Today I had a decidedly un-American experience. A relative stranger asked me for help. Not a creepy stranger, not a weird favor, just needed a ride to the VW dealership several blocks down. I was headed in exactly that direction and was so shocked that I said yes; I’m glad I did it. I had to ask him where he was from, and he mentioned he had only been in the U.S. for about fifteen years; he was born and raised in India. Of course, I already knew he was a foreigner– true Americans observe a strict taboo against helping each other.
As I drove myself home I started thinking about the way that a small group (maybe a large group, I don’t know) of people at my church want to bar “neighborhood” people from receiving free dinners at our Big Wednesday night program or from coming at all, really. These neighborhood people have been labeled (by some) as “Dave Kerr’s People,” as though a pastor offering hope and a free meal to people in need was something preposterous (he associates himself with sinners and the mentally ill!). At first I thought that the issue was pure classism, but I think that today I changed my mind. It’s not just about being prejudiced against people of another socioeconomic status, its the inability to understand what it is like to trust oneself to the goodness of a fellow human being.
And that, my friends, seems like a spiritually impoverishing state of affairs.
I don’t really even know where to begin with this one.
Do I feel personally affronted, perhaps, that someone questioned the viability of an interracial marriage, even to the point of generalizing all interracial marriages? Am I shocked that such a blatant example of racism could occur in our seemingly “modern” society? (Not, we see manifestations of racism every day). Am I enraged by the assumption that marriage should, in fact, necessarily produce children? Am I angered by Bardwell’s squeamishness for “mixing races” and obvious disdain for integration? Am I appalled by the fact that, as a Justice of the Peace, Bardwell feels he has the “right” to impose his personal prejudices on couples, regardless of any notion of civil rights? Am I intrigued by the implications of the corresponding anti-discrimination rhetoric, and the extent to which is applies (or doesn’t apply) to other couples wishing to make life-long commitments in marriage?
This is what I’ve been thinking about lately (while I should be thinking about papers, of course). I tend to see hip-hop/rap music as poetry, and I’ve become fascinated and maybe even fixated by what it has to say about community, national identity, and of course, the narration of survival. I’ll qualify that, because obviously “Blame it on the al-al-al-al-al-alcholol” isn’t exactly poetic.
I don’t think I have any awesome analysis yet, but it’s worth checking out these songs and thinking about them a little, even if you disagree with the politics.
You may, like my husband, think I’m digging too deep into something that is meant to be “entertainment,” but I’m not quite there isn’t something to be grasped here about us, the community of people who calls themselves Americans.
I was writing a little check today (incidentally, Rebecca is headed to Ghana this summer) and flashed back to a childhood incident when, with no small amount of disapproval, my mother pointed out a woman’s hyphenated name on some sort of legal tender and remarked “you can tell what kind of woman she is.” That probably went along with the conversation (again, with my mother) where I was informed that, no matter how many degrees I might achieve or what sort of career I might have, I would be my parents’ responsibility until I had a husband to be responsible for me. I remember remarking, not very kindly, that I was quite certain I could eventually manage without some form of patriarchy peering over my shoulder.
A few summers ago, when I was working at Calvin Crest, a fellow staffer who I barely knew noticed me in a tank top and exclaimed, “Oh my god! You don’t shave your armpits?! I love you!!” and that sorta made me uncomfortable too. Sometimes I feel like thinking a woman is really cool because she doesn’t shave whatever part of her body without really knowing what’s going on in her head is not so terribly far removed from trying to teach your daughter that hyphenating your name somehow makes you less respectable as a woman/wife. Whether it’s for the better or for the worse, aren’t we still just judging women by superficial and non-consequential markers?
Of course, most of you wouldn’t ever make such an exclamation because you just think it’s gross. To you I say: I have really sensitive skin!
