{"id":280,"date":"2019-02-16T10:48:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T15:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/?p=280"},"modified":"2019-02-17T20:32:18","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T01:32:18","slug":"when-the-apple-falls-from-the-tree-of-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/when-the-apple-falls-from-the-tree-of-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"WHEN THE APPLE FALLS FROM THE TREE OF RACISM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve never been one\nfor the Old Testament. The stories creeped me out as a child and filled my head\nwith the images of murderous brothers, frightful storms and zombie-like lepers\nroaming the desert. The feminist side of me certainly had issues with the story\nof Adam and Eve and those literalists who believe that it is proof of woman\u2019s\ninferiority. The mystical Holy Grail was far more intriguing. And the prose of\nprophets who spoke in parables? Now that\u2019s my cup of tea! Even though I tended\nto read into stories, searching for the deeper and more mystical meaning, ala\nJoseph Campbell, I never could wrap my head around Adam and Eve and the Tree of\nKnowledge. I knew it had something to do with losing one\u2019s innocence to a more\nsinister kind of awareness. But surely it couldn\u2019t be just about sex and\nmodesty. Could it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            It wasn\u2019t until recently that I had\na tiny insight through that window of pane Eve had fogged up when she bit from\nthat apple. It has to do with a certain kind of consciousness or self-consciousness\nwhich is imposed upon us from the outside, rather than from within. Dah \u2013 I guess\nthat\u2019s what that old snake was all about.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            During our church book discussion\nabout Waking Up White<\/em> (Deborah Irving),\nwe were talking some of the systemic racism we\u2019d encountered as children, i.e.\nblack hats \u2013 bad, white hats \u2013 good, etc. We were all delighted to include a\nfamily whose eight-year-old daughter joined us. The parents brought up a more\ncontemporary version of this imposed coloration in the form of animated films\nand cartoons where the bad dragons are dark purple or blue and the good dragons\nare white. Although the girl had noticed that the good dragon was white and the\nbad guys were darker colors, she hadn\u2019t yet internalized the meaning. She\nrecognized the fact that there were colors for good and bad, but you can\u2019t\nexpect an eight-year-old to make the leap and say \u201cAha! Those cartoons are racist!\nThis was further illustrated when mom relayed a story about standing in line at\nthe grocery store and her daughter warned her that she was about to step on a\nboy behind her. Mom noticed he was an African American boy, but the daughter\ndidn\u2019t notice color. He was just another boy. One of the group members asked\nthe girl what she thought about that, and if she noticed color differences at\nschool. But it was clear that she couldn\u2019t comprehend the question. As\ngrown-ups will do, we all tried to reframe the question about noticing\ndifferent races, but she just didn\u2019t get it. \nThe fact is \u2013 she wasn\u2019t there yet. Clearly, our awareness of race is a\nlearned behavior. And there we were, like snakes in the pit, offering her a\nnice juicy apple that would taint her for life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This reminded me of an experience I\nhad when I was about her age. I remember taking a bite from that apple. As with\nmost of the pivotal moments in my life, it all began in third grade. I remember\ncoming back from lunch. There were lockers in the hallway for the older kids \u2013\nfourth and fifth graders. As I walked down the hall, I ran my hands along the olive-green\nlockers, until I reached a roadblock of fourth graders rushing to put lunch boxes\naway as we waited outside our classroom. \nI don\u2019t know how it happened, but an older boy who was nearby slammed my\nleft pinky in his locker door. First, I let out a screech of pain, and then I\ndid what my father would have done. I let out a tidal wave of cuss words that\nprobably went something like this: Jesus\nH. Christ, goddamned bible backed bastard\u2026<\/em> punctuated by painful sobs.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            As if that weren\u2019t bad enough, I was\nsuddenly accosted by a girl who had been standing nearby. She was in my class,\nand already looked down upon me because the teacher clearly didn\u2019t like me, and\noften picked on me.  As if I wasn\u2019t\nalready traumatized by the teacher and the school and my witness to the\nterrible words that could flow from the mouths of men, Gabriella turned on me\nwith the pent-up middle-class rage of her own adult community.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cYou\u2019re a racist!\u201d she shouted.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            My finger was throbbing. I was going\nto lose that fingernail, and that really grossed me out. My heart was sobbing\nas I tried to figure out what the heck she was talking about.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be making such a big\ndeal about it if he wasn\u2019t black.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            You could hear the apple cut loose\nfrom that old tree and roll toward my feet. Up until that time, I\u2019m not sure I\nnoticed the boy at all. I was preoccupied with my finger. But then I looked up,\nand I saw the astonished, frozen face of the one African American boy in our\nschool. Did I know that he was African American before Gabriella pointed it\nout?  I\u2019m not sure. But her words \u201cYou\u2019re\na racist!\u201d rattled around in my brain for years, effectively making me walk on\neggs around any person of color so as not to appear in the least bit racist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The truth is, I didn\u2019t really\nunderstand what the word \u201cracist\u201d meant. I only knew it was bad, and that my\npeople were somehow marked as bad, and that my father must have been a racist\nbecause he swore all the time, and of course the teacher didn\u2019t like me. In\nthis case, Gabriella was the snake who offered me a bite of that apple. Prior\nto that encounter, I was pretty much unaware of the color of other children. Yet\nI knew what it meant to be an outsider and treated as \u201cother\u201d. I had somehow\ninternalized the racist remarks about my great grandmother who was a very\ndark-skinned Mic Mac mix of French Canadian. But I hadn\u2019t yet externalized or\nunderstood the concept of racism. Thanks to Gabriella, I now had one more\nburden to carry through life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Gabriella was the daughter of the\nUnitarian minister in town. She was the kind of student teachers loved having in\ntheir classroom. Curious, precocious, and thoroughly middleclass. Both parents\nhad gone to college, whereas mine hadn\u2019t graduated high-school. Her world\nseemed large and extended to a larger community of adults which I could only\nglimpse through her interesting show & tells which included Russian nesting\ndolls and African artifacts. What did I have to show? Not much. I did bring a\npurple rock found in the potato field, which was supposed to have been an \u201cIndian\nStone\u201d. But it didn\u2019t generate much interest among my peers. Clearly, there was\nno small amount of looking down the nose at me. In fact, my distorted memory\nhas Gabriella towering over me as if she were wearing stilts, while the African\nAmerican boy and I stood frozen with our jaws equally unhinged.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\u2019d like to think that the African\nAmerican boy and I both ate from the same apple that day. Perhaps he too hadn\u2019t\nnoticed that he was different from the other kids until Gabriella pointed it\nout.  But I suspect that encounters with\nvarying degrees of racism was nothing new for him. My rude awakening had been\nslow and painful and muddled by class. Leave it to a middle-class person to assume\nthat I must be a racist because I was comparatively poor. It\u2019s always \u201cthose\npeople down South\u201d, \u201cThose redneck crackers\u201d, those \u201cIgnorant mill rats\u201d and\nsomeone else to blame. I bet if you asked most people to conjure up the image\nof a racist, it would be a picture of someone who is white and most likely\npoor, rural or Southern, except for President Trump thrown into the mix. Yet\nracism was perpetuated by an owning white class both in the South and the\nNorth. Just follow the money, the laws, the institutions and the circles in\nwhich wealth travels. I\u2019m not saying my family wasn\u2019t racist or that certain\nelements of the family aren\u2019t racist now. I haven\u2019t bridged that confrontation\nyet, and to be honest I\u2019m not close enough to my family to have those kinds of\nconversations. I travel in different circles that no longer overlap.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            If Gabriella hadn\u2019t handed me the\napple and urged me to take a bite, would I have been aware of differences\nregarding race and class? I don\u2019t know. What I do know is that I took the bait\nand bit off a large chunk of ISM. Racism, classism and all the little isms that\ntrail behind.  I realized I was naked and\nhad to cover up where I came from. I realized that I must be guilty and\ntherefore ignorant and racist because I was poor. I realized that the boy who\nslammed my finger in the locker was a different color than me and because I\nswore about it, I would never be able to have a close relationship with a\nperson of color. I was immediately and long lastingly shamed. Just like Eve.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve never been one for the Old Testament. The stories creeped me out as a child and filled my head with the images of murderous brothers, frightful storms and zombie-like lepers roaming the desert. The feminist side of me certainly had issues with the story of Adam and Eve and those literalists who believe that … <\/p>\n

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