Stories

Dear Hearts

Something is essentially wrong with the moral fabric of our country.

If Trump and Hillary were stranded on a desert island together, who would be saved?

America.

“Never have there been two more deeply flawed candidates…” running for the United States of America presidency.

I don’t know what happened in any of the violence this week because I wasn’t there. I wasn’t recording the event from one perspective with my brandy-new iPhone. I wasn’t with the 40 year old cop who got up that morning and probably did not say, “I am gonna kill me a Black Man today.” I was not with the deceased who did not obey police orders. I wasn’t there. 99.999 percent of America wasn’t there. Yet, we are judge, jury, and executioners.  I was not part of the protests where I was out-numbered by a five to one by a crowd of angry people who very well might be armed. I wasn’t fearing that it might be me or him—and I just wanted to get home to my wife. I wasn’t with the 13 year old boy who thought—or didn’t think—that showing the cops his realistic BB gun would be a good idea. I wasn’t fearing that my child would be shot or assumed dangerous because of the color of his skin. I wasn’t with those people who stole cargo from trucks on the highway, shut down the highway, and proceeded to make bonfires. I wasn’t with the man who made a pressure cooker into a bomb to take out as many police as I could during a charity run.

I know there people are racist. They are.

We all have biases.

I have a bias against the Chinese. I’m not proud of it and I have had some wonderful Chinese students. But, my first interaction with a Chinese girl was really negative. Am I racist? YOU DECIDE. All you need to do with your iPhone is record me and that slut from 20 years ago who my boyfriend at the time fucked. (His fault too.) Then you can record me with talking and laughing with my Chinese-American students.

Walking down the street is a Black man and a White man both dressed in a suit. I’m going to ask the White guy for help. If it were a man and a woman, I would ask the woman for help. I feel safe in Starbucks outside Patterson, NJ because most of the clientele was White and attired in business clothes. I did not feel safe in the Verizon store in downtown Patterson, because the clientele was most Black and did not look like me.

A singular story. Through the Burning Bed Domestic and Sexual Violence class I saw a TED talk. (I still don’t really know who TED is.) A Nigerian woman was speaking. My first thought was, “Wow, she’s beautiful. She must have lived in terrible poverty and clawed her way out.” I had no idea there was a Nigerian middle-class who had servant boys. She said when she started reading she read “White books,” and then she wrote stories about blue-eyed, blonde haired kids playing in the snow and talking about the weather. She has no idea what snow felt like and Nigerians don’t obsess about the weather. It wasn’t until she found African authors that she realized people like her could be in literature. Her roommate in college asked her what tribe she was from and offered to show her how to use a stove.

The Nigerian woman did not wax about racism. Rather, she said that her writing about only white children and her roommate’s assumptions about her were based in ignorance—in a single story. She was seeing all white people to be like the characters in her books. She only had a single story. Her professor said her first novel was not “authentically African” because the characters were clawing and scratching just to survive the oppression of The Man. Her professor had a single story.

We all have single stories that we judge people by—the trick is to move beyond those single stories.

From the Black woman in the Burning Bed class, I learned that Black people can’t use the kind of shampoo I do. WHAT? Octavia wears wigs because no one in White-Middle America knows how to “do” Black hair. I was impressed by her Dooney and Burke bag, because that meant she is a successful middle- upper-middle class Black woman. That surprised me. That sounds terrible. If I said that in a classroom, I would be bludgeoned. But it’s honest. I’m being honest.

I digress.

I grew up White. Seriously. I can’t be Whiter. I’m not a WASP because I am not Protestant. But, I converted to Catholicism, so I was raised WASP. My ethnicity is pale English and Norwegian people. I am White. I went to school with White kids. I dated a Black boy in my freshman year. (God, he was a dork!) But I was called “nigger lover” and told I had “jungle fever.” My dad threw a chair across the room because he thought my reputation would be ruined and I wouldn’t get a prom date in three years. (I did get a prom date twice with two white guys: one was a tortured genius with a penchant for drugs and the other was a sociopath.) That Black boy, Aresenio, he was attracted to me for one reason—my tits. Yes, I had good tits and a great ass when I was a freshman. I was attracted to him because if I had a boyfriend that made me feel like I had worth.

Slut, who slept with Socio, when I was dating him was just one of many girls with whom he cheated on me. He fucked my college roommate too. And, he tried to fuck my sister’s underage friend. Ew.

What if America stopped being politically correct and was just honest. What if we just had a sincere discussion about race? What if we asked those questions, we’re afraid to ask.

“Hey, I don’t trust Muslims, because I don’t know any personally and the only Muslims I do know about are terrorists.”

“Hey, I think middle-class White women are snobby and entitled because those are kind of women lived in my town when I was growing up.”

“How do Black people get their tattoos to show up on their skin?”

“Why do Muslim women wear a hijab?”

“Why do Black people tend to have a certain dialect to their speech?”

“Why do Hasidic women wear wigs?”

“Why do you loot businesses in your own town, when a shooting is judged to be justified”

“Why do you hold your purse closer to you when I’m in the elevator with you, because I’m black and you're white?

“Why do you hate cops?”

"Why do you hate Mexicans?"

“Why do see a Black kid as more of a threat than a White kid?”

We tend to define ourselves by singular stories.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Black.”

“I’m a Catholic.

“I’m a woman.”

“I’m gay.”

“I am on disability.”

“I have clinical depression.”

We all have multiple stories. I am not just depressed or woman or Catholic—I am all of these things and more. What if we took the time to learn all those stories?

If we were to do that, we would have to kick out Political Correctness, Safe Places, warnings for trigger words, fear of offending and being deemed racist…

If we were to do that, we would have to look hard at our own biases and prejudices and own up to them.

If we were to do that, we would have to forgive ourselves and others for prejudices and biases.

If we were to do that, we would need to acknowledge that having a bias and acting on that bias are two very different things.

This violence is not about guns—it’s about the politicians who need to shut the fuck up. We, the people, need to look at what and who we are now, today in 2016. What are all our stories?  What do we want our stories to be? What do we want our children’s stories to be?

Smoke ‘em if ya’ got ‘em. God Bless

In the name of The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Mother Mary, Saint Brigid; Saint Jude; Saint Therese Lisieux; Saint Peter; Archangel Michael, and my Guardian Angel.