La Linda Writes

The arrest of Prof. Gates is such a perfect extra strength, megawatt Paper Cut that it deserves its own award. First off, his home is not a public space, it is a private space. And most of us would get very loud if we were accused of breaking into our own home. This is when a citizen"s arrest option would be appropriate, rather than a citizen being arrested, which is what happened. Reminds me a bit of my PC entitled: "Noisy unit" where I was labeled loud as well.

I do so love having the President call out the department and acknowledge racial profiling. Such a sweet moment of validity from an office that has usually been a place of denial. And the Mayor also stepped up; another reason that "they" don"t like to put us in power - we just might call a spade a spade

I am waiting with other women to play tennis at Live Oak courts in North Berkeley. The two courts are full. One group of women has said they will leave in 10 minutes and the other, two men, say they will stay another hour. We are waiting for the women. Talk turns to how long can people use a court when others are waiting. Half an hour, people think.

“Yeah, but would you tell that big black man on the other court to leave? He said he would be there for an hour when we asked.” Alright now, I think, we have stepped out of the rational into the irrational area of the brain.

“That isn’t the issue for me. These folks said they were leaving in 10 minutes.” I say, feeling disappointed in the elderly Japanese woman who is kick-ass on the court. She repeats a version of what she said earlier and I again shift the irrational fear to figuring out what exactly is the rule so we can get back to reality rather than stereotypes.

“Does anybody really know?" I repeat, “because I think half an hour is really short- once you get to a court it seems like you should get an hour.”

There are a few more comments, but I am fading into my thoughts, scanning my surroundings in a more conscious way. The group is all women, mostly in their sixties and seventies, two Asians, three white women and me, the lone Latina, the “baby” in the group. Most of us met at our twice weekly tennis classes, taught by a black man who is not tall, but he also does not mess around. They have been taking his class for years and attended his mom’s funeral several months back.

And still they so easily get caught in the scary, big black man hole. He is playing tennis, for christ’s sake. And even though the group playing said they would be done in 10 minutes, 20 minutes passed before they left and no one complained.

I am in a self-defense class to take care of myself after the incident of a young man coming into my home a few months back (see blog entry: I was robbed.) The leaders are wanting us to discuss the continuum of violence and have a chart posted with a line across the page. On one side it says cat calling and on the other side of the continuum it says genocide. They ask us to name forms of violence.

“Choking.” Says a young white woman. “And where would you place it on the continuum?” “Just to the left of genocide.” I can’t believe it and I make a noise of discomfort. I don’t say anything because I am curious how the facilitator will handle this. I can tell she agrees with my reaction, but she ends up putting it down as the other woman says.

We had practiced getting out of chokeholds that night, so it must have been scary for her, but to take her personal fear generated in a supportive group of women and put it right next to genocide is a sign that she has no idea what it means to has someone try to systematically kill people solely based on their membership in a group, usually racial, ethnic and/or religious, as in the Holocaust, Rwanda and Bosnia.

This response is typical of why people can’t deeply grapple with oppression. It is all too personal as a defense against seeing the larger patterns with devastating results, as the following stat reveals: "Nearly 170 million people probably have been murdered by governments in this [20th] century; over four times those killed in combat in all international and domestic wars during the same years."

I had just done a brief diversity awareness training where I had a quiz about the wage gap between white men (all but one of the participants, the last being a white woman) and Latinas (that would be me). It was almost 50%. Ouch. Facts can take all the fun out of a training that had me worried for a number of days. I don"t do much diversity training these days, and certainly not to a group that is so homogenous on the surface. I mentioned that I was taking a calculated risk and that I had been debating how and whether to do this as part of a larger "How to be a Trainer" series. I knew I was probably one of the very few trainers who would consider looking at differences and power inequities as an essential skill in delivering any training.

At lunch, one of the men came up to me. "I don"t know why you were worried. I work with alot of Hispanics and we get along."

I smiled, thinking about the multiple ways I could deconstruct his denial of difference. His workers are mostly undocumented men who fled and still live in difficult economic situations. I am a highly educated, US born, middle class woman. That alone is difference enough. His comment merely reinforced my worry and my acceptance of what impact I could have in a few a hours. I did not push them as I could have and I did not push him now.

I was on day 5 of my nutritional cleanse and I chose to focus on making sure I served myself a delicious portion of salad, scraped the creamy sauce off the chicken and bypassed the garlic mashed potatoes. Something my compadres back at his worksite did not have the privilege to do. I also did do what I have learned to do from watching men when faced with a question/comment they did not want to answer. I stayed silent.

I am closing out my two year stint as School Governance Chair for my kids" middle school. We were once again faced with making hard decisions based on the unmitigated focus on war and prison rather than public school, where most of the black and brown kids attend. The new principal, an African American woman, and I have provided great leadership, but that just never seems to be enough to have SOME people trust us or support us.

We got one particularly offensive email from a white man admitting he basically knew nothing of our process, but he "plead that at least equal value be placed on the bright and capable kids as is placed on the ones who need counseling. As best as we can tell, the "G.A.T.E" (gifted and talented) program is a joke - no funding, nothing ever seems to happen - other than that the bright kids seem to continually get picked on & teased by some of the kids badly in need of counseling. For our son, the music program has been a refuge from all that sort of yucchy teenage behavior."

Code switching is a time honored skill used by people of color to navigate the two culture language differences. But his man reminded me of how white people code switch within their very own language. So "white" becomes "bright and capable", blacks become "the ones who need counseling" or who are "badly in need of counseling". Finally, "separate but equal" becomes "the music program" and "yucchy" is "black behavior that bothers white kids and their progressive parents".

Nevermind his lament of no GATE program- the netire district is geared toward having white kids succeed- they outperform black and brown kids by endless percentage points. He doesn"t begin to consider that many of those "non-bright and capable" kids are also GATE. That would ruin his bright and capable dichotomy and he would have to consider why they don"t thrive in the school environment as his son does, despite the "teasing".

My downstairs neighbor is moving out and our animosity is overripe and attracting flies. He sends an email about the new renters and reiterates for the fifth time how great they seem, these two young white men who are the antithesis of why I tried forming a co-housing community. He has given them a list of responsibilities about being courteous if they have a small gathering. He ends with: "Please extend them the same courtesy (been pretty noisy in 1606 A recently)."

You can guess which unit I am in. And in his exquisitely white liberal passive-aggressive way, he demotes me to being a unit rather than a person with two 13 year old kids who also have names and who, yes, like their Rock Band, along with his son and the other two 13 year olds on the property.

I imagine all manner of comebacks, but I am trying to be the bigger person here. One tasty comment would be: "Hope you gave your tenants full disclosure about the noisy Latino/a neighbors who occupy the other three units." Another was: "Wow, since I"ve been gone for a week, maybe someone noisy was squatting in my unit, or maybe the two hamsters and the fish had a pachanga and did not inform you in the courteous manner you wanted. Go figure."

I hit the delete button instead and start planning a LOUD party for the weekend he moves out. If ya got the reputation, flaunt it!

I am sitting with my daughter watching my all time favorite movie, "Harold and Maude" on January 28th at 9 PM. It is the first time she has seen it and we are in the scene that is the crux of the movie, where she tells him to "play the game, get hurt, otherwise you got nothin" to talk about in the locker room."

"What"s that?" She asks.

I pause, but I really don"t pay much attention as I am into the movie, I am looking for hope in my life. "The hamster wheel." I say.

My eyes turn and I see a gloved hand reaching slowly for the black straps of my purse, hanging from a dining room chair. I cannot fathom someone in my home stealing my purse 15 feet from where I am sitting. I finally kick into what is, get up and yell "Hey!", walking to my backdoor which is open. My son had been skateboarding an hour earlier and he forgot to lock the door.

As I am on the phone talking to the police and telling them I only saw the glove, my daughter turns to me and says: "I saw him." I am stunned and as she describes him I realize she was sitting to my right and her view was bigger than mine. I dread her saying he is black, I dread the whole process of the police system and the ways people of color are pitted against each other to pursue life, liberty and happiness. To untangle all that occurred in the next hour before I brought her to my bed to sleep would need many more pages than I am ready to write.

We are laying together and she is crying quietly as she has been for the last hour. "I should have done something." She says. That is a cut- that my girl thinks she should have done something about a male intruder in our home. I assure her she did the right thing and that my purse is replaceable. Her safety, her brother"s and mine are what is precious in our house.

"I keep seeing his face." She says. And we discuss her safety and what she needs. And I then tell her that no one grows up thinking they will be a thief or a prostitute or homeless. I know she is afraid but I also know her life is full of images of black men being suspects and I want to add some humanity to the stereotype. I will call her martial arts sifus and tell them what happened and to discuss it in her next class - both her sifus are black men and that is part of why I wanted her in this program.

I had also told her earlier before this home invasion about an article by a friend nominated for an award - about trangendered folks of color, especially FTMs who find out that being a black man means becoming the suspect and being pulled over endlessly. http://colorlines.com/article.php?ID=265

I am sad that I cannot just let her rage at this young man of color who violated her space and heart, but he is part of our tribe and someday she will know that despite all the complexities of race and class and gender.

Ironically, in the movie that we never finished, it is Maude, the old white woman antithesis of our nighttime thief, who steals cars. I am looking forward to finishing "Harold and Maude" with her and seeing where we will go next as we sooth our emotional and spiritual cuts.

P.S. A woman found my purse later that night in the street, nothing missing but the fifty cents I had in my wallet, my Walgreen"s reading glasses and my bronze sparkling lipstick.

I am in a writing class that is taught by a Latina, a rarity in itself. I had given myself enough time to get there early, park and grab a cafecito, but the parking signs on the UCLA campus were poor and I drove around as my twenty minutes dwindled to negative 5 minutes. I felt a surge of tears that tapped into the pot of mitote (a la Don Miguel Ruiz, also know as Samsara in Buddhism) labeled: “Even when I plan for spaciousness I can still end up boca abajo." The second pile of mierda I stepped into was: “I hate being late to a group of white people where I will unconsciously fulfill the stereotype of black/brown people not being on time.” Then I was really holding back tears as I walked quickly to the Public Affairs building. I did not want to represent my race, I just wanted to accept what was and gracefully step into the class 10 minutes late. I remembered my rescue remedy lozenges and slipped one into my mouth as I stepped into the elevator. When two white women came in later than me, I knew they were only representing themselves – a marvelous privilege.

At lunch I got my food and saw my teacher sitting alone at a table. I do workshops myself so I chose to smile at her and find a table away from her so she could have a real break. She had already told us her voice was scratchy from a cold.

As I sat alone, I saw another woman from the class go right up to her and ask to join her at her tiny table. Cut, cut, cut.

Later in day as we were reading our third excerpt to demonstrate point of view, She said: “You can tell I’m a little biased toward Latin American authors. I will try to mix it up.”

I wanted to say – “NO! Don’t feel you have to explain. None of my white teachers even felt they needed to explain why they only used white authors." If these women were exposed to the US education I was, they had very little exposure to the wonderful authors she asked us read.

I can’t wait to get Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo and the bilingual version of Aura by Carlos Fuentes!

It would be fun to think I am referring to the cloak worn by Harry Potter, but I am speaking of a different type of cloak that seems to descend on me sometimes when I am out engaged in the commerce of this country.

I was visiting my sister in LA and one day we were out at different stores and locators when the cloak descended several times. There was the yoga class when I stated I had practiced for more than 3 years and the teacher said a few minutes later: "Since this is a class of people new to yoga I am going to adjust my plan."

Then we went to a lovely cafe and were standing at the counter for awhile waiting to order. Another woman came in and stood next to us. The counterperson immediately asked the other woman, a good 6 inches taller than us petite Latinas, what she wanted. I got on my tippy toes and informed her we were first in line.

There was at least one more incident that doesn"t come to mind. What does come to mind is this quote from bell hooks: "As long as white Americans have difficulty coping with the assertion of agency and self-determination by individual or collective groups of black folks, victimization will continue to be the locator of visibility." from Killing Rage.

It is precisely when I am in my privileged place of eating at a nice cafe or taking a yoga class that this invisibility occurs most often. While it works great for Harry, he is the one who decides when he doesn"t want to be seen. And he has that damn wand as well

Berkeley High School is proposing a new schedule to attempt, by any means possible, to eliminate the achievement gap that has African Americans and Latinos dropping out at an almost 50% rate while whites in particular succeed in high numbers. I attended an informational meeting and, with great trepidation, joined the small group to discuss what we liked about the plan, what were our worries, and what options we had to end the achievement gap if we disagreed with the proposals.

I should have taken a rescue remedy or meditated before the meeting, but I entered the group armored with fear and anger.

"it"s too late by high school, I worked in an elementary school. I suggest vocational training so "they" can get jobs and earn a living."

OUCH!!!!

I turned to the speaker, full of the self-righteousness that comes from being excessively attached to the only truth worth knowing. And I had forgotten that listening is the best strategy for writing a great paper cut!

"That is old fashioned racism." was my fabulous retort.

"No it isn"t. Car mechanics requires knowlwdge of math. And we need plumbers."

She is exactly the stereotype of white people that drive me crazy. She is older, has frizzy gray hair and the barest whisper of lips. Topped with wire-rimmed glasses and a knit sweater, I am completely closed to her humanity.

I keep as quiet as the other members of the group, no one daring to back either of us, wishing to sink into a daze of pseudo-agreement.

I sink into speaking in Spanish to a woman who has a daughter in the school already and is a teacher in my kids" former pre-school.

"Can you listen to what people are saying?" The informal white facilitator asks me.

"I"m translating," I lie.

She backs off, then later asks me in Spanish if I have anything else to add.

I respond in English, wondering if she knew I was vaguely translating and mostly quejandome en español.

To be perfectly transparent, the woman who annoyed me approached me later and apologized, seeking relief from her discomfort.

"Didn"t you see "Stand and Deliver"? I ask her. "Did you see what he did in a year?!"

She finally admits her daughter will be fine no matter what the schedule is and says she will support the new proposal if we really believe it will help. Alright now. There are a few happy endings to these sharp moments