I’m white.
I grew up on a multi-racial block in St. Paul, Minnesota that had recently seen all but two of its white families with children move out. My friends were black, my immediate neighbors were black, my playmates were black. That’s the way it was.
I’m proud of this reality, and humbled by it. I also realize that it’s pretty much an integral part of who I am….ie. growing up on the block I did made me, uh, me…it shaped the way I see things from the very get go.
Now, none of this is apparent in how I look or dress or talk, it’s definitely not apparent in my style. It doesn’t mean I look or dress or speak like anything other than a ‘college-educated white male’. I mean, that’s what I “am”….a white kid, a white dude, a white man.
When I’ve talked about this with friends, which isn’t that often…the thing that I’m never quite able to convey is this. White and black, race, is so important and so bullshit at the same time.
What I mean to say is this: what’s important for me to convey when I talk about my story isn’t my race or anybody’s race really…uh, we’re all one. What’s significant to me about growing up where and how I did…the thing that I realize now…is how much I was loved, how much we all shared, and how exceptional that was for all of us on that block, period, end of sentence.
That sounds stupid. It sounds trite. That doesn’t mean, in my case, it’s not true. I know other people, black and white, who have had different experiences growing up in similar circumstances. I can only speak for myself and try to make it concrete for you:
In 1973 I learned to ride on a bike that was at least ten years old…a clanky clunker with a long history. I know it was Tyra’s bike, and then Ray Ray’s…and then Eric learned to ride on it…and then Nanny decided to give the bike to me, so I could learn to ride. It was my bike, then my sister Ann’s bike, then my sister Margaret’s bike and then we passed the bike on to Scooter and Tiffany so they could have their chance.
People had modest means back then. None of us had the kind of stuff that we are surrounded by today. But my family had more stuff. We were white; we had more “middle class” means. Nevertheless, kids who had less shared with me. Nanny, a grandmother raising a large family, included me by insisting that I take the bike. And while I had that bike, it was mine, I was never made to feel otherwise. There’s something so American to that story…in good ways and bad. There’s also a deep lesson about community and equality.
We shared much more than that. Like all neighbors we shared the simple things. We shared food. We spent time together. We just did the stuff you normally do on a block. Laughing. Joking. Wrestling. Playing games and sports. Growing up. Being with each other. Sitting on the steps. Talking about things. Getting into trouble. Being ourselves.
There’s really no way to convey the profound significance this had for me, how intimate this was, how “like breathing” this now seems to me, other than to say: when I used to go back to my block, before things changed so much…and I would hear someone say my name…it felt to me like folks were really saying my name.
I felt like I was truly being seen and accepted for who I was.
I wish I could share with you the simple force, the power of hearing someone say…repeating the words, as is common in the African American tradition: “Look at you….look at you!…look at you!” and being looked at, wholly, directly, all-in-one glance, with love and gratitude and an appreciation for simply being who you are, nothing more and nothing less. To be seen in this way, to be accepted…by friends who knew me when, by neighbors who loved me when they didn’t have to, by friends who included me when they easily could not have….is a powerful thing. It shapes you.
I was not “white” on my old block so much as I was simply Paul, and that’s what I’ve always been. I guess, in this I’m just like anybody who was lucky enough to have a happy childhood in a neighborhood blessed by “good times” and caring adults.
However, when I think of the one thing I would want to share from my experience coming up, before I would address the various important and difficult aspects of the story…..it wouldn’t be anything sociological or political or philosophical. At its core the most exceptional thing I take away from my block is something that I can’t really share or do justice to other than to say that I was loved, deeply, as a human being, for who I am. I was accepted.
I am a lucky man for that. I am also, despite it not registering in any obvious way on my exterior, partly the man I am for that. It has only become obvious to me over time, that, in being true to myself and where I come from, I have some responsibility to that love. To its force. To its blessing. To its honesty.
Of course, at the end of the day, in our own particulars, on some level, isn’t that true for all of us?
{Originally posted on a little blog called k/o.}.