Light-skinned-ed Girl

This is My Brother

. . . and I'm proud of him. 

Read this Willamette Week article about my brother's boycott of the Alibi, a Portland karaoke bar.  A few weeks ago, he was asked to leave (for then unspecified reasons) and since then he's protested in front of the bar daily to end the bar's policy of discrimination in public accommodations. 

The article mentions the fact that my brother is in recovery from Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, "a condition that blisters skin and organ coverings."  What it doesn't explain is that this syndrome (caused by an antibiotic allergy) makes a person's skin slough off in sheets (like a burn victim) and the cells on all of your organs slough off as well.  My brother was in the hospital for months because of this -- we didn't know whether he would survive.  Amazingly, he did.  And he's approached his life with a new vigor since: he's had to deal with many illnesses through the years but he's determined to make the most of his life.  That means going out, meeting people--being among people.  I applaud that.

I hope you'll read the article and leave a sensible and sensitive comment.  His protest and his desire (indeed his insistence) to live out loud is no joke!

...the N-word: Unjustly Put to Rest?

Author David Bradley, (The Chaneysville Incident), writes an obituary to the n-word, and praises its name! This is a really powerful and thought-provoking article.

read more | digg story

On the Creative Life

"How many are silenced, because in order to get to their art, they would have to scream?" Ann Clark

"What we can do is be willing to see what we do, what we are, what is around us, and to stake a claim in the marriage of artistic craft to that unflinching and steadfast looking.  We can ask for truth.  We can approach it from every side: above, below, backward.  We can follow our obsessions and images over the course of a lifetime, returning and returning to the body knotted in its hangman's ropes in the sea at the center of our grief."  Jane Hirshfield, "Facing the Lion," Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Setting the Tone of the Discussion

I deleted some comments from my blog today.  As much as I enjoy feedback from readers, I won't let my blog become a forum for those who don't engage in meaningful dialogue.

"Education" as a Substance

I've been having strange and troubling dreams of late some dealing with elephants and other wild animals, and some starring people who are no longer living but who seem so ALIVE in my dreams.  But the scary dreams I have been having are about a former teacher!

In particular the dreams have centered around a New York City acting teacher who believed it was okay for the other (white) students to call me a n---- when we did improvs because it was all for-pretend.  And, oh yes, he didn't want to squelch the aggressive energies of his actors.

I won't go into the particulars of the story, but needless to say, being called a n--- squelched me.  At the end of the school year, I left the conservatory and have had a difficult time getting on stage ever since.  That was ten years ago, and that teacher has been surfacing in my dreams.  I have over the years thought about writing him a letter telling him how much his teaching methodology had harmed me.  But what good would it do?  When I explained it to him then, he didn't--and refused to understand.

I'd like to forgive him.  I'd like to let go.  I'd like to change my dreams and make them peaceful again.  And, if he's reading, share these two quotes:

"People think of good and bad teachers as engaged in the same activity, as if education was a substance, and that bad teachers supply a little of the substance, and good teachers supply a lot.  This makes it difficult to understand that education can be a destructive process, and that bad teachers are wrecking talent, and that good teachers are engaged in opposite activities."  Keith Johnstone, Impro

"I have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can’t suppress true talent. People can be destroyed; they can be bent, distorted, and completely crippled."  Katherine Anne Porter, writer

I am not that crippled artist of whom Katherine Anne Porter speaks.  But I was for too long after studying with that teacher.  I refuse to be again.

Mixed Chick Mom, Real Savvy Mom TV Host Rayme Cornell

Real Savvy Mom TV Host, Rayme Cornell is one of my dearest friends.  Please tune in to her show and check out her blog.  Rayme's a single mother with a delicious three-year-old boy who is making a new life for herself and son in Las Vegas as a university acting teacher.  She's funny and she's got a lot to share!

What's Wrong With This Picture?: N.Y. Hostess Wearing Big Wax Lips

On the New York Times' front page today, you can find a continuation of the "Summer Rituals" series.  Today's article, "A Hamptons Barbecue, Aglow With a Little Star Power", shares the story of an Upper East Side hostess' barbecue with a star guest list including Vera Wang, Pink Floyd and possibly Kelsey Grammar.  Irritated with myself for even reading the fluff piece, I became more irritated when I saw the black and white photo on the inside after the jump.  It is a group shot of the hostess (white) and hostess' daughter (white) (far right) and their guests (from left to right) white, white, of color, and white.  But the hostess and hostess' daughter are sporting large wax lips.  Think Sambo.

From the article I gleaned that the lips had been used as a decoration for the bakery-bought cake.  But I also couldn't figure out how the lips figured into the "theme" of the hostess' party.  "We try to come up with a theme every year, and this year I'm writing prescription labels on little pill bottles," the hostess is quoted as saying. 
"So, like, for Roger Water's I'm writing, 'For treatment of vertigo,' because you know, 'The Wall.'"

Okay, but where do the big Sambo-looking lips fit in?

Let's file the Sambo-looking lips under racially insensitive!  Especially because throughout the article there are references to the family's love for "playing" with "black"  culture.  They have named their Hampton's get-away equipped with a yard, pool and wet bar off the living room "Da Crib."  And the soundtrack to the evening was to be a compilation of hip-hop. 

So tell me, what do you think?  Does this bother you?  And how come all I can think about are the racially-insensitive toys at the Bangkok airport or this offensive chocolate cake in a Buenos Aires bakery when I see this NY Times photo?

The Best of Both Worlds?: Biracial and Getting Flack from Both Sides

This week I've had the "opportunity" to deal with some of the first negative comments on my blog and my weekly Mixed Chicks Chat podcast.  I am certainly interested in dialogue.  Still, the comments this week that I received from both "sides" of the spectrum questioned my "permission" to talk about biracial idenity at all.

This comment appeared in reponse to an introduction about Mixed Chicks Chat on the Honey Magazine website.

"The fact that there is a site just for mixed ppl (as if there not black) tells me how they really feel about regular black folks. do they not want to be black? Do they think that they are better because they have european blood in them? they better get over that shit real quick, because black people embrace them more than ANYONE on the face of the planet. yea, u got some black ppl who say ignorant things (”not black enough, etc”)but o well. Remember the one drop rule. as soon as you mixed folks do somethin that whitey don’t like– ur out! back to nigger status. who u gonna run to then? i’m not sayin hate white folks, but i’m saying embrace ( seriously ) ur african people too. we will always be here for you. i promise. can they?… "

The next comment appears here on my blog in response to the biracial tennis prodigy post:

"he has good foot work, but i might have waited a few years before coughing up the family scholarship. anyway this whole blog is an absurd exercize in navel gazing. skin tone should not define your existence. maybe there is something more meaningful you could pursue."

First, how did these people find the podcast or the blog?  And two, why did they keep reading once they saw that I was on a different page than they were?

The comments made me reluctant to post all week.  I don't want to be misunderstood, or attacked for the thoughts I share on this blog -- some thoughts which are bedrock beliefs and some thoughts which are sometimes not fully formed, but questions for others and myself.

I'm not interested in responding to the substance of the comments.  Needless, to say, I disagree.  I'll leave it at that.