White Priviledge – Tessa M. Perko's Blog

Feeling Better about America after Visiting the South

I just completed a trip to Savannah, Hilton Head, and Charleston and, now, I feel better about the United States.

During the last six years, the news has plagued viewers with stories about racism, some of which were unfortunately true and others which were sensationalized. George Floyd was murdered by a police officer who knelt on his neck. In two different instances, a police officer in my own town killed two men who had mental health problems. There are numerous examples like this. Hearing that my country is full of arrogant white supremists who belittle, offend, and abuse minorities does not make me a proud American.

I wanted to tour these historic areas of the United States because I want to understand the history of this country, not just the white-washed stories that many books divulge, but the complete histories of even the disadvantaged human beings who lived here before the Puritans and the African Americans who were brought here to be slaves on plantations.

My trip taught me about a different side of Americans. I met numerous Whites and African Americans who extended great hospitality toward me and my co-travelers. They helped me make hotel arrangements, dinner reservations, and late-night taxi calls. One 6-foot, 6 inch African American man, who was dressed in a blue-and-white-striped seersucker suit and a colorful bowtie, drove me to an appointment one day. On the way, he told me how he met his Russian wife years ago, and, how, they were now best of friends. I’ll never forget his funny story of how he didn’t even like his wife when he first met her and how his eyes lit up like candles as he told me.

An elderly White woman led a group of us around the city of Charleston, showing us how the mansions had slave quarters attached in back. She described the opulent lives of the mansion owners, some of whom were plantation owners who came into the city in order to avoid the mosquito-infested plantations during the summer. She also explained how the slaves had to cook and clean outside in the back yards even during the sweltering summer months. Her mission, she said, was to tell the history of Charleston so that the mistakes of the past were never repeated.

When we visited the Gullah Geechee Museum in Pin Point, Georgia, a Gullah woman taught us how to sing a Geechee song by stamping our feet, clapping our hands, and singing. She also shared details about how her ancestors worked as slaves before the Emancipation and then lived and worked at Pin Point in oyster and crab processing plants. She was confident in her story-telling and proud to share her culture with us.

When we visited the Magnolia Plantation where we viewed slave quarters and a magnificent plantation home, the White tour guide told us that she tells the story of the plantation and its slavery so our country can heal from its lurid past. At another storied place, the Middleton Plantation, we saw how the family of the owners ate from silver platters while the slaves lived in unheated wooden shacks.

Every Southerner we met had a story—a personal one or one that had been created from the South’s history—and they all told their stories with clarity and friendliness. Every community we visited exuded harmony and graciousness. Most notably, Whites were respectful of African Americans; African Americans were respectful of Whites.

When people experience harmony and hospitality, their moods improve and they feel better. I feel better now that I’ve experienced the warmth and kindness of the South.

A Place for All of Us

Last week, I saw Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story with Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ansel Elgort as Tony. Rita Moreno, who played Anita in the 1961 version, played Valentina, the wife of Doc, who was the original owner of Valentina’s drugstore.

This fabulous musical—which whips emotions into a frenzy with enthusiastic dancing and impassioned characters—was relevant back in 1961, a time when racism was high in the United States. For goodness sakes, the Civil Rights Act wasn’t even passed until 1964, three years after this original musical.

The Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. This act sought to establish equality for voter registrations, prohibited racial segregation in schools and public places, and outlawed discrimination in employment.

West Side Story, first written in 1957 by Jerome Robbins was inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Remember, Romeo and Juliet came from two different feuding families in Verona. Robbins wanted his lovers to come from two different religions in America—Maria was to be a Jewish girl and Tony was supposed to be from a Catholic family.

But when Laurents and Leonard Bernstein started collaborating on the musical, they drew inspiration from the Chicano riots in Los Angeles. By the time the musical was complete, the setting had been moved to New York and the opposing gangs were represented by the Puerto Ricans and poor white communities of the city’s West Side.

The 2021 version is spectacular, and as relevant as ever. The two opposing factions could be any community in America: men verses women, Whites verses Blacks, heterosexuals verses gays, Christians verses Muslims. Even though the 1964 Civil Rights Act was supposed to establish equality for every person in the United States, it didn’t.

People aren’t equal here, and diversity still seems to threaten our various cultures. Women have not achieved equal pay for equal work, and, even when they work, they experience inequality at home when they are expected to bear most of the responsibility for raising children and doing housework.

African American men are viewed as dangerous and irresponsible and too often become the targets of police officers or white vigilantes. Furthermore, African Americans are dehumanized for their dark skin and course and curly hair.

Muslims are labeled as terrorists just because they share the same religion with terrorists on the other side of the world.

When gay couples want to have children, they are criticized and ostracized. Transgender individuals are the victims of rape and ridicule.

American society is still a white supremist society, and most white people don’t understand how pervasive this damaging attitude is to the non-white cultures of our country. So when two people from different cultures fall in love, their ability to sustain that love is fraught with hatred from their respective communities.

In Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story, Rita Moreno sings the song that begins with “There’s a place for us, some where a place for us.” She sings about a place with peace, quiet, and open air. She sings about a time for togetherness, time for recreation, time for learning and caring.

The poor and discriminated in the United States don’t live in places of peace and quiet. They live in places filled with pollution, noise, and stress. They don’t enjoy togetherness when families break down due to financial hardship and lack of opportunity. They don’t have time to play. Stress takes up their opportunities to learn, and they don’t feel like anyone cares.

I cried in the dark theater as Rita Moreno sang this song.

When will women ever feel as equal as men in American society? When will their assertiveness and leadership be valued as much? When will African Americans overcome the cavernous damages that slavery imposed upon them? When will religions ever learn to respect every individual no matter their gender, sexual orientation, or creed?

Rita Moreno sang about how, if we hold hands, we can be “halfway there.” Holding hands requires empathy for one another. We’re not practicing empathy too well these days.

Let’s really get into each other shoes. Choose the people who are the most unlike you, and ask yourself, “How would I like to be treated?” Maybe then, we can start holding hands and finding a place for all of us.

Five Features of a Perfect Democracy

Ever since the pilgrims landed on the North American Continent, Americans have struggled with freedom.

On January 7, 2021, Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation made this statement in the Foundation’s Equals Change Blog: “Our founding aspirations were just that: aspirations.” What he means is that the freedom which we aspire to in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights has not yet been achieved. In fact, Walker admits that these aspirations were a “founding contradiction.” When white settlers took control and settled across what is now the United States, they took away the rights of the natives who had previously lived on the land. As white plantation owners built tobacco, rice, and cotton empires, they enslaved human beings from Africa to serve like cattle in the muddy fields under sweltering sun.

On January 6, 2021, a mob of white supremists stormed the capital, our citadel of democracy. This event horrified most American citizens and made them realize how fragile our democracy really is.

Yet, some good came from this insurrection toward our government. It signifies that we have not achieved the freedom that we strive for; we have not reached the level of a true democratic government. This violent, but sad act against our government makes the brokenness of our democracy blatantly clear, and that is what is good. We have clarity that we must act to improve our democratic dream.

In his blog post, Walker makes it clear that “inequality is the greatest threat to justice—and, the corollary, that white supremacy is the greatest threat to democracy.” As long as people exist who do not seek equality for all peoples, our democracy is flawed.

What is a true democratic freedom? I mused over this question for days, and my mind constantly wandered back to Aristotle’s rhetorical philosophy practiced in the original democracy of Greece which solved community issues, not with force, but with respectful dialogue.

I wondered about how a citizen should act or what a person should be in order to promote democratic freedom. I’m not a specialist, but I do have aspirations to promote democratic freedom for every person in the United States. As I mused about what qualities would promote freedom for all peoples, I came up with five overlapping features that must exist in the populace for a truly democratic community: openness, self-discipline, moral courage, empathy, and respect.

Openness

The United States is a diverse country, and, therefore, in order for us to achieve to true democracy, different types of people with dissimilar customs and cultures must live together without criticism or conflict. This requires citizens to adopt an openness to customs and cultures that are diverse, even when those practices are against what citizens may choose for their own lives.

To be open means to be imaginative, curious, and ready to learn about the lives of other people, no matter how unlike they are to oneself. Being open means to be receptive to new ideas without feeling threatened. It means to be attentive to all people no matter what their background is. It means to be transparent in action, acknowledging what is new, but accepting it anyway.

Here are some examples of openness. A heterosexual couple willingly accepts the lifestyle of a homosexual couple who moves into the apartment next door to them. They treat this couple as a respected neighbor and do not make judgments about them just because they are homosexual. A pedestrian encounters a peaceful demonstration while he is walking down the street. Instead of prejudging the participants, he reads their signs and engages in a conversation with one of them to hear their point of view. A manager who is hiring a new employee does not discriminate when an applicant comes into an interview wearing a turban on his head.

Self-discipline

Most humans work on improving their self-discipline throughout their whole lives. In a truly-perfected democracy, self-discipline is important since one person must never infringe upon the freedom of another for any reason. Whites cannot take away the freedom of Blacks or Hispanics. The rich cannot take away the freedom of the poor. City dwellers cannot erode the freedom of rural dwellers.

Self-discipline is the ability to control personal feelings and overcome personal weaknesses. It is the aptitude to pursue what is right despite temptations or any private fears. Self-discipline involves acceptance, willpower, commitment, hard work, and persistence.

Acceptance requires that people look at reality accurately and acknowledge it. For example, the reality is that Whites have greater privileges in American society than other races; however, even today, many Whites don’t understand this. They don’t understand what White privilege really is.

The “willpower” part of self-discipline helps individuals set a course of action and start on it. They set an objective, create a plan, and then execute their plan. For example, I wanted to become a professor whose African American students succeeded in my classes. That was my objective. My plan was to use more African American authors in my course readings and more visuals of African Americans in my online course. My plan also included in improving my own knowledge about African American history that was never taught in school; through study, I would better understand African American history and, through their history, my students’ current needs and feelings. Then, I executed my plan, and my courses became more inclusive, I became more knowledgeable, and my students became more successful and happier. Even I became happier in my growth and their success.

Commitment cannot be underestimated. To be committed means putting in the time to whatever goal you have in order to achieve it. For my goal of improving the success of my African students, I committed to reading numerous books on the African American experience even when reading those books took time away from more pleasurable activities. I read every day. When I finished one book, I started another right away. If I wasn’t committed, I often would have chosen to read a light-hearted mystery or go outside to do some gardening in the sunny weather.

Self-discipline also requires hard work. I had to read challenging books even when I was tired after a long day teaching. I had to look up new vocabulary words, reread certain paragraphs until I understood them, and take continuing education courses that complemented my newfound knowledge.

Finally, nothing of value is accomplished without perseverance. I started my quest to learn more about my African American students over five years ago, and now, I have accumulated a lot of understanding of the African American history. This knowledge has allowed me a greater understanding of the current political issues today such as the George Floyd murder and the Black Lives Matter protests. If I hadn’t persevered in my growth, I would never be able to comprehend the complicated issues America faces today. And now, I’m at a new level of citizenship, ready to make new goals.

Moral Courage

Moral Courage is integrity. People with moral courage are honest, true to their word, do the best they can, and own up to their shortcomings. They do not make excuses or blame others for their actions or faults. They do not try to cover up their mistakes. They try to make others feel better, and they do the right thing even when it is difficult.

Here are some examples. Travis intervenes when Roger bullies Mario on the playground. When Sarah goes for a walk, she takes a plastic bag so she can pick up litter on the street. Ivan completes his chores without being reminded by his father. Killian pays for the college tuition for his nephew without telling anyone. Recently, Vice-President Pence refused to block the electoral vote in Congress even though it would have been easier to submit to President Trump’s aggressive demands.

Practicing moral courage is hard, but our country needs citizens who possess it. People can draw inspiration from people who have demonstrated great courage such as John Lewis, the former Georgia Congressman who helped Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrate against prejudice and then worked in Congress for decades to continue King’s work.

Another way to strengthen moral courage is to practice acts that require courage and to avoid actions that lack courage. People can compliment those who treat them badly, and consciously can avoid gossiping. They can think of new acts of courage on a daily basis so that acting with courage becomes a habit.

Empathy

To help America attain a perfect democracy, people must possess an empathy for their fellow citizens. The type of empathy required is a compassionate empathy where a person’s logic and emotion are balanced. Compassionate empathy is a combination of logic and emotion—a concern that leads someone to act for the betterment of another.

When someone intervenes for a bully victim, they feel compassion for the victim and they are able to stop the bullying from taking place because of their intervention. When a professor feels compassion for a Hispanic student who lacks the technology necessary to pass her course, she uses her resources to provide technological resources to that student. The effect of the action is to improve the lives of those for whom you feel compassion, thus enhancing their freedom—to live without fear, to attain an education, to secure decent housing, to acquire a job that pays adequate wages, or to be able to vote in an election.

Respect

Of course, in a perfect democracy, citizens must respect each other. We must treat each other with dignity, with regard for each other’s feelings, wishes, rights, traditions, and needs. Citizens must treat each other with kindness and politeness, hold each other in high esteem, and exude a positive attitude toward one another.

Citizens show respect when they discuss mistakes with kindness instead of hatred or criticism, when they make decisions based on what is right rather than whom they like. Respectful citizens listen and hear one another and honor physical boundaries. They treat each other’s property with care and they never violate or intrude to cause physical or psychological harm.

Respect means never making assumptions about people just because they are poor or transgenders, or because they live in Oakland, wear a turban, or attend a synagogue or a Catholic church every weekend.

We have many blemished citizens in our country, and this is why our democracy is flawed. Maybe we will never achieve the perfect democracy where every human being is treated with equality, but we can do better than we are doing today.

Walker has not lost hope. He says, “while much remains to be done, and undone, I believe we can emerge—and are emerging—a more unified, more equal, more just, more American America.”

It’s time to start talking about the qualities that will help us fulfill our democratic dream again. Now that we have been awakened by the riots in our capital, we can use our new awareness to upgrade ourselves, fight against privilege that demeans others, and make plans to spread freedom to more people and to grow closer to a perfect democracy.

Faces of God

When I was thirteen, I walked slowly up to the priest giving out Communion. Decked out in a green robe with a white stripe down the front, he held a gold chalice in one hand, his other hand resting on the cup’s lip, holding a white wafer between his thumb and index finger. He looked up into my face, opened his eyes wide, and formed an “O” with his lips. Staring deeply into my eyes—I remember his eyes were brown—he exclaimed, “The face of God.”

I have always wondered what he meant. Did he think that green eyes were particularly pretty? Did he see God in my eyes where he looked so deeply? Did he think that I had some higher power present in my face, a power that he recognized out of his own wisdom? Did he see my soul?

All that I know is that I have always carried on a conversation with my soul.

As part of my relationship with myself, I have thought deeply about my relationships with other human beings. This is why I always have wondered about the issue of racism. When I was little, my parents acted like racists. They learned these hateful attitudes from their narrow-minded parents and relatives who lived in Northern states surrounded by the descendants of Europeans—Swedes, Polish, German, and Irish. When you live in such a closed community, it is easy to label people who don’t look like you as “the others.”

My soul told me that these “others” that my relatives insulted were like me. They had feelings, hearts, and souls like me. Yet, as I grew older, I learned about the great chasm that divided Whites and Blacks. So much distrust. So much lack of understanding. So much violence. So little peace on either side.

So I read about the history of the people of whom I was once taught to distrust. As I read and learned about the untold history of the African American, I watched my parents change their attitude as well.

After retiring from the Air Force, my father went back to school to earn a degree as a building contractor. His biggest job as a contractor was to build See’s Candy Stores in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii. He had to manage all the contractors who came to work on the remodeling and building of the stores. Some of them were Black.

I remember one night when he came over to my house for dinner after he had worked all day in a nearby store. We sat on the patio. The sun had set into night, and the porchlight lit up his big face like a full moon. “Two of my electricians are Black,” he exclaimed. “What good workers they are. Not only that. They are friendly and can joke around just like the other guys.”

He was fifty years old, and I realized that it had taken him more than half his lifetime to learn how to trust people who were different from him on the outside. I was amazed, but I also hoped that it wouldn’t take me that long to learn my own lessons.

By the time my mother was 76 and my father had died, a Black family had moved in next door to the home where my parents had lived while raising their large family. Now, my mother lived all alone. When her Black neighbors went on vacation, they asked her to take in their mail. She agreed. She also found out that the father was a professional painter, so when she needed some painting done, she asked him to do the job.

Pretty soon, their little girl came over in the afternoons to visit her “grandma” next door. She drew pictures for her. My mother bought the little girl little trinkets from the Dollar Store. When I spoke with Mom on the phone, she described her visits with Lily and mused about the next trinket she would buy for her. I felt jealous. She wasn’t Lily’s real grandmother. Mom belonged to us.

Finally, after a few years, my jealousy waned as I watched my mother turn her love toward more and more people, never judging them, and loving them for what they brought into her life. She did not only belong to me, but she belonged to everyone that she chose to love.

When my mother turned eighty-six, she couldn’t pass her driver’s test. She sold her car and asked a fellow church-goer to drive her to church on Sundays. By the time she turned eighty-nine, her eye-sight was so bad that if she dropped a bottle of pills on the floor, she couldn’t see well enough to pick them up and put them in the correct bottle again. So we moved my mother into an assisted-living home. She gave her most precious piece of furniture—a mahogany marble topped washstand that she had purchased in England—to the Black family next door. “My friend Vivian,” she said, “has always loved that table.”

I never witnessed my father’s interactions with his Black contractors, and I never heard him talk about his experiences with my mother. I rarely was around when my mother interacted with her Black neighbors, but, over the phone mostly, I listened to her transformation from a racist to someone who embraced her African American neighbors as special friends and trusted people.

Both of my parents learned that African Americans were not the “other” people they couldn’t trust. My parents became walking miracles. Their attitudes underwent a revolutionary change—they learned to see African Americans as men, women, and children with souls—with the faces of God.

Achieving Belovedness

The African American woman has the most to complain about in America. She, after all, was brought here against her will in the bowels of a ship, raped by her master before she turned fourteen, bore his illegitimate children, fell in love with her lighter progeny, lost her mind when her children were ripped away and sold to other plantations, lashed across her back and legs when she did not submit, and forced to smile day after day beside her master’s wife.

To understand the African American woman’s plight, we must contemplate the plight of all women in America.

Most still have not achieved equity. This is tragic, especially for a country that pats itself on the back for its individual rights. No, American women don’t all wear veils and burkas, but their voices still are silenced and subjected to the will of men in power.

Blatant examples exist all throughout American society.

One example: American Catholic women have no voices. The power of the church is carefully guarded and only granted to males through church “laws” that maintain male power. When Catholic women speak, they are expected to follow the strict rules set down by Catholic men ever since the church was first adopted as the official Roman Empire religion. Never mind that, prior to the Roman take-over, Christian prayer groups were once led by women. Catholic women are not encouraged to think independently; instead, they are coerced into following orders. Like soldiers in the military: valued for their obedience, not their wholesome humanity.

In American culture, women are raped and blamed for their acquiescence. They are prevented from rising above the glass ceiling while blamed for having children. They are paid less than men who hold the same jobs and blamed for not working harder.

Even First Lady Melania Trump walks like a voiceless doll next to her husband. When she is asked a question, her answer is amended by the opinion of her husband. And so, she is silenced, muzzled.

But the African American woman has suffered some of the greatest indignities. Perhaps this is why Toni Morrison chose to be her voice. In interviews, Morrison said that she wanted to tell the story of the female slave: what being a woman was like under the yoke of bondage, the lack of having a voice or will, the scourge of being at the mercy of selfish and insensitive men.

I first read Beloved by Toni Morrison when I was a mother of two young children. Much as I wanted to appreciate the story, written by this African American professor whom I admired for her achievements, I was confused. Trying to understand how a dead daughter floated in and out of her mother’s life and then lived and haunted her mother, sister, and friends for over a year was intriguing, but what was the author’s point?

I was frustrated that I couldn’t understand the story. Was my white privilege so strong that my heart was unable to empathize with a slave woman’s experience? Was I too comfortable in my white prosperity that I didn’t really want to understand? I knew that slavery was immoral, but what else could I learn? Clearly, Morrison had pondered about the African American story for a long time. She knew a story that I didn’t know, and I longed to overcome my ignorance.

After I read Beloved, I read every Morrison novel I could find: Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, The Bluest Eye. I also read essays which spoke to the aspects of Morrison’s writing such as “Toward the Limits of Mystery: The Grotesque in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” by Susan Corey. Then, finally, I read one of Morrison’s own essays, “The Source of Self-Regard,” in which she supposes that Beloved is an intimate version of history.

Much to my surprise, Beloved is based on a true story of a run-away slave named Margaret Garner. While being pursued as a fugitive slave, Gardner slit the throats of three of her children so they wouldn’t have to return to the cruelty of slavery and endure the abuse and torture that she knew too well. One of those children died. Remarkably, Garner wasn’t tried for murder; she was tried for the theft of her master’s property. Proving that history is carved by those in power.

In Morrison’s fictional version, the protagonist is Sethe. Sethe escapes from Sweet Home Plantation with her four children across the Ohio River to Cincinnati. When the slave-catchers find her, she grabs her kids and hides in a woodshed where she slits the throats of three of her babies. Her two older boys live, but her oldest daughter dies in her arms. We never learn this dead baby’s name, but Sethe has the word “Beloved” etched into her tombstone. Her younger daughter, Denver, is uninjured.

Abolitionists succeed in securing Sethe and her three remaining children’s freedom, and she moves into a house in the community. When the boys become teenagers, they leave home, tired of their mother’s grief for Beloved and wanting to become men.

One day, neighbors find a strange adolescent girl sleeping outside of Sethe’s house, and they believe it is Sethe’s dead daughter Beloved. Sethe becomes enamored with Beloved; she cooks for her, bathes her in affection, and ignores her other daughter.

A former fellow slave, Paul D., escapes captivity and finds his way to Sethe’s house. He, at first, removes Beloved’s ghost from the house, but later, when Beloved has transformed into a more physical presence, she seduces him and becomes pregnant with his child.

Once I understood that Morrison wanted to tell the story of the female slave. I decided to read Beloved again. To hear the female slave’s voice. To feel her pain and sorrow. To experience her fear and dread. I finally felt like I was ready to understand the meaning of the story that had eluded me for twenty years.

This is what my second reading of Beloved taught me.

When Sethe is attacked in the plantation’s barn by the Schoolteacher’s grown nephews while her husband watches from the rafters, I feel her indignity—a knife thrust into the pin cushion of her femininity. They drink the milk from her breasts that she needs for her infant. Not only do they rob her of her intimacy, but they harm her child’s viability. These men violate her center, the core of her femaleness. Tragically, her husband, her one-time protector, dies from insanity, not having the power to save her, and she loses his partnership.

When Sethe takes the life of her daughter, her already weakened core responds, and she acts out of distress—trying to save her children from all the abuse that their parents have endured. At least in death, they can find peace; in a slave’s life, peace will never come.

But Sethe suffers dearly for her actions. Psychologically, she lives in anxiety, questioning whether or not she made the right choice for her child. No matter what the child’s name, the child is her “beloved.”

The pain of Sethe’s conscience is so deep that she believes that Beloved comes back to her, so that she can make up for depriving her mother’s love. This is a manifestation of Sethe’s guilt. Whether or not Beloved is really present is unimportant; in Sethe’s mind, Beloved is present, loved, lost, wanted, missed, and grieved. Beloved can also wound Sethe, and she does when she becomes pregnant with Paul D. Like betrayal, the loss of a child hurts acutely and forever.

Sethe’s suffering is raw, violent, and close to the surface. Her pain wracks her body with weakness and her soul with despair. She can barely live, and has no need for freedom after she has lost so much of herself.

At the end of the story, Sethe tells Paul D., “She was my best thing.” This means that when Beloved died, Sethe died with her. She lost her willingness to live, he ability to think without guilt or sorrow, and even her capacity to love her other children completely so that they could enjoy their free lives.

Female slaves lost not only physical dignity, but also their emotional and psychological self-possession.

Paul D. corrects her gently: “You your best thing Sethe.” What he is asserting is that she can overcome her deep grief and loss and find a way to recapture who she is. She can wash up her battered body and mind and live the present. Put the past in the past. It does not have to define her.

As an American female, I am the African American’s sister; I, too, have lived with the loss of dignity. Even though my damage does not equal the forfeiture of slavery, I have been slashed by violations, a lack of voice, and scars of discrimination.

I stretch out my femaleness, my soft center, my vulnerable heart to my African American sister so we can raise each other up, celebrate our communal bond, and feel unified. Our past does not determine our future. We have changes to make in this America.

Clearly Bothered

I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor.

Movie Theater — I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor . . .

One night after I teaching my courses at Diablo Valley College, I attended the showing of a movie—Sorry to Bother You—written and directed by Boots Riley, who will be coming to campus in March as part of Black History Events.

The movie is an artistic commentary about the negative characteristics of capitalism. The main character Cassius Green, who is Black, gets a job as a telemarketer and finds out that he is successful only when he uses his “white voice,” a nasally, high-pitched tenor with overtones of lassitude and a lack of interest.

Just as the poorly-paid telemarketers unify to demand a union and better pay, Green is promoted to the “Power Telemarketer” floor where he enjoys the luxury of a modern office and sells labor for a company named Worry-Free.

While Green is enjoying the parties, alcohol, and access to the CEO of Worry-Free, he learns that the company transforms humans into horse-like creatures who can work harder and stronger than the average human, creating even more profits for capitalistic, greedy companies. Green’s girlfriend informs him that all labor is slave labor when capitalism controls the corporate culture. The employees work at the mercy of those in power, thus having no rights or voices.

Finally, in the end, Green quits his job, gets back his pure-of-heart girlfriend, and retains his morality.

I walked into the theater right at 4 p.m., thinking the movie would be starting on time. The room: a theater with about three hundred seats that stepped down to a big screen, where a podium stood to the side with a laptop set up to show the movie. An IT woman, that occasionally comes to my classroom to fix technical problems, stood behind the podium.

I looked around before choosing a seat. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I sat in a seat on the right aisle about six rows from the door.

Scattered in the rest of the seats were students who did not reflect the diverse nature of the college. About half were Black, sitting in twos and threes, sprinkled throughout the room. Several Asian students, sitting by themselves, also filled the seats. Three white students sat together. Where were the Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Indians, and Native Americans? I saw no professors—the people in the room were all in their teens and twenties.

Waiting for my English colleague who was bringing her class to the showing, I changed my seat to an aisle seat in the middle section of the room. Definitely felt like I needed some physical support in this room that did not reflect either my age group or my status. Finally, I’ll call her Carol, Carol walked in with her class—an assortment that more reflected our college’s diversity, and I adjusted more comfortably into my seat.

At about 4:15 p.m. a Black man strode down to the podium and turned to face the audience. He wore his hair in a wide, black afro and dressed in casual clothes, not helping me decide whether he was a fellow student or professor. In any case, when he started talking, his sophisticated vocabulary and well-practiced speaking voice let me know that he was used to speaking in front of groups about issues that he supported. He introduced himself. Let’s call him Brian Miller.

Miller explained the focus of the movie. He discussed how students have to use their “white voice” when they speak with their professors.

At this, I squirmed in my seat. I spend lots of time in my English classroom teaching students how to speak and write in Standard English. I explain that they will have to use formal language in the workplace, and that they will be more successful when they attain a command of it. I preach that the acquirement of this language is empowerment.

I also inform them that, once they learn the mechanics of formal English, they will be able to purposefully adapt the language to suit different writing and speaking purposes. While speaking, they can employ a short sentence to give listeners time to think. When writing fiction, they can utilize fragments to create emotions or visual impressions.

But here, this person was inferring that the formal language I teach is not only “white,” but also oppressive. That what I teach in my classroom is a form of domination that subjugates people to conform to those in power, and those in power are the “whites.” I wasn’t sure I belonged in this room, being an English professor and white, but I wasn’t willing to miss learning about how an African American film director was going to portray the white culture. I wanted to know and try to understand, so I stayed deep in my chair.

One scene in the movie showed the CEO of Worry-Free Company surrounded by scantily clad women who fawned all over him. Another scene showed naked women having sex with naked men at a company party. I was certainly offended at the misogyny of the scenes, and commented about it to Carol. My first thought is that people are more concerned about equality amongst the races than they are amongst the genders. Troublesome. A uniquely American issue that continues to plague our whole society.

At the end of the film, Miller asked the audience to rate the film from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. Most people rated it as a 3 or 4 as Carol did. I didn’t even raise my hand. The film was such an in-my-face opinion about the culture that I represented that I couldn’t even decide what to think.

What could I learn from this Avant Garde criticism of America set in Oakland, California? As I drove home from campus, dodging the headlights of dozens of cars whirling around me, my heart fluttered like a moth burned by the heat of a lightbulb.

Why would this director claim that capitalism was “white” culture? Because the white Europeans colonized the Africans in order to rob them of their land’s natural resources such as rubber and diamonds. Because the English aristocrats, who profited from the Caribbean plantations, left the sin of slavery behind when they went back to England to live in their mansions and estates. Because American plantation owners treated the slaves like they were savages and erased their African roots by converting them into Christians and partial human beings. Because African Americans have never felt like the benefactors of the capitalist system. They have slaved before and after the Emancipation without profit and, for hundreds of years now, have been robbed of their human dignity.

When I got home, two new volumes of African American literature were waiting for me on my doorstep. I recently had ordered them from Norton. As I sat at the kitchen table in the hallowed light of the room, I read the Table of Contents of each volume.

The first volume starts with the words of spirituals—religious songs sung by African Americans since the earliest days of slavery. As I followed the long list of songs, I recognized the name Brer Fox, but most of the words were not familiar. In the latter lists, I spotted Phillis Wheatley, a slave who was taught to read and write by her mistress, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Harlem Rennaissance poet Langston Hughes. Volume 11 covers literature up to the 2000 years, and I knew of Melvin Tolson, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

But the lists of people I had never read was longer. The editors of the volumes are two African American professors from elite Eastern universities. Obviously, they have used their long literary careers studying the works of African American authors of all forms and styles. I never even heard of many like Bob Kaufman who wrote Jail Poems or Adrienne Kennedy who is still living and wrote Funnyhouse of a Negro.

I’m not surprised I don’t fully understand the perspective of Boots Riley and other African American writers like him; I have two disadvantages. For one, even though I have experienced discrimination and prejudice for being a woman, I have never worn the dress of an African American. Second, I have much, much more reading to do and more empathy to cultivate until I understand why Blacks distance themselves from me, from someone who wants to be their fellow citizen, but, first, who needs to qualify.