Race Matters In America: What I've Learned So Far

Here in this post Zimmerman world it has suddenly become okay, if not in fact, necessary to address racism. I venture a perspective from my own particular niche of racial privilege. 

Race Matters In America: What I've Learned So Far

When I came to the US in 1968 (on Labor Day) America appeared to be enjoying a state of progressiveness that infected the whole culture with a vibrancy and newness. And in this context of progressiveness I thought this country of mixed races had this whole race thing solved.

In fifth grade, which was where I entered this conversation, I noted and appreciated the respect being shown by my white teacher during the lessons on black culture. And as I read the story put before me about George Washington Carver learning to read, I also learned something of the plight of black people in America. For in this story black children born into slavery were denied an education, but George Washington Carver had figured out how to get the white boys to teach him the alphabet, by boasting to them that he already knew it. And when they demanded that he recite it, he was counting on them to correct him and that was how he got it right in the end. He did not mind being humiliated in the meantime. This was a lesson I would carry with me for it was quite often that I would find myself in the same position of not knowing something everyone else took for granted. And if you didn't mind being totally clueless and possibly humiliated by those who were in the know, you could learn what you needed to know. This was a big help. Could be of help now.

I don't recall learning to be afraid of black men. My white mother was a fan of Sidney Poitier and the movie Guess Who's Coming To Dinner was used as a teaching point for me since she too had had to introduce her parents to a fiancé who was a man of color. In contrast my Thai father learned to speak in what I would come to recognize as racist terms. He chiefly complained about Mexicans and how inferior they were as fellow immigrants. I disliked his rants because I did not have a Ph.D. like him and my mother implied that I was lazy about just as often. (To insure that I would I live up to my potential, I was sent to private schools where the attention of teachers in small classes would keep me forever anxious about making something of myself.)

At my private high school I was required to read The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I did not understand this book at all. The sense of irony was beyond me possibly because I did not realize how being invisible was problematic and I was taking for granted my own invisibility. I better understood Black Like Me which my mother owned. (I also did not understand Crime and Punishment because basically Western thought was still foreign to me, but I didn't know it at the time.) 

I did, however, speak with a British accent identical to my mother's and this was encouraged in my anglophile prep school. (She had actually upgraded her accent from her provincial Yorkshire one when she moved closer to London as a teen.) Post high school the accent gave me another layer of privilege because people listened to me when I talked and assumed I was unusually intelligent or highly educated. I am neither nor am I good at math. I've tried to make up for it with reading. It also helped that I had three different cultural perspectives to choose from, one of which was openly based on class privilege. It gave me more room to observe and understand biases.

Confessions of a Model Minority

And so I came to hold that odd position complicit with white America. I am a model minority. More to the point I am a collectible much like a piece of exotic art. Or as my ex-lover, a horsewoman, put it "I wanted you like I wanted an arabian horse I saw passing by." I had by then acquired a head swiveling beauty that made watching me walk through a room a source of entertainment especially since I was oblivious to the attentions of the men turning to look at me. Beauty brought me social privilege though I was aware that my particular brand of beauty was objectified in a fetishistic way that didn't include being introduced to mom. Not that I'm complaining. On balance my list of privileges, benefits and access to life enhancing experiences amounted to more than your average white person might enjoy. And though I had experienced numerous incidents of stereotyping and inquisition demanding I explain myself, it would be unseemly for me to complain of racism because of this.

I know I tried once and I am still amused and disheartened by the response of my all white, women's writer's group. "Is this an anti-white polemic?" was the first comment. (Love that high brow literary label.) Then several tried to justify, reframe or blame me for all the incidents of prejudice I had described. And I rewrote that poem until all that they were teaching me was included in the rewrite. I had brought up the topic because I thought it might help to add my voice to the issue if I showed my personal experiences of it. I expected them to give me the benefit of the doubt since they had known me for nearly 10 years and it cut me to the quick that they didn't believe me and were defending the perpetrators. The ordeal was so unloving and unsupportive, I knew I would never bring up the topic again. Perhaps they were right, I had too much privilege to complain. And that is how I was silenced because until I figured out some other way to talk about race I couldn't impart what I knew.

While researching this essay, I came across a blog, explaining racism in America written by a black person under a pseudonym that confirmed some of what I knew. It was there that I learned that it is the purpose of the model minority to prove that whites are not the primary beneficiaries of this system of white supremacy in America. That minorities of all races (and white people raised poor) who succeed socially and economically prove that it can be done through hard work, good behavior, dressing and speaking for success and making education a priority. 

But the entire yardstick is an illusion because the benefits afforded both middle class whites and model minorities are superficial compared to the positions of prestige commanded by the uber rich who control the country—the 1% who are invisible to most of America and who have no intention of letting anyone else in. This fully admitted by my ruling-class, horse-loving ex-lover. 

The Invention of White People

The whole idea of white people was invented during the time of slavery to separate the interests of white people who were indentured servants from those of black slaves. I learned this from a black author in her book Learning To Be White which I borrowed from a client (white) who teaches seminars to white people on white privilege. The owning class feared that black slaves and white servants, observed to be fraternizing together, would combine resources and form a rebellion so it became necessary to persuade white people that they were a separate class with privileges based on their race. 

Beginning in Virginia in 1670 (and later adopted by other states) it became illegal for free Negros and Indians to own Christians i.e. "white" servants. From 1680 on it became legal for white Christians including servants to give a slave 30 lashes. Then in 1705 it became illegal to strip a white servant naked in order to beat him. That same year property was confiscated from black slaves and sold by church wardens to poor whites. Masters were also required to pay their white servants at the end of their indentureship with money, clothing, corn, a gun and 50 acres of land. In 1723 free Negroes lost the right to vote, right to bear arms and right to bear witness. Interracial marriage was also made illegal in 1691 although an attempt was made to repeal the law in 1699. And so on until a caste system had been created based on race.

This historical construction of the rights of "white" people convinced me that being white was a construct and the slipperier a construct it was, the more it undermined white people's confidence that they were good enough or white enough to make it in America. European immigrants were also taught to discard their home culture as quickly as possible to avoid discrimination. The behavior of former slaves were used as an example of what not to do. (Which might be why white Americans felt justified in complaining about Black English which struck me as an interesting dialect of American culture that should be preserved.)

As an immigrant I was engaged in conversation by white people who wanted me to agree with their complaints about minorities and other immigrants. It irked me that the same white people who extended themselves to me would not also extend that welcome to everyone. It unmasked my role as a token minority; that I was making them look good in a way that aided and abetted the embedded white supremacy agenda of the culture. I was particularly annoyed by the complaint about the poor English of immigrants because it usually turned out that they themselves had never learned another language. Not having to learn another language in American schools enforces the hegemony of the United States, reduces compassion and increases xenophobia, but it was clearly not my place as an immigrant to complain about the country that was allowing me such access to opportunity and advantages. I already knew that if I initiated a criticism about America the standard response would be "So why do you stay here?"

While I could see that the American system favored whites (and model minorities), white people did not to want to talk about it. We were supposed to be over this whole race thing; it was best to claim color blindness. This is supposed to insure that we would all be treated equally. And though I could see that it was well intentioned it nevertheless infuriated me. Why are you asking me to erase my entire heritage and everything that has informed me thus far? I wanted to know. I consulted my client who taught white privilege. "It is part of white guilt", she said. I consulted Lenore, my white shamanic counselor and civil rights activist. "So they don't have to look at their own privilege," she said as if it were obvious. 

Border Crossing Check Points

Which brings me to another aspect of white supremacy in America. Keeping the races apart. I live in one of the most diverse and cosmopolitan areas of the country where people of numerous nations have shown up to offer their educated skill set to the corporate mother ships of technological innovation here in Silicon Valley. But on the weekends this Star Trek composite of races working together disappear while I find myself among white people. To further study this question of being not white in America I borrowed from Lenore's list and friended several informative posters on Facebook who were black and hoped they would accept my friend request; all did.

The bulk of my experience with black people comes from my travels as a writer 20 years ago. I and whatever other minority writers could be rounded up were invited to publish our stories in anthologies about our lesbian experience and contribute to the need to reflect diversity. We were bridge people. People of color who have made it our work to offer our life stories in order to create a literary culture that is more reflective of the diversity of experience in America (also true of white lesbians). And part of that package was to offer ourselves socially to hold and defend not only our own experiences, but all the cultural turf we might represent in the larger context of white America, a role that requires a certain diplomatic skill set and a willingness to defend a perspective (or multiple of perspectives given that there is never just one to represent).

One such writer was often invited to the parties of a white ally I know. Margaret Sloan Hunter was one of the early editors of Ms. magazine. And because I was usually the only other person of color at these parties (besides her lover), she would recruit me as a POC comrade. Once she invited me to one of her parties along with all the white girls. And so it was that I found myself in an apartment in Oakland hiding out in the kitchen because my white ex lover (the horsewoman) was holding court in the living room with her new (white) lover (and all the other white girls plus our host).

In the kitchen were two black women with whom I tried to converse, but I soon realized that I was not getting anywhere. They were not answering any of my questions just looking at me quizzically. These were not bridge people; they were seeking safe space in the home of a black lesbian community leader and I had just invaded it. Had sat down uninvited like I owned the place. Might I be flirting with them? Hard to tell given my usual oblique, provocative style of engagement. With my English accent, unplaceable nation of origin and non regulation long hair, I was a dangerously unattached cultural discrepancy.

I did have a white date I had invited to accompany me that day, but she didn't show up having not realized the critical role she was to play to legitimize my presence. Five minutes later I felt compelled to leave entirely, my record for shortest attendance at a party.

Beginning The Healing

The worse thing about George Zimmerman's acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin I was realizing for myself the day after the verdict was that he was not white. He was half Jewish with a Latina mother. Whatever psychological pathology he harbored, he needed to hunt black men in the name of protecting the rights of (white) property owners. He was a living example to me that the division of the races was working and that broke me heart. 

The verdict also eroded my confidence. Suddenly we were a divided nation on a topic I knew to be full of land mines. I first had to ask myself—is this my issue? Do I have a right to participate? What do I say as a bridge person? It was not until the half dozen white allies on my Facebook page showed up expressing their grief and disgust at the verdict that I could venture a statement that it was hard to believe this was now a country where it was okay to kill children as a pre-emptive strike. May it be that we just hit bottom, I added.

The day after the verdict I drove to Marin Country for a shamanic workshop where I was the only non-white person in this 18 person workshop. Not unusual for a group so small. No one mentioned the verdict and a woman from Florida was not wanting to talk to me when we were the only ones left to debrief an exercise. Nor did I ask her what she thought about the verdict to protect her from her own shame. 

The workshop was on creativity and it was proving to be a struggle for me as a creative person, but then the definition was opened up and we were asked to make a journey to ask a helping spirit to help us with a community issue. 

"What can I do in ordinary reality to heal racism in America?" I asked. "Writing is your strength" said my grandmother spirit as I was afraid she would. I couldn't even find the door to this topic. In the next journey I asked her to show herself to me as a black woman. She did as I asked, her white hair exchanged for black corn row braids falling to her shoulder. She looked at me with a warm smile. I took her hands in mine across her kitchen table, lacing our fingers together so I could look at the hues of our skin against each other. And then I was in her lap as she wrapped her arms around me and held me. And I asked her how I could bridge the gap between me and black women. (Black men are already happy to talk to me.) "Make eye contact", she said, "offer a welcoming expression, make them visible. Read the literature of black women". (In Asia people do not look at each other straight on quite like people do here. It is too confrontational.) All these ideas I had thought of myself, but it gave me confidence to hear a loving black woman say it. 

When the journey was over, a British woman came over to debrief the exercise. Her eyes widened as I told her how I had asked my guide to show herself as a black woman and when I told her the advice I got, her interest grew and I saw we had both been healed a little bit. 

In the week following I learned of the tumblr blog called We Are Not Trayvon Martin where white people were talking about their white privilege and I saw that we could all participate in this storytelling. Finally the system of white supremacy was being exposed. It reminded me of that other storytelling healing meme called "It Gets Better".

This weekend I made eye contact with a young black woman sitting at a table at the Chipotle restaurant in Palo Alto; she smiled back. On my morning dog walk in my mostly white neighborhood, a white woman jogging by in the customary black spandex, cheerfully said hello to me. I was so taken aback at my sudden visibility I knew it had to be a Trayvon Martin effect. I smiled and said 'hi' back. Then it happened again as I rounded the corner; another woman I had talked to once about a lost dog hailed me from across the street and asked me how I was. I felt more like I belonged in this neighborhood than I have since I moved here 18 years ago. It reminded me that this is a country where people believe that an individual can make a difference. It gave me hope that America would overcome this. 

The New Visible America

How the new racial landscape of America meets the Green movement, increasing the visibility of both.

The Great Not-White Hope

The morning of the election I was filled with happiness just to have had the opportunity to vote for a black man with a white mamma. Happy that he was also a man of eloquent speech, intelligence and awareness of others. It was an unexpected elated feeling of joy at having a black candidate make it this far in a presidential election. A candidate who put a face on my own mixed race heritage. The one that exposes a love that was also once taboo—the sexual union of white and brown. These unions had been my touchstone, my proof that love between all people was possible. A sort of United Nations manifested in the bedroom.

To be the child of that kind of boundary-busting paradigm is to live with a world that always seems to want you pulled apart, when you know that working together to be whole is, not only possible, but necessary for survival. It is a path that not all who are born to it can handle well for to live it is to be constantly tested; the temptation to deny one side or the other is so strong that the grace of the middle road is forsaken.

I was going to vote for Hilary in the beginning because she had the experience and it would mean Bill would be back too, but then a kind of rigidity set in. It would be a relief to have the criminals gone from office, but having an administration that would merely govern was not enough. Experience can be sought from advisors. I wanted another layer of consciousness in the White House. Plus I had not forgiven Bill for giving away the store to transnational corporations while we had been asleep, comforted by the Democratic Party brand. Next time we would know better. Next time we would post a constant watch.

Obama connected with people in a way that inspired those who were ho-hum about politics before. This was heartening. That he became Mr. Fill-In-The-Blanks Hope was the stuff of fairy tales. I had no illusions about his message of change. He was a centrist said to be aligned with the principles of free market capitalism as offered by the Chicago School of Economics—The Shock Doctrine Mafia. This chilled me.

But nevertheless an American presidential campaign is a time of storytelling about what a great nation we are and how we will continue to be great—more mythical than reality based. My vote for Obama was a bid for how we would continue with the adventure of empire and world dominance. For continue we would, either very badly and quickly towards our demise or with a bit more grace and diplomacy. This grace offered by a man who had been a global child as I had been. One who had lived among others not in lock step with the insular American identity (and high octane lifestyle). One for whom the world had the faces of his playmates in Indonesia and Kenya. While here in his own country, he was a minority; a minority whose skin color would be overlooked if he lived up to the higher expectations demanded by his prep school education. So far so good.


Black Is The New White

What was unexpected, the night Obama won, was that it would matter so much that he was black. Witness the emotions that followed his quick decisive win. White liberals gushing with pride that racism had been overcome. Black men speechless, unbelieving. All of us, at my house, screaming at the TV then rushing outside to make a joyful noise. We hadn't dared hoped it was possible. Those in power had been expected to keep it all locked up with diabolical Diebold machines and legal loopholes, never letting any outsider in. (It also occurs to me that they needed an outsider to be left holding the bag as their failed regime stripped the assets on its way out.)

The way the liberal pundits gushed that night, I flashed on a headline for the papers the next day—"Today We Are All African Americans". That was the way to express solidarity (as in Today We Are All Americans from the European headlines following 9/11). But no that wasn't it at all. White America was too busy unpacking white guilt. The slapping on the back was out of righteousness at having done the right white thing. The day after the election Obama became white, allowed into the club. A song about him being Irish passed around on Youtube. White culture claimed him via the grandparents who raised him.

This is the white privilege part of being a mixed kid. You are already family with white people. There is no divide, no discomfort to overcome on your part. And you still have the caveat of being cool. America at large had just discovered racial coolness. My social equity went up. I was immediately more visible to strangers.

Being cool while being a person of color first made its appearance for me in the lesbian feminist community in the '80s. White feminists bent over backward to listen to women of color. And women of color mostly let them have it. This just made me feel uncomfortable. Mixed kids don't tend to use that kind of language. It is too painful. Try calling your white parent a racist. You point out white privilege somehow, but not by starting a sentence with "white people". Nuanced is a word often associated with Obama.

Meanwhile, white liberal journalists were eager to unload guilt on the black voter who had discriminated against gays—seven out of ten having voted Yes on 8, the ban on gay marriage. What to make of this?

I already knew that the black community was homophobic—part of a macho culture maybe, the church definitely and maybe a need to look down on someone who was even more of a social pariah. When I heard the news it did not make me angry in the personal sense that white homophobia makes me angry. It made me wonder if the white privilege of gay people had been properly examined. A black lesbian said as much in an editorial in the Chronicle. And that was another thing to celebrate.

For the first time in newspaper history, not one, but two black lesbians were visible, presenting two sides of the black/gay divide. My how the conversation was broadening. The social frame of mainstream media shifting wildly, sweeping the horizon for representatives of the "new" faces of America. The danger was in allowing this "black/gay divide" to divide us. Dividing us—minority against minority—has long been a tactic of the dominant (white) power.


A Movement of Inclusion

Minority leaders who cross over to a largely white community such as the environmental movement, as Van Jones had done, with his Green Collar Economy concept, learn the language of inclusion. He used it at the Green Festival less than two weeks after the election.

"All those bigots and homophobes did was drive us to suicide and divide our community," he said. He didn't have to include the gay community at an eco function, but he did. The Green movement having learned to be inclusive back when clubbing seals was the cause celebre of Greenpeace; that Greenpeace campaign having hugely impacted indigenous people economically. Thus local economies and local people were folded into the equation. The Green Festival created as an economic response to the Battle of Seattle, the first North American protest against globalization at that famous meeting of the World Trade Organization.

We lefties in our no logo clothing and hemp socks munching on fair trade chocolate; we young white people with dreadlocks, handcrafted man purses and tattoos; we were readjusting to this new feeling—of oppression slowly evaporating. Everyone wanted to hear a black man speak in this new America of Barak Obama.

Van Jones began by commending us for having the courage, all these years, to stay with our ideals when no one was supporting us.

"You held the line for peace," he said, "you stayed and you fought, you didn't leave." I got all choked up over this acknowledgment. I hadn't allowed myself to feel how much of a struggle it had been to create a parallel universe of eco ideals in the face of such a stubborn, dumb and destructive administration.

"This movement, this sustainable, green movement created the opportunity for Barak Obama to be elected," he told us. "Because he came here, to all these pockets of sustainable thinking and he saw you. He saw your boldness, your clarity and audacity."

Then he teased us about how he knew what we were thinking.

"I know you," he said, "You, with your stack of books this high on your bedside table. I know that you want to hold Obama accountable." I was puzzled. Wasn't that our job?

"The problem with this phrase," said Van Jones, "is that there's not a lot of holding involved." He gestured holding as a loving embrace. "It's more like you want to kick Obama accountable." He mimed kicking.

"The Brother President Elect has done his job of taking back America. We came this close to losing our democracy. It is your turn now to do your job which is to take America forward."

So this was what it meant to be visible in Barak Obama's America. Van Jones was certainly visible now. His book was top 10 on the bestseller list, of the business books even. Obama very likely met him when he came to visit our pocket of sanity and audacity. Van Jones did, nevertheless, stomp on Obama's inclusion of clean coal (no such thing) and geosequestration (not enough places for holes in the ground). He outlined his own three-point plan. 1) Put a price on carbon. 2) Put people to work weatherizing the nations buildings and 3) R & D to decentralize and connect the grid.

"It's our turn now," said Van Jones. "They had their turn. The bomb and torture…the drill and burn...the borrow and spend, bubble and bail out. They had their turn. They totally discredited their model. All those bigots and homophobes did was drive us to suicide and divide our community. It's our turn now."

The packed hall gave him a standing ovation for this language of inclusiveness, this prodding to create a greater movement.

In contrast, Kevin Danaher, who spoke next and had many fine suggestions to make, tossed off this techno elitist comment.

"Because of the Internet, we can all connect with every human on the planet." He meant to be encouraging about our ability to create social change, but all he did was remind me of the AIDS orphans in Africa who can't go to school for want of a uniform and a pencil.

Winona La Duke, a Native American with a white Jewish mother, came to this language of inclusion naturally, mentioning not only the gay marriage debacle, but adding this sentiment."There is no monopoly on botching things up," she said, "that's what humans do." She was asking us to be "big" people now (not infantalized consumers). She spoke of deconstructing empire and considering how much we are willing to let go that is defended by the whole system. Peak oil was on her list, too. She said the words with disdain like 'hello when are we going to learn'. As a food activist, she commented on the folly of trying to squeeze the nation's corn crop into our gas tanks, just so we could continue to drive. This continuing bias of the industrial paradigm just didn't allow that any wisdom or truth could come from outside of European thinking, she said. She then proceeded to list off the guiding principles of the Anishinaabeg people thus:

We are all related.
We are cyclical.
We should treat all things as alive.
We take only what we need and leave the rest even if it grows wild.

Pedal Power

She spoke for the efforts of the Anishinaabeg Indians, in Northern Minnesota where they have installed four wind turbines on their reservation. They decided not to lease the land for windmills that outsiders would build, but to keep control of the energy they generated. It was what the tribal leader called "a crazy horse moment". This population, which was the poorest of the poor, had done it, which was why she was telling us their story, because if they could do it we could do it. We could generate some part of that 185,000 megawatts of power needed to run this country on renewable energy.
The Green economy has justice in it, she said. You can't have peace without justice.

The audience gave her a standing ovation too. We had our marching orders. We were being urged to get on with it. Move with this opportunity that Obama has opened for a Green economy. We had voted him in. Were we going to quit now, lay back and hold him "accountable"? Were we going to wait for the industrial paradigm to take care of things?

This was our crazy horse moment. Our turn now.

Mixed Like Me

Quick, name a movie depicting interracial marriage. You wouldn't have to think hard to come up with "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner". Okay now name a movie depicting a character who is biracial, a child of such an interracial marriage. Can't think of any? Neither can I (unless you count Buckaroo Banzai which was a serious disappointment to me in that arena).

Jennifer Beals, a biracial actress, persuaded the creators of the television show, "The L Word" (in which she plays a leading role), to make her character biracial, possibly the first biracial character on TV since Spock in Star Trek. (And as important as an art loving, biracial, lesbian in power suits has become to me, I wouldn't want to diminish the territory that Spock defined.)

Jennifer made the case that "if we do not tell these stories it gives the impression that the stories are not worth telling". Yes, in terms of the dominant culture, it sure feels that way. But if it was just about what was worth telling it would have been done already. Television is a voracious medium of novelty, anything to keep you from changing channels. I think Jennifer knew that the stakes were higher than that because to tell a story about being biracial means talking about race (and that is exactly what The L Word proceeded to do).

On the liberal end of the spectrum (which is the only end that will really allow me to exist) the story of a mixed identity is a non-starter. We ignore it in a race blind way as if that is the proper liberal thing to do. I mean, what is the story here? Making a choice? Either race is fine. End of story. You are, after all, the product of a mixed marriage, the very proof that people of different races can love each other and make a family together.

And therein lies the paradox in which I find myself. It is as if I signed a pact, at birth, to represent the liberal ideal of two races coming together in the best of human possibilities. It just makes you want to burst into a chorus of "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony". (And, yes, I did totally love that Coke ad as a teenager because of what it represented, until I realized, much later, that Coke was, well, the evil empire of globalization, intent on converting every last human into a soda consuming entity, blah, blah, blah, and the world into plastic bottles, blah, stealing water rights, polluting rivers, blah, blah, and I will still drink it out of nostalgia, but only in Thailand, because it still comes in glass bottles there.)

The first time I tried to write about my racial experiences in the US as a foreign national, I included all the weird assumptions, false stereotypes, annoying sexual fetishes and two incidents of confrontational opinion making by white people that might be characterized as racist. My all white, women's writing group responded with such a chorus of emotional reactions that I was dumbfounded.

"Is this an anti-white polemic?" asked the first to comment. Well no, that was not my intention. Does a poem about experiencing race related incidents necessarily mean I'm anti-white?

"Did your roommate really say that? Surely, she didn't mean it that way?" I had been in this group for ten years and now they were questioning my observations as a writer?

And finally the reframing. "That wasn't about race; he was just being a jerk."

I couldn't figure out why it was not okay with them for me to describe my experiences with race. This was the same group that had listened, with complete open-minded respect, to my explicit tale of a love triangle with two other women. Weren't stories about race a part of the American literary heritage? Somehow I had betrayed them at a base level. I had broken the pact of my birthright by bringing up race. I was angry. After all, it's not as if I can pass for white—or can I?

The first time I learned that a white person could actually talk to just the white side of me and ignore all traces of my bicultural, biracial background, we were in the middle of a conversation about reincarnation.

"Surely you don't believe in reincarnation?" she said, which immediately made me want to upset her whole apple cart of normalcy.

"Well I do come from a country where 99% of the population believes in reincarnation," I said referring to my home in Thailand.

"Oh, but I think of you as British," she answered. Dang. She had me there. I was up against the ropes of my own identity construct. I had no ready comeback. My English accent had neatly eliminated my Asian heritage, my olive skin, my Thai eyes. This is the balancing act of a multi-cultural existence. The balance point is determined by the one looking at you. If they insist on looking from so oblique and extreme a point of view, they can make my alien-to-them side vanish, just like that. It is their concession to me. One I had cultivated.

I had chosen to balance my Asian face with my British mother's tongue. I made this choice to keep my English accent, in fifth grade, to inform my American classmates that, though I be foreign, I did have a country. One they knew about-England. They had never heard of Thailand and I was tired of trying to tell them where it was, because this being 1968, the only way I found to tell them was by talking about Vietnam. (And to be associated with a war zone of American imperialism was a whole 'nother frightening can of worms that my ten-year-old self could hardly comprehend, which was exactly why I would spend the rest my life trying to comprehend it.)

Out of the Vietnam conflict came the Children of the Dust, the offspring of GI's and Vietnamese women, left to the streets, scorned and abandoned. But the biracial children of my childhood were from a world of privilege. We were the children of educated Thai men who had found for themselves, European brides. My mother started a club for them called "The International Wives of Thais". They gave parties, and it was there that I met the other children. I already understood that we were natural translators between our two cultures. There were maybe twenty of us in this select group of special agents and it felt as if we might have a unique purpose in life. And then we were scattered to the winds.

Recently, by the grace of the Google goddess, a long lost friend found my blog and contacted me. Veronica and I have known each other since 6th grade. We were the only non-white kids in our class. She was/is the only close black friend I've had. When we drifted apart I sorely missed her perspective for it was she who taught me how to balance race in America, how to make space for yourself without rejecting the dominant culture. She told me, when we met for breakfast, that she couldn't understand why, when she went to college, all the black kids would sit together at the cafeteria separate from the white kids. You're asking me, I was thinking?

"I guess I'm just bicultural," she said after describing the parties she gave where friends of all colors would hang together at her house. But her black friends only had black friends over. Race was not an easy border to cross from either side, I could see. She hadn't expected it to be that way. Her parents had raised her in that Martin Luther King vision of race without borders. It had not prepared her for what she would encounter after our sheltered private school experience.

"I had no idea how much my parents liked you," she told me, when we met again for lunch at Taxis. She had told them of our reunion. As kids we had spent many a Saturday ice-skating at the local rink. I had made her parents laugh with my imitations of Flip Wilson, my twelve-year-old's version of race without borders.

I asked Veronica what the deal was with Barak Obama. Was the black community really concerned that he wasn't black enough? "He's black to me," she said, "he's married to a black woman, his children are black; if I saw him walking down the street I would see a black man".

"So what was all that about him not being accepted by the black community?" I asked.

"Sometimes when white people write stuff on the behalf of black people they don't get it right", she explained. Hah. Just another divisive diversion of the dominant culture, we concluded. But for a moment there it had seemed as if we might have some insight into the role of biracial people. But nobody had bothered to celebrate the gift of perspective that a biracial politician would bring to a culturally diverse nation.

"Do you think he has a chance?" I asked about Barak Obama running for president.

"Amanda", she said, in a don't-be-naive tone, "this is America".

"Oh yeah, right," I concurred, "Not that kind of chance." We were silent a minute over the regressive politics of our time. A waitperson came up to ask if we needed anything. That was the second waitperson who had come by and this was a no service restaurant. She smiled at us in a genuine way and I reflected a moment on what Veronica and I looked like together—an Asian woman with a black woman. It was so rare this pairing. Never am I am more invisible than when I pass black women in the street. In Oakland where the Asian community borders on the black community, the races ignore each other; a palpable schism hangs in the air.

When I was in Brazil with my now ex-lover, a young Brazilian couple came up to her and asked her if there was much racism in America. "No," she had said. I walked over to her just as they left. "What did they want to know?" I asked her. She told me and when I heard what her answer had been, I was outraged. "You said no? Heck, if they wanted to know about racism why were they asking a white person?" I exclaimed. She shrugged. But they would not have asked me because I was not the dominant race; in fact I looked Brazilian. Brazil is filled with mixed races—Japanese, German, black, all sorts of mixes. They may have just been asking her because they wanted a white North American to affirm for them the American dream. The one where immigrants of all nations and races can come to America and be accepted into the upwardly mobile success train.

The waitresses at Taxi's were also from south of the border, Mexico most likely. I suddenly had the feeling that Veronica and I were representing a tableaux that was magnetic in its attraction to those who longed for such affirmation; that in this Promised Land, there was a surrendering of racial differences; that we did mix it up and represent a nation of harmonious collaboration. White people, too, wanted this from me. I was blessed in that sense.

I had spent much of my life in a vacuum of cultural isolation, not quite fitting anywhere, whether it be the gay community, the Asian community, the immigrant community, the women's community or the bohemian community. I was constantly having to explain myself and feeling that my friends would never begin to understand where I was coming from. At any moment I might have to defend one group from another. I identified with subcultures I didn't even belong to.

As I worked to integrate all the different parts of me by telling my own story, I found that I had been dealt a remarkable hand. I had so many avenues by which people could enter into my world. I was a human jukebox of special interests groups. Just punch up one of my many eclectic topics. Sometimes, on a good day, I can play three or four.

A white man gave me a ride to my car the other day, after a moving job. He was dressed on the conservative side, but he reached for my hand to shake and I looked for an opening. By the end of the ride I knew his brother was marrying an Indian woman, his sister was a bike messenger and he himself was gay (though he never said so). I was hitting home runs with every topic. (My colleague on the job told me I had utterly charmed him and if he gave me a job I was to cut her in on it.)

Jennifer Beals, in her acceptance speech for an award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, spoke of how the culture we live in gives us the narratives for our own lives-through media mostly. There were few such narratives for me when I came to this country. I had to look really hard, going back to the Native American "two spirited people" to piece together a place and a purpose for a gender bending, border crossing lesbian. And now the story has gotten bigger than I ever imagined it could be and, oddly enough, more want to be part of it than not.