Can the Kids Have a Win?

I rose from my chair and said to the group at the table, "I’m really sorry. I have to leave this conference right now or I’m going to wreck it." and embarrass myself horribly at the same time I thought to myself.

I had white knuckled my way through the opening night. At first I thought maybe it was just because it was a Seattle event. Close to twenty years on the Island has given me the softness that comes with not having to bang the drum very loudly to be heard. For us transplants it’s a process. At first we have that edge and energy of laser like focus in projecting our agendas. Once we discover we are sharing our ideas with the same person we unload our recycling next to or whose kid we coach on basketball or the alto we sing just above in chorale we let our death grip on determination loosen a bit.

Overtown, at this conference on learning to live in racial unity, not harmony, unity, I knew I was going to lose my grip on Island softness pretty early into the game.

We were all enamored of the little clickers placed in our hands that allow us to instantly see graphs of who earns what income, who holds conservative or liberal political beliefs or how much education we have, or children, or what art activities we enjoy for entertainment and relaxation. Gone is the ancient raising of hands so the speaker can get a feel for his or her audience. No, we immediately see up there on that power point the makeup of our collective individual lives.

But the back row couldn’t get past the question ‘which gender do you identify with male or female,’ and so we spent a significant amount of time getting to ‘gender non conforming’ and then the gray haired lady with the classic sports clothes stood up and said timidly ‘white is a color too’ as we look at the list of ‘white, non Hispanic’ which I have never understood. At that point I wanted to stand and respond, ‘'color theory says' white is actually the absence of color’ but thought better. The elderly gentleman who arrived next to me one hour into the presentation was , of course, one of the first to have an opinion based on times that had passed at least thirty years ago. And when the two ladies on opposite sides of the sanctuary shared with genuine emotion about their visit to the Holocaust museum in Israel, and the old African American civil rights leader shared that he thought the prisons on the East coast of Africa were worse, where slaves were held for shipment to the parts West for what we all knew was one of the most horrible chapters in human history , completely negating the sharing the two woman had done, but neglecting to mention that the captors were, in fact, African Americans themselves, I knew the ship was sinking fast for me.

The point had been to set our own agendas aside and see where we could stand in unity. It just wasn’t going to happen. People were hanging onto bitterness and resentment like the war was still on.

The next morning didn’t start any better. I felt like I had been dropped into a 1960’s time capsule and we were all fresh off the line from being hosed by the police.

I finally raised my hand and asked if we were going to look at the younger generation. The speaker allowed as how we covered that last night in the survey.

That wasn’t what I meant. I mean the fact that Chris Rock forever blended our cultures in telling the truth about women’s hair in his movie. We now all know that what we have in common is… nobody likes their hair. Black women straighten and weave. White women change the color. Across the board with no government funding we were declared equal.

I told how we need to look at the lives of our children and how they live. It’s their world, not ours anymore. Our history is important to tell so it doesn’t every happen again, but nowadays, the kids are intermarrying, no policeman is going to get away with brutality without it being captured on a cell phone, and we need to build on the progress. We need to help them build on the progress.

Another poem followed with all the racial slurs you could hope to hear performed by a Greek chorus. Only one was left out, Honky. See, the kids added Honky.

At that point I stood up and made my declaration and exited. It was a wise move.

I know where of I speak. Fifteen years I had a terrible wrong, several terrible wrongs, done to me out of malicious envy and fear. I didn’t put up much of a fight. I turned to more positive advances. I watched all of the people who had hurt me and my family either die or experience terrible tragedies. Vengeance was not on my agenda and sure enough a brighter day appeared and I learned that people with hate in the hearts always die at the hands of that hate. Their bodies just do them in. So too, it is time for us who watched the world change, start building on that change.

The rest of the day was wonderful. I came back to the Island in time to sit with the knitting group at lunch; an incredible diverse group of women in cultural origins and political opinions. I went to hear the young Asian American writer talk about her book at the library, and then I went to see a matinee of "J Edgar" at the theatre and saw again how fear and the inability to deal with one’s pain leads to horrific consequences.

Overcome evil with good. That’s the lesson we need to start embracing. Let’s give the kids a win on this one.

Love,
Deborah