No "Cain" Do

When Barack Obama became president, a few people told me that they believed it was only because he was black. This kind of hurt my feelings but in fairness, it shouldn’t have because they were all well meaning, respectful opinion givers. Nevertheless, this way of thinking stung for a couple of reasons.

• Reason One: I found Barack Obama to be the smartest, most socially aware and moderate candidate I had ever experienced. I was hard-pressed to find ways that I did not think of him as outstanding. And by this I do not mean outstanding, for a black man.  I mean that he was bone crushing in debates, he demonstrated rather than simply espousing what I consider to be core family values and despite being the number one target on multiple white supremicist hitlists, he was voted into the whitehouse.  Plus, he was a democrat after 8 years of (arguably) polarizing Republican leadership, so if someone really wanted to discount his merits as a candidate, I felt the more honest slight would be to say that he won only because of his party affiliation.

• Reason Two: This way of thinking, that Barack came into his office on the shoulders of all these surprisingly powerful black voters and maybe a cadre of anglo individuals trying to relieve white guilt, seemed not only to begrudge the man of his competency but also to implicitly include me in a group of Americans so mesmerized by the brother’s choclatey skin that I couldn’t see how improper he was to run our great nation. That irked me.

Of course I can’t truly say (any more than anyone else can)  that race was a non-issue when I pulled the lever that said Barack Obama back in 2008.  In fact, I must admit that it was quite a rare and delighful phenomenon to have a man who so intimately seemed to reflect my experience of life.  Barack was biracial and I could hear in his rhetoric that he was infected with the duality of a multiracial makeup which, as I have said before, can cause one not only to consider two sides of the story but to inhabit them both. It seemed to me that Barack could not villainize with the ease of the other candidates, a characteristic that I did chalk up in part to his experience of race and in part to another identity I shared with him—that of traveler—one who has been a stranger in a strange land.  And, I won’t be so naieve as to think that I was wholly unaffected by the more rudimentary prospect of simply having someone who for the first time looked more like my brother than George Washington, but if Mr. Pres got a few votes here and there that were exclusively due to his skin color, I say (completely anecdotely)  they were no more than the number that Senator Mccain got for that very same reason.

But that is all water under the bridge---soooo 2008. Today as we approach 2012 we have a new black candidate in Herman Cain—and I thank God for Herman, because now I can with a clear conscience know that despite his blackness, I would never vote for this man as I understand him currently. We may share some physical characteristics and history—but we don’t share much else. 

I do not find his regressive tax policies to represent my desires,

 I do not find his Palin-esque quips to be charming or informative,

 and it baffles my mind when  candidates like Cain wear their inexperience as a badge of honor.

People cried out at President Obama’s short stint in the Senate before becoming our leader but somehow find it refreshing that Mr. Cain’s background is in Pizza. For me this is paramount to encouraging a pianist to perform surgery. Sure, there is some overlap between the two fields—a need for excellent fine motor skills, calmness under pressure to perform, and often a team of people surrounding you who make your work even better (shout out to my brother Chris who works in the O.R.) . Go ahead, let the pianist consult, compare, commit to aquire more skills that might increase his aptitude for operations, but don't just go handing him a scalpel.  I want the woman who went to medical school to do my lobotomy when the time comes.

And likewise, as a rule, I want a lawyer, judge, congressperson, governor, or equally schooled public servant to run the country--the SMARTER the better I might add.  Yes, Herman Cain has truly done me a solid in his quest for the republican nomination, because though it would in some small way warm my heart to see two minority presidents serving back to back terms in this country. Mr. Cain’s principles do not represent my own  (and I think many of my black and white brothers and sisters are with me on this) and so with relief I can say at least for myself that I do have some capacity to judge not by the color of a man’s skin but by the content of his character.  I hope that is a capacity that each American voter will explore, develop and foster as we see more diversity and redundancy with regard to politics and policy in the good old U.S.A.

But, How Can We Know a Candidate’s Character?

1.       Watch the debates, they are flawed but they are a start. (latest debate below)

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffYucaFkCHY

2.       Check the facts. www.factcheck.org  & www.votesmart.org 

(Revisiting Debate Claims, Reviewing Voting Records, etc)

3.       Read their Stuff (especially pre-candidacy)

4.       Vary Your News Sources.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/     http://www.cnn.com/     http://www.foxnews.com/politics/index.html www.comedycentral.com

5.       Check the Facts Again!

For me the facts add up to a "No Cain Do". You might judge things differently because of, despite of or mostly irrespective of race, but whatever your judgement, please just VOTE RESPONSIBLY!

Immigration Irritation

 “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. ²³ If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry." Exodus 22:21-22

As I listened to the most recent round of debates about immigration, my stomach flipped and flopped almost as much as each of these candidates are sure to with the ever-shifting jubilance and wrath of public opinion. Flippant responses about the fate of millions of people poured forth effortlessly from the mouths of these “public servants.”

When candidate A argued that it is the American Way to provide a path to prosperity for every person who was raised in this great country of ours, candidate B responded thusly:

“The American way is not to give --benefits to people who have broken our laws and are here in the US illegally! --what works is to have people come legally with money in their pockets and a sponsor. They should also have to --learn to speak the English language, [take] American History and [know] our Constitution-- that is the American way.”  The crowd went wild! Nailed It, Senator.

Now, I realize that our debate system leaves something to be desired. Candidates are forced to answer in 30 second sound bites rather than thoughtful, measured or even sincere responses. Still, as voters, we remain accountable for obtaining the necessary and accurate information needed to make decisions about our own governance.

As a social worker at a local Elementary School, I encountered many families who were paperless. These families tended to be extraordinarily hard-working, helpful with school events, loving, self-sacrificing--generally model parents and citizens. So in my naiveté as a new practitioner, I was baffled and bothered by what appeared to be complacence and even indifference from them regarding citizenship. Often there was a language barrier between us in our at times mangled Spanglish communication and this got me thinking that perhaps there was something getting lost in translation for me.  I called up a friend named Sam, an immigration lawyer, and asked if he would be willing to come in and chat with me about the legalization process.

I apologized to Sam for my own ignorance and then promptly showed him evidence of it.  “Listen, I said, “I get that citizenship is arduous to obtain, but I need you to tell me exactly what the steps are so I can help some of these families get started.”  He stared at me for a moment, sighed and proceeded.

“Okay “, he said matter-of-factly, “those steps you are referring to, do not exist.”

I blanched.

“Well, I mean, it’s not quite that simple,” he continued more gingerly.

But, he then went on to explain how there are only a relatively small number of legal slots each year for Mexican immigrants—far fewer than the economic and social demand.  “Even a parent/child sponsorship can take between 14 and 17 years of waiting around in Mexico, and that is one of the simpler paths to citizenship. And, if you don’t already have a sponsor in the US, fuggetaboutit . So, actually your clients are right to just keep obeying the laws and hoping for legislation changes.”

Hmmmm. Had he really just informed me that (practically speaking) , there is no legal immigration process for Mexican families? So, in ten years when my students who are currently third graders become adults, in the only place they have ever known, we will just toss them in the pile with all those other law-breakers who don’t deserve American benefits--easy peezy?  

That just does not suit me.

So, when I hear candidates casually dismissing those unAmerican lawbreakers without any acknowledgement of the issue’s complexity, it gets me thinking about our morality as a country. Lawrence Kohlberg, who is probably the most well-known theorist on moral development, uses Heinz’s Dilemma to help explain how we navigate ethical dilemmas throughout our moral maturational processes.  In the story, Heinz steals a drug from a pharmacist in order to save his dying wife’s life, but only after attempting to reason with the man and offering him a down payment with his entire $1000. This admittedly amounted to only half the pharmacists asking price of $2000, but was still five times more than the$200 the pharmacist needed to make the drug .

Kohlberg identifies six value stages used to evaluate Heinz’s actions from an ethical standpoint.  Those with the most immature moral development often take a simple but clear position, reasoning that anyone found to be disobedient deserves punishment, regardless of the individual’s intention, resources or circumstance.  In this realm of reasoning Heinz can easily be characterized as villainous, after all, he is a lawbreaker.  And so, this is one way that we can assess immigration and characterize immigrants in our country.

Moral progression then continues in the following value stages:

 Self interest

Group Conformity,

Law and Order, and  finally-- for those individuals who seem to demonstrate the most maturity,  

The Right to Life Principle and,

Human Ethics.  

These final two stages acknowledge that acts performed to save a life always trump acts performed to preserve personal property.  In this stage, Heinz is the potential hero in the story—the man who chooses life over law and people over power.

And us? How will we prioritize, people, property and power?  

I do not mean to indicate that every illegal immigrant is heroic or that anyone who casts their lot differently than I do on this issue is somehow morally inferior; nor do I believe that we all should stand on the border singing This Land was Made for You and Me to every bedraggled soul hoping to cross over. I do believe that those of us who purport to be Pro-Life or who clamor on about “family values” have got to consider the moral courage demonstrated by individuals like my client Noemi who left her entire support system, risking jail, abuse and death on her dangerous journey, just so that her babies might have a chance at living with the same education and safety that mine will (only because my enslaved ancestors had the good fortune to be dropped off here in the USA). Noemi will likely never see her mother or sisters again because visiting is too precarious. She’ll never shop at her favorite bazaar or attend services again at the church where she took her first communion. But her children are worth the sacrifice.

It is difficult for many of us who were born and raised in such a prosperous nation to imagine having to make these sorts of ethically challenging decisions.  Further, there is no way to know which decisions we would ultimately make in a scenario that is so foreign to our experience that it seems nearly mythical.  But, as we consider immigration, can’t we agree for ourselves  and demand of our politicians to engage in a more nuanced discussion when we debate the fates of all the Noemi’s in America? Can’t we have a discussion that more accurately reflects our own moral progression as a thoughtful and compassionate country?

My answer? Si se puede!

School Bus Census

Growing up with eyes made it apparent that my father’s relatives were a bunch of white people, while my mom’s family was black. That is how I knew that I was halfsies. Every day of my life, I looked to this chocolatey woman for guidance and this vanillaish man for love and, always a lover of metaphor, I became obsessed with things like oreos, zebras and most especially swirl-cones at fast food restaurants. “Yep”, my little poetic mind would think to itself “that is exactly what I am--I am black and I am white.”

Imagine my surprise when my mother informed me that I was not.  I was telling her about a dilemma at school, whereupon I had been instructed to mark my race on some sort of data form. The categories did not seem to address my swirl-cone situation, so I told my mother that I just marked white. Likely I did this because my father, the white guy, was the only person in my family who seemed completely on-board with having me around. If he was team white, I was team white.

Well, my mother explained matter-of-factly, “you should have marked black”. 

Why? I asked accusingly, I am not black! I am both, so I should get to choose.

If you are black at all, then you have to mark Black, Kerri, she said patiently.

But why, I asked with equal amounts of impatience.

Because, that’s just the way it is.

And if she had left it at that, you can be sure that I would still be going around marking Caucasian on every form known to man. I could be wearing dreadlocks, whilst preparing collard greens in front of a Tyler Perry movie and I would still claim a completely anglo-saxon identity because I have never done well with the flaccidity of “because”. 

But seemingly as an afterthought, my mother continued.

“Anyway, your dad is not white, his father was half black, which makes him black too.  You are not half and half, you are really more black than anything else.”

That made some sense to me and there was no way to argue with the math, but I still felt that another category should be developed to more accurately capture my family dynamic. I think I expressed this intellectual strain by saying something artful like, “that’s stupid.”

Nevertheless, I started marking African American on all my forms. So, I knew just what to do on the school bus that May when one afternoon toward the end of the year, the bus driver pulled over and said that he had to do a count of all the kids and that we should each stand up as our race was called.

 No one seemed to question it much at the time, but looking back, I feel certain that this demographical research could have been completed in a more sensitive fashion. When he called out for black children, I stood up alone, but confident. The bus driver smiled back at me condescendingly.

“Are you sure he asked”.  I suppose I understand his confusion since at the time I looked more like an Italian princess than an African one.” But I stood firm.

Yes I am sure, I said.

Do you think maybe you mean Mexican? Maybe even Chinese? 

No, I am sure, I said stifling an eight-year-old eye-roll.  I am Black.

You know, I don’t have to have this information today. He said gently.  Why don’t you go home and check with your parents?

And as inappropriate as it was, the bus driver was kind of right to do so. My family of origin is black and white. Our composition is 3 men and 3 women. My dad’s side of the family were all ultra-conservative members of the Church of Christ. My mother’s family smoked weed on Saturday night and attended Macedonia Baptist on Sunday Morning.  It should not surprise anyone that the phrase I use most commonly tends to be, “on the other hand”.  Despite being wildly opinionated, I see everything in shades of gray.  And it still bothers me, when we are asked to categorize ourselves in no uncertain terms. 

I hate it at Sonic (I’ll have mustard and mayo, thank you) and at church (one part Armenian, one part Calvinist please), but I most especially hate it at the voting booth. Why do I have to be a democrat or a republican? I can’t be pro-life and anti-death penalty? Because those two things seem pretty compatible to me, but it’s easier if we all just choose a side and stick with it, isn’t it? When will there be a more comprehensive descriptor of my political makeup?

I don’t know if they still do those school-bus-demographic checks anymore. At this point they probably do a retina scan or something which makes sense because honestly, the truth about each of us is so rarely black and white. I think it was Whitman who said that his contradictions came not from small-mindedness but from the grandeur of containing multitudes.

 Unfortunately not everyone gets to be bi-racial, but we can all be “on the other hand” thinkers. We can be bi-lingual, bi-vocational and we can be bi-partisan. Heck we could even create a new box if neither the elephants nor the donkeys tickle our philosophical fancies. In 2012 when it is time to check the boxes that best describe who we are, we must choose honesty over simplicity and the only way we can do that is to pay attention over the next year. Look alive! Listen up! Stand up! Use your voice! Let’s not be less dynamic than we really are because it is easier to push the select all button in the voting booth or because our pals or preachers or parents tell us to. Now is the time to do our research, tune in to our consciences and honor each individual part of ourselves. We might still end up standing on the bus alone, but at least we can do so with integrity.

A Little Help For My Friends:

Cinematic Thoughts From Your Companion of Color

A friend called the other night to hear my opinion on Kathryn Stockton’s, The Help.  He was the third to do so in about a week’s time and everyone said the same thing in the same way. I’d really be interested in your opinion, they confessed, with that funny emphasis on the word your, indicating that I specifically, harbored some coveted perspective. This curiosity for my opinion might be because I am a social worker, and thus have professional interests in race, oppression, and empowerment—all themes which characterize “The Help”.  I am also a writer and bibliophile so maybe it was just my bookishness that made people want to chat. But, most likely it was my blackishness as much as anything else that my friends relied on in response to this new bit of cinematic controversy. I have been proudly enjoying the benefits of bi-raciality for almost thirty years now, and this half-black-and- half-white thing has always allowed me to keenly relate to both the oppressed and the oppressor.

Truthfully, I wanted to know my opinion too, but, unfortunately I had neglected to read the book despite about a million recommendations.  So, this week I had to break my own book before movie rule and get my social-working-book-reading- half-black-self to the theater.  As I watched the film, three questions swirled in my brain from the conversations with each of my friends. I paid attention to every tear I cried and each butterfly that I experienced in my stomach, and afterwards I listened to the crowd to hear their reactions. And after all that, here are my responses:

Question Number One: Did the film make too little of oppression? Did it make being an underpaid, dehumanized maid look too quaint, overly- charming, or darn-right-fun?

In short, my answer is no.  Naturally, in The Help we see maids who love the children they care for and take pride in their perfectly fried chickens and who enjoy a sisterhood with one another because of their shared miseries; but, the film also regularly demonstrates a full spectrum of evil predicated on these families  from simple but unfair hardships, to violence and untimely death.  I was privileged to attend the movie with a woman in her sixties, around my mother’s age who enjoyed the film in a way that I cannot, and though she praised the movie and thought fondly of her own black nanny as she watched, when we left the theater she said quietly to herself, “It was way worse than what they showed in there.”  Visions of my grandmother working at the tables of white women flashed through my mind and I wished she were still here to tell me about it herself.

 “We moved here when I was little,” My older friend continued, “and I don’t think I’ll ever forget being down there on seventh street where they had separate fountains. And I just kept asking why? Just kept thinking of my nanny and wondering why it had to be that way.” 

This was an oppressive time for everyone. If this film needs to atone for any sin (which I don’t believe it does) it is only for having neglected to include a more comprehensive set of discriminatory practices, but certainly not for glorifying the black maid gig in the least.

Question Number Two: Does it leave people thinking, those were the old days and racism is gone?

This concern that the film will leave privileged audiences, thirsty to assuage their own white-guilt  with a “those days are gone” mentality, is a valid one.  Wouldn’t you know, the minute we stepped out of the theater I heard a young woman say sweetly, “Aren’t you glad it’s not like that anymore? I mean, can you even imagine?” And my first answer is yes, I am glad; because, I am deeply thankful for everyone of every color who helped create a world where I, a black woman according to “one drop” standards can sit in a room of college professors as a peer, rather than an ignored, if not invisible, coffee-deliverer.  And even more important to me is this, as the movie finished and I sat there drowning in my own mess of salty tears and streaming snot, the white woman next to me reached into her purse and handed me one of her tissues without so much as a fleeting thought about what negro-disease I might be passing on. I am also tremendously thankful that it has been years now, since someone told me that they would never date or allow their family members to date a black person,--but, it has only been a few years.

                So when someone says to me, “aren’t you glad it’s not like that anymore” my other answer is no.  I am not glad because that statement isn’t all that accurate. It is true that I don’t have to be someone’s servant, and I would never be so disrespectful as to characterize myself in the same vein as those who were.  But, my brothers  and nephews are still more likely to be pulled over by a police officer than those of my white friends, and my cousin Kizziah is less likely than my WASP cousins on the other side of my family to get a job because of her “ethnic” name, and I still have to listen to horrifying jokes, presumptions and categorizations of people of color that silently and steadily keep us in states of brokenness and second tier living ; not to mention what my gay and immigrant friends must experience each day that they remain disregarded, disenfranchised and dishonored . So, I do hope that in watching this film, people will thank God for how things have changed and concurrently beg Him for more to come--and for the strength to be that change in each of our individual spheres of influence.

Question Number Three: Does the film repeat a cinematic tradition of elevating white individuals as benevolent saviors of poor black people?

As I chatted with that old friend on the phone the other night he told me that he had left the theater identifying more with the criminality of the majority of white people in the film and less with the heroics of Skeeter, who some would call the movie’s protagonist.  I know him and I believe him. Furthermore, I think there are plenty of others who will feel the same sense of shame for having been even superficially associated with one group of people who would treat another group of people with such profound vulgarity, just as I share, however superficially in the embarrassment of having been victimized.  

I also believe that any film or literature is to some degree a projective measure, meaning that we see and hear and receive just what we want to see and hear and receive from it. What comes naturally for us is what we will read into and play out in our literary and theatrical diversions.  Leaving the building, I heard a third and final woman’s voice declare proudly, “I would have been Skeeter.” And perhaps she would have been. I don’t know her as well as my old friend on the phone so I can’t make a judgment on the trustworthiness of this bold assertion.  What I do know, is that we have the opportunity and responsibility to ask ourselves which part we each currently play in today’s versions of pride and prejudice.

We all have opportunities every day to be a Skeeter or Aibileen, but we also have an equal, if not greater, chance to be a Ms. Hilly Holbrook. She doesn’t consider herself to be an “actual racist” like the ones she warns Skeeter about.  Instead, she thanks the maids publicly for all their help at the big charity benefit, she uses her faith to disseminate a “God helps those who help themselves” doctrine and she believes that there is kindness in “separate but equal”; better yet, she believes there is such a thing as separate but equal.  And sometimes, that is me too. Sometimes I am Hilly Holbrook. So, I have to choose to watch and read each story like this with the understanding that I am as much villain as I am hero.

 I do not think it is wrong to illuminate heroism demonstrated by anyone, regardless of race; because if any individual with some amount of power acknowledges that power and is willing to lose some of that power on behalf of another, she is heroic and worth the recognition. But, an individual is also a heroine if, like Aibileen, despite her powerlessness, she finds the voice and courage with which to speak and stand up. The Help, in my estimation, shows us the beauty and bravery of both kinds of protagonists. How we talk and teach and preach about it is up to each of us.