Race first broke into my thoughts one day while I was walking around my quiet neighborhood. I was home for a month in between my first semesters living in Kenya as a missionary. My paradigm of the world had already been shattered and transformed in more ways than I could count and yet it was about to begin again. As I walked my neighborhood, I saw spray painted on a wall the words “all n*** must die” accompanying a lynched stick figure. I stared in shock that anyone would even think of such a horrid thing. I thought of all my new, dear friends in Kenya and my heart ached. Then I went straight home, found a bottle of spray paint, and decided to commit my first act of graffiti.
Race is learned. We learn it through experience, through observation and most especially, through storytelling. Human differences always exist but what those differences mean and symbolize vary depending on context and what we are taught that they mean. We aren’t automatically born knowing the meaning of whiteness, blackness, femaleness or blue collar-ness. We learn it over time, based on our observations of the world around us, based on how others treat us, and through the stories we hear from our friends, family members, and strangers we talk to on the bus. Our sense of who we are is constantly evolving and changing as we grow and expand our life experiences and social circles.
I’ve had to learn whiteness. I never really thought about the symbolism attached to being white until I found myself outside of the bubble I grew up in. In my mind, all I knew of whiteness was the irritating propensity for terrible sunburns that my northern European ancestors bequeathed to me. I never thought of the privilege, symbolism, or status attached or how the color of my skin translates into how other people perceive me.
During the nearly four years I lived in East Africa, I was forced to learn whiteness. In this context, the colonial legacy and global ideas of power, wealth, privilege and beauty weave a powerful symbolic importance into whiteness. I found that my appearance had a meaning that I did not know or understand. Over years, I had to learn what it meant to be interpreted, categorized, and understood based on the color of my skin and the meanings and stereotypes that my skin translated to those who saw me.
In some cases my racial identity gave me automatic privilege: I could miss lines at the bank, use the bathroom at the nice hotel, and make friends with almost anyone. In other cases, my racial identity (especially when combined with my gender), made me an automatic target for exploitation: people befriended me to make money, I received a constant barrage of sexual innuendos, and almost weekly threats of robbery (either covert through pick pocketing or overt at knifepoint). In some cases, I was automatically an honored guest and in others I was a threat to potential donors and so had to be hidden away when other white people were around. My Ugandan fiancé received serious exhortations from some friends who warned him the danger of marrying a white woman. They had never met me. They did not know my character, personality, motivation or heart. They knew my color and that was enough.
Over the years, I’ve continued to negotiate the ambiguous, conflicting, and ever-evolving nature of the social construction of race in various contexts. I married a Ugandan man and then we moved to the U.S. We both had no idea what we were in for. Within his first few weeks in the U.S., my husband was followed and frisked by police after riding his bike in our neighborhood. He had a woman look at him, hold her nose as if he smelled, and intentionally walk around him on the sidewalk. He gets asked to show his ID on menial purchases on his credit card, purchases that I am never asked to show my ID on. He’s noticed people look at him in fear and cross the street so to avoid passing him on the sidewalk.
Working as a security guard in Hollywood really gave him experience of race in America. In a position of authority and trying to enforce rules, people’s politeness fades and racial tensions explode in attempts to wound and manipulate. He’s been called all manner of racially charged derogatory statements, yet the worst have always been from African Americans.
He’s had a long process learning to be simultaneously “black” and “not black” in the U.S. context. While sometimes labeled “black” in appearance, he is still “not black” in ethnicity. He’s been told again and again by some African Americans that he is “not black but African,” often with a tone of disgust.
What is race? What does it mean in our Southern Californian context? Who defines it? Who is excluded and included from the various titles and labels? How is it used? We are still learning.
I conducted my ethnographic fieldwork for my MA in anthropology among the Ugandan diaspora in SoCal. I tried to learn about how their sense of social identity, or their sense of who they are, evolves through their immigration to the U.S. I was privileged to sit and hear stories about their struggles and victories in learning life in a new context which often does not understand them and which they also struggle to understand. We got to process life together. Race came up time and time again as one concept that was foreign to them and that they were still trying to grapple with.
I found it fascinating when I would ask if they had experienced racism how many of them said, “No…I mean yes….I mean maybe…” and then they would tell me a story and ask me if I thought it was racism. Or they told me stories others had told them of racism and then ask me if people in California think that way too. They were using storytelling as a means of understanding their experiences and they were still in the process of learning how to interpret what race means for them.
So much of racism is subtle and unconscious. There may be times when it is overtly done, but in our “politically correct” climate, more often than not, it’s much more covert. There are times when the racist behavior isn’t even recognized by the one who did it. There are times when the person it is done against may or may not perceive or interpret it. There is also the challenge of perceptions of identity. I have my own sense of identity, but then I a sense of who I think you are. Then I also have a sense of who I think that you think I am. Perceived identities don’t need to be accurate to be powerful. It’s a murky, layered, volatile topic.
I also found it fascinating in my interviews of and studies of African Diasporas in different cities how the racial climate of each city can contribute to a different social identity for immigrants. You see, race is not always a “black and white” category (double meaning intended). Blackness (or whiteness or brownness) may have different meanings in Los Angeles and Minneapolis and Birmingham and Boise. The social, political, historical and economic context of each location contributes to creating different layers of meaning or shades of texture to the expression and interpretation of our social categories.
I’ve been pondering a lot about these racial categories the last few years. I mean, besides my African husband, I now think about it because of my son. I think about it every time I have to fill out those stupid forms on every hospital questionnaire, job application, birth certificate, and school enrollment form. “What race are you?” with a series of boxes. If race doesn’t matter than why does it matter?
These days I usually rebel and choose “prefer not to answer.” I don’t want to be categorized. I don’t want my son to be categorized. I want to avoid all the corresponding layers of stereotypes and meanings, but can we avoid it? Yes, my son is Swedish, German, Scottish, English, Dutch (and a host of other easily-sunburned European countries)…and he I also Alur, from NW Uganda, but that all can be encompassed under the label “black” with my heritage excluded from his identity. The U.S. has a historical and social context which makes Barack Obama a “Black” president but I struggle with it. His mother’s identity and heritage are not recognized. There are meanings attached to his appearance that I cannot begin to comprehend or understand.
We simultaneously overestimate and underestimate the importance of race. No wonder we struggle as a nation to understand ourselves. Who defines blackness? What does blackness mean? How do I prepare my son for his identity in between categories and meanings and titles? I don’t think I can fully because I don’t know what it means. Those meanings, also, are constantly evolving around him and in him. Wherever we live, the neighborhood, school, and friends he interacts with will shape his concept of who he is. Yet I hope to give him stories from both sides of his heritage to help him have pride in all aspects of his bi-racial, international, cross-cultural identity.
I am deeply concerned watching the current racial discussions in our nation. I am concerned that race can be used to determine guilt or innocence, on both sides of the divide.
I am concerned when conflicts in vastly different cities that are created by the intersection between class, race, ethnicity, and the use of authority are all labelled as being purely about race. I get worried when I see that the Dallas police officers are punished for the actions of police officers in Baton Rouge and Minnesota. People, places, and systems of authority are too complex to simplify under a single, homogenous story.
Stories are powerful. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about what she calls the “danger of a single story” or the way we can categorize people into one particular stereotype and do not take into account a complexity of viewpoints and perspectives that people inhabit. “Show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again and that is what they become,” she says. She talks about how “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete.” Too often our stories of different social categories are incomplete.
Race in America is not a single story. Race is contested, evolving, constructed and reconstructed. It impacts people and places in different ways. Yes, race is an issue and one that sorely needs addressing, but it is not the only issue and it is shaped and inflamed by an interlocking variety of additional conflicts. How much is race, how much is class and how much is a conflict over response to authority are questions that need to be addressed in each situation. I cannot assume a single story.
We are in the midst of an identity crisis as a nation. Past injustices and deeply felt griefs have been veneered with a thin layer of political correctness which leads to politeness but not healing. An absence of conflict is not always a sign of peace. I look around and see people who are hurting and people who are afraid. Some of the worst atrocities of history have been rationalized by fear. People who are afraid can do terrible things because they are afraid. The more violence, the more fear. The more fear, the more violence.
Fear of people who are different from us can sometimes be overcome through relationship and storytelling. Storytelling can create our prejudices and biases as much as it can help us overcome our prejudices and biases. To really understand the complexity of the people and situations in our nation, we need to provide opportunities to hear from all sides and perspectives. We also need to put ourselves into the shoes of others with hearts that seek to understand and humbly learn.
We need to mourn for injustice and mourn for past griefs and present pains. When I read over our brutal and unillustrious racial history as a nation, my heart breaks over the terrible injustice that one human being can do to another. Those deep wounds must be acknowledged. Simply because a beating has stopped doesn’t mean the bruising is gone away.
We also need to think about our own interaction with and process of understanding race, class, and authority. What does it mean in our context, in our city? How can we seek to bring healing and reconciliation in our context? How can we strive to understand the stories of those who are different than us? What does justice mean to all parties involved?
Some of my Ugandan friends here in L.A. shared their response to perceived prejudice based on their color or accent. They said that getting to really know people helps overcome some of that prejudice. Some shared that their religious convictions and assurance of their “identity in Christ” helps them to navigate discrimination and choose forgiveness. A few shared with me how they realize that there are good people and bad people everywhere in the world. In Uganda, they know some terrible Ugandans who can give all the others a bad name and so when they meet with Americans who are unpleasant, they figure it’s just a particular person has had a bad day or is a jerk. Yet, they are Ugandan and not African American so they come at race from a different perspective. Theirs is a different story.
What is the way forward? I do not know for sure. It’s still a process for all of us, I guess. One of the best places to start is building relationships across tribal, ethnic, racial, and class lines. I have many beloved friends of various tribal, ethnic, cultural and racial backgrounds. They love me not because of my color or my stereotypes but because they know me. They know the awkward, eccentric, messy Tara and are friends with me because of who I am. It is mutual. I love them because I know them and not because of what they symbolize or represent. While we may not have naturally been friends or found similarities, over time through sharing of food, jokes, and tears, we build a friendship. I’ve heard their stories and they have heard mine. We are able to learn from each other. I am richer for having them in my life. We need more opportunities for us all to process our similarities and differences as human beings with each other. We have to listen to the complexities of our different stories.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says that “stories can break the dignity of a people or repair it,” and now is a time more than ever that our stories need to build bridges instead of tearing them down. I pray that we, as a nation, make space to hear the complexity of stories that are around us.
For Further Reading:
- Audrey Smedley, “Origin of the Idea of Race”
- Tim Wise, “Racism: Divide and Conquer”
- "History of Whiteness”
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Danger of a Single Story”
- Anthropod, “#Blacklivesmatter:Anthropologists on Protest Policing and Race Based Violence”
Works Referenced:
Brewer, Marilynn B.
2001 The Many Faces of Social Identity: Implications for Political Psychology. Political Psychology 221(1):115-125. Retrieved from JSTOR.
Buchignani, Norman
1980 The Social and Self-Identities of Fijian Indians in Vancouver. Urban Anthropology 9(1):75-97. Retrieved from JSTOR.
Copeland-Carson, Jacqueline
2004 Contemporary Ethnography: Creating Africa in America: Translocal Identity in an Emerging World City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Retrieved from Ebrary.
Hutchinson, Janis Faye, ed.
1997 Cultural Portrayals of African Americans: Creating an Ethnic/Racial Identity. Pp 139-150. Westport: Bergin & Garvey.
