Date: Tue, December 17, 2002 4:23 am
From: Joy Smith
Subject: letter to the editor
Being Black in America can really wear a person down, like the creator of this site I am in an interracial marriage and I witness my husband being whittled down like a well used erasure daily. I know from personal experience the disappointment, anger, fear, disbelief and disgust that I must wash out daily like any other germ from not only our hands but our own house. As a White mother of Black children (and yes they have my biology as well) married to a Black man I’m not surprised when people like the Trent Lotts of the world are in every news sound-bite blubbering apologies for the things he or she truly believes. Just as I am not surprised that people like the creators of this site, though you do fight for some things I agree with, do not understand this need possibly because you cannot relate to the need to identify with a specific racial community like the Black community. It would seem so much easier to identify with those who aren’t the “faces at the bottom of the well.” Groups like the NAACP, which you love to challenge, are trying their best not to drown in a racial sea of hatred that most white people, and some people of color, deny still lives and breathes in this nation.
We are individuals, multi-ethnic, multiracial, all the creators children, yes, but we are still socialized beings that will find comfort in some things and discomfort in other things and by no conscious choice of our own. Personally, at the end of some days when my uncle has made the typical jest that he is not a racist but . . . and what follows is a stereotypical racist comment about my husband, or our white neighbor who has adopted black children tries to be funny and drops one racist bomb after another, and my children have been either completely ignored or been all but packaged as the best toy ever to be packaged poked, and prodded, put in a store window and sold like any Gap poster, need an escape with a big E. Sure, my family would love to be seen for who we are as individuals but frankly most white Americans don’t allow this to happen, to just “get out of all the boxes” like Lauren Hill sings or you might be trying to promote for legislation. However, most people are almost hyper aware of our difference. So sometimes, I just have to laugh and laugh hard. When Huey says to Jasmine that she is “Black” and to “just get over it”, I think he is saying that you may look different from me but we are the same. He is being quite empathetic and trying to save the girl from mass confusion. He is saying that our history of oppression is the same. It’s a funny strip to me, yes, but it’s only funny because it contains some serious truth. I’ve really embraced Blackness in its complexity, just as a fully embrace my children. The Boodocks is another way that a Black person is expressing his individuality – his story and I just happen to understand his perspective. It has turned many a moment of anger and frustration into a much needed laughing session far more beneficial than reading this site has done for me. I really don’t relate to some of the “libertarian” views on this site, but to each his or her own. And to the creator of this site, why don’t you visit another favorite website of mine named blackpeopleloveus.com? You might not get that humor either, so don’t bother us with another press release condemning it.
Cheers,
Joy Smith
Editor: I just love getting politically naive letters from folks who are inadvertently promoting “racialism” and who deify the NAACP. I’ll let up on the NAACP when they apologize and reverse their position on “multiracial” self-identification. Until then, you keep your head in the sand and stay guilt-ridden. I’ve got work to do. None of it involves worshipping at the altar of a civil rights organizations that has outlived it’s usefulness.