All people want is simplicity. We want to go back to quote unquote simpler times. The frozen rose-hued memory world of the past. A time when my Wisconsin hometown was an all-white trueblue American town. No doors were locked. There were no Jasons in the woods, no Freddie Kruegers in the basement. All families were idealized versions of the Cleaver family. Papa bear bringing home the bacon, Mama bear in pearls and aprons, Brother Tommy quarterbacking, Sister Debbie cheerleading. No one was divorced, there were no abortions or premarital babies or premarital sex, no domestic abuse, no gay people. Everyone went to church on Sunday and everyone was happy. The other lived elsewhere and the little red wagons rolled down the sidewalk majestically.
A time of innocence, a time of confidence.
Growing up in Wisconsin, we were the only family of any color. The town had an ordinance, that no people of color could buy property, but the university and the Rotary club stepped in so my university professor father did buy a house. The only racism I remember was some boys whooping in Native American style as those were the only Indians they knew of. That transgression was fixed when my mother went to school in a sari with a National geographic magazine map and explained in an assembly where India was.
I did learn a little discrimination. There was a house where Ben the warlock lived. He was a wiccan/shaman/something and wore robes and his wife played a big lyre. We raced past that house. There were two girls we could not associate with. One was Jana Katzen whose father was a Jewish businessman from New York. She had a pony and big ringlets. Her father was short and balding and loud and looked like Danny DeVito. Her mother was slim and statuesque. Her father once slapped her mother on the butt in public, to everyone’s horror and fascination. Good Lutherans could not invite Jewish New Yorkers to their homes. The other other was Julie Shifteer. She lived across the tracks in a ramshackle home, there was alcohol and police associated with her life. So the little brown girls were accepted, but not that other.
When my mother came to visit me in Cincinnati, she was perceptive and said, “Dear there are so many Negroes here. I know they are good in sports and entertainment, but they are so involved in crime and drugs.” I shushed her and told her to call them black. She said, “who wants to be called black?” African-American was too long a phrase and other terms derogatory, so she finally agreed to call them “The Blacks.”
Time flew and 9/11 happened. Another other emerged- the Islamic terrorist. Trumping happened and another other emerged- brown immigrants who were taking jobs that white Americans should have. I remember reading about scapegoats in a Daphne duMaurier novel. The world has changed and a lot of changes in perceptions and realities have happened. Integration and assimilation are words we must understand and implement.
I walked into a warehouse to pick up an item. I was wearing a long black tunic/kurta with a silk stole and leggings. I did not realize how foreign/middle eastern/Islamic I looked until I walked past the long line of people waiting to check out. They were mostly blue collar or black folks, families talking to each other. I noticed people staring at me and stopping their conversations. Not just one-but sort of a domino effect. Conversations stilled, eyes sidled over to woman in black, voices became inaudible, eyes focused alertly, mothers pulled children closer, men stood taller. I met eyes and smiled, saw a little hesitation and confusion and slowly the sounds restarted, I realized that somehow someone felt threatened and was aware that I might pull my suicide belt out from under the long hijab style shawl. I breathed and joined the line.
I went to pick up books and had a postal service tub in my car which I used to load them up. A nice, friendly Kentucky dude smiled at me and said, “It’s illegal to use those- you could get deported.” I smiled back. “Nope, I was born in Minnesota.” We all laughed.
I was at a cocktail party chatting to an executive wife about kids and college and suburban life. She told me she was a native Ohioan, though she had lived in California and New Jersey. I told her I had moved here from Minnesota which was remarkably liberal and politically correct before the term was even used. She said, “I am so tired of political correctness. I prefer the way it was when we could have true free speech and call a spade a spade.” I changed the topic and asked her where her youngest was going to college.
Call a spade a spade, a nigger a nigger, a gook, a gook, a wetback, a wetback. Vent your inner fears and insecurities. Blame the other. Find a scapegoat. Segregate people of color, Use immigrants for labor only. Just go to church. Stop abortions, push gay and transgendered folks back into the closet, establish white supremacy. Make the world fit into the clean simple lines you envision.
A time of innocence, a time of confidence.
Anita Raturi 