SEGREGATION
i was going to take time and come up with a carefully worded and well-reasoned (you know me! wink) blog post about this, but i really can't wait:
the segregation in grand rapids is really starting to wear on me. along with potholes and an impossibly shitty economy, it makes me want to move. i realized recently that the ymca is really the only place i go where there is any significant degree of racial/ethnic and socio-economic diversity. oh and possibly the library.
i am really getting sick of this shit. i really don't want to have to start applying some kind of affirmative action to my social life, but i think i'm going to have to. i'm just getting so tired. i'm tired of strangers touching my hair, i'm tired of being a novelty (particularly for men)... mostly, though i'm tired of finding myself in socially awkward situations/teachable moments because of the ignorance of my white friends and co-workers.
i know what you're gonna say: you should bring the diversity, be the change you want to see... well, i'm sorry, but fuck that. this may make me a small person, but i don't want to be anyone's teacher. we're not talking about children from zeeland asking "why are you brown?", we're talking about people in their 20s with graduate degrees who i think should know better managing to embarass me in public -- usually with ill-conceived "humour" or trying to prove how "down with the people" they are.
here's a hint: if there's only one black person present, they may not want to hear you:
a) joke about "black people time", "jungle fever", or soul food
b) talk about how you're the "blackest white person" they'll ever meet*
c) present uninformed and/or non-academic opinions on the legacy of slavery
d) quote chris rock or chapelle's show
i didn't really think this would bother me this much. i grew up in a white neighborhood. i even like casseroles. the thing is, in a predominantly white area, you kind of expect to be misunderstood. you expect a certain degree of ignorance since you probably are the first real live black or hispanic person your neighbor has ever met. but you'd think that in a city that statistically speaking is fairly diverse, there would be more understanding. not so. still pretty many of my close friends, past boyfriends, and current coworkers have managed to make me feel alienated, embarassed, or put on the spot.
i really don't mean to offend anyone with this post, but the situation is really starting to piss my shit right off.
Comments
*rest assured. if you are the blackest white person they've ever met, THEY WILL ALREADY KNOW.
Posted by: sally | March 4, 2008 1:47 AM
Sally,
I always appreciate your thoughts on sticky issues.
I've been thinking about this kind of thing lately, partly because I just saw a really great movie called Medicine for Melancholy, which is about to premiere at SXSW next week. It's an indie love story, but it also deals with race, diversity, and gentrification in interesting ways. I just interviewed the director over the phone, and it was a really good conversation. It made me realize that I very rarely have conversations with compelling black artists about what they're doing. Actually, I don't have conversations with black people very often at all. Which is certainly not something I'm consciously doing, but regardless, it's a reality. So why is that? Is it this city? Is it me? These questions are confusing, and frankly, I get exhausted by them.
What this movie did, which was so fresh to me, was it brought up these difficult issues in an encouraging and compelling way. It made me want to question myself and my biases, without feeling guilty, which tends to shut down the dialog.
Anyway, I know no one else has seen this movie yet, so I guess that's not really the point. But in a way, I think this post is doing a similar thing. I can't explain why your white friends embarrass you. But I do think that honestly expressing your frustration is a great way to get a dialog going.
Maybe we should watch Medicine for Melancholy at NEST sometime....
Posted by: kevinb | March 4, 2008 11:07 AM
here's a link to the trailer of Medicine for Melancholy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFHWGvDRKYw
Posted by: kevinb | March 4, 2008 12:04 PM
The situation in the city is inexcusable as far as segregation.
It is the worst quality of Grand Rapids. It even extends beyond race, although race is by far the greatest dividing line.
Posted by: outobol | March 5, 2008 3:34 AM
Your blog on de facto segregation in West Michigan (I'd argue the Midwest as a whole) is astute and powerful. While the Midwest never had de jure segregation as the south, it had (still has) a more insidious segregation by economic, read racial, boundaries. Case in point, the crapstorms and court cases that arose in the D and other areas as the issue of bussing students around to promote diversity in elementary schools. Instead, we let our city schools fall apart and wring our hands at falling test scores and the widening income gaps. We (whites, G-Rapidians, Midwesterners) have to recognize our ignorance -- I admit that my upbringing was white bread as it comes -- and a degree, I've found, does not equal consciousness.
I guess I'm saying that I hear what you're saying, though I know I can't fully understand -- what it is to experience this as you...
Posted by: nateinkzoo | March 7, 2008 2:03 PM
Thanks, Sally, for posting my bit from our conversation.
An addendum to the point about de jure vs. de facto segregation -- that arose particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. The refrain that went around is that segregation only existed in the south -- but in the north it was economic and zoning restrictions. Poverty was focused in the projects in places like NY and Chicago and other urban centers, or home prices were allowed to fall in areas such as the West Side of GR to concentrate the poor there.
Then look to places like Ada where the average lot size is somewhere around an acre. Where urban land use policies try for concentration, suburban policies do exactly the opposite to price the poor out of living in the "nice" areas. There is no doubt a racial component to this -- I've seen it enacted time and time again in planning commission meetings. If you want to see where this is enacted, it's right in the open. Wait for a multi family unit to go into a place such as Walker or Ada and see the crap fly. Very quickly the conversation goes "we don't want 'Those people' to move in." "Those people" being the poor, indigent, mentally ill, and frequently nonwhite. As areas such as the West Side and Heartside become gentrified, I question where "those people" are supposed to go. Then it becomes an issue of blaming the victims of poverty -- like a true Calvinist (not you, I'm just speaking of the idea of predestination). They're poor because God doesn't care for them, not that the cards are stacked against the poor, women, and nonwhites. Seriously, Nickle and Dimed needs to be on the reading list of every civics class in America.
Sorry to vent, but it's things like this that drive me crazy (and away from ever wanting to live in West Michigan).
Posted by: nateinkzoo | March 7, 2008 3:19 PM