Realizations: Part I

Realizations: Part I  

I’m not a racist. Really, I’m not. I don’t care what colour someone’s skin is or where they were born. When I was kid, one of my very best friends was a black kid, Curtis. He was just black and that’s how I described him, like how we both described another friend we had as a red head kid because he had red hair.

My mom had a bit of a conniption when I brought Curtis home that first time. She knew a friend of mine was coming over, but she didn’t figure he was black. There weren’t many black folks in my neighborhood where I grew up. She probably didn’t ever see a black person until she was married back in the fifties, had kids, and moved away from the hick farming community she grew up in. I think she was afraid of black people, you know, because of all the stereotypes, because you only hear about the negative stories and have nothing else to base your perception on.

But that wasn’t my experience. This guy was one of my best friends. We genuinely liked each other and hung out together almost every day.

I remember there was this one time the red head kid and I went to his house, Curtis’s. Curtis was watching TV when we showed up and rang the bell. When he came to the door, Curtis that is, he was mimicking a TV commercial – I guess it was on when we rang the bell – and he said something like, “How can I remove all of these ugly brown patches?” I knew the commercial he was imitating; it was for some kind of skin cream or something, something that was supposed to hide age spots or freckles. The red head kid and I looked at each other and then burst out laughing. Man, that was funny! A black kid talking about using a skin cream to remove brown patches. At first, he didn’t know what we were laughing at, but then it clicked. It was like a light switch went off in his head or something and he got really mad at us. I thought he did it on purpose like a joke or something, but he didn’t. I don’t why he’d said it if he wasn’t trying to be funny. He slammed the door on us. He was our friend and all and so we opened the door and walked in. We apologized for laughing at him, even though we didn’t really laugh at him but at what he said. It was all cool in a couple of minutes and we put on some music or something and just hung out.

I’d never forgotten that, though. I guess that was my first experience of racism and I was the one being racist. How do you like that? The first time I ever noticed racism and I was the guy who did it. How screwed up is that? It’s not like I did it on purpose, though. It was something he said and all I did was laugh. I guess he thought I was laughing at him, but I actually laughed at what he’d said. He’s dead now. Killed himself about ten years later. I was really, really sad when he died. It was like part of me died with him. I never had a friend of mine die before. I had lost touch with him by then and hadn’t seen him in a while. But to this day I feel real badly about that time we laughed at him, the red head kid and me.

A few years later I volunteered to do some service work in a third world country. It was something I’d wanted to do for a while. This wasn’t one of those spend-a-few-weeks-with-poor-people-to-say-I-did-something-good-with-my-life experiences. I stayed for almost two years. I liked it, most of it anyway. Honesty, I’m not sure how much good I did by the end of it all. The people there were black and really poor. They drove me crazy sometimes, but not because they were black. It was because they were different than me, culturally. I just couldn’t appreciate it at first. And they were so damn poor. Sometimes I couldn’t stand them just because they were poor. Can you believe that? Disliking someone just because they’re poor? But that’s how I felt, at least at first. I realize now that it wasn’t because they were poor. It was because they were so goddam different. After a while I got used to it and it didn’t bother me, like I just grew up privileged and they didn’t have the same chances I did. My point is that I didn’t mind being around them most of the time, So I don’t think I’m racist.

Referring to them as them seems wrong. Like there’s me and there’s them, you know? Me and them. Us and them. (As if everybody reading this is white.) I guess maybe I sound racist because of that, because I refer to black people as them. But I don’t care if they call me and other white people them. You’ve got to be so careful nowadays about how to refer to people. Everyone gets so offended so easily. If you ask me, I think getting offended is good. It’s healthy. It means that people feel free enough to express their honest feelings and, let’s face it, if we’re honest one hundred percent of the time – you know what I mean, like perfectly honest, no white lies or anything like that – if we’re honest all the time then we’re bound to piss off a lot of people. I don’t think I get offended easily, though. I mean, a lot of people piss me off sometimes, but they don’t offend me. It’s more about inconveniencing me; I get mad when people are selfish to the point of inconveniencing me, like they’re better than me or something.

Another time, back when I was a kid, one of my brothers teased me about a girl I told him was cute. I was in third grade at the time and she was in my class. My brother was razzing me about her being my girlfriend. He was a jerk like that, always trying to embarrass me or something. I hated it. Anyway, I described her as being half Indian and half normal. You see, the place I grew up was next to an Indian reservation. It wasn’t like the reservations that you see in movies and stuff. This one felt a lot like the neighborhood I lived in, except that there were thick woods between where I lived and the reservation. Anyway, after I described her that way to my brother, he laughed when I said she was half normal. I didn’t mean anything by it. To me, white was normal and anyone who wasn’t white wasn’t normal. The thing is, she was white. I mean, she looked a bit tanned, but you could drop her in the middle of Europe and you wouldn’t think she wasn’t white. Her complexion wasn’t any different than mine. But, you see, I knew she was Indian. And it’s not that normal is good and anything else is bad, or anything like that. I thought she was great, and she was real cute. What do third graders know about girlfriends anyhow?

There were a lot of Indians in my high school, you know Native Americans, not East Indians. I was good friends with a lot of them. Some people where I lived were afraid to go to the reserve, but I wasn’t. It might have looked a bit different, I guess. There were no street signs, for one. You kind of had to know where you were going. But even if you didn’t, all you had to do was ask someone where so-and-so lived. Everyone there knew everyone else. To me they were always ‘Indians’ and that was okay because that’s how they referred to themselves. Now, though, you’d never guess it. In Canada, where I grew up, they went from being called Indians to Natives to Aboriginal to First Nations and now to Indigenous. I remember thinking about calling them First Nations. “Who are the Second Nations, then?” I wondered. Seriously, though, who is it? Is it me? My ancestors first came here about five hundred years ago. When will I get to be called native? For all anyone today can tell, five hundred years might as well be ten thousand, or whenever the first people migrated to the Americas.

When I was in elementary school, we’d stand up and sing O Canada and I’d say the words, “Our home and native land.” I figured back then that Canada was my native land. At some point it occurred to me that I can’t call myself a native Canadian because, you know, I’m not an Indian or First Nations or Indigenous. If I’m not a native Canadian, I thought, then what am I a native of. Everyone comes from somewhere, and isn’t that where they’re native?

I have nothing against First Nations – I like using the term First Nations because it implies that they were here first – no one can argue about that – and it implies that there could be others. Scientists say that the first migrations were from Asia about ten thousand years ago – Paleo-Indians they call them. About five thousand years later, the Paleo-Inuit migrated to North America. I suppose that makes them Second Nations, but that’s not a thing. Five hundred years ago Europeans migrated here, making us Third Nations, I guess? But that’s not a thing, either. My point is that all our ancestors are migrants, right?

When I was a kid, I enjoyed learning about Indian culture and history. I have an affinity towards Mohawk culture and Iroquois nations because they’re the Indians I grew up with. I hope using the term Indian doesn’t offend you. It’s what I grew up with and old habits die hard, I guess. I always thought it was strange the way First Nations people here are called Indian and then we use East-Indians to refer to, well, East-Indians. Anyway, the reservation next to where I grew up had a Pow-wow every year. It was a big celebration of Mohawk culture that they invited non-Indians to and I liked going to it. They’d be in their traditional dress, chant, and beat skin drums. They’d sell crafts and stuff. There’s a store on the reserve that sells Indian arts and crafts. For as long as I can remember, when I was a kid, that is, every Christmas I’d get a pair of moccasins from that store, you know, to use as slippers or instead of sandals outside. I’d wear through them by the next Christmas because I wore them so much and would need a new pair each year. It stopped when I got older and moved out of my folks’ house.

In high school, there was this one Indian girl I thought was beautiful, like jaw-dropping gorgeous. But there was this unwritten rule that white guys (and black, too, I guess) don’t go out with Indian girls. This girl was going out with a big, mean looking guy, an Indian, and I just stayed away from her. He probably wasn’t mean, he was probably a nice guy if you got to know him, but I just stayed away from him and his girlfriend. One time I was kidding around in gym class. There were a few Indian guys in that class with me. Anyway, I was kidding around and one of the Indian guys, a really nice guy that I liked, was the butt of a joke I made, like friendly teasing because he was a bit goofy. I didn’t think I was being mean or poking fun at him in a mean way and it had nothing to do with the guy being Indian. I would have said the same thing about any of my white or black friends. Anyway, the big, mean looking Indian waited for me in the hall after gym class. He warned me in the locker room that he’d be there in the hall. In my high school, running away from a fight was the worst thing a guy could do, so I walked out and just figured I get beat up. I just knew I had to face him or it would only get worse. There we were in the hallway standing face to face. I remember being scared, and then a girl, an Indian girl, told him to leave me alone because I was smaller than him, that it wouldn’t be a fair fight. I can’t remember what he said, but he ended up walking away. That was the end of it.

The way I see it, we’re all immigrants. My European ancestors came to North America because life sucked where they were and they hoped for something better. I don’t think it was any different for the Proto-Indians I wrote about earlier. Why else would a large group of people hike across an ice bridge from Asia to North America unless things sucked over in Asia.

In the city I live in now there are a lot of immigrants. I mean a lot of immigrants. They don’t bother me because they’re immigrants. They bother me because of the things they do. There’s Asians and Indians – from India, not, you know, North American Indians. Anyway, the immigrants, especially the Arab ones, woman mostly, don’t know how to drive properly. They drive me crazy. Asians are bad drivers, too, both the men and the woman. I think the ones born here or raised here from a young age are okay, but the ones who immigrated…. Man, they drive badly. I don’t know what it is. Maybe they’re nervous or something, but then they just shouldn’t drive. Take the bus or something.

And then there’s my neighbour who’s Middle-Eastern and always looking to give me advice about my lawn or work I’m doing around the house. Once I was putting brick down on my driveway, you know, interlocking bricks, and he walks over to me to tell me that I dug too much for the gravel base, that I didn’t have to dig down so far. He points to his driveway that he widened a few years earlier and says that he only dug down four inches and that’s all I needed to do. Now there were bare spots on it and weeds sticking up through the bed. It looked especially bad because the rest of his lawn was immaculate. He spends hours every week, almost every day picking weeds, watering, putting new plants in. It looks great, but he’s the type of guy who thinks he’s better than everyone else because his lawn is perfect. You know the type? And he thinks he knows better than everyone else. And get this, when I get to the point of laying bricks down, he walks over and tells me I’m doing it wrong. “I do all my own work,” he says, “and if I don’t know how to do something, I watch YouTube and learn how to do it.” Can you believe that? YouTube, or like U Tube, the University of Tube. That’s too funny.

Anyway, this guy’s telling me how wrong my way of doing it is. I’m getting kind of pissed off about it and I’m about to point to his patch of driveway with weeds poking out and tell him, “Because I don’t want it to look like shit,” when his wife walks over. Her head was all covered like they do, Muslim women, that is. She never went out without her head covered, but their daughters did and one of them was almost grown up. I guess they weren’t super strict about it. So, I couldn’t tell him that his driveway looked like shit in front of his wife. I think she knew he was being annoying because she kept telling him that he needed to drive her somewhere. She said it in English, too, because I was there. You see, that’s respectful. She knew I didn’t speak Arabic so she said what she had to say in English, even though they usually speak Arabic together. I know because I’d overheard them many times. She was real polite about it. She even told him to stop being a know-it-all, or at least she told him something like that even if not those exact words. But he was the type to not care and to just speak his language in front of someone who couldn’t understand it as though he wasn’t even there. It’s just rude, you know?

That’s the kind of thing that makes me seem like a racist and I can’t stand it, seeming like I’m a racist, I mean. These people – just saying things like these people is enough to make me think I’m a shitty person – they come here to Canada from a place they chose to leave – they chose to leave, right? Like I can’t over-emphasize that point – they chose to leave their home and family and everything they’re used to, not like refugees or something, but like this guy who says he and his wife were engineers wherever it was they came from. Anyway, these people leave everything they know, friends, family, work and all that, to come to Canada. They’re welcome here – honestly, I feel that way – but why do they have to be uncourteous? Speak English. It’s one thing if you’re a tourist and aren’t planning to move here, but if you choose to live here, at least speak English or whatever language it is where you live when you’re out and others are around you.

I’m not a racist, but can you understand why this kind of stuff bothers me? I haven’t travelled a whole lot, not as much as others, anyway, but I went to Spain once and I had a great time. I went wherever I felt like going and there was this one monastery I drove by and I stopped to have a closer look at it. It wasn’t a tourist spot, but it looked kind of cool and the gate was wide open, so I drove through the big archway. I realized that it must have been there for hundreds of years, and I envisioned horse-drawn carriages going through the same archway long ago. Anyway, I drove through, parked my car, and wandered around the courtyard a bit. After a few minutes this guy walks out and walks up to me. He said something to me in Spanish that I didn’t understand – I didn’t know much Spanish at all.

“No hablo español,” I told him. “Hablo Inglés?” I had no idea if that was grammatically correct or anything or even if Inglés meant English, but he understood what I was asking.

“No,” he said. At least I understood that.

“Hablo francés?” I asked, hoping that was the word for French. It was, but I have no idea where I pulled that one from, some recess in my mind, I guess.

“Si, si,” and he kept nodding his head.

We spoke for about ten minutes, me speaking Canadian French and trying my best to pronounce things the way he would have been used to and him speaking broken French with a Spanish accent, throwing in Spanish words here and there. But we could understand each other well enough. The monastery was more than three hundred years old and had gardens inside. They had olive orchards and pressed their own olive oil right there. I asked him if I could have a tour and he said they weren’t allowed to have visitors, so I thanked him and then left.

The point is that I was a visitor to his country and I owed him the respect to at least try to speak something he could understand. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone to expect that kind of courtesy in his own country, and that’s why I think my neighbour should speak English when he’s talking near people who don’t speak Arabic. I don’t think that makes me a racist.

I had lunch last week with a guy I work with, a black guy, only he wasn’t just black. His mother’s white and his dad’s black and he, the guy I work with, he identifies as black. It never made sense to me, honestly, how almost categorically people of mixed race, with white being one of the mix, identify with the non-white race more than they do with white. I mean, I know that it’s because of whites and our history of racism where anyone who didn’t appear to be completely white couldn’t be considered white. I’m just saying that it never made sense to me.

Anyway, this guy I work with, we’re having lunch in the lounge and we’re talking a little bit about race. So, I tell him that I got a DNA test done, the kind where they look at your racial ancestry. I was ready for anything to come of it, because at the end of day it didn’t really matter to me. I was just curious.

“Turns out,” I told him, “that I’m about as white as it gets.”

He laughed. “No surprise there.” I laughed back at him.

“No, I guess not.” I explained to him that the results of the test placed most, like nearly one hundred percent of my ancestry in Europe, mostly Northern and Western Europe with some in the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and Portugal are today. There was a real small percentage of Sub-Saharan African, I mean real small, like point three percent or something. “Hell,” I said, “I think I’m more Neanderthal than I am black.”

“That would have been my guess, too!” he answered back with a guffaw, loud enough for a couple of heads to turn our way. “You and every other white guy out there.”

I smiled and shot back, “Hey, that’s crackers to you. Show some respect.”

But, yeah, I have more Neanderthal in me – about four percent, in fact – than I do African, and Africa’s where all our ancestors came from. How strange is that?