Off-White or Why I'm not White

Prior to me moving away from my Jewish enclave (well.. there were Italians and Mexicans, too) I thought I was white. I also thought most people were short and that 5’9” was tall.

Now that I have lived some 18 or so (oy) years away from that world (though I can’t seem to shake some of its holds on me*), I know spiritually, socially, politically even I’m not white. My mother.. my brother .. white, perhaps.. my dad.. not-white. When I speak of being white or not-white, I’m referring to many characteristics including that of: skin tone, ‘tude, temperament, and degrees of consciousness (self, social, political).

When someone says someone is white, I immediately associate being white with being privileged. Privilege of opportunity (schools & jobs). And in this case.. I’m pasty white. I am drippin in it—this privilege. And though many of my hometown peeps associate such privilege with economic wealth, I associate privilege simply with economic opportunity. (I must thank my Marxist Sociology professors for such enlightenment in the first semester of my college career— though I continued shop at Marshall Fields, but only when I was sad or didn’t do well on a paper)

I attempt to recognize, and own this privilege, capital P, in most everything I do and say.. and feel. Of course, recognition of such a power (and I must thank the Emma Goldmans, the Gloria Steinems, the Bella Abzugs and my Ellis-Island ancestors for handing me such a power) does not quell it or lessen its strength. But being aware of it does not allow me to abuse it. I don’t think.

Perhaps, one may think or have experienced that being a woman has afforded them less opportunity, and thus one feels less privileged. I don’t feel that way. I have noticed throughout my little life that women and girls were often less assertive than their male/guy counterpart. And I am not of those. I didn’t feel some great inequity when only guys got to play football. “Go, run, tackle fuck your face up, who cares!” I’m certainly not fearless (particularly when it comes to things like love and well, math), and it isn’t like I’m Annie Assertive, but I have yet to experience inequity due to the fact I’m a woman. I have experienced it due to the fact that I look and act perhaps younger than my peers, and perhaps because I’m Jewish or short/petite or both. Moving on..

• When I think of white I think of something stale like bread, bread that should’ve been thrown in the fridge in order to maintain its freshness longer.

• When I think of white, I think of something or someone who is tone –deaf, unable to hear the many sounds and rhythms that resonate the world. If you can’t hear the world how can you understand your role within it?

• When I think of white, I think of large facial pores.. pores that too open, too obvious and resistant to any type of toner or astringent. It’s not that being white is open it’s that being white is obvious and resistant to being subtle, under the radar, to being just part of the face, part of a whole.

• And I have to say when I think of white, I think Christian and not the Jimmy Carter or Quaker-kind-of Christian. I think of the kind of Christian who fears liberty, the ‘other’..who fears feeling. The kind of Christian who defines being ‘open’ by eating Thai food. Consumptive, Clueless and Cruel.

My mother thinks I have always wanted to be Black. I don’t know if it’s that I have wanted to be Black or as much as I simply find some comfort (not all) in many things, Black. Yes, as a child my loves among several were Good Times, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor and Donna Summer. I recall watching Donna Summer on American Bandstand and my mother informing me? us? that she had slept her way to the top. How else would someone of her skill .. get there? I guess? I recall thinking, ‘Is that why she sang she worked hard for the money.’?

In high school I wrote this Haiku. It was published in its literary magazine.

They all bake
prunes shriveled into raisins
yet bigots they are

When I lived in Cleveland, I was told of an incident by a young girl named Aja regarding my color/skin/race. Aja attended a predominately Black school I was doing drama work in. She got into some argument with another girl and the exchange went something like this:

Girl-Ms. Decky is white!
Aja-She is not!
Girl-Oh yes she is.
Aja-is not!
Girl –Ms. Decky is white!
Aja-Ms. Decky.. is Ms. Decky

I don’t feel white.. I don’t feel so hateful, so full of moxie and hubris. I don’t feel or maybe I just don’t want to be whatever the girl in the story about associates with being white.

On the most recent census I couldn’t even mark my color/race down. You had Hawaiian, African-American, Pan-Asian, Eskimo, Native American and White. YUCK. Of all the choices, why would one even want to check that one?! I couldn’t do it. (Couldn’t they have what Dorothy Parker writes, ‘Just a Jewish Girl Trying to be Cute’, category?)

Now.. it’s not just a drive to be different, to be on the margin, to be the underdog, on the periphery -- all the things I do admit I thrive on being. It is not that, nor is it identification with such sentiments, (though given I’m one of very few Jews, one of very few maybe more urban individuals at my place of employment, the feeling of difference is very, very genuine). This being not simply feeling off-white is a combination of many things: it’s where I live.. work and play, it’s those I connect, create and collaborate with, it’s the poetry that moves me and the minds that mold me, and it’s who I love.

Color.. culture.. it’s a state of mind/being, if you’re privileged enough to claim it. I know this. Yet, just today someone came up to me and told me that I looked Brown; I smiled, glowed even and of course was quite comforted.

Coming soon.. Bjork and Other Discoveries, Other Firsts…