Grammy Gripes

I am not a feminist in the climb the corporate ladder, sexual Revolution, keep my own last name kind of way.  But I do have this little quirk where I hate it when a man feloniously assaults a women in public at the pre-party for an event and then 3 years later without explanation or any well-documented come-to-Jesus is invited to return to said event as its darling.

I am hoping against hope that somehow I am in a long dream and that I do not actually live in a world and country where Chris Brown is paraded around the Grammy stage rhythmically gyrating to not only the music but also to the delighted squeals of young girls in the audience who according to one tweeter “would let Chris B beat her anytime.”

Not Okay People.

And I can hear the pathetic responses right now,

1.       Everyone Deserves a Second Chance

2.       There are lots of immoral people that perform at the Grammys

3.       The Grammys is about Music not personal life.

Allow me to briefly address these mid-eye roll and exasperated sigh.

Immoral Performers a Dime a Dozen

Yeah, there probably are.  I mean the Grammys is basically a drugs, sex and rock-n-roll factory and somehow I am cool with stoned, non-virgin, irreverent provocateurs taking the stage.  Because despite our best efforts to be equally scandalized by every individual offense committed, there is for each of a hierarchy of sin.  As a hippy-dippy artsy type I am comparatively less concerned about an artist tokin’ it up in his or her own home before creating his or her next masterpiece or having sex with her or his live-in on a regular basis.  Would I discourage them from these things if we were good pals? Probably, but we could still be pretty good pals either way.  For me, those behaviors are really nothing at all like beating a woman to a pulp and leaving her for dead. That would be harder for me to “be cool with” in a personal relationship and I think it ought to have been much harder for CBS to be cool with on Sunday night.

Second Chances

I am pro- second chances. Who among us has not spoken out of turn, given into our baser desires and at times made the prodigal son look like the “good one”?  I am stepping completely away from the stone much less being the first to throw it. I am a Christian. I am a Social Worker. I oppose the death penalty. Second Chance is my middle name.  But again, isn’t it a little elementary to equate this level of prominence on the most important night in music with a simple second chance? A second chance is allowing Chris Brown to sit in the audience in the back somewhere. A second chance is agreeing to let him give a humble speech should he win in one of his categories.  This was not a second chance, this was the Chris Brown Banquet of Honor held for all the world to see. 

The Grammys are Professional not Personal

I think it is personal and that is the problem, because as a woman, I take this extremely personally. This reminds me of a few years back when Michael Vick was going to be released from prison and welcomed with open-arms into the NFL. Vick had been convicted of running dog-fights and the animal cruelty that comes along with the gig.  Obviously animal lovers were outraged that he would be let back into the NFL even after having served his time. But many shrugged it off saying, “ it was ONLY some dogs”.  And here we are again at a juncture when a man has nearly killed another human being, bruised her, bloodied her,  humiliated and dehumanized her and it is as if I can here the producers saying, “it was only a woman.”

Not cool Grammy Officiants, you have just made what my dad calls the “S” List and “I don’t mean super.”

Linda Joy Myers Memoir Vignette Prize

Not Your Average Butler

As a child at Southwest Elementary School, I had the profound good fortune of having Ms. Leila Butler as my music teacher. I do apologize if this is offensive, but I will admit to my bias that every child in America deserves to have a big, pillowy, terrifying black woman for a music teacher.  If you want to be all glass-half-full about it, I think that one good thing slavery did for African Americans was to give us enough transgenerational, spiritual wounds to create good music. Passionate undulating heart-songs seem to launch from chocolaty throats, scurrying through the air and piercing the listener’s soul with an acuity that allows him to experience, if only for a moment, the pain and the pleasure of the warrior-warbler crying out. That’s why it is hard to find a person who doesn’t enjoy a black gospel concert—my WASPy friends, my atheist friends, my friends from other countries, they all seem to agree that there is something about this genre of music that we so aptly call soul.

Ms. Butler had soul and sass and class and if looks could kill—well, class size at Southwest Elementary may have become exceedingly more manageable thanks to her expressive interactions with disrespectful little boys and girls.  I think most of my Black History Education happened in that little, out of the way, music portable under Ms. Butler’s queen-like reign. She would have us re-enact Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat for a white traveler in Alabama. For what seemed like weeks, we would walk into her classroom and set up two long rows of chairs to approximate a greyhound bus and then vie for acting roles. Three or four of us would be the White passengers in the front, another 3 or 4 kids would be the black passengers in the back and 3 others would fulfill the roles of bus-driver, entitled-seat-demanding white person and tired, old Rosa herself. I don’t know if Ms. Butler turned in these lessons plans to the administration or whether or not they would have been approved if she had, but I am so thankful that I was there participating in the Butlerian congregation. Reenacting this scene over and over again-- using our own  little toothless mouths and voices to make someone give up their seat and then using those same little bodies to  rise up against this evil was a sort of Eucharistic experience—holy in the way education really ought to be.

Ms. Butler also taught us about Dr. Martin Luther King Junior and his peaceful protests. It was she who told me, for the first time, that in the not-so distant history, black people and white people had to use different facilities, water fountains, entrances and all manner of resources. But it was when she said that people who were different races could not be friends and absolutely could not marry, that I experienced one of those life changing moments in which the new knowledge that you have acquired cannot be unknown and must therefore be addressed or ignored.  Ignoring is not a strength of mine.

I started telling everyone I knew, (mostly mixed-race family members) about this crazy injustice from years past. When speaking the words was no longer therapeutic enough I wrote a paper about Dr. King and how,were it not for his efforts, I would not just be oppressed but in all likelihood, as a biracial child of a black mother and white father, I would not even exist. In an unfortunate string of events, my older siblings found my literary reflections on MLK and I entered our living room just in time to see them laughing at and presumably making fun of my hard work. This presumption filled me with equal portions of debilitating pain and homicidal rage. I screamed at them and ran out of the room crying. One of them, I think it was my oldest brother Shawn, came after me and explained that they were not laughing at my ability or sentiments, but instead were chuckling at their own ignorance—the fact that their baby sister knew more about Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights than they did.  This, of course, appealed to the narcissistic and tyrannical tendencies that characterized my early years and calmed me down enough to be useful again. To me, Dr. King and Rosa Parks were not just interesting pieces of classroom trivia. These stories were fiercely personal, emotional, meaningful and sobering.

Each day in music class during this Black History Unit we would sing a rendition of Martin Luther King’s  I have a dream speech that went like this:

I have a dream, that we could all love one another,

I have a dream that we could be sisters and brothers,

I have a dream that when the sun shines down on the world

That there’d be peace on earth in every place, for every one of every race.

And every time we sang this song, tears poured from my dark brown eyes. I cried as though my tears might somehow make those dreams of his come true. They were amen tears.

Amen to love.

Amen to family.

Amen to light covering and warming us.

Amen and amen and amen to systems that promote peace for each of us.

Those were the prayers of my fresh, young, soul in that little portable in my little town in the south. Music opens us up and brings us into agreement with the truth. We sing it out to one another and hear it sung back to us, and that is why Ms. Butler did more than teach Hot Cross Buns on the flute-a-phone (although she did that too.)  With her fold out chairs, homemade scripts and songs of justice, Ms. B might have been one of the first influences that led me into Social Work. Sometimes when I am worried about the world, I put myself in someone else’s shoes like we did on that imaginary bus. Sometimes, I write and op-ed like I was inspired to do when I first learned about segregation. More often than not, though, I sing that song that we sang back then and I am thankful for the woman who taught it to me.

Tardy Thoughts on Penn State

I*** One huge tragic flaw that I have as a writer is that I never remember the urgency associated with getting thoughts out there as they pertain to current events. I realize everyone has probably moved on to the next big scandal that I am at this very moment failing to realize I should be writing about, but as far as I am concerned, it is never too late to think about ways to fix what is broken in society. Thus my thoughts on Penn State are below:

 I read an article a few months ago about memory—specifically how it is becoming less valuable in the technological age. Why would I commit anything to memory when the answers to all of life questions are readily at my fingertips? 

Memorize my spouse’s phone number? That’s my phone’s job.

Remember my appointments? Calendar’s Job.

Scripture memorization?  No need, I have the Bible App.

In a sense, when we relinquish these sorts of mundane controls in our lives we affirm that we cannot be bothered to think for ourselves. But I would suggest that when we remove ourselves from these processes it is not merely an intellectual detachment but an emotional one as well.  This might be sacrilege to a technology worshipping generation, but I believe there is a correlation between these micro-detachments in our individual lives and a similar group detachment which occurs when we often and absent-mindedly relinquish moral reasoning to institutions and policies. The rationale is that those outside forces: human resources, the board, the legislators will think about issues more comprehensively than an individual would and will thus know more and know better.

I believe that is some of what we have been hearing about over the past few weeks with regard to the tragedy unfolding at Penn State University. Pennsylvania has laws about reporting child abuse and one assumes that the University has reporting policies and procedures as well.  These policies are meant to be a help—to make things more clear, efficient and systematized.  So why does it seem that these systems so demonstrably failed to protect the children within their care?

They failed because institutions and laws though not inherently evil do not have souls. They create bare minimum or lobbied responses to complicated and complex issues, and  just as we have allowed machines to do our remembering for us we are allowing policies to do our reasoning for us. I have overheard and solicited a great deal of response to the happenings at Penn State and as always what surprises me most is the number of people who are self-righteously assured that this sort of thing could never have happened on their watches. They could be right. But I suppose, I just don’t see that way of thinking as particularly helpful in times like these.

What if we were to assume that every alarming story that we see in the news is from Jonathan and we are each David. We are "the man" in the story and rather than wasted energy used to judge we must find ourselves in the tale and determine how we got there! Maybe we are not the coach who allegedly perpetuated this abuse, but for a moment can we see ourselves as the graduate assistant, the janitor, the friend and colleague?  If we want to see change, we must let down our defenses and assume that we might have, could have, and would have behaved in similar ways.

I know for certain that at times I have let the State of Texas make a decision for me when my gut, my education or Jesus Christ would have been a better consultant.  But in those instances I have wanted to take the smallest amount of action that would get me in the least amount of trouble and allow me to think the shortest amount of time about something that made me uncomfortable. I don’t think I am the only one.

That said, I do not mean to belittle the mistakes, failures and evil that surrounds this case. To the contrary it makes me so sick that I desire to engage to the fullest extent possible to be proactive in disallowing stories like this to continue to exist.  These are a few ways I think we can be a part of the solution:

1.       We must acknowledge and embrace power and responsibility. Spiderman’s Uncle was right about it and so was Jesus: To whom much is given, much is expected. This does not just mean money. It means age, influence, strength, talents, abilities, education and preferential treatment based on race, gender, socioeconomic status or anything else. Because we live in such a powerful and resourced country many of us are blinded to our own power but we all have some. We have to own it rather than ignore it and use it rather than abuse it.

2.       We must develop and embrace empathy and collectivism. I am sorry if that offends any patriotic sensibilities but I am hard-pressed to find scripture that supports a “just do what is best for you” mentality. Instead, I read, “share all your belongings”, and “always put other before yourself”. We do an especially poor job of encouraging selfless behaviors from men and instead promote gender-specific vision, ambition and drive as the overarching characteristics a man should strive to obtain. None of those qualities are horrible but left unsupplemented by other characteristics that are traditionally regarded as feminine, we raise a whole segment of the population to be primarily self-serving.

3.       We must demonstrate courage to go beyond or against what is simply required. It makes me sad when my friends no longer care to memorize my phone number but it makes me livid when my fellow citizens no longer care to think for themselves.  No one can do my thinking and feeling for me and if I let them do so because I am scared, uncertain or lazy I put myself and others at risk, because I have personal experiences and professional ethics and spiritual guidance that institutions do not have. We need programs and policies and procedures. They are good protections for a species who left to our own devices will often choose poorly. But more than any of those other things we need people--people who break the mold, display valor, rock the boat and are fervent not in the absence of but despite their own fears and fragility.  

Really?!*# Ann Coulter Addition

        One of my favorite all-time SNL skits occurs on Weekend Update and is performed by the lovely Seth Meyers and the great Amy Poehler.  It is called REALLY?!*# with Seth and Amy.  The sketch is essentially the two comedians expressing dumbfoundedness at some recent public indiscretion. This indiscretion is usually so overt and profound, that it is hard to imagine how its absurdity could ever escape the mind of its perpetuator.  And with full acknowledgement that I might be commiting comedy blasphemy , I have one such sketch that I took a crack at writing myself.  But first you'll need a little context, so go here.

Really?!*#, Ann Coulter?

You are going to-- in the same conversation take offense at the idea that some find your party affiliation to be a little on the bigoted-side and then non-ironically use the term “our blacks”.

Really?!*#

You didn’t think that maybe a possessive pronoun in this instance might take the audience back to a time in our history when black people were literally your ancestor’s possessions? Really?!*#

I mean Really Ann Coulter, you expect me to believe that an intelligent, successful woman such as yourself could presume to do a race-based (minorities only) comparative analysis of the performance of politicians and that that would be a totally un-racist thing to do?!? Really?!*#

Because Really Ms. Coulter, I think you are bright enough (even despite the blond hair and female genitalia) to know when you are purportedly giving a compliment to an oppressed group but concurrently othering them with your exclusionary subtext—just like I did earlier in this paragraph.

See I’m one of them better blacks like you talked about, Really!

 Only I would be ashamed to support a candidate who takes pride in your support Ann Coulter,

Really!

This has been Really?!*# from www.mixed-company.blogspot.com . My apologies to Mr. Meyer and Ms. Poehler for any bastardization of their comic genius.

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.