and black descent, mulatto, my history doesn't start in Africa. Certainly my mother's family's history starts there. But I feel like my race, as a part of what my race is, we have no hisotry. I have no history. I am a blank slate.

There's a part in To Kill A Mockingbird where Scout is hanging out with mulattos, and she says that they hang out alone with one another, because the whites won't be around them because they were black, and the blacks wouldn't be around them because they weren't. She says she feels sorry for them because they were stuck in the middle, not really wanted by anyone. Ghosts with no pasts. This has always been a part I remember about that book. I don't feel like the fact that my race having no past is something to feel bad about. I don't say "we have no past" to provoke sympathy. Honestly, I think it's awesome.

I don't see my history as having started with Africa. It started when the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, and the slaves were freed. Mixed people of course existed before this time, but before then they didn't matter. They still didn't matter as a seperate entity than black people for about another hundred years or hell, perhaps all the way up to a couple decades ago, but that's when they were acknowledged as people. Basically, since that's the almost entirety of my history in terms of race, pretty much the definition of what I am is not black enough, not white enough, no identity, I find that I have the unique opportunity to create my own idenity. My history starts with me.

Think about it. What other race in the entire world has a choice in its own history and identity? Every other race has their own pride, but also their own ugly baggage. Except mine. This is why it frustrates me when mixed people associate themselves as one race or the other instead of bracing being both. We're about the only race in the world in the position to create ourselves our own identity, our own sense of self. Why take the lazy route and just use someone else's?

So when it comes to the idea of trekking to Africa for some kind of pilgrammage, that's something that doesn't interest me, because I am a uniquely American creature. Certainly, mulattos exist in Africa, but their society doesn't see a difference. Mulattos are treated with the same indignity any lower class person would be treated as, especially in South Africa. In the more superstitious parts, mulattos are considered bad luck and often killed. Ours is just about the only society where someone like me-- or for that matter, anyone-- is allowed to exist as an individual, instead of automatically being clumped into something they're not a part of, so I don't understand why a mullato wouldn't want to take advantage of that. Why isn't anyone else of mixed descent as excited as I am at being what we are? Why would someone see my embracement of the uniqueness and individuality of being what I am a rejection of the black race? To the contrary, I use my race to my advantage, probably moreso than any other minority.

Would I like to make a pilgrammage one day? Yes. But not to Africa. I'd love to go deep into the heart of the south, Texas presumably, and find the plantation where the last relative of mine that was a slave was freed. I'd like to look out into the fields and think what it must've been like to get the news, and ask, "What do I do now?" And why keep the last name Waites? Was it because he liked living as a Waites slave? Or was it just for lack of having any other last name? And for that matter, what was Master Waites like?

This is the moment that matters. Because this is the point where that first freed slave could have a child with a white person, and sure, the child would've still been shunned, but legally, from that point forward, that child was a person, not Massah's Secret.

Africa? Africa is a million miles and a million years away.
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with love from CRS @ 9:15 PM 

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