If there was ever an unlikely candidate to think of herself as an ‘African American’, it would be me: a white girl of Scottish, Irish and German descent from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
I was born in 1968, a time when de facto if not de jure segregation was rife in the American South. In the 1970s, the Klu Klux Klan was still a viable force, causing mayhem and fear throughout the region. Smoking cigarettes was considered a constitutional right and, outside my generally liberal hometown, voting for uber-conservative Senator Jesse Helms was seen as a constitutional duty. I remember Walter Cronkite talking about the Vietnam War, my Watergate coloring book, bell bottom jeans, disco, roller skates, eight track tapes and marching for equal rights for women. What I don’t remember is the Civil Rights movement because it simply wasn’t a part of my world.
I was raised to be ‘color blind’ and I certainly thought I was, but that didn’t mean that I actually knew any black people socially. This didn’t strike me as strange because nobody I knew did either. Sure, we had teachers who were black but I don’t ever remember them attending the same churches or even the same civic events.
The schools in my hometown officially desegregated a few short years before I started kindergarten. When I was in junior high, the issue of busing became one of North Carolina's most hotly argued topics, but since Chapel Hill only had two junior high schools and one high school it was never an issue for us beyond the debate. That doesn’t mean that races were seamlessly integrated or that relations were always easy. I remember clearly a day in the eighth grade when a group of black girls walked up to a white classmate and smacked her across the face in the school yard. As I recall, her crime was dating a black boy.
That same year, I was involved in an incident that I too considered racial violence, although looking back on it as an adult, maybe it was just one of those things girls get up to when Queen Bee hormones start raging. It happened when we were ‘studying’ volleyball in gym class. I despised the game because every time I hit the ball it would take minutes for the stinging in my wrists and lower arms to subside. My solution was to step aside whenever the white orb of pain came hurtling my way and, to my relief, the boys on my team, both black and white, quickly and reliably filled the gap I was creating. I didn’t want my team to lose but I wasn’t too committed to helping it win either.
After about two weeks of this, I was approached by two black girls in the locker room after class. They chose a time when I was sitting on the floor tying my shoes and, from that vantage point, they seemed very intimidating. The smaller of the two demanded to know why I refused to get in the game. Her exact words were: “Girl, why you always standing like this?” For effect, she added a not so flattering mimic of what she thought I looked like on the volleyball court. Not always having a filter between my brain and my mouth at that age, I quickly replied: “Probably for the same reason that you are in the eighth grade and still suck your thumb.” Looking back, the collective gasp that reverberated around the mint-green tiled room was theatrically impressive.
It was a reverse ‘I wish I said...’ moment. Under great pressure, I had in fact come up with the perfect retort but wished I had said anything else. The retort was too good, she was in the eighth grade and she did still suck her thumb. What I said humiliated her and I was generally considered dead meat for having gone there. Regardless of race, as far as the girls in the locker room were concerned, this black girl was going to kill me. Time slowed, my challenger and I stared at each other in mutual shock about what had just come out of my mouth, she became a whirling dervish of arms and legs, my best friend said her final goodbye to me with her eyes and, then, just as a can of whup ass was about to explode all over me, the Dervish’s friend picked her up around the waist and hauled her out. It was over. I hyperventilated for the next thirty minutes and avoided eye contact with my would be attacker for the rest of my school career.
When I reflect on this event, it occurs to me that, aside from some much loved teachers, it constituted the lengthiest interaction I had ever had with a black person for the duration of my life to that point. Segregation as law was long gone but as children, particularly amongst the girls, it continued. It seemed to have been tacitly agreed that we were just different and had no mutual ground around which to plan a trip to the mall.
That doesn’t mean that black people didn’t play a role in our lives. Michael Jordan was busy making history at the University of North Carolina and we all considered him to be a God. But, he was a ‘black’ God. For some reason, Southern whites at that time (and even today) always pointed out whenever anyone achieving anything great was black. For that matter, they always pointed out color regardless of whether or not anything great was being achieved. If a boss was white, they were a boss. If they were black, they were a ‘black boss’. When watching a sports game, there were point guards and black point guards. There were teachers and black teachers, singers and black singers, TV shows and black TV shows. The delineation was ever present and as I grew older and started to understand that it represented a verbal separation between humans and black humans, I found it increasingly offensive.
The first true black friend (i.e. the kind of person you call to chat and make plans with) I made came about when I was in high school. His name was Gordon and we worked together at a local movie theater. He was urbane, cool and awesome and had the added value of being in college which meant that my friends and I got invited to great parties...where, come to think of it, there were always more white people than black.
When it came to dating during those years, the inter-racial factor was a daring line to cross. My friend Heidi did it but she didn’t count because she was Norwegian and thus not bound by the same rules. Then there was the fact that her boyfriend was not only mixed race but one of the most physically beautiful human beings ever to grace Chapel Hill, and arguably North Carolina. It was impossible to fault her taste.
When I was 16, there was a girl in my gym class who had an older boyfriend named David. While we had never met the man, we knew everything about him because he was all she could talk about. We knew his favorite foods, what made him laugh, the sweet things he said and even that he preferred boxers to briefs.
One day, while we were ‘studying’ bowling, my friend Marla and I were sitting on the gym floor gossiping and watching the action. “Guess what I learned about David,” she asked me. “What could there possibly be left to learn?”, I replied. “That he’s black,” she said. I couldn’t help but laugh. We knew everything about this man except for the one thing that people in South always felt it imperative to point out. He wasn’t just a boyfriend, he was a black boyfriend and the revelation was, in my mind, hysterically funny. Unfortunately, or perhaps quite rightly, as I guffawed at the missing piece in our collective picture of David, an errant bowling ball smacked me in the face and smashed my front two teeth into hundreds of pieces. A divine smack down? Perhaps.
Another interesting thing about interracial dating in the South at that time was the fact that any discussion about it always seemed to involve Michael Jackson and invariably led to the conclusion that I was a racist.
“Fine. You say you’re not a racist. Would you date a black guy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if I met the right guy I would.”
“Well, would you date Michael Jackson?”
“Um, no....”
“Aha! You are a racist!”
While not being sexually attracted to Michael Jackson most certainly did not make me a racist, my reaction to learning that my dorm roommate my freshman year of college was black shattered my opinion of myself as ‘color blind’. It turned out that I was anything but and despite the shame I felt about the fact that I cared, I was terrified about imagined irreconcilable differences. I needn’t have worried, she was an amazingly good, kind and gentle person who was far more grounded and self-aware than I was (and perhaps even still am). I loved the semester I spent with her as my roommate. I wouldn’t say we ever became true friends but she opened my eyes to the wonderful world of the black subculture at the university and it was a lot more impressive than my own subculture of no self-discipline, drinking too much and regularly getting stoned. Sadly, due to financial constraints, she had to leave school mid-year. Even sadder, my new roommate was a dyed in the wool redneck who consistently, if unsuccessfully, pressured me to let her boyfriend sleep over so that they could do God knows what with me a mere few feet away.
After college, I spent a year in Atlanta waiting tables, chasing a boyfriend who didn’t want to be caught and perfecting my party girl persona. I then moved on to Washington DC where, at the age of 23, I made my second true black friend. A Creole from Louisiana, she was (and I’m sure still is) stop-traffic gorgeous, literally. Her fashion sense was impeccable and she knew exactly who she was. Given that I was completely lost about who I was and noticeably fashion-challenged to boot, I admired her greatly. My favourite memories with her, outside constantly shopping for better wardrobes, were when we would go to her church, a racially mixed gospel Catholic landmark where the parishioners would boo whenever the priest delivering the day’s sermon said things they didn’t like. It was inspiring and fantastic and hands down the best church experience I’ve ever had.
It was also in DC that I met Lisa, a saucy, bossy, Arizonan who would become a friend for life. A lawyer with an Ivy league education, Lisa had two grand passions: handsome men who understood the ins and outs of great sex and Africa. She spent time in the Peace Corps on the continent, but left before her service time was up because she had a problem following rules. In DC, she managed to land a job at an African embassy and, in so doing, my life, the life of the sheltered white girl from North Carolina trying to find her way in the world, began to change irrevocably.
TBC. Next up: How I ended up moving to Africa and, wow, did my opinion of the world and my place in it start to change fast.