Your Stories

“I’ll tell them I’m from New York, and they’ll say, ‘No, where are you really from?’”

On trying to cope with a non-white nose.

How I Talk to White People About Racism

As a black man, I’m not chomping at the bit to talk about racism with white people, but if asked, I’ll share my thoughts. In order for two Americans of different ethnicities to talk about racism, they both must—

1. speak to each other with respect and care

2. remain silent while actively listening

—if not, the conversation will invariably morph into a shouting match with one person feeling marginalized and the other personally attacked. Racism is an equal opportunity offender. Not all blacks are thugs, drug dealers, or welfare queens. Not all whites are racists, trigger happy cops, or rednecks. Everyone has some degree racial bias, but the majority of Americans try not to let their biases cloud their worldview.

One element I’ve found that makes discussions about race difficult is that some white people can’t entertain the idea that a black person’s experience with institutional racism and firsthand brushes with racism is valid because it’s totally different from their own.

For those who feel that America has rid itself of abject racism, here’s an analogy: snow.

Imagine if you lived your entire life in a tropical climate and you’ve never experienced or heard of snow. One day someone who’s lived in the arctic attempts to explain the concept of snow, blizzards, and all that comes with winter to you. Your lack of experience with snow does not negate the existence of snow, the need for winter clothing, snow drifts, etc. In order to entertain the notion of snow, you have to first concede that the world as you know it is not the only way the world can exist.

A friend commented that he didn’t have a silver bullet to solve America’s racism issues. I corrected him: “You’re right, you don’t have ‘a’ silver bullet. As a white guy in America, you have three silver bullets—

Silver bullet #1: Refuse to laugh at racist jokes/comments.

Silver bullet #2: Call out folks on racist behavior when you see it. Silence gives consent.

Silver bullet #3: Actively listen when the discussion of race comes up or you meet someone who’s personal experience is different from your own. Remember: a black person’s life experience does not negate your life experience or make you a racist.”

So why do I talk about racism with white people? Because I want to make people aware of everyone’s inherent humanity.

Growing up Filipino, I was taught eternal and everlasting love through the belief of religion and the bond of family. The Asian community in general typically have large families that teach the same morals to their kids, grand kids, cousins, etc. What I noticed with these huge array of people though, is that it is not as culturally diverse. By that I mean, Filipinos usually marry their own kind. I was raised in a heavily Roman Catholic household in the Philippines where my grandmother taught to to find someone you love and truly care about no matter what your family thinks just as long as you’re happy, but no one told me if I were to love a black or brown man, I’d be looked at with disapproval. Filipinos are very easily drawn to media. They mostly believe everything to what any news source or website tells them. With all the robberies, shootings, and terrorism going on in the world today, Filipinos will assume all of those bad things towards their whole race. Even though most Filipinos act this way, majority of the Asian community do. It upsets me how one view of that certain race can make your family disown you for loving. I can be shunned for loving someone of color or someone who is not my kind.

On being the only non-white person in dance class.

I’m happy to say that I live in a country where “race” is not an issue… Not a big one at least. A great majority of the population descends from immigrants from all over the world, even if mostly of European origines. Traditionally schools where rigorously equalitarian in terms of race and culture. (Recently, though, a growing social discrimination prevails). Different origins were and still are commonly used as affectionate nicknames such as El Tano, El Ruso, El Negro (both in femenine and masculine). This is not to say there are no social and political prejudices, let alone (today) a mounting intolerance between segregated political dogmatisms… But even so, race is not an issue. This country is known as Argentina.

As the son of a brown Puerto Rican father and a Hungarian mother, I had fair skin and dirty-blonde hair as a kid. One lazy Saturday afternoon I was in need of a quarter to replace the Spaldeen that had split in half from overuse. Knowing that Pops was in his favorite watering hole, I went to The Half-Moon to seek some small change. I walked into the bar, announced my predicament as Pops was flipping me a quarter. One of the other patrons had a hard time believing we were related and challenged my father with a dollar bet. After the bartender backed up Pops, I ended up with some loot for ice cream to boot.

Fast-forward some 20 years later and I find myself in a bar located in a strip-mall in La Mesa CA and as I’m nursing a cold beer on a hot afternoon some guy walks in and decides to sit right next to me even though there are plenty of places to sit, as I’m the only other person, besides the bartender, in the establishment.

After a minute or two of dead silence, as I’m looking at him via the mirror behind the bar, he says to me, “what are you?”

I offer no response and he starts reeling off all these overseas countries. The stranger is on his 5th or 6th country, I get up, leave the barkeep a tip, walk out of the bar without a word, and ride off on my motorcycle.

To this day, I still see him on that bar stool, sounding like he’s giving a geography seminar to no one in particular.

Human Being is what I like to think I am.

Racism is something that should not be brushed off, instead it should be heard. People around the world do not like mentioning the topic of racism due to the bad mention of it. Each and everyday people face racism, some more than others. There are certain degrees to racism and at times some people do not realize that the words that come out of their mouths are words that hurt others. We all need to be more aware of how we talk to people or how we mention different type of people. We live in a world full of people of different color, height, age etc. and no one should feel lesser of a person than anyone else. The world around us can slowly unite if there wasn’t difference of opinions of race. Some people are more open on the subject than others or some people do not like the mention of the topic period but that should not change the fact that racism is bad because it causes unnecessary conflict. We are all human and should all respect one another.

On being a Puerto Rican growing up in Chicago.

My mom, 2nd generation German/Hungarian grew up in northside Chicago. She never went to school, church or had any black friends. When she was almost 90, I moved to South Carolina and took her with us. She moved into an Assisted Living Facility and her first friend was Evelyn, and she was black. They were better than sisters. Evelyn told my mom stories she often repeated to me about discrimination, and mom told Evelyn about her life. They were wonderful friends.

Feeling like race plays a factor in school.

I’m a white female, 63 years old. When I was 11 years old, I was pinned down and raped by a young black man, a stranger, while I was playing in a public park in suburban Pittsburgh. I didn’t tell anyone until I was in treatment for alcoholism at age 36.

When I was 23, I was robbed on the street in Princeton NJ by a black man wearing hosiery over his face. During that same period, my house was burglarized twice by a group of black men. I only know they were black because I loved a little black boy in the neighborhood who used to come to my house in the afternoons. He came to my place of work during the second robbery to tell me what was going on. He also told me my spaniel puppy had got out

and was run over on Witherspoon Street.

I think we should make clear apologies and reparations to the descendents of slaves in this country.

On feeling discriminated against for being African American at work.

A writer discusses what it means to look like a Black Latino.

In the winter of 1963 my parents and I took a train home to St. Louis from visiting my grandparents in Miami. We’d flown down, but a plane crashed while were in Florida and my mother was too petrified to fly home. We stopped in New Orleans overnight to visit other relatives. The next day after we boarded a nearly empty train car, my father turned around two seats so we could have four facing each other. I thought we were lucky because we could see in the car ahead people were still standing even though the train had started to move. Then a conductor appeared and called my father aside. They stood at the end of the car whispering and I could see that they weren’t agreeing. I was sure we were in trouble for having taken that extra seat and I was ready to help my father turn the seats around. When he came back to talk to my mother, he was furious. The conductor wanted us to move to the car ahead because we were in the colored car. He said we’d probably only have to stand as far as Memphis. “I’m not standing all the way to Memphis,” my father said, so we didn’t move. Later when we took out a bag of pecans we’d bought in New Orleans, my mother realized we had no nutcracker. A man across the aisle showed me how you can always open a pecan if you have two. You put them in your palm side by side and close your fist. The harder one always cracks open the softer one.

It was 1955 and Army advanced basic training at Ft Jackson SC. I was a white squad leader from Minnesota and a squad member was a black kid from Philadelphia. We had bonded naturally do when we finally got that one and only 3 day pass during basic and white and black soldiers were segregating for transportation Into nearby Columbia, I urged that, instead, we go together! He too was new to the south and explained that his parents had explained what he would face in such a state, “Dale, you don’t understand, we can’t. We would be beaten up or at best jailed, and might possibly be killed!” He taught me what Jim Crow and tyranny by the majority was in the U.S. Both embarrassed at our helplessness and inability to work and play together, we suffered a lost self respect and forced “distance” that put a crack in what should have been a great friendship…and we lost touch.

I am a retired officer from a large department in the northeast. Following over 20 years of service my experiences revealed a dominant and persuasive police culture that condones and rewards racist and gender violations on a significant scale. That is not to say most officers are racist, they are not. The systems and agency protocols from which they provide police service however, are and have been thoroughly inundated with policies and mind sets from the distant past. We have evolved from rubber hoses and indiscriminate beatings, but not from a contention that police are better informed and prepared to instruct communities on how they are to be policed, and not the other way around. In the end then, it is police management that needs revision. Twenty first century cultural and technical realities demand twenty first century perspectives on policing. When such leadership emerges, we will begin to see effective changes supporting both community and officer safety.

My anti-racial feeling started in the 3rd grade in 1950. A principle ranted in front of the class that he would leave before he would tolerate a black student in his class.

Today, 65 years later, I do not accept any racial comments or slurs without a comment that their attitude is wrong and harmful. I live in a rural, white and Hispanic community with very strong racial attitudes. The educational levels are mostly high school graduates and it shows. I love the area but we do feel isolated because of the political and racial differences.

I think that racial demography is directly related to the levels of education in the overall population. Overall, the levels of education in

America has stagnated if not declined. Until this blight is reversed, racial tensions will not improve and most likely deteriorate. It is very disheartening as well as illogical but admittedly, it is a fact.

Child’s Play

At six I ran with a crowd

of my brothers down a walk

between backyard garages.

From the stair top looking down

on an alley, we shouted,

Graham crackers, graham crackers,

at colored kids playing ball.

White crackers, white crackers,

they screamed back. Then we bellowed

the sweet smear again. They edged

toward us. We ran in terror,

our hearts, feet—tripping, pounding.

We taste better than you,

they shrieked from the bottom step.

I couldn’t argue with that.

A Chocolate Wall

In the end, the poetry class

ran into a chocolate wall.

Brownies, much more icing than cake,

M&Ms and Hershey kisses

rocketed the poets into

a sugar high, marring judgment.

Forgotten was the black and white

bickering about the right word

to call a former colored kid.

Chocolate was not an option.

No mention of the black woman

who cut out two classes early.

I couldn’t argue with that.

Color Lines in Shadyside

Get that black boy off the front porch,

Gram said when I brought a Thai friend

home from tennis for some iced tea.

I told her Thais are not Negroes

but black skin meant black, she believed.

*

Put more black faces on TV,

our interracial gang had urged.

Apologize, the bishop said.

I gave up Catholic race work then.

*

When my dark Arab date arrived,

my brother teased, A camel

just pulled up out front. We all laughed.

That was before 9/11.

No one feared Arabs or Muslims.

*

We’re adopting a baby girl,

I told my mother nervously.

Her only question: What color?

She was pleased to hear she was pink

but never babysat the kid.

I am used to being one of few African Americans at the organization I volunteer with called NAMI. I have experienced good and bad experiences with my fellow volunteers and consumers. I am always aware that I chose to be a part of this organization but as I said I am one of few African Americans who are members of NAMI. I also had the experience of being one of few Blacks majoring in English in college. I graduated from college in August. It’s a real blessing to be a part of NAMI. I’ve been told I am a good leader and many people are friendly but there’s always this feeling I get of being different from “everybody else”. I’ve been involved with NAMI for 7 years I think. A male member who happens to Caucasian and Jewish got me a cake with my name on it for my graduation. One time we were at a diner and a white male member called me Alesha and it was his daughters that had to tell him “Dad she told you her name is Ayesha.” It’s been interesting being the only Black or one of few.

I was a nine-year-old boy in Illinois in 1939 when I was attracted to a gathering across the road where an accident involving an automobile had occurred. It had run into a ditch and the passengers were still inside. It took a moment to realize I was seeing Negros (blacks today), a rare event in my then neighborhood. Someone said an ambulance had been called and in due course it showed up. But the driver, seeing Negros in the car, said he couldn’t take them. Another ambulance would have to be called. It was my first encounter with Jim Crow.

On not feeling like you fit in with “white society.”

In the mid 1970’s I was the head nurse on a surgical floor in a large university hospital in Manhattan. Our patients and families paid us many compliments, physicians did everything but bribe us to find a bed for their serious patients, but our lily white nursing supervisor could find nothing right in the care we gave.

“Don’t you get it? You’re Jewish and I’m black,” said my assistant head nurse, who happened to be the niece of one of the leader’s of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a close aide of Dr. King.

“But the head nurse across the way is black, and she doesn’t have any problems with the supervisor,” I replied.

“Yes, but she’s an Uncle Tom.”

This wise woman opened my eyes to the subtleties of the prejudice we shared in this bastion of liberal thought that was supposed to be the paradigm of humane values.

The next year I left to live in Israel, but my black colleagues and their families are still fighting this battle, years after it should have been far behind us.

Growing up in Scranton was like living in the United Nations. There was just about every nationality in the world. My grandparents spoke the language of their homeland, modern day Slovakia. There were babuskas all over the city as well. I attended a Catholic school in the same building for 12 years from First Grade through Senior year. There was a ritual of stating your Nationality to new teachers or visitors and I was amazed that my classmates would say “Irish-American” or “Italian-Amerian” even though we were all born in America. There were few Negroes in our area and two older families lived up the street between my house and school. My mother taught me always to say hello to the two women sitting on their porches and I did so without a second thought. Later as a teenager I expanded my contacts to teens of other religions and easily made friends. My upbringing was based on common courtesy to all and my life has benefitted greatly from this. I ended up marrying a Dane and moving to Europe after leaving the service in 1970. We lived in Berlin, Brussels, Heilbronn, London, Hamburg and Warwickshire. I am now retired in Umbria the past 13. My oldest son married a French woman, the next a German and the youngest a Swede. The 7 grandchildren speak, French, German, Swedish and English. I get back to the States almost ever year and one of the highlights of my trip is always a trip to Scranton and a reunion with my former classmates. I am very proud of the close contact that we still have and for me it is extremely important to visit the roots of my adventurous life, which allowed me to adapt to the various cultures and languages in my various homes. I imagine that this multi-culture trait has passed on to my children as well. All due to the influence of multi-cultured Scranton

I’m pregnant and my first worry is what box will our child check for the ultimate “race” question? It stresses me to know that they will have to choose at all. But even so, he or she will have a 3rd generation Mexican with original Spanish heritage father, and a mother with German and English bloodlines back to Miles Standish, Daniel Boone and more to ponder.

At ten weeks old, when asked our son’s name, people responded “He doesn’t look like a Carlos!” To this day, having chosen a culinary career working among multiple ethnicities, the eventual HDLLC question follows him everywhere. His dirty blonde hair and reddish beard confuses the narrow minded and makes the rest of us laugh.

Job applications, credit applications, mortgage applications – being born with my safe WASP heritage I never experienced discrimination, other than being female, and never gave it much thought, until financial procedures took on a more dramatic nature. Everything seemed to take more: documentat ion, time to process, additional due diligence – more than I had ever experienced before, even down to discrimination from a British owned HVAC contractor. Discrimination is always the LAST thing that enters my mind when trying to root out the sources of misunderstandings, but it is always there.

Having married into a Latin family I saw myself as part of a new trend of a more blended America. Have there been issues? Of course; what marriage doesn’t. But there have been more blessings than not; more life understanding than before. But, most important, I now wonder when we, as a civilization, will become more loving and open to all, with less judgement and bigotry. The answer came to me like a thunderbolt: I fell in love with a person, not an ethnicity.

Since 1969, I’ve worked in the schools of a large city, mostly with minority students. Being Caucasian, I have made friends with people of many backgrounds during that time. In the African American community in my city, I’ve found many families headed by unmarried, unemployed females with no positive role model or support. The stresses they experience are severe, including poverty, violence, pollution, less longevity and less completion of high school studies or beyond. When I did mental health evaluations, I observed a lot of negativity in child rearing practices. Many children I saw were subjected to verbal and physical maltreatment by an overwhelmed mother. As a result, the children were angered and had not learned calm ways of negotiating conflict resolution and problem-solving. The means of resolution was physical fights, that became more intense and dangerous with age. Parents feared for their children’s lives, so they believed that children had to learn to obey immediately, and meted out harsh physical punishment for lack of immediate compliance and submission. These patterns of interaction are not conducive to teaching children freedom of speech and helping them to move toward successful independence as they grow. Most of these kids have been reachable and responded positively to supportive interactions; but when communication patterns varied in school and home, cultural expectations were more prevalent than children’s learning skills in speaking their minds freely. Still, I was able to reach most kids, even those I worked with in residential settings for mental health or alternative juvenile justice settings. Most of the kids showed empathy, the ability to form positive attachments and pro-social attitudes and behaviors. I see a clear need for more sophisticated clinical supervision of police officers so they can appreciate the potential among inner city kids to cooperate, calm down, solve problems and think independently at levels appropriate for their age. I’ve seen that if I say to a kid, Can you please help me? I very frequently get a positive response. Once it is established that a conversation is going to be positive, police can assess the level of cooperation or hostility in identifying danger and protecting themselves and others. My hope is that these ideas will be studied and will provide the impetus for police to communicate more positively. As adults they must.

A Puerto Rican in New York discusses being mistaken for having Middle Eastern heritage.

In 1953 when I was in 11th grade at Robert L Simpson High School in Huntington, New York, there were few black students and most of them were not in the college preparatory classes. There was a black student girl who sat next to me in my French II class. We became school friends and often lunched together. Her father was a medical doctor serving the black community in the area. We did not discuss race but I felt privileged to know her. She was a year behind in school and obviously well educated and from an educated family. I was afraid to invite her home to my family’s house. I didn’t know how they would welcome her. Nor did I know how the neighborhood would react. There were no black, Asian, or even any foreign people who lived in my neighborhood. Yet, I didn’t feel anything unusual about my friendship wund also that we both had Native American ancestors. We remained friends but subsequently lost touch.

When I was married, A close friend was a professor at a local university. His first black student became his friend. when the student got married the professor invited him and his wife and me and my husband to dinner. This began a life long friendship with us sharing times and spending parts of summers together with our children who were the same ages. When the husband and wife divorced I always took the children to our farm when Maine where we lived. They’d spend the summer with my children. I was a teacher so I was available in summers.

Later when we moved back to the city where we lived the daughter called me to come and spend time with her dad who was dying. We did.

It was sad but precious relationship. We shortly afterwards attended his family funeral service at a large well known urban African American church.

Today interacial relations are much more common. I have taught many children from interacial families. The neighborhood where I grew up which was all white is now interacial and multicolored. To me it seems and feels like a natural progression in a land where equal opportunity is supposed to be a stake.

Grew-up in Connecticut suberb, worked in Private Banking, retired to gated Fla. community. My life was and is not an integrated one. I vote Democratic and love supporting programs that give opportunities to those who may not them; but, my life on a daily basis monochrmatic.

Many years ago, during the Korean War, the Officer’s Club on Kadena AFB, Okinawa, was the hangout for officers of the flight crews of the 370th Bomb Squadron. The bar was seldom empty when they were between missions. The only black officer was a good looking, good humored bombardier with an unbelievable capacity to imbibe Johnny Walker. His drinking companion was his chubby navigator. The bombardier was constantly poking good natured fun about his navigator’s waistline. Normally, it was taken in the friendly manner intended, but one time, others chipped in and our navigator had had enough. His eyes became steely as he faced his crewmate.

“Look old buddy. I can always go on a diet. What can you do?”

When I was 8, a black woman employed by my family sexually assaulted me and my sister.

My very upset mother still never spoke ill of black people, but like all white people, she benefited from blacks suffering. That is terribly wrong.

Today I am working for all women’s safety—all colors.

In the 68 years since those childhood sexual assaults, black women have bullied me dozens of times. I, too, know that doesn’t represent all black people’s character.

As to white women’s character—today it is decreed daily that every white woman is guilty, and that her only identity is that of a greedy oppressor.

Today I’m pushing back and saying that there’s a better way, but my greatest frustration is in trying to dialog with black women about their safety—and ours—which can be achieved only through a coalition of all women. Together we are a powerful 51%.

Our challenge is to work together with black women who adamantly resist joining white women to fight sexism, and whose distrust of and hatred for us outweigh the reality that only the power of numbers will make us safe.

Younger black women confide that black men are abusive, but men of all races abuse women, and men stick together across color lines in that “privilege.” Black men do not really ally themselves with black women—they use them to run the cause.

The social justice programs I’ve been to were attended by 80% white women, 15% black women, 5% white men, and no black men. Yet, the focus is always on black males’ lives—never on black or white females’ safety.

Part of the male conspiracy to keep women down is to turn women against each other. Don’t fall for that cruel crap. Women are the best part of humanity.

Black women—we want to work with you, use our best efforts to improve race relations, and focus on safety for all females.

We are willing and eager to get past the past, and work for justice for all women. We are all smart and strong in our own way … and together, we are a major force for change.

We can’t abandon our hopes for coalition, or let rage and payback-violence, masquerading as strength and freedom, hinder our success.

No one ever GIVES power away—we women must TAKE power over our lives, by intelligent, peaceful means.

We need to talk—before more females are hurt.

Tell us what you think.

I never felt so white as the day a child, who had just gotten in a fight, said to me (as I was getting the phone to call her Mom): “You know, my Mom doesn’t like white people” .

It’s heartbreaking, but, I understand why.

How can you trust my kind? When your child’s school building is run down and the scarce books and computer are so old? You are right, “white” schools have more funds and most white children sleep soundly in warm, safe and nurturing higher valued houses. How can you, Mom, like white people: when they parked your kin, for generations, in a home that is a tin can? You are right, most white people don’t care -sitting in their house bought at a fair interest rate mortgage.

How can you want to hear my opinion? You are right, it’s just impossible for you to find a full time job with benefits as your CV never makes it passed the Yes/No-pile.

Why would you want me to discipline your child when your man is locked up for life for his 3rd non violent crime? You are right, this 2 tier justice system that jails all your men, is too discriminatory. Except Mom, I love your child. I admire her, she is a diamond. Soon she will shine at our science fair and on the city debate team. I love her spunk and I call her Miss President because she is a born leader. In fact, she is a great junior assistant, she helps with the little ones during homework time and the reading program. She is the choreograph of the girls dance group she created. The flames in her eyes and her eagerness to win, are driving her debate preparation time. We spoke about her prepared arguments yesterday, she is so quick with her words, she is ready. The team’s next round is this Friday at the other Boys and Girls Club. I know she made a dangerous choice earlier today but she felt like this was her only way to stand up to her bully. Mom she needs you. She is sad. She is angry. Answer. Please. It takes a village…

Mom never answered.

“Be safe.” “Bye, Miss Laure” Kayla disappears into the Projects. Do you see, Mom? Kayla’s bright future where anything is possible. Even in this, so called post-racist, racist world.

I am not black but I am speaking for my husband, Lenny Singleton, who is black. I met Lenny in high school. We both attended a magnet school, created to help in the desegregation of America after the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921. I searched for Lenny for 28 years before finally finding him incarcerated in Nottoway Correctional Center in Burkeville, Virginia in 2012. Lenny committed 8 “grab and dash” robberies in a 7 day period while high on alcohol and crack. He received 2 Life Sentences plus 100 years for 6 of those robberies. He did not murder anyone as his sentence might suggest. He didn’t even physically injure anyone. He didn’t have a gun. He stole a total of less than $550 and these were his first felonies. He wasn’t a habitual criminal or part of a gang. He earned a college degree and served in our Navy before he allowed his addiction to destroy his life. The judge, without any explanation to the court or Lenny, sentenced Lenny to more time than repeat violent offenders, rapists, child molesters, and murderers. Illustrating his reformed nature, in 20 years, Lenny has not a received a single infraction for anything – a rarity for lifers. To keep Lenny for the rest of his life will cost taxpayers well over a million dollars – for stealing less than $550 in crimes where no one was physically injured? Lenny’s only chance at release is through a conditional pardon. We have been told this will take a Miracle. Learn more, www.justice4lenny.org. Lenny saved me from a life of paralysis and death. I am diagnosed Stage IV Triple Negative Breast Cancer. We have both been given death sentences. Reuniting with him when I did sparred me a terrible fate. He created a miracle in my life, and now I am trying to create one for him. I believe in his reformed nature so much I married him this past August, even while incarcerated for life. We have also written and published a book together, “Love Conquers All” now available on Amazon. Lenny’s case is one of the worst in the country illustrating sentencing disparity and the need for criminal justice reform. His story needs to be told.

I am compelled to convey to you something of which I was informed about fifty years ago when I visited a private resort with a group of African-American families in Kentucky. We were visiting from Missouri. One family conveyed to the rest of us an experience which they had the previous year, 1963, when taking a motor excursion through South Dakota from St. Louis. They made the excursion in order to visit a national park which I believe, was Yellowstone. The family of four (man/wife/two daughters) stopped at a restaurant near a national park in order to get something to eat. This fine, upstanding family who I knew through my church was told in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome in or near that town. I do not recall that the family told us that the management refused them service. However, they did tell us that the restaurant owners had to summon the state police to escort them out of that town. They, both the family in question and the restaurant owners were in fear for their safety. The apparent reason for the summoning of the police was that the situation was on the verge of escalating to riot proportions. This was, as you may recall, the year that the controversy over civil rights was the likely factor which induced certain citizens of Birmingham, AL to dynamite a church full of blacks and also kill four black girls.

Accordingly. a possible factor in minorities’ disdain for travel to national parks may be that in order to get to one, a person might have to go through hostile territory. This is recent American history.

When I think of race I think of privilege, and when I think of privilege I think of my cousin M and of that night in the Ford Taurus, when I learned that privilege is not just a lucky set of circumstances but also a film in someone else’s head, and a part we choose to play, if we’re lucky enough to get the chance.

I grew up in Detroit. My first bike was stolen while I was riding it. I was mugged when I was eight. One of the apartments I lived in with my mom was across the street from a crack house. I learned how to swim at a dirty little beach that was right across the Detroit River from the heavily contaminated site of the now-defunct Uniroyal Tire Factory.

M grew up in Malibu, across the street from Bob Dylan’s place. M’s dad – my uncle – was a successful actor. M spent his childhood in a big house with a view of the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes my mom and I would visit and I would wish I had been born with M’s life. M is black. He has told me how middle-aged white women like me clutch their purses when they get into an elevator with him. How people in shops look nervous when he asks to see an expensive watch. And how, when he first started driving, his mother told him to always stay under the speed limit.

One night when I was sixteen, I was pulled over for speeding down a derelict block of Van Dyke Road in my dad’s new Ford Taurus. My dad lived in a wealthy suburb; it was his address on the registration and on my license. The black cop shined his flashlight down on the Grosse Pointe address, and back in my white face. “Girl, what are you doing down here at this time of night?”

I had been drinking and smoking pot at a club downtown. Adrenaline triggered immediate sobriety. “I think I’m lost,” I lied in my best stupid-white-girl-from-the-suburbs voice. “Can you tell me how to get to I-94?” The cop gave me directions and told me to slow down and lock my doors. I drove slowly for a few blocks. Then I checked the rearview mirror to make sure he was gone, made a U-turn and headed for home.

In graduate school, I had a class titled “Issues in Ethnic and Cultural Competency.” For one of our first assignments, we were told to write about our ethnic or racial identity. After I turned in a paper about being Jewish, the lecturer seemed taken aback, and scolded me: “’Jewish’ isn’t a race,” she said, “it’s a religion.”

I had never really thought of how to define “Jewishness.” Even though I had not grown up religious, I somehow knew I was still “Jewish”. Even though my cultural background, from the language I spoke to the foods I ate, was totally different from that of my Israeli friend, we were both Jewish. Even though my father is 100% Italian Catholic, strangers I have never met insist that I am Jewish, because my mother is Jewish.

In that moment, right after being told how to identify by this ‘expert’ on cultural competence, I became very angry. If “Jewishness” was only a religion, why weren’t Eastern European Jews converted, rather than being killed? Why were the children of those who’d converted to Christianity in Spain, having known no other religion but Catholicism, still run out of their own country,? Why do people kind of freak out, for lack of a better term, when they find out an ancestor was Jewish? If “Jewishness” is only a religion, why is it so hard to hide?

All of these things certainly seem like characteristics of a race and not of a particular religion. What exactly, then, I asked, makes a race, but how others perceive it? I still don’t truly know the difference between a race, an ethnicity, a culture, and a religion. But I do know that, no matter what you call it, being Jewish is an intrinsic part of who I am.