The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

In response to Max's comment about my biracial post. I decided that I had a bit more to say than I thought, so I made a whole new post, rather than just re-comment.

I am asked at least once a day by those without tact (generally my students, but sometimes not) what my nationality is.

Since most of them thnk I'm hispanic they ask me "Where are you from?" I always say New Jersey, and then they say, "No. Well, where are your parents from?" And then I say South Carolina and New York. Then they'll ask "Fine. What's your nationality?" At which point I tell them I'm half black and half white and at least half the people I tell don't believe me right away.

The response at many people never having met someone that fits my description engenders a certain solitude. I suppose the word solitude implies sadness and that's not what I'm trying to say. Maybe uniqueness would be a better word since I'm certainly proud of being a "person of indeterminate racial makeup" as a friend of mine once put it.

I think at the end of the day it helps me to make an impression simply as a person without any sort of pre-judging that may go on when you can be certain of a person's race. Not that everyone pre-judges, but if you can't be ceratin about me, then it would preclude one who might pre-judge from pre-judging.

This was something I didn't even think about until I was 16. I started thinking about it through a situation that had an enormous negative impact on me for a day or so. My parents essentially preached at me when I was young to ignore race in everyone and especially in myself because it's not what makes people good or bad and you genuinely cannot tell anything about a person from their race.

Growing up I was not only in contact with people of all races, but related to people as disparate as could possibly be. Only in retrospect do I see this disparity and it has nothing to do with race. At the time I honestly saw people as simply people and not only was I taught that race was not an issue, I believed it.

Incidentally, I still believe it, and I have since applied the same view to people of different ages with interesting results. I have learned quite a bit from people much younger than me simply by listening and applying the same credence to their remarks as I would to a peer or mentor.

Anyhow, here's the incident that altered my idealism. I never even considered race when I would come in contact with people and so this took me by surprise. I dated this girl in high school for a couple of months and one day after school I went to her house. Her father was there and she introduced me and I said hi and he was perfectly cordial. A couple of minutes later this girl's father calls up the stairs that her mother is on the phone and wants to speak with her.

She get on the phone and talks for a minute or two and then hangs up. She says to me, "My parents are mad at me." I asked why and she said, "Because I brought a black person home." It took a couple seconds for me to realize she was talking about me.

So that's about when I started thinking about race. For about a day I felt really small and then a short while later I realized that they were small and I was much more enlightened. In fact, my mere existence represented light years more enlightenment than this girl's parents could even fathom. After that I felt much better about myself. Though now I think about race from time to time.

I decided a while back that I really enjoy being not white. I'm not trying to eschew my whiteness, but I appreciate the perspective of one who's not necessarily in the majority. At the same time I really enjoy opportunities to connect with my blackness. I was in the black students organization in both high school and college, (I didn't have much of a choice in high school since my father was the founder and coordinator of the group), and I feel like I learned a lot about myself at those times.

An interesting thing that I've noticed as well and that also makes my enjoy my not whiteness is that black people make me feel much more accepted than I otherwise would. There's a lot to be said for the shared black mentality and I never fail to be amazed at how black people seem to yearn to be associated together despite the seemingly negative stereotypes and treatment. Nine out of ten black people don't deserve to be labelled in the way that they are, yet those nine will not turn their backs on the one who does. I have never, ever felt anything short of total acceptance by black people and I cannot say that is true of any other group as a whole.

I'm also half Jewish and Jewish people (this is a bit of an over-generalization) are willing to accept me, but many of them seem to want me to be more Jewish before they do. I cannot tell you how many Jewish people have tried to recruit me upon finding out that my mother was Jewish. (Quick Judaism lesson: The requirement for being a Jewish person is that your mother is Jewish. The father has essentially nothing to do with it.) I'm always a bit taken aback by this. I don't feel a need to be more or less Jewish. I enjoy being literally "half Jewish".

On a somewhat related note, I find Judaism to be the most palatable religion. I'm not particularly religious and I don't ascribe to any particular religion, though if I were forced to choose, I would certainly choose to be Jewish. For whatever reason Judiasm seems to make sense to me in ways that no form of Christianity does. I think Judaism is rooted in wanting to truly understand, whereas Christianity is rooted in something on the opposite end of the spectrum. Not all interpretations of Judaism are great, but I feel like I can appreciate where Judaism comes from, while I don't understand Christianity at all.

Generally I think about race in a bubble. It's really more of a philosophical exercise than anything that affects my day to day life. A bit like Socrates or perhaps Voltaire or one of those guys in that I generally think about abstract scenarios related to race and never act on them or even attempt or intend to. It's a bit like Rousseau's Social Contract in that my thinking about race is like trying to retrofit a philosophy to something that was running on it's own without it.

Hmm...that's an interesting notion about philosophy. I'm gonna let that one marinate. Perhaps more on that in a bit.