Let's Talk about Race, Baby

So a co-worker and I have been having fly-by book conversations for the last few months, starting from when she spied my lunch time entertainment "The Children of Hurin" by JR Tolkien. Later she saw me pouring over the last Harry Potter and these two titles convinced her that we might have similar reading interests. I was suspicious, because I had yet to notice certain tell-tale affinities in her that I usually notice in my fellow book fan buddies. But taking it in stride, I agreed to read a couple of her suggestions and even gave her two of my own for our respective upcoming plane rides.

Neither of the books she gave me inspired immediate response, so after I tore through three library books on my vacation last week I finally decided to read the one she gave me with the most renown....."East of Eden" by John Steinback. It is well written but the first several pages are so full of descriptive nature prose that I kept throwing the book down in impatience. I then realized I hate descriptive prose about nature. It bores me. But that's just me.

But the image of her asking me if I had read either book kept popping into my head and though I imagined she would not be too offended if I told her I couldn't get into it, I managed to perservere enough into the story...

I came to not one but several places in the story where they talk about black people very casually using the N word. One character, a brothel owner, is referred to simply as the 'N' and she possesses a steel sexuality that he talks about in a poetic way. It goes on for most of a short prose-y descriptive chapter. And by the time I am done with the chapter I feel really offended and angry at the person who gave this book to me telling me how it was her favorite favorite book in the whole world.

Now I am not beyond recognizing good literature in spite of history. But a part of me wants her to REMEMBER that that was in the book and REMEMBER that that is my biological history and at the very least, call it out for what it was. It makes me wonder however briefly, what white people internally feel and think when they come across stuff like that. Do they recognize themselves in the literature, do they feel horror, are they alienated from the writer as I am? I seriously doubt it. But I learned last night that I am supposed to suspend my suspicion, be grateful and forgiving.

In a discussion last night, a friend was expressing her difficulty with maintaining good feeling toward members of society who make racially insensitive or ignorant comments in her presence. Our mentor had been reading to us quotes from the "Advent of Divine Justice" and another person in our group said he, as a Persian, could identify with her black experience and for a moment it felt heated in the discussions about the differences in those two historical experiences and their subsequent impact on the groups of people involved.

But it got me thinking about how much we need to talk about it, keep talking about it. A few months ago an acquaintance of mine joyously pronounced how wonderful her mother was for not being afraid to speak to a black person. When I mentioned my issue with this, I was told that in that particular ethnic group, this was a huge accomplishment.

Back to the book, I wondered what I could possibly communicate to my co-worker that impresses upon her how it feels to read something like that without getting her defensive, which accomplishes no feat......I thought about what it might feel like if we lived in a world where prostitution was so taboo, it had been banned on an international scale for over 200 years and completely and utterly frowned upon not just in public, like it is now, but in private too. If women finally reached a status where we were universally viewed as equally valuable citizens whose purpose is ever so much more than a tool for man's sexual 'needs'. And yeah, then I could tell her that it's like reading a book where prostitution is the norm and some man gives it to you raving and you wonder and think and suspect that the man who gave it to you takes no issue with the inequality of description. And you fear, too, that if you brought it up the man would laud the ART of the book and the talent, and excuse the language as a function of the past, not worth talking about at all because after all we did BAN it long ago.....

I'm just saying we should talk about it. That's all. Even if it feels like nails on a chalkboard sometimes.