Pico de Orizaba

Pico de Orizaba
Taken from Huatusco, Veracruz, the closest town to Margarita's family's ranch.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

White Boy Color Blind...a layperson's guide to racism, sexism, illness and healing...

Yes, that's correct. I'm a white boy... nothing I can do to change that... Granted, those who pride themselves on their skin tone, those who consider themselves the true "White Boys", wouldn't allow me into their club... What to do? What to do?

Here in Mexico, I'm a "white boy", meaning that I'm a "Gringo"... meaning that regardless of what is the truth, I'm extremely privileged... Looking at the true concept of privilege based upon systems of comparison, it's true, I'm extremely privileged, although not nearly as privileged as those you and I would consider extremely privileged... but then again, we're not putting things in perspective when we see ourselves as so much less priviledged... or maybe we are... The teenage budding intellectuals would call everything "relative"...  Relative is convenient... makes intellectualism extremely easy, always a quick escape route... And maybe there are quick escape routes for those at the most extreme end of the underpriviledged: death.  But, if we consider human nature that of self-preservation, then escaping "bad luck of the draw" by dying is not acceptable...


"White Boy color blind" is a play on words...  How can you be color blind calling yourself a "white boy"?  Ironic... it's not that I call myself "white boy", it's that they call me white boy or gringo... Are they to blame?  The Mexicans, the "blacks"? In a world divided by skin tone, historically and culturally, the lighter skin-toned and the taller are given positions of power and influence.  Yes, we can point to 5 dictators who were NOT tall and possibly weren't white washed: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Mussolini... But, something else about those people helped them be anomalies, such as pure force of character... possibly...  


Today a "white" friend posted this article "

Let Black Kids Just Be Kids

 by the New York Times:  
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/opinion/black-kids-discrimination.html?mwrsm=Facebook&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2F

I posted it on the wall of a "black" friend and wrote the following comment that I posted on my wall and on the walls of a few other friends:  



"Just wondering... as I've wondered since we were bussed 5 miles to Somerville High School, where for the first time we found ourselves "mixing" with Blacks and Latinos... After 8th grade graduation, the older brother of a neighbor of a "friend" said, "now you're gonna go to school with the Niggers and the Spicks! Boy do those niggers smell!" I never forgot that statement, especially in the locker room where all the white boys seemed afraid of getting semi naked together... but you always heard the showers running after gym class. For 4 years the white boys put their cloths on over sweaty bodies... but the showers were running... the only kids who used them were the black kids,... ALWAYS. I didn't have to wonder how the "niggers" smelled. I knew: CLEAN. But all anyone truly cares about is what was said, not what truly occurred. This was central Jersey in the 80s... where racism couldn't possibly exist; "we're from the North; we fought against slavery in the Civil War!" Uh! Huh! I guess you slept through that part of "American" history 101... But that's not only what's on my mind... and directing this towards you "miss Black" could be considered racist... my having been the only white boy member of the Black Student Union at the community college may be considered racist, although I was invited... and when my peers called me "nigger lover" because I manned a table during Black History Month... I think we're all racist because we notice the differences... although there are differences between racist and racist, just as there are differences between rape and rape... and maybe we should try understanding those differences... but I still haven't gotten to my point... why you? Because of all of my 600+ so-called friends here, maybe you are only one of 2 who is interested in this stuff and may respond... not even the social-activist types truly give a damn or maybe they're afraid of blemishing their image... my image always was blemished regardless of my intentions. They called me a "nigger lover"... I wasn't. Why should I be? There's this world within which we live, within which we were born, whether or not we wished... and there are these incredible lies being cultivated and spread, for even thousands of years. From before puberty I didn't want to participate in those lies... but here I was born a white boy... shouldn't be a problem... but the problem makes us participate in so many ways... ignoring is participating... so the adolescent black boys seem older and can't behave as whites their age behave... seems violent... they seem older... must be judged as older? What's the problem here? Could it be that feeling the pressures/risks/concerns of "race" makes adolescent Blacks more intense, more serious? Is it that white social consciousnesses has "us" knowing that the "other" has reason to be angry and tense, regardless of the truth... so "we" are in constant defensive... but no one likes suffering passively in waiting. So maybe "we" become aggressive at "the drop of the dime"... knee-jerk reactions to modern movements against police violence and what "white privilege" truly means... yes, I'm a white boy... in most parts of Mexico that means Gringo. In East New York, Brownsville, Clinton Hills, Bed-Stuy, central Harlem, that was clear... what could I do? Paint my skin Vaudeville, not enter those communities? The true heart of darkness... is the greater lie we live... So, better to shed some light not avoiding."

One of the friends who grew up with me, who also was bussed to Somerville High School responded:  

There is no one, and I mean no one that can claim to be not racist. I had this conversation with gentleman a few weeks back. He was telling me the first time his mother heard herself being referred to as black and not Jamaican was here in the US. When people as me if I am gay, I tell them no, I am Italian American, what I do in my bedroom is have sex with men. Just an fyi, Bed Stuy and Harlem is now very hot neighborhoods that are colorblind. I have had roommates from various backgrounds, but I still would tell you black, hispanic, and white. We have been trained to see color and not ethnicity. I try to ask and learn something about their background and culture. Still I am a racist, because of the what is learned via society, and most government forms. You just be you, and screw what everyone else thinks.

To which I replied:

I was running in the park the other day... sounds like a 70s folk song... I was running 10k at 21 hours of my 24 hour fast... and a whole novel appeared in my mind titled, "White Boy color blind"... And I never got to the computer... because I've found myself writing and writing and writing about alternative health... touch-typing in the comfort of a downstairs couch... and I never got to painting either... But, the idea while I was running was just awesome! If I could pull it off... So, at the moment of your current comment, I was on my blog beginning "White Boy Color Blind primera parte"... Never comes out as I would wish... For me, it's all very sad... At once you are who you believe, at the same time you are who they label you as... no escape... I use the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust as examples: During the 1st phase of the Spanish Inquisition, Jews were offered the option of converting to Catholicism... or die... (or escape to France and Portugal or to Morocco)... Many converted... And many of those who converted to Catholicism embraced Catholicism in their hearts, as their own... And here they were, beautiful Catholics when the second phase began claiming that even the converted must be burned at the stake... So, what do you do? Now, if I were living in Hitler's Germany, no matter how much I explain that I do not believe in Judaism... I am Ross... myself... and even the Jews don't accept me... the virtue that by Jewish law, since my mother is Jewish (Father too), by default, I'm Jewish. No escaping the gas chamber... So, here is a very convincing explanation of it doesn't really matter how you call yourself, what is important is what others call you... which is why I've started calling myself "white boy" and "color blind" is actually ironic...

"Nigger Lover"... Now what does that mean?  Do you understand love?  Now what does THAT mean?  "Love"... hum... What is love damn it?  Do I love you?  Should I love you?... regardless of your appearance, skin tone, gender, sexual preferences...  Now, tell me that I should love myself... How many people become so confused when you say, "Before you expect someone to love you, you must first love yourself."? So, call me a "Nigger Lover"...  Go ahead... What does it really mean?  When I was being called that, I was supposedly loving my very white girlfriend who's maternal grandparents were of Welsh descent... Did I choose her for her skin tone?  No...  The woman with whom I was "in-love" at the time also was white... But, her parents were from Germany.  I guess I shouldn't have been attracted to her...  because of the Nazi risk...  of anti-Semitism...  She would have kissed me, if I wasn't a "prude" at the time... Who knows?  Maybe we would have married one day... maybe not... but not because of her skin-tone... But I was a damn "Nigger Lover"... And, NO, I wasn't color blind... I was attending towards that issue within... what racism meant for me... what racism meant for others... how it worked within the society, within history, within culture, pyschologically...  economically, politically, religiously...  And I was just beginning...  Not because I was a "Nigger Lover"... 

And what if that young female student who engaged me on the issue of racism and discrimination who told me that in no way I could enter the "Black Student Union" causing my 22-year-old response, "which means you are discriminating against my skin-tone", who then went to the officers of the Union with the debate, returning to me the following day (although I hadn't asked for admittance into the union, it was just a fun intellectual debate for expanding our minds in garden of R.V.C.C.) with the news that YES the officers would allow me to participate, but not as a truly active member... kind of as a guest... What if I had kissed her?  In some way or another we must have been "in-love"... "In-Love"? Yes, with something that engaged us... With the desire for erasing what created the need for the debate in the first place...

But what if Sue and I weren't in that 3 year relationship?  What if I wasn't "in-love" with Cathy?  What if this young "black" intellectual woman and I decided to be a sexual couple?  Remember, this was when Spike Lee came out with "Jungle Fever" and "we" couldn't look at those two hands intwined black with white...  Remember the social identity to which we were attending, trying to come to terms with the color lines, the distinctions, trying to resolve the differences... "The Grand Canyon" new age film just came out too... The response was to live in harmony but white families being white and black families being black and no true mixing... just mutually respecting one anther...

So, this young intellectual woman and I in central Jersey...well we begin dating... What happens?  What happens when I bring her to a family gathering?  What happens when she brings me to her's?

Racism didn't exist in New Jersey... at least that's what the "liberal" whites said... fantasies...  

So, I wasn't a "Nigger Lover"... although they said I was... I wasn't truly a white lover either... 6 years later I would bring Mónica to my mother's pre-wedding party in the house where I grew up... And she and her best friend Judy would start dancing a jig and singing "Maria" from "West Side Story"... Mónica was Puerto Rican... Of course I got angry... And Judy immediately accused me of bringing Mónica to the wedding just to cause a reaction... I guess I'm living in Mexico 14.5 years and married to Margarita 14 years for creating a reaction...  Now, come to the family and friends dinner parties and listen to the intense "liberal" arguments on human rights, sexism, discrimination, racism etc. and you'll be incredibly surprised by the hypocracy of that moment of singing and dancing to "Maria"...  All discussion is fine as long as it is isolated within the "in-crowd"... And if the "whites" or the "Jews" say that they aren't racist... well, you take their word for it until their REactions prove them wrong... 

By the way, Mónica was a very white Puerto Rican with "honey-colored" hair, born into a wealthy Polish and Spanish Puerto Rican family... She and her younger brother Martin, like their paternal grandfather, graduated from Cornel University in Ithaca.  Her father studied medicine in Massachusetts and her older sister Mercedes studied law at Johns Hopkins.  Her grandfather could have bought and sold Marsha and Judy.  

Perceptions, Perspectives, lies, hypocracy, power games...destructive illusions...  

What can you do?