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Have
you ever been discriminated against because of your race or color of
your skin? Do you have memories of them? Tell us about one of them in
brief.
Do
you feel that new immigrants to North America should assimilate into
the mainstream?
Do you feel that new immigrants to North America should assimilate into
the
Would your parents object to you dating or marrying a person who was a different race than you? No, because they did. Well, sorta. Do you think that children who are multi-racial have an advantage or disadvantage growing up in today’s society? Why? Powerful advantage though with some pitfalls. The pitfalls being the separate and powerful tides of society which force choice. The older you get, the more rigid the boundaries. Puberty, Junior High School, High School, College and the Workplace were lessons in one’s opportunities as much as in one’s place. And each brings on a new awareness of the true stratification of our society and its challenges. At each stage, I was faced with a renewed and rigid choice to be either black or white. Each stage was just as difficult, but they grew in intensity and depth, for each came with harder questions before the previous ones had been answered. To avoid the choice often left one not feeling as “both”, but actually “neither”. Blacks, I found, were accepting. Partly for my tan skin, which in America is inarguably black, but also, outsiders often accept and understand outsiders. Many whites, who sincerely tried to be accepting, often built a second hurdle between us through their naiveté on issues and comments which hurt me daily. College was a harsh introduction to the real world in every sense. It was fascinating, and hopeless to see how one institution could house and espouse such segregation. And beyond college, riding the bus and subway home from work, it was just as amazing to watch the colors change as though riding through the softened but distinct colors of a rainbow. These days in particular, they feel more distinct than ever. So that’s the difficult side. Choosing. Picking a side. As a child I answered the surprisingly common question of “which are you”, with my name. Beginning somewhere around age 12, I began to answer “black.” And I still do. A little late compared to some friends. And interestingly, a conscious decision. That, I guess, is the potential dilemma of mixed parentage. Somewhere inside, you feel you have a choice. Whether real or not. I feel I made the right choice so long as there’s a struggle. So long as that is the way the world faces me. I’d like to think I would have chosen it in any case, but it’s been the source of a lot of pain, and my honest answer at this point in my life is I can’t say. I guess I could still choose to live this life fooling myself. I see people of color like this and find it absurd and weak. Harsh, but it’s how I would feel about myself. It’s easy to side with the powerful. Most who can, do. I do know though that I am thankful for everything I am and everything I have been through, and can’t imagine or contemplate being anything else. Being born black, feels like being born a peaceful child and immediately handed a sword and shield. Born to fight. The shield was life-saving. The sword was borne of futility. And even though you know they are man-made, artificial, there are always others who don’t care. And somewhere inside, when I’m honest and at peace, I’m Gordon, the son my mother loves, regardless of our two colors. Have you ever been discriminated against because of your race or the color of your skin? Do you have memories of them? Tell us about one of them in brief? I got some. Particularly early ones since I know better how to avoid them now. My mom’s white from New England, my father’s black from the South, I’m a heady mixture. My sister has a different father, white. So she’s blonde and blue-eyed. Forever tripped people out to find out we were brother and sister. I don’t know how deeply it affected me, honestly, especially as I know she has a mouth on her, but there was always something that she could, at the heart of a fight, call me that I could never call her. And nothing I had ever came close. One other, my best friend, Joey, and I, when we were about 13 years old, were coming home from a popular street near our neighborhood. Between it and home was Little Italy. Both black, we knew to avoid it, but this day we were especially tired and feeling fairly sure people wouldn’t care to bother us. But basically we didn’t want to walk all the way around it yet again that afternoon. Halfway home, I felt a sharp thud in my back and turned, the same time as Joey, to see that both of us had been kicked in the back by two little 8 year- olds. They were both “niggerizing” us and wanting a fight, as a few older friends of theirs were coming up behind them. It was afternoon, sunny, we had absent-mindedly taken a route along the street of their park and just then, with one glance, noticed just about everyone, everyone in windows, in the park, on the street had been watching us in disgust, and some coming towards us. These two tiny little 8 year-olds were about to bring all of hell down upon our heads. It hurt so badly, but I’ll never forget in slow motion, that funny, and very certain look we gave each other as we turned toward each other and continued the turn into a run towards home, as fast as we could, away from these two tiny little bastards. We spent a good while that afternoon, time and time again, acting out just what we would have done on safer ground with those microperpetrators, by kicking and kicking and kicking against an innocent fence. One last one, years ago traveling in Goa, India and having the very dark skinned Indian boy who cleaned my room daily, trying to strike up a conversation by asking me if I was a nigger. What is the most unusual thing you’ve ever eaten? And where were you when you ate it? The night in Patna, India of trying politely to eat a stewed treat a friend’s mother decided to make just for me, a westerner, of fresh chicken. A chicken which I earlier had the pleasure of watching have its throat slit, thrown into a blood-stained barrel, flailing headlessly, stripped of feathers, dumped into a plastic bag, then onto my lap. And riding home on the rickshaw with this still-warm bag of death heating my lap. Where do you live and where have you traveled where the culture was the most different from your own? I live in New York City. India. Without a doubt, India. I haven’t yet been to other parts of Asia, but India was like landing on another planet and time, without the rationality of a spaceship. Do you feel that you are in touch with your culture? Which one? Yes. My primary identity in this country is black. The biggest part of which I feel is being engaged in the struggle. I feel I am part of the struggle, the awareness, and the strength. I’m not given as much opportunity to be my white side, though it is a powerful part of me as well. The most difficult challenge I have, especially in the current separatist climate, is resolving the external differences between the two internally. There is a lot of conflict. For worse and for better. Also, due to the mostly white and Spanish neighborhood I live in, the loss of some close friends (to obligation and death) and my own lack of effort, I’ve not had as strong a connection to the black community as I once had. I find I now have to put some effort into building black friendships up to the level they once were in my life. I believe it is important for everyone to every now and then notice what their close friends look like. Do they represent the plurality I wish for? I pick my close friends carefully, but if I want greater global effort in unity, I’d be a stupid hypocrite if I didn’t try, continually, to find and keep friends from all walks of life. Not superficially, not because they’re black, Chinese or white. I feel we all have much more common ground than we’re led to believe. And we all have powerful histories. In other words, everyone should have their own affirmative action plan, meaning a little more effort to gain a little more representation. Fair. We all gain by each others’ efforts. Not at the loss of quality, just more time spent searching out people in the separate places society forces us. Don’t compromise, just look harder. What percentage of your friends are able to speak a language other than English? Most, I think, I’d say 65-70%. Spanish, Italian and Mandarin. Are you physically attracted to people of a different race? If so, why do you think you are? I generally find other cultures to be very attractive. I find my own culture to be very attractive. I can’t think of any women from any culture I don’t find attractive. Each culture and person has their “flavor”, but it all seems good enough to eat. I find New York City women to be exciting, mostly for their diversity and yet their commonality for some reason. That blend. I do believe different people and different cultures can be a spanking new adventure if both are game. (No, no spanking.) I think there’s a natural attraction to diversity, often shallow, often not. And then there are the pedestalled queens of our dominant Euro-culture which are hammered into our skulls with every commercial, soap opera or MTV video from birth. We all fall for it a little. For all men it’s the shortest dash at power. And casual sex is often a mutually exciting game of power. Regardless of gender or sexuality. Throwing color and/or class into the mix and its anger, sadness, aspirations, guilt, presumptions really stirs it up. For both. All stems from power or lack of it. All from the roots of racism. I do believe that friendships and attraction of different cultures has inherent excitement, especially when accompanied by open minds. It gets ugly and sad when the reasons are for your own weird role-playing stemming from racism, sexism or frustration. We all have them to a degree and they often find matches, which in many ways does sort of justify them; you know, two people, closed doors, better weird sex than war. And I do feel we all go where we know. But it sometimes doesn’t. A lot of these role-playing fantasies are rooted in the desire for power or self-justification that a segregated and racist society creates. Do you feel uncomfortable if you are a minority in a room full of people who are all of one race? It’s honestly the way I feel living in America. The Big White Room. Run by the Big White House. I feel when I’m in a home or club where there are diverse people whom I feel more akin to, I feel like we’re in a little pocket that very few people are aware of or could even participate in. In spite of the fact it seems more the way things should be. There are very few people who are not black who I can be fully myself with. Without explanation. Without offense. Without threat. Even though the only thing in danger are their safe ideas about me and others like me. Describe your idea of a perfect world. Lotsa fucking between all sorts of colors, sexes, nationalities. “Black, White, Puerto Rican, Everybody just-a freakin’”. One big funky, chunky soup. That and a good open-minded, ironclad, politician- and patriotism-proof, globally oriented educational system which teaches more about our elder cultures rather than our monied ones. Where the clamoring to greater scientific and industrial heights, speeds, competitiveness, profits and technologies our schools presently encourage, is changed. I feel this is the cause of the imminent dangers we as a race are faced with. There seem a few things all people share, but they are 90% of who we are. We simply need to eat, breathe, mate and live a reasonable number of years, then die. All of these, with one exception, are threatened by our frenzied addiction to control. Where commercialism does not define knowledge. Nor does capital. Easy huh? Where all boundaries are worn out by the wear and tear of constant travel. Where rich bastards can be rich, but not nearly as much as they are. The richer they need to be, the more they must “give back”. Where the primary recipient of their contributions is not each other or the military, but those who have much less. One where those who have much less, still have a home, food, education and real opportunities for job. Jobs geared towards individual contentment, rather than the simple, most efficient, methods of pumping wealth upwards. Smaller, bite-sized communities, where no one feels outside the scope of the daily life and health of the community. Where everyone feels a strong connection to each other and a sense of who and what we’re all there for. A primary cultural goal of goodness, rather than power, wealth, fame, control, simple accumulation and competition.
Would your parents object to you dating or marrying a person who was a different race that you? No, because both my parents came from families where their sibling are interracially married. What is the most unusual thing you’ve ever eaten? And where were you when you ate it? Deer meat. I know it doesn’t sound unusual, but I’d never had it until a year ago. I was at my friend’s house and her father gave me a piece. I did not like it. The meat tasted too strong. Do you feel that you are in touch with your culture of origin? Not really. When it comes to the Spanish culture I am totally lost. I’ve never been taught to speak Spanish even though my father does. I have never been to any Spanish speaking countries or anything. We do eat Spanish foods and listen to Spanish music, but I don’t think that is much. Do you or did you ever wish that you were another race other than your own? If so, why? I used to wish that my coloring was darker. When I was younger my sister used to make fun of how pale I was, because she is darker than myself. So I used to wish I was darker. Still
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