Dear Mr. Baldwin or alternately Peggy vs. the PC Crowd

Occasionally, between boughts of total sedation and ingratiation, the hell that is Inventing America does pique my interest. Today we were discussing Alexander de Tocqueville's perspectives on race, and the general tilt of the conversation really got me thinking. JK started the class with statistics, comparing the racial and class makeup of basically antebellum America to our present day, including voting statistics, the poverty line, etc. The numbers were really the most unsatisfying, I mean, how does one come around to classifying themselves as "non-white, American Indian or Alaskan native," or god forbid, "African American"? Talk about a loaded question. I think in general, I rebel against such snap judgments, quick generalizations, basically, why assume? Why think you know?

So I posed this question in class, and happily managed to hijack the rest of the discussion. There were a few mixed-race kids in the class, and of course, our token black girl, (token only in the sense that it is Lewis & Clark for crying out loud) which thankfully added to the discussion. I came to realize, again, how deeply I have been affected by the diversity of my family. Someone brought up Affirmative Action, speaking quite passionately about racial minorities exaggerating their standing simply to better qualify for college admission and the like. I don't actually think she meant it maliciously, I just found the perspective really interesting. I mean, ethnically, I'm basically 80% Jewish, a good 3/4 of my family was eliminated during the holocaust, though we haven't been practicing Jews for two generations. Though I do identify with Judaism as a large part of my ancestry, of the history I share with a greater whole, I would never claim to be Jewish. I would claim Jewish ancestry if anything, but the first time I was in a synagogue was definitely Lori Liebesman's bat mitzvah in eighth grade.

The whole idea of self classification, or identity in relationship to how society sees you, it really bothers me. People look at me and I'm sure see straight of most of the truth: I'm a young, white, educated woman, on the affluent side of comfortable. But if you stop there you miss so much. That says nothing about my African-Vietnamese sister, says nothing about my black-as-can-be uncle, his children that I love, my nieces and nephew who are just now coming into themselves. I feel like, because of the people I grew up around, I have a better idea of race. Maybe better isn't the right word, maybe just broader. Maybe I'm just as naive as the rest of 'em.

Or maybe I just like a good excuse to rebel against a more than dominant opinion.

I wrote this letter to my nephew last semester, in response to reading James Baldwin. This just about says it all, I feel like.

"...You can't fully understand the dynamics holding together your life. Your mother's - my sister's - struggle to provide for you and your family has led her through years of strange choices. You may not recall that hole of a house in which you lived; all those years ago back in Baltimore. We visited you there, with the roaches, the seeping ceiling, and the chipping paint they tell me you ate until it landed you in the hospital. Mister Baldwin would tell you that it's their fault, that "these innocent and well-meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not very far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago" (Reader. Pg. 273)
Now that may be true, if you consider my mother - your grandmother - an innocent and bighearted woman, who thought kicking your mom out on the streets was a worthy penalty for having you. She truly believed abandoning you to the ghettos would make you stronger; that you could never integrate yourselves into our lives. I wish I had better truths to pass on, I wish I had tender stories of bringing you out, of smothering you with enough love to keep you safe for the duration. Instead, we turned a blind eye and let you just be another black baby set down in the dark to be swallowed up (p. 274).

Somehow, Sheldon, you've managed to surprise us all. You've come up in this world compassionate, moral, and indomitable. Last summer, you awed me with your courage. Not only confronting us by waving our flagrant biases in front of us, you spoke quite eloquently on behalf of your mother. It was then, at that moment, as I was hiding and eavesdropping on the conversation, that I realized we could never truly accept you in our world. You only wanted to escape a hard situation, to run away from a bad man taking advantage of your mother. You were not asking much. We feared disorder, and were afraid of the ramifications of taking in a young black man. And how the suburbs would have howled then, irate at the interloper in our midst. You see, Sheldon, "To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger.Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality" (p. 274).

Living with us in Maryland would have forced my parents to see how discriminating and degrading our lifestyle could be. You would have made them see how stifling their attitudes could be; making them see exactly how you have been wronged by our society. This painful amalgamation is exactly what we need to make us realize how little we understand of each other! Baldwin said it so purely, that "we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it" (p. 274). If we consider ourselves progressive, we must first confront the evils that we wreak, then with thought and empathy, we must set about to change..."

I think the honest truth is that the "race issue" corresponds to our human need and desire for an easy answer. We go out into the world, and endeavor to make connections with those who hold something in common with us. In many ways, race, profiling even, is most palatable, or at least quickest way to classify those we encounter. Race will always be an issue, because people will always use it as an easy way to disqualify others, to make the great puzzle of conscience that is humanity easier to grasp.

So wherever you are, all you who have influenced my consciousness, thank you.