From its very beginning, after all, America was a profoundly black country as well.
This took a while for an Englishman to grasp upon arriving here, because it's so easy to carry with you all the subconscious cultural baggage you grew up with. England, after all, is deeply Anglo-Saxon. It makes some sense to refer to England's roots and ethnic identity as white, its language as English, its inheritance as a deep mixture of Northern European peoples - the Angles and the Saxons and the Normans and the Celts. And superficially, English-speaking white Americans might seem in the same cultural boat as white English people, dealing with a relatively new multiculturalism in an increasingly diverse and multi-racial society. And at first blush, you almost sink into that lazy and stupid assumption, especially if you arrive in Boston, as I did, and carried all the usual European prejudices, as I did.
The English, lulled by their marination in American pop culture from infancy, and beguiled by the same language, can live out their days in this country never actually noting that it is an alien land - stranger than you might have ever imagined, crueler than you realized, but somehow also more inspiring than you ever thought possible. This is the America I am trying to make my home, after 25 years. It is not the America of Pat Buchanan's or John Derbyshire's fantasies.
Sorry for the lengthy quote, but I thought it necessary. Andrew said this to me over dinner in Provincetown, and I've been thinking about it ever since. There is a part of me that wants to disagree with it, I think because so much of my work is delineating "What black is." But I deeply suspect that he's right. It's the sort of observation that someone makes about your marriage, but that you can't see because you're caught up in the day to day.It struck me almost at once, if only in the music I heard all around me - and then in so many other linguistic, cultural, rhetorical, spiritual ways: white Americans do not realize how black they are. Even their whiteness is partly scavenged from the fear of - and attraction to - its opposite. Even something as stereotypically white as American Catholicism, I discovered to my amazement, was also black from the very start. (Yes, those Maryland slaves. If you've never been to a Gospel Mass in an ancient black Catholic parish, try it some time.)
From the beginning, in its very marrow, this country was forged out of that racial and cultural interaction. It fought a brutalizing, bloody, defining civil war over that interaction. Any European student of Tocqueville swiftly opens his eyes at the three races that defined America in the classic text. Has Buchanan read Tocqueville? And that's why it seems so odd to me that the election of the son of a white mother and a black father is seen as somehow a threat to American identity for some, when, in fact, Obama is the final iteration of the American identity - the oldest one and the deepest one. This newness is, in fact, ancient - or as ancient as America can be. The very names - Ann Dunham and Barack Obama. Is not their union in some ways a faint echo of the union that actually made this country what it is?
That some cannot see Buchanan's cartoon as a travesty of history remains America's tragedy of self-forgetting.
It's true that this point has been made, in some iterations, before. Still, there's something striking about seeing from the point of view of someone who is white and brought up in England. My history professors used to make a similar point. But I had my own prejudices then (just as I have them now) and couldn't see it.
I need to read some damn Tocqueville.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Yeah, I thought that was one of the best things he has written in years. Some very insightful commentary and I really think he is onto something about how the British are uniquely qualified to notice it.
What I mean by that is that while even in colonial America you had people from multiple European countries we were still very much a culture derived from England. So the ways that what has developed here is a melting pot and unique is most visible to an Englishman since the difference are more readily apparent to them than they would be to say a Swede.
This reminds me of something Roy Blount Jr said about being a southern writer. At a writers' conference the question was raised about what it was about southern writers that made them so important in our culture, and the first meme to go around was "The south lost the civil war! Dealing with that has given us a perspective unique in America." And then a black woman stood up and said that she was a writer from the south, and she had not lost the Civil War. And Roy decided to side with her: he was a white writer from the south, but he didn't lose the Civil War.
People make stories about who they.
I have a feeling this won't be the last post of yours we see in reference to this. I'm eager to see what you think after it rolls around your brain for awhile...
Yeah, I actually am not equipped to respond, yet. I've been thinking about this for awhile.
Tocqueville is challenging but very much worth it.
Its shocking how prescient he was about what America would become. He even predicted the emergence of America and Russia as the world Superpowers.
I'm a Brazilian, and here in my country race is a very troublesome issue too. Nevertheless every child learns in school how brazilian people is a mixture of several ethnic groups (most people tend to call themselves "white", even if they're not, but that's another story).
Anyway, this is just to add that I always found it very strange that, in USA, indians are "native americans", blacks are "african americans" and whites are (plain) "americans" - not "european americans", "british americans" or whatever. So, only if you're white you're a real, 100% american, right?
(This must have already been discussed before. But then again, it's just a foreigner's point of view).
It changes over time. "Italian-Americans" used to identify, and be identified as, a distinct group; but they've been kind of folded into whites over the years. Same with the Irish. Before it became politically incorrect, Native Americans were Indians. African Americans were Blacks or Negroes. The "-American" addition is a pretty recent development.
I do think that the hyphenated groups tend to fall out of favor as it becomes more common for people to marry outside their ethnic group. If I were to give a full accounting, I'd be (in descending order) an Italian-German-Scots-Irish-American. My wife would be (in descending order) a British-Danish-French-German-Dutch-African-American. My daughter would forget where she was halfway through the explanation. Seriously, that's just too damn complicated to remember. So we simplify it to "White."
I am a "Canadian-American" on my father's side. It doesn't sing.
Personally I deeply loathe the XXXX-American nomenclature. It should just read "American", I don't see why people feel the need to modify that with an ethnic group. The only people who should be thought of as "African-American" are African immigrants, and even then its a pretty silly way to describe people.
But, as to your point about how whites are the only group not termed with a XXXX-American, I am pretty sure that is because the XXXX-American nomenclature evolved as a way to refer to people that would not be ofensive in any way. Since some people didn't like being called Black they prefered African-American or Italitian-American and so on. The only groups not to really get these sorts of lables are generic whites, groups such as the Irish and Italians who both care about the "old country" and had ethnic slurs they may have wanted to avoid people using against them. There are no real British/Dutch/French/Swedish/ect slurs that other white people felt the need to avoid and they didnt care about the old country the way some Irish and Italians do so no need for British-American and so on. Also, most white people are not just one country heritage, but rather are European mongrels with some heritage from a lot of countries. Interstingly I also very rarely see anyone being called a Jewish-American. I think this is because "Jew" or "Jewish" is a perfectly acceptable thing for a Jew to be called. No one got upset about being called a Jew so there was no need for another term.
The hyphen is significant and useful, not to demarcate race or ethnicity in a genetic sense, but persistent and distinctive cultural practices.
Suppose you moved to France. You wanted to make sure that your kids still learned English, however, and knew the rules to baseball, and maybe even played it. You might even hang out - and move next to - a couple other people who came from the same place you did (perhaps co-workers who were working out-of-the-country for a while.) What's wrong with the phrase "American-French" to describe the kind of cultural experience that your kids grow up with?
That's a really good point about lack of slurs = no-hyphenate.
I don't get that logic about no-slur/no-hyphen. There were Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and German-Americans, and the terms Irish, Italian and German had no animus to them. Rather, the -American was to distinguish them from nationals still in those nations of origin. There was no country of "Jew" or "Jewish" until recently; and now, we do have "Israeli-Americans" (who also happen to be Jewish, most of the time.)
Irish, Italian and German have no animus to them now, at various times those were all groups that were discriminated against, scapegoated for stealing jobs from "real Americans" informally black listed from living in certain neighborhoods and so on.
eric k, you would be hard pressed to deny that your claim didn't also apply to Jews during the same period of time. You're being arbitrarily ahistorical.
Of course it applied to Jews, and Scandinavians in places they lived and Poles and Hungarians and pick just about any nationality you want.
That was my point, the XXX-Hyphen-American designation pretty much always indicates a group that was conisdered not a "real american" at some point.
I just picked the three I did since you had listed them first and I didn't feel like writing an epic essay listing every single nationality that has been discriminated against and considered a threat to "real American Culture" which is pretty much everyone not English at some point or another.
I'm not being arbitrarily ahistorical, just a lazy typist:-)
There was serious, government-fomented animus against German-Americans during WWI. Do some reading up on that one.
Dave, there were German-Americans here for hundreds of years before the first World War. I know how the German-American identity virtually disappeared during WWI: and with it, for all practical purposes, the (until then animus-free) term German-American.
My ace in the hole in this argument: the term "Anglo-American."
For many Asian Americans, the use of XXXX-American is a political and deliberate way of reinforcing the fact that although we may not be readily identified as American, we are. (For more info, please look up "perpetual foreigner myth" and "Japanese American internment camps.) While the idea of a pan-Asian American identity still gets debated to this day (e.g., how much does a 5th generation Chinese American relate to a a recently arrived Burmese immigrant?), there's definitely a sense among progressive Asian Americans that political strength comes from working across ethnic and even racial lines. This grew out of the civil rights movement and related political activism taking place in both the East and West Coast in Asian American activities.
(I'm pretty hit or miss on the use of the actual hyphen, but that's another story altogether.)
Long story short: there's more to it for some of us than using it as a reference point to not offending people's delicate sensibilities.
Rather off topic, but this comment reminded me of the old Monty Python sketch with the competition to come up with a slur for Belgians.
http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode37.htm#10
I was really, really impressed with Sully on this one.
"It struck me almost at once, if only in the music I heard all around me:...white Americans do not realize how black they are."
that's ridiculous.
everyone knows that little richard and chuck berry ripped off all of their stuff from the beatles.
also: muddy waters? he learned all that shit playing old led zeppelin lp's over and over when he was a kid.
and the real crying shame is how elvis invented that whole musical ethos, and then had to die broke and unknown, while louis jordan and blind lemon jefferson went on to make millions in las vegas.
goddamn it, pat buchanan is the only white man brave enough to tell the truth!
Actually Chuck Berry ripped off Louis Jordan...
That was good. It took me a second, but well done, sir. :-)
Why does everything have to be in black and white? There are people here who are neither black nor white, and they have had a bigger impact on America's changing demographics over the last forty years. Arguably, this group is more relevant to discussions about the economic insecurity Buchanan wrote about in the essay of his you linked to yesterday. After all, the black percentage of the American population has been fairly stable for years.
It's amazing how invisible Latinos can be in our cultural and economic discussions sometimes, when they have such a large impact on both, by the sheer weight of their numbers. I'll give two examples here, one economic and one cultural.
When politicians from both major parties advocate immigration reform bills that would extend citizenship to millions of Latino illegal aliens, it is common to hear comparisons to the arc of assimilation and economic advancement followed by previous generations of Ellis Island immigrants. Yet you don't hear as much about empirical studies, such as the one recently published by Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz, that show that most Latino immigrants have not had anything like that arc over the last several generations here.
Here's the cultural example for you. There's a Showtime series I watch, that's based on the movie Crash. The series is called Crash too. It's set in Los Angeles which is what -- half Latino? And yet not one main character this season is Latino. There are white characters, black characters, an Asian-American character, but no Latinos.
I went the other direction, Dave. I think that the European and African sources of American culture have very good reasons to be privileged as determining cultural factors, and it is fair to recognize, for example, the paucity of South Asian or Hispanic influence in the core of the formation of the American cultural identity. Contributory influences, definitely, but not fundamental ones.
Latinos are growing in importance - I am one. But I think you're being contrary for the sake of being contrary (and combative.) Hispanics are an important part of the present and future of America, but they aren't as significant as part of its foundational past, and I think that is the point of these observations.
I think there is a regional split here that is often missed. I'd say the Southwest has had significant Hispanic influence since before the revolutionary war.
And I'd say there has been a major Asian influence on the West Coast since the mid 1800s.
But media has been dominated by the East Coast, even while most of the TV networks have moved to CA the nightly news on all of them is still based in NY for example and pretty much all publishing is based in NY. So the larger collective culture hasn't reflected it.
It's also worth remembering how much of what later became this country was initially explored and staked out by Spanish explorers, missionaries, etc. From St. Augustine Florida to the San Juan Islands in Washington State.
Dave, all that being true, Spanish culture still has had a belated and dilute impact on American culture. The Southwest was always sparsely populated; one reason why it was so easy for Texas and California to essentially wrest themselves from Mexican control was that settlers from the US pretty much outnumbered Mexican residents from rather early on. (The lingering aristocratic culture of Spanish land-grant families in the territory taken from Mexico is fascinating, but it was never numerically- or, in a broad nation-building sense culturally significant, except in border communities.)
I agree with the ongoing and even increasing influence of Hispanic and Asian cultural forces in the West Coast in particular, but, compelling and often tragic histories aside, I still don't see them as truly formative of the core national character in the way that African and Western European sources were. When I think of the ways that the American personality differs from the English one, the role of the African diaspora, slavery, the Civil War, etc just has unparalleled explanatory force. Only colonialism comes close to explaining it, and colonialism is, too, deeply wrapped up in that history.
Oh, don't you worry. Buchannan also has a space for Latinos in his paranoid fantasies. It's a very big tent that's apparently taking his country away from him.
RE: Crash. I think one could find an interesting window to Anglo Hollywoods mindset by asking how many Latino actors are actually Mexican American. Just going by LA demographics, you'd expect quite a few right? Just to pick a star off the top of my head, Selma Hayek is a Spanish/Lebanese Mexican national. It's no suprise that when when casting, white Americans see non-Mexican Americans as glamorous Latino stars, but actual Mexican Americans, those are cleaning people.
And Antonio Banderas is Spanish.
As is Penelope Cruz.
That series is actually on Starz
Right, though Starz is part of the Showtime family, if memory serves.
No, they entirely different companies. Showtime is belongs to Viacom and Starz belongs to Liberty Media.
I don't get what, specifically, you're disagreeing with. It'd help if you quoted something and made the argument. This just feels like a rather random and combative objective to the mere notion, without much actual consideration of the argument on its merits.
That comment was prompted more by the cumulative effect of reading a series of related posts here. I just think focusing on the black-white dynamic is missing more economically relevant ones, but perhaps that's a thought I could have fleshed out in an open thread instead.
more economically significant than 200 years of slavery? The entire economic infrastructure of the South was built on slavery.
Great post by Andrew. And to add to it, white Americans also don't realize how much they have internalized native American culture, while doing their best to displace and deny it. "In the Name of War" by Jill Lepore (about King Philip's War), and "On the Rez" by Ian Frazier (about the Lakota) both dig into this topic, in different ways.
Echoing Lemmy, no one would deny the influences of a wide variety of groups that have immigrated to the US in large numbers since the late 19th century. I think that Andrew's point (and Ian Frazier's) is that the culture we think of as "white American" culture has been influenced from the very beginning by native Americans (who were already here) and by black Americans, who arrived at the same time as the earliest Europeans, but that whites tend to deny, and be unaware of, that influence.
Even as we eat Shepherd's Pie and listen to rock n' roll.
*Yawn*
This happens any time cultures intermingle. Its happened all throughout history. As far as Americans not realizing it... well, I just don't think most people think about that sort of thing. I mean, did the average Roman think about how Jewish they were becoming as Christianity spread throughout their empire?
Turns out that the Spanish were frightened to death about how Jewish they were, not to mention moorish.
All this palaver, this schtick, this blarney makes me want to consider Chris Collinsworth doing the stanky leg in the endzone after pointing his finger to the sky, remembering karma is a concept relatively recent to popular American usage--uptight? or uptight. Take your pick. Outasight! Amazing Grace is a Scottish spiritual? Heard it first done gospel through the grapevine, singing Woody Guthrie, up highway 99. All of America: Indian Country--an eagle on the dollar bill with a pack of arrows in its talons. Get on your high heeled sneakers. Put that wig hat on your head.
Who's buried in Grant's tomb? Your mama!
LOL!
Here's something interesting I've been hanging on to or the past 9 or so years. Back then I was a segment producer for a premium cable movie network. I was doing segments to wrap around movies for "Black Music Month" and sat down to interview a music professor- one of many music people.
The big question we asked everyone to get things started was "talk about the influence of black music?" He replied (Ok this is paraphrased but very close)"Well when I was in Europe in the Army I had a started a gospel choir and we would go on tour around Germany. One thing I noticed was when we did a song like 'When the Saints go marching in' the audience would clap on the 1 and 3 beat. Any American audience would naturally hit the 2 and 4 down beat. Americans clap on the 2 and 4 without thinking, but these Europeans were off beat; more in line with polka music for instance. It hit me like a ton of bricks how much the music of jazz and blues, which evolved into rock and roll has seeped into our culture. The Europeans just didn't have the same influence. It was the music that did it"
Indeed, I'm sure most Americans don't even give it a second thought, but a huge piece of our collective being, is rooted in music that descended from Africa.
Kevin Spacey said the same thing in an interview about filming Beyond the Sea in Germany. In the nightclub scenes, when the German extras were told to clap along to the jazz stylings of Bobby Darin, they did it on the 1-3 instead of the 2-4, and it took the AD forever to get them to do it correctly.
Blog comment threads have caused me to laugh out loud before, and to openly weep, but never before have they caused me to sing "When the Saints Go Marching In" under my breath while attempting incorrectly syncopated clapping. Bravo.
Yeah, I'm doing it too. It feels so wrong!
Agreed that this is cool. "It's got a back beat, you can't lose it." said Chuck Berry, and sure enough, the Beach Boys could hang on to that 2-4. I have old folks in the family who like to listen to a polka show on public television. What totally different vibes.
Also the McFerrin thing is really cool. What a blissful guy.
Your comment reminded me a a post I read a while back- There's a really cool vid after the link of Bobby McFerrin showing how people almost intrinsiclly know and follow the pentatonic scale. In the comments I think folks figured out it would never work in say china. Check it out.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/07/28/playing-the-audience-like-a-xylophone/
I don't think I really grokked this until living in California for five years made it obvious, but it's true: as a smart-ass white boy from Alabama, I have way way WAY more in common with any randomly selected black person from Alabama than I do with any randomly selected white person in California. There are huge blocks of religion, cuisine, family relations, tons of stuff - plus the absence of other things, like a statistically significant influence from Mexico or China or the possibility of being over two generations removed from an agrarian heritage or any sort of significant pro football presence - that should make it obvious that in the South, there is a regional component to identity - so much so that while racial identity is inescapable in Southern-ness, there is also an aspect of being Southern that incorporates so much of what the rest of the country might think of as "black" that it may almost be considered aracial (Did I just make up a word there?) in the actual analysis.
I can offer nothing by way of proof except to say that the only guys I have hit it off with since moving here are almost all black with roots in Louisiana. It's anecdote, not data, but take it for what it's worth.
wow, was that actual Sullivan?
color me shocked.
no less than Dr. Condoleeza Rice called us a 'Founding Population', Coates. she often let gems like this slip to make it obvious that she was not without a clue.
also that slavery and racism were in the DNA of this country.
DNA, Coates.
that's sorta deep.
which is why I have no tolerance or patience for mofos who would ever think about challenging Black folks' patriotism.
what the hell do you think a patriot is...
is it waving a flag blindly...
or is it finding a reason to support a country and its IDEALS, even after, on its books, it BEGAN a country with calling you 3/5ths of a human being and then worked from there.
I've said this many times and will say it again - I believe Black folks are the TRUEST Americans, because we have fought FOR this country to live up to its ideals, and I don't mean on the battlefield. that is OUR legacy to America, and no racist like Buchanan will take it away...
I've said this many times and will say it again - I believe Black folks are the TRUEST Americans, because we have fought FOR this country to live up to its ideals, and I don't mean on the battlefield. that is OUR legacy to America, and no racist like Buchanan will take it away...
Oh barf. What a bunch of maudlin drivel. You attack likes of Pat Buchanan - and rightly so - for their racist jingoism, but then you turn around and proclaim that members of your race are the TRUEST Americans. What an insult to anyone, black or white, who actually laid down their lives for this country! Get off your high horse.
Was that really necessary?
I don't know if the tone of the post was necessary, but I do agree that calling any group of people, especially a race of people, the truest Americans is kind of silly. A whole race of people are the truest Americans? Regardless if it is Pat Buchanan saying it, or a commenter on TNC's blog, I find it to be wrong.
Seriously. Rikryah didn't even use my favorite phrase about Crispus Attucks being the FIRST AMERICAN to DIE in the REVOLUTION.
Which is amazing, because she must have a macro for that sucker by now.
This is a frustrating case of one subtle way of thinking about things slamming into a cruder one: not you in particular, but the entire subthread about "truer Americans." The observation that Sully made that we're riffing off of is about the origins of what we could call the American national character, and identifying it as being deeply about African and European immigrations and diaspora. It isn't about who is a "true American." I do not believe that the Samoan influence in American history is very significant, and that very little about "America" as a cultural entity has roots in Samoa. Nonetheless, a Samoan family creating a life for themselves in America are as "true" Americans as any other. It's orthogonal to the topic at hand.
Well, I would agree with this mostly, however, others have also fought so that the country would live up to its ideals, even some who had nothing material to gain and much to lose from the fight. But if the measure of patriotism is the depth of service and loyalty in the face of rejection and intolerance, I would agree, there are few who could be called truer patriots than the descendents of slaves.
Speaking of John Derbyshire, I read something interesting about him on another blog the other day: He was in a Bruce Lee movie. The blogger linked to this essay by Derbyshire about it, Thug, Uncredited. Apparently, Derbyshire was hanging out in Hong Kong in the early 1970s, when the casting director for a Kung Fu movie picked him to be part of a group of shifty-looking Westerners. I liked this:
Pat Buchanan, sad sack that he is, makes gobs of money and, for that money, all he has to do is spout what he thinks... Despite this, despite what has to be the cushiest, plushest, sweetest and no-sweat gig since the invention of work, the loser still thinks his life peaked in 1972 with Richard fuckin Nixons administration. That's the high point of his life.... the rest has been downhill, despite the physical, emotional and material comfort he now enjoys.
Sad as this is, and it immeasurably so, sadder still is the reactions people go in wanting to either outright deny Buchanan or justify the counterarguments... without really seeing that the counterargument to sad and immoral reasoning isn't necessarilly happy, or sane. The psychiatrist doesn't argue with the psychosis.
One of the funniest scenes in the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" occurs right after the slave girl, Eliza, makes her escape... The overseer to her erstwhile master, Mr Shelby, "enlists" two other slaves to search for her. The two slaves, and the overseer, all on horseback, rested and well fed, fail to even come close to catching Eliza, not because of what Eliza does, but because of the subterfuge and wiles of the two slaves leading the overseer in circles. Here's the thing, tho'... the overseer goes willingly!! He willfully believes that the slaves know where they're going and trusts implicitly in their willingness to help him. It's a clever inversion of the master/slave relationship and one in which the implicit trust in captive persons is placed above reason and common sense. From the point of view of the overseer, of course, no good comes of it. From the point of view of the slaves, the overseer is confounded and Eliza escapes.
This is inverted now, and instead this peculiar little man, Buchanan, who would be the overseer, with no other goal than to confound and subvert progress does little else other than confound and subvert progress, quite handily. Sigh. Andrew Sullivan spends more time thinking about Pat Buchanan and what he means for America than any three people ought to. Pat Buchanan is America circa 1972. Come back to 2009, Sully. It's nice here.
To be perfectly frank, too much time is spent defending worth from racism, as though we're not quite certain whether they have a point or no, that ends up in pointless navel-gazing and goes no where.
The proof of this, as if any more is needed, lies in the distinct sameness of response to that outright racism like Pat Buchanan and insidious baiting like that performed by Rush Limbaugh, and others. Pat Buchanan, no doubt, is a stone racist, but, as I've been at pains to point out, he's stuck in 1972 and ain't ever gonna get much further. Rush Limbaugh is an entirely different beast: he's not an immoral racist who has simply corrupted some principles for which he's willing to fight. No, far meaner and insidious: he's an amoral and opportunistic sadist. His self worth lies in hurting other people and he don't particularly think black people are any less deserving than anybody who isn't Rush Limbaugh. He don't care what he calls you, just so long as it hurts.
Yet the response to both Buchanan and Limbaugh is pretty much of a sameness: woe and handwringing and soulsearching, and defense of black people, and denouncing, again, racism and searching for bona fides in your actions and your words. How abouts we grow some spine and just be good, instead of worrying about looking good? What's wrong with just turning around and saying Buchanan is an insufferable old throwback and Limbaugh is a sadist? Or, better yet, just shut up and let them be insufferable pricks, without letting them, in any way, affect our truest selves. Why isn't that enough? As I see it, that was enough for Jesus, Ghandi and MLK.... Why isn't it enough for us?
I look at Buchanan's writing and I see weak love: that strain of affection that sees the beloved as static and pure. The lover who says, "don't ever change." And when the lover does change, when she grows old, finds a new hobby, makes a new friend, or changes her opinion, the lover, he says, "I'm losing her." It's the new phrasing of "love it or leave it."
I look at my wife, a product of the James river TNC toured this summer, how she has been affected by being both in the capital of the confederacy and where the stew of American culture is strong. I see how she has been changed by it, how she has changed me and I her, how our happy and unhappy circumstances have altered our relationship's trajectory, and I think, this is adult love: sometimes inconvenient, sometimes maddening, always fulfilling, and a hell of a lot more powerful.
Daniel, beautifully said. Thank you.
Sullivan's piece reminded me of the time I gave my dad Gates's "Colored People" to read. Dad was white and from rural Kansas. I asked him what he thought and he told me, "I never knew that their picnics were just like ours..."
Ta-Nehisi, I just discovered your blog (thanks Rachel) and I am so glad I did.
I thought I would comment on this piece - as a white girl not raised anywhere in particular, except maybe west Texas, due to the fact that my father was in the Army for my entire childhood. I was not raised to view anyone by their skin color or any other characteristic, except their character.
Now, before you say "yeah right", consider this - my parents redacted words out of Mother Goose that they thought were racist. (I never understood why there were black lines where words should be.) I can't say I recall much about the racial or ethnic makeup of my parents' friends, because it was not something we conciously realized. I know it was a very diverse group. (The military is good for that.) I've raised my own daughter the same way, minus the black Sharpie. (We talked about those words instead.)
Something occurred to me recently that came as a surprise. I realized that at times, I have wished I could be black. Mostly because - as other posters have pointed out - white people just don't have much of an identity, a culture or a community. As a result they don't seem to express much concern for others. Somehow, being black just seems to make people more real. More human.
Just my 2 cents, for what it's worth. Have at me if you must!