In the mix of a person’s humanity, what is race? Is it the kool-aid, is it the sugar, or is it the water? Depending on the person, I’ve seen cases where people seem to think it’s each - and in some cases, all three. A couple things bring this to mind, but most immediately, there’s an article on oxycranium.com about a sister who gives an impromptu history lesson at a weight-loss meeting.
I was soon witnessing a full-blown discussion on a variety of immigrant food experiences – all of them being white. People were actually interrupting one another to get in their two cents on how difficult it was to eat healthily when one was bombarded by ancestral background. All the familiar countries emerged – Italy , France , Ireland , Scotland , Russia and Israel . Even some lesser-known contenders were later mentioned – Czechoslovakia , Romania and Wales . Normally this would be okay, but everyone save two others and me were involved. What pushed me over the edge was the actual bitching and moaning about how these rich foods had damaged their ability to choose a healthier diet. While they were definitely proud of their heritage, more and more members spoke as dietary victims of cultural history. One comment served as the proverbial last straw.
“Well, I mean it’s very hard to get away from it. For generations my people ate these rich, high calorie foods and having that passed onto my grandparents, my parents and myself from past generations is one of the main reasons it’s hard for me to really change my diet and what foods I eat.”
What? Bitch please. My turn!
“Well,” I said as I watched the one other African American in the meeting rolling her eyes. “I understand what everyone’s talking about.”
Heads nodded and there were faint smiles. They always like when one of us chooses to participate.
“I mean, I’m still working off of a slave diet.”
Silence. No heads nodding. Absolute confusion. Time to elaborate.
“You know I’m listening to you guys talk about all these rich foods being in your family for generations. I don’t know anything about that. I do know that my maternal great-great grandmother told my mother about the day she was set free.” This is true.
Confusion begins to transform into being uncomfortable.
“She also talked about what she had to eat as a slave in Alabama . Bad stuff. I don’t mean fried chicken and biscuits. She didn’t have it that good. But everything was pretty much fried and put in grease to make it taste good. The slaves needed something since they only got the most disgusting parts of the animal to work with.”
(I’m trying very hard not to get sidetracked by the issue of historical precedent in food choices and weight issues…very hard. But suffice it to say that regardless of a person’s ancestry, using the foods of the forebears as an explanation for today’s weight problem is, in my mind, suspect. Especially living in America, where we have almost unlimited food choices. That would be like me blaming the fact that I like to eat Doritos on the fact that my mother used to work for Frito Lay. But I’m not gettin sidetracked on that.)
Now to be fair, in introduction, the author does point out that her main goal at the meetings is to lose weight and control her diet, so race is not a factor. However, on this one occasion, she went out there. Even given that caveat, I think it’s illustrative of the fact that for different people, Blackness occupies a different level of primacy in their lives. For some folks, it’s Black first, last, and always. Those are the people for whom Blackness would be the water. Then there are people for whom race is not primary, but a strong, strong secondary. That’s the kool-aid. And then there are people for whom it less important than that, which would make it the sugar. (Understanding, that in this construction, the metaphor has nothing to do with the sweetness of sugar, only the tier on which the ingredient rests.) Then I suppose there are people for whom it would rest even further down the line, making it a lemon or something, which is not crucial to the actual drink, but serves to add flavor and texture. To balance that out, I guess I need to add those people for whom race isn’t just the water, it’s the actual hydrogen and oxygen molecules that combine to make up the water in the first place. (NBPP, I’m lookin at you again.)
Now for me personally, I’m thinking that it’s probably at the kool-aid level. What I mean is this: I’m human first. I know that I could come up with many, many adjectives by which I describe myself. You know, I’m a male, over 30, left-handed, only child, and soforth. While all of those color my understanding and experience of the world, I don’t know that any of them do so at the same level that race does. Like this: I’m human before I’m Black. But am I XY before I’m Black? Am I left-handed before I’m Black? I’m thinking that the answer is no. My guess is that being Black colors my understanding of each of those other adjectives more than any of those influences my Blackness, although to be sure, each has a bearing on the perception of the other.
Of course I’ve said before that in my mind, the real litmus test of race has nothing to do with Blackness, it’s all about whiteness. That is to say that when looking at race as a social construct, you can’t really start with us, because we have the phenotypical dimension, which kinda skews the results. Race as a social construct is best viewed through a lens where there is nothing but social construct. Then, once you get the physics down, you can compare the results with us and see what the physical difference changes and what remains the same. Now even given all that I just said, I think there’s a degree to which normalized whiteness prevents most white people from understanding that the kool-aid and the water are, indeed separate. If you think your race is the default state of humanity, you don’t really experience race in the same way. Now, what’s interesting is that there’s a clutch of Black folks for whom the raceless identity is the goal. But in those cases (and yeah, I’m thinkin specifically of WC and JLP), I don’t think they use their own race as the default, which is a whole ‘NOTHER deal. Especially in the case of JLP, and some of the stuff he says outta HIS mouth.
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