I think I've been trying to write this for a while now, but maybe I didn't know to.
I've been under this pleasant illusion of 'comfortable controversial' - where I thought I could talk openly about certain issues - certain race related issues. And because I could talk about these issues - because I could write about them - I was mindful and I was articulate about "racial realities", and even (goodness) about life. Heck - I'm an anthropology major - this is literally the food that I eat. And the people that make the food that I eat. And the source of the food and the people that make the food that I eat. You get me?
And so it is with a certain alarm that I find my chest is tight and my face is warm with embarrassment because I thought to share a question about a certain "racial reality" with some friends.
I wrote a line in an earlier piece of writing about a black nanny I saw in Paris, and her "two white wards", two sweet little milky white boys that contrasted beautifully with her thin dark frame. And I was writing about the feeling of shared awareness and melancholy between us.
It is only now, and with a certain shame, that I realise the audacity of that presumption.
I did feel something, there WAS an awareness: one of *me* being aware of *her*. It is only now, and with a certain shame, that I see that I didn't see how much we really did share, and how easily we could begin to share a certain presence in this world. I could not see the full blackness - a dark and occluding blackness - only a single articulation of black that I used to give words to my own feeling in a particular place and at a particular time. I feel almost guilty now, but more I feel sad.
Because I *am* also that black nanny, and I cannot be honest with those around me about how scared to death I am of that. I cannot exhale the words to explain why I cringe when I have to walk with the white children. Because I shouldn't? I cannot explain that though it was not me, nor my mother, nor my grandmother that left alone their own children to look after little white children - I am all those women when I pick up a white child. And I cannot be 'those women' -- I resist being forced into the flesh of the idea of those women.
But also, how can I resist? When all I really know to perceive is their presence in my space, ready to be sealed onto my own skin. It must be that what I fear is unknowing; I am frightened that people may not know me, engaging instead with a false and thin skin that I am complicit in creating.
And what if I do not even know the skin that other people see?
At dinner tonight I tried to talk about it. I asked my friends what they thought about people assuming that a round white baby was mine. The thought of their response still makes my stomach tight. It was *embarrassing* to see those forced eyes and those plastic smiles and the sheen to it all that slid off their faces and hit me with a thud that thickened my chest.
But isn't it weird?! That people seem not to question, and that I question, and that I cannot seem to question with some others?! My friends literally *could not* talk to me about it. The same people with whom I had just been discussing the pain, the psyche, and the social realities of Palestinians/Israelis, and Germans, could not look me in the face and talk to me about blackness, and whiteness, and people's perceptions. And really it is not exactly pleasant to force it. Squeezing out a conversation like that leaves one with the unseemly residue of a pinched pimple.
It didn't work tonight, and it didn't work months ago on another continent in another community when I tried to talk about a similar experience. That similar experience took place in an affluent town in California. A white lady working at the upmarket supermarket referred to me as "mommy" of the little white children I was with. Truth be told and I swear to God, I think the first thing I thought was "how unintentionally generous of her".
Since then I've been quietly and intermittently chewing on that thought and that scene. Perhaps I should feel guilty about what was in my mind? But I'm just too busy being so damnably curious about the whole thing!
All I want is to discuss is what it may mean for someone to refer to a white child as my own. Both for me and for them. When it happens I always pause a fraction to look them full in the face, trying hard to find something in the shape of their eyes or in the curve of their mouth that will tell me what they could possible be thinking.
What intrigues me is that there does not seem to be a pause for thought on their end. When these people call the white baby mine there - just - does - not - seem to be what we might (pretentiously) call a moment of social mindfulness, where the person *chooses* not to question what kinship looks like. I cannot compute!
Are they being progressive? Are they thinking? Has something been incalculated into them? Here I am frightened that they enclose me in the skin and situation of a black nanny, and there they are assuming the baby is mine. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Someone talk to me about it. Please. Why am I so concerned? Have I taken things too far with this fear that I am being thought of as what I am not? Am I... behind the times?