I Am

This week a news piece regarding a Caucasian woman claiming to be African-American got national attention.  My first reaction was questioning why this rose to such a level. Sure, the woman (Rachel) was an activist for African-American issues and a spokesperson for the NAACP, but really…with what’s going on in the world – why this?  Outed by her white, estranged biological parents, she was interviewed and edited to look tongue-tied, sounding both evasive and dishonest.  

However, the more I considered the news story the more relevance I found to fundamental problems that our social norms have difficulty surmounting.  It goes beyond race and spotlights at least part of the reason communications and cooperation have been unable to keep up with demographic and technological changes. 

This should have been her response: 

Am I black, am I white? The question itself underlies the reason why our culture remains so divided, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Is President Obama black or is he white? He has identified with and been lauded as the first African-American president, yet his mother was Caucasian. Is he black because of the way he looks?  Is Catlin Jenner a woman or a man? He looks like a woman, his physiology is male.  Which is it? It should make little or no difference how the question is answered, but in our society the question itself evokes amusement, hostile emotions, and/or, for some, an unhealthy need for retribution. 

Like it or not we now physically live in an integrated world. There are just too many of us with communication far too rapid and mobility never more available.  Yet we still apply the historical social and religious mindsets that believe the differences we see need to have us separated, closeted, or protected one from another. This has been fostered by hate, perceived good intention, religious dogma, or simply inertia. 

My biological parents are white, my family is black. How I view myself has meaning for me in a variety of ways, but how does that have meaning to anyone else? Yet that view is somehow considered such a violation that it warrants national attention.  Can anyone else not see where the real problem is here? 

The Nazis killed millions of people because they were born into families that prescribed to a particular religion or chose to be, biology played no part. That is unlikely to happen again, but the mindset survives and atrocities of all kinds continue to flourish because of that mindset. The fact of the matter was; those Jews were just people, fundamentally the same as anyone else. Skin color is no different. Before anyone criticizes me or judges my life with prejudice, whether they be black or white, they need to ask themselves why they are asking the question in the first place. 

This story deserves national attention, but not in the way it has been presented.  It has been reported like a titillating sex story, not dissimilar to the Bruce/Catlin Jennings saga.  The fact that interviewed whites (which interestingly include her biological parents) view Rachel as being a nut case (her parents actually stated in an interview that they believed she was mentally ill) or that interviewed blacks viewed her as a fraud or opportunist shows how the news media places priority on reporting only that which they believe will increase viewership and, therefore, ratings and income.  The real and important news story requires a mirror.  While this young lady has the spotlight I hope she has the ability to pull one out of her purse and point it at the camera.