Yesterday, I started to comment on my friend Cecily’s post but it ended up being a post in and of itself, so I figured it’d be best to make a post of it here.* She wrote about conversations she had with ladies in her neighborhood, where they planned to school their children, and how the fact that most of the children at the school were African American tied into their decisions. One woman she talked to didn’t want her child to go to their local elementary because she didn’t want him to learn ‘Ebonics’. Immediately after reading, I didn’t even really know what to say, but I wanted to comment. I felt that maybe, being a minority and having children that were mixed, and one child in particular that has been mistaken for fully white, I had a different perspective.

Ebonics is, inherently, a racist term. It implies that black (ie., “ebony”) people speak in a dialect so broken and incomprehensible that it needs to be separated from the rest of the English language and learned. It may not have been coined negatively, but regardless, it is a sweeping generalization that paints black people as uneducated and incapable of understand or speaking as  “good as the white folks do.” You don’t have to be a politically correct über-liberal to see how that’s a bad thing.

For her to assume that the children at that school all speak that way is prejudicial, and unless she plans to shield her child from all forms of entertainment, such as hip hop and Quentin Tarantino movies to name some off the top of my head, for the rest of his life, he’s going to learn it, at least some semblances of it, whether she likes it or not. And what’s wrong with that, really?

I’m not dense enough to suggest that many of the black people I know aren’t more likely to say “Y’all niggas done lost yo damn minds, fah real doh” (spoken exactly as I typed it) rather than “you guys are insane, seriously” but so what? As long as these same people know the correct way to say what’s on their minds, and when to use that wonderful, wonderful thing called code-switching, what’s the problem? I don’t speak that way. I used to, when I was younger, but now, I don’t really bother with it, although if you smack me in the middle of a group of black people, such as my cousins on my grandfather’s side,  after a while I’ll fall back into it. Just like if I spend too much time with my grandparents or my boyfriend, every little bit of Southern in the way I speak will be exacerbated too. Still, being as I normally don’t talk like that, I find it seriously offensive that if she saw me entering a school, maybe with a little boy or girl that was my skin tone, she’d assume that I did. Just the way that I’m sure people here in the South see my tattoos and piercings and wrongly assume I’m a bitch with a long criminal record. That – the assumption based on appearances – is what’s prejudicial here.

I won’t call her racist, because I’m very big on semantics, and there is an astounding difference between racism (ie., hating someone) and prejudice (ie., generalizing or having preconceived notions and opinions) in my opinion.  For a popular example of the difference  I consider between the two words, look at Ms. Morello from the show Everybody Hates Chris (an all around brilliant show). She frequently assumes Chris’ mother is a crackhead, his father is absent, he has a dozen brothers and sisters, and that he eats ribs and pig’s feet, but she doesn’t hate Chris or treat him unkindly or unfairly. She’s not racist, she’s prejudiced. I believe that White Privilege allows the average white person to believe things and feel things about other races that implicitly affect their view of the world, whether they are aware or have ill feelings or not.

The lady Cecily was talking with may not have any idea that what she said was offensive, although I strongly doubt that. Why? Because I don’t believe she would have used that term or even brought up the race:school thing in the discussion had Cecily been a bit more brown, but she MAY be sheltered. Which, to me, says something else about her. Cecily lives in Philadelphia, right? There’s no way she could have had so little interaction with black people that she not realize that term was offensive unless she was almost purposefully avoiding it. “It” being interaction with black people.

I worry about how parents like this, and the children who ultimately learn from them, will affect my children. Bella has a slight concept of color, and she calls herself pink and me brown, like Cecily’s daughter Tori does. For a while, she was seriously obsessed with the differences and somewhere along the way she learned that being pink was better than being brown. I don’t profess to be color blind – no one is, and if you are, you’re doing yourself and the world around you a disservice by ignoring the differences between the races – but a child should never get the impression that anyone is less than because of their skin. Which I guarantee you the child of that woman who doesn’t want him to ‘learn Ebonics’ is going to learn, listening to the conversations of his parents. It’s not too much of a stretch to think that eventually (whether coaxed or no) the child will learn to believe that since a school full of black people is inferior to a school full of white people, the same must be true as a rule for the general population. It is very possible for his parents and himself to be almost completely unaware of such a belief, too.

Hence, the perpetuation of white privilege in America, repeatedly passed down, even unknowingly.

I am hoping that no matter how black or white or Hispanic my daughters end up looking, or how gay or straight or bisexual they are, or how Christian or Muslim or Atheist they decide is right for them, that they are always not only tolerant and aware of the differences between them and others, but that they welcome situations that put them outside of their ‘comfort zones’, whatever those may be. How else are they supposed to grow or develop into tolerant individuals? I would hate for anything that I do, or anything that they pick up from other, more close minded people, to inhibit their ability to accept the world around them in a complete way.

*Whoa. This was long. See why it needed to be its own post?!

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Listening to: Toto – Africa

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Notes:

• I say “um” a lot. I know. Sorry. I also have an issue keeping my mouth still when I’m not talking. Sorry about that as well.
• Chicago was his idea, I swear.
• He’s really good at making irritated faces. Don’t pay them any attention.
• Here’s a photo of his back, for reference (I don’t remember why he had a knife in his hand):

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For just about The Bella’s entire life, I’ve been regulated to listening to nothing but The Beatles. They are her most favorite, and for the first four years of her life, no other musical groups existed. I have every. single. released. The Beatles track. ever.  in my iTunes. About 10-15 GBs of ‘em.  All for her, and her sister.

Over the past year or so she’s been teeter-tottering between Michael Jackson and The Beatles, with a bit of Queen, David Bowie and Lady Gaga thrown in for good measure. It’s been better, needless to say, because while I fucking love The Beatles OMG PLEASE CAN WE LISTEN TO SOMETHING ELSE is what goes through my head every time we get in the car.

Anyway, recently, she’s been expanding her musical tastes. She proclaimed a while ago that she didn’t like the kind of music where “people talk when they should be singing” (ie., rap), but then she heard It Takes Two by Rob Base & DJ E Z Rock and she was won over. I was relieved. Since then, she bounces around to all the hip hop she hears in the car, and I love it.

The other day, she asked me to put ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ on her iPod. Cool. I obliged. Any child that likes Joy Division is awesome, needless to say. She was singing ‘The Crystal Ship’ to herself while she was coloring last week. The Doors? Girl you’re blowing my mind with this shit. I have a habit of playing The Smiths when I’m in the bathtub, and she has a habit of refusing to let me get any peace, and demanding I put ‘This Charming Man’ on repeat and bouncing around, singing along. I can’t even kick her out because really, that’s just amazing.

Then yesterday, she asked me to put ‘Say Aah’ by Trey Songz on her iPod when we were on our way home.  I was like, “okay, sure – glad to see you opening up to more than the classics”. When we got back, I was about to, but I decided to listen more to the lyrics because Trey Songz is a nasty (SEXY AS ALL HELL) dude. And, maybe I’m being paranoid, but am I wrong in thinking that this whole song is *really* about swallowing jizz, rather than liquor?

I’m not sure I want her singing this. It’s a great song, but it’s weird enough to hear her singing “Why Don’t We Do It in The Road” at the top of her lungs. I’m pretty sure I can’t handle this, even if it’s not about that, because in the back of my head, I think it might be.

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Listening to: Trey Songz – Say Aah ft. Fabolous

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The question was asked by OHMommy, and it’s about my religious beliefs and how they affect my parenting. Yes, I am resting my chin on her head for most of the video. I know it’s supposed to be pronounced ‘vee-log’ but I REFUSE to say that. It’s stupid and I hate it.

P.S.Read this. It explains why things look so different around here.

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I don’t remember how old I was the first time I witnessed domestic violence. I was very young, maybe around six. My younger brother had just been born and we were in California visiting family and seeing the baby for the first time. My grandmother and grandfather went on a second honeymoon of sorts and I was stayed with my aunt and uncle. I hated it. My uncle was very controlling and ran his house like a military base, with the only civilian being himself. He snapped his fingers at his wife when he wanted his glass filled, and forced his children to eat oatmeal every morning while he enjoyed Frosted Flakes. He didn’t like oatmeal. Neither did his children.

I begged my grandparents every day I saw them or spoke to them to let me stay at their hotel with them, but everyone refused. I complained about not being able to eat what I want, about my uncle threatening to spank me for being disrespectful, about my cousins being mean to me. I didn’t complain of having to listen to my aunt’s screams and uncle’s yells coming from their bedroom everyday, or of the bumps and bangs of her body hitting the walls and floor. I remember that I sat on the floor playing puzzles with my younger cousin during one particularly long fight. I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing, every sound from upstairs made me jump, but not my cousin. She assembled her puzzle, seemingly unaffected by any of it. It was normal for her. During that fight, I learned to ignore it as well. Pretty soon, my puzzle was finished and it wasn’t until I’d stuck in the last piece that I realized that the violence was still going on. When my aunt came downstairs, her face was dry but her eyes were red. She didn’t have a scratch on her that I could see, but when she reached up to get something, she whimpered and clutched her side.

My aunt and uncle are still together.  He has spoken to me in contrition of the way he treated his wife in the past, during our discussions of my own marriage, but I don’t know if he changed.I have no idea if he still beats her, but he still keeps her under his thumb. You would never know it; from the outside in they seem like a fine couple. They joke and laugh and talk and it’s only in family settings or if you pay close attention that you’ll see the signs. He still snaps his fingers at her.

Another time, I think I was 9, and I was in California again, this time on summer vacation. My grandmother was forcing me to spend time with my mother, which I didn’t want to do. My mother was still with my younger brother’s father, and they fought like cats and dogs. It had been just arguments, until one night. I sat on a futon watching, listening, as they yelled at each other, and my brother’s father kicked my mom in the back when she turned to walk away. Hard. She fell, but jumped right back up, and he knew what he was in for, and ran out of the door. She didn’t chase him, but later on that night he yelled at her from outside as he was slicing her car tires and she ran out of the house with a crow bar or tire iron or some other sort of long metal rod. I couldn’t see what happened in the parking lot, but she came back unharmed. Seething, but unharmed.

When I was 12, my younger sister was born, and I moved to New York with my mother. I don’t remember exactly why. My sister’s father was abusive and a drug addict. During my mother’s pregnancy, he  sold all of her furniture and robbed her of everything else so she had to move in with relatives. As soon as she had her home back in order, she let him come back. My sister’s father treated my brother, who was then 6 years old, awfully. He called him names and bossed him around, he made it well known that he didn’t like the boy. My mother ignored it, other than reminding him to call her boyfriend daddy, rather than by his first name. Her boyfriend tried to puff up his chest at me, but it never worked. I was always a tough, stubborn little fuck, and he would have had to break me into pieces before he could have broken my spirit. He left me alone after a while, and that was to his own benefit, because I’d decided pretty shortly after meeting him that if he put his hands on me I would slice his throat in his sleep.

I moved back home after a while, leaving my brother and sister and mother behind, gladly. A short while later, my mother moved down to North Carolina with us, nursing a broken wrist. Her boyfriend had pulled back to punch her in the face, she blocked it with her arm, and his fist hit her  wrist so hard that it broke. I remember asking her about it and her telling me “well he was going for my face, imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t put my arm up?” with a laugh. And it wasn’t a compensating laugh, it was a real laugh. She enjoyed the fights – she started many of them.

He followed her down to North Carolina  and I lived with them again, off and on, during my early teenage years. It wasn’t so bad, they were pretty tame, save for the one time my mom asked me to call the police because she was losing this battle, pretty badly, but I couldn’t because her boyfriend had ripped all of the phones out of the walls. She hit him with the car that night when he was trying to leave on a bicycle. I was used to the fighting after awhile. I chose sides; I yelled at them both to stop it when it dragged on particularly long and I was trying to get some sleep; I distracted my younger siblings.  It became normal to me too – it’s actually more odd now that they are finally broken up for good.

I set the precedence for abuse in my relationship with my now ex-husband. I threw the first punch, and I kept punching, for months, until he finally hit me back. There was something…cathartic in the first time he slapped me. I can’t explain what was going on, but it was much more satisfying when he hit me back rather than pushed me away or held me down. After a while, when I’d gotten over whatever it was that was driving me towards the physical violence, I’d awakened something in him that craved it. So he hit me. I hit back. I left sometimes, I came back every time. He tired of it too and eventually the abuse was purely verbal from both of us. I threw the last punch as well.

Most of my life was lived in the home of my grandparents, who now, married for 50 years, have never fought in front of me: not even an altercation. They are the perfect couple, a model for anyone; the uncle of mine that was violently murdered due to his lifestyle when I was very young; the uncle mentioned above who beat(s) his wife; my mother, who gravitated to men that beat her; myself, whose first real relationship paralleled my mother’s. Maybe the violence is nature – my sweet and docile grandmother set a girl’s dress on fire in school when she was a child after the girl had spit on her. She hit her sister over the head with a sledgehammer another time, over something or other. You’d never know it now, never suspect her of being capable of such a thing. It’s funny, the only one of her children that hasn’t lived a life affected by violence is my eldest uncle, who is not her child, but my grandfather’s from a prior relationship. I don’t deny that it could be nurture, picked up from my environment as I grew, but I don’t know.

In my opinion: My aunt was an abused woman. It’s possible that she could have left, but she had nothing and no one to help her, and I believe that she feared for her life, and rightfully so. I think my uncle would have killed her had she left, maybe even harmed their children. My mother was not an abused woman. She could have left, and she did but always went back. She wasn’t in fear for her life. She started as many fights as she didn’t. I was not an abused woman, I started it and finished it. I left, and I returned. I never felt forced into doing anything, I made decisions of my volition. I don’t feel sorry for my mother, or myself. I feel sorry for my aunt, and for my cousins. I feel sorry for my younger brother who is now, as an adult, torn and scarred by what he experienced – he never had the safe haven from it that I did, with my grandparents.

My view on domestic violence is the same as everyone else – it is incredibly wrong, it should never happen, and it must stop. But, beyond that, my view is slightly askew from the majority -  it takes much more than a bruise for me to consider someone a victim. My sympathies are reserved for those that experience it and can’t do much to change their situation – like my aunt. Not like myself, or my mother, or those that may not hit back but still do not leave although they are able to, without fearing for their life or how they’ll survive because they have nothing and no one. If they can leave, but they choose not to, why should I feel exceptionally sorry for them? Are they not a adults, capable of making what they want out of their life? I will not absolve anyone of their responsibility to take control of their own life. I cannot. It may seem cold, but I don’t think so. I understand that in actuality, everyone that experiences violence is a victim, but my heartstrings are usually only pulled for those that are in nearly impossible situations, and for the children of any situation because they are truly helpless.

Domestic violence scars, it hurts, it kills. It destroys pieces of people, both the abuser and the abused, and those around them. It should never be accepted, or tolerated.  I would do anything I could to protect those that I love  – and strangers as well – from anyone who wanted to harm them in such a situation. I think one of the best uses of the internet, ever, is Violence Unsilenced. It is a basic human right that we are entitled to at birth to be able to live a life unmarred by it. It’s that cut and dry, of course. It’s the other aspects – the situational ones – that aren’t so simple to me.

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