I was raised white but both my grandmothers were mixed race. I belong to a writer's group in the Hudson Valley, in a "liberal enclave". Kate, who runs the group, is from New Orleans, and while the group changes every few months, most of the time she is one of up to 4 black women in the group. And almost all of the 10 or so of us are middle-aged. At least.

(Even in writing that paragraph I was conscious of how I described Kate, and opted for delaying and generalizing How Many Black People, to diffuse the importance. To introduce the idea: this will be about my White Guy's experience with/of, oh, let's say, "other races". And I say "races" just now because I used black a lot already. And I wasn't sure whether to capitalize Black -- there! at least once, w caps! sigh --or not, since the previous "White Guy" was caps just for Irony, not respect.  Someday this will be natural and easy.)

Ha!

But you know, this writing group is sooo good for a white boy who grew up in Missouri/Kansas, which are by repute midwestern states but are in fact very southern. I know what is in me. The hesitancies, odd recoils, involuntary thoughts, that my children are blessedly free of. Relatively, at least.

And over the years, while we write about deeply personal things, and this sometimes means race, we don't use the group to sort those out per se, at least not overtly, intellectually. We do the sublime and simple thing of: getting along.

Laughing. Snorting at each other sometimes. Challenging, with respect, about all the usual stuff. Relating first and commonly as middle-aged Americans. And from time to time the underlying differences -- of growing up black or white, thru the 40s, 50s, 60s, through the post-Cosby Show era (that established, um, perfect racial harmony, forever) -- are all the more poignant and stunning when they emerge, as, as...hmm.

As plain facts. Or nearly so.

Here's one, from my perspective: Kate writes a lot about Katrina, and the last 100 years in NO that led up to it. In a piece about the 50s, she described how parties thrown in her neighborhoods on the 4th of July had to be called something other than "Independence Day". So very obvious. Mm-hmm, say black readers, of this.

I thought I knew all the alleyways and dungheaps of racial cruelty, yet this one eluded me. The subtle and brutal ironies of Independence being forbidden on the Fourth of July amaze me.

And the haunting detail: they held such parties anyway, with a twist. Not "allowed" to use fireworks to celebrate "independence", great bonfires were built, the glittering embers filling the wet delta air every year with swirling pyrotechnics, that sparked hope, perhaps, for some, in those pre-Civil Rights days.

This is what comes from daring to co-exist, close up. I could, I know, ask anything of these women, satisfy any longstanding curiosity about hair, opinion, life, and they can of me, too (tho what about white hair and its care is not known, given 50 years of  commercials?) . We have earned that right, in our very ordinariness together.

Perhaps I will someday. But nothing, nothing, is as rich and meaningful and useful to me as the other things we share together, the Real Stuff, the breath in and breath out. Kids and dating, disturbing relatives, the sounds and smells and flavors of our Montanas and Louisianas long ago, the arc of relationships and the sharp rocks of loss, our beautiful and startling patois, our heart-language. Our plain and now-entwined lives.

So I sing, full-throat, of the commonality and sparkling differences that are us now, the gorgeous outcome of Civil Rightness, the Simple Gifts we can share if we but sit together, work together, ride together, serve together. Break bread, and get on with it.

It Works.


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This post inspired by the wonderful http://open.salon.com/blog/damali_ayo/2009/03/17/racism_101_figure_it_out
by Damali Ayo