The "Blackface Skit"

The firestorm around "the blackface skit" on a recently aired variety show here in Australia has me very interested in the Aussie take on race-relations and "political correctness." According to the polls in major newspapers (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/readers-hey-hey-skit-not-racist/story-e6freuy9-1225784417114), Australians seem to think that Americans in general and Harry Connick Jr. in specific are far too sensitive in being offended by the "blackface skit."

I watched the skit, and I watched Harry Connick Jr. speak about how we as Americans have come so far towards equality and toward "not making black people look like [stereotyped] buffoons." I must say that I agreed entirely with his assessment of the skit. I too found it objectionable and offensive. Harry Connick did not call anyone a racist, not the group that "sang," not the show, not the Australian public. He was gracious and kind, but he expressed his objection to ridiculing black skin through "blackface." He did not object to poking fun at Michael Jackson, not at the Jackson five, but at black skin. Harry Connick Jr. was here to promote his new album, and it would have been easier to let the skit pass without commenting than to speak up. He showed tremendous courage and exposed himself to great criticism and financial loss by speaking up for what he considered truth and right. Good job Harry! I will buy your next album, not because I love jazz, but to support your courage.

I am not a fantastic student of history or politics in America, but a piece of the history of social justice for minority races in the United States of America is my story. It is the story of my mother as an American of Mexican descent and the story of my father as an (now naturalized) immigrant from India. The story of justice for minority races in America runs through my veins and reverberates through the privilege of opportunity I have known. Because I own a little piece of that history, I feel compelled to speak up with my "inside scoop." I hope that my anecdotal perspective will add a little understanding as to why we as Americans are sensitive to joking about skin color.

In modern-day America, there are still at least a couple of generations that grew up in a segregated society, a society where the color of your skin determined your value to society, your perceived intelligence, your opportunities for education, your wages, and your social status. At this point in history, with all the opportunity I have owned by birthright, the way that my mother grew up is nearly unimaginable to me.

Near the Mexican border, segregation divided schools into "white" and "Mexican". My grandmother wisely taught my mother English before Spanish so that my mother could pass for white and be educated in the white school. The white school provided a far superior education to what she would have experienced in the Mexican school. Race discrimination was alive and well in Texas in the 1950's, but because of my my grandmother's shrewdness and my mother's diligence and determination, my mother became one of the first in her family to finish university and live above poverty.

My father arrived from India in the USA around 1970, thirsty for opportunity, and just in time to benefit from the civil rights movement. He studied to at a state university and has practiced as an architect for the last 25 years. He came with a few hundred dollars in his pocket and he has worked hard for decades to be able to own his own beautiful piece of suburbia, and even, a few years ago, a black, shiny Mercedes Benz. Discrimination based on his accent or his skin were not permitted by law, and he has experienced little illegal discrimination in a post-civil rights America. He has excelled on a more level playing field than had ever existed for minorities before. I regularly hear him say, in his soft Indian accent, with overwhelming gratitude, "only in America, only in America would my story be possible."

For the black community, even more than for immigrants or the Mexican community, I think racism and segregation have gouged a terribly deep scar. For hundreds of years people were brought from Africa against their will. They were treated as property. They were bought and sold, bred, and abused. When the civil war ended in 1867, they were freed from being slaves, but left to live as a parallel society, with a lower set of standards in justice and education, just to name a couple dimensions of inequality. After hundreds of years in captivity, freedom left blacks in a post-civil war society, neither African nor fully American, in terms of their rights and privileges as citizens. Nearly a hundred years passed before the courage of the civil rights movement peacefully began the process of righting the wrongs left by more than 300 years of injustice based on skin color.

Because Aussies have no history of slavery, the story of African-Americans may not resonate with most, but if you go back only a generation, Aussies shudder to think that children of the "stolen generations" were taken from their Aboriginal families because of their mixed (white) blood. Australia's good heart is appalled by the injustice and inhumanity of taking mixed children away from their own Aboriginal Australian parents, who were considered an inferior race and culture. Aussies, with few exceptions, treat the stolen generations with respect and kindness and sympathy. Aussies would not stand to see others, especially those in another country, ridicule the color of the skin of their "stolen generations" because of the injustices that they have suffered.

Americans feel the same protection towards our African-American population that Aussies feel towards their stolen generations. In some ways, the sentiment of protection may even be stronger since the injustice went on for a much greater length of time and involved much greater segments of our society both as the abuser and as the abused. As Americans, we tolerate poking fun at what people do as individuals or even quirky things that communities do as sub-cultures of Americans. We cannot, however, abide the ridicule of the color of skin. The wounds of skin-based injustice are too fresh to be funny to us. We have come too far as a society, toward equality and justice for all Americans, and we refuse to go backwards, even in jest.

So, to my American friends, do not be so quick to see universal racism in Australia. Aussies as a culture, are irreverent and funny and self-deprecating. Aussies tend to make fun of everything they like and everything they dislike. Irreverent humor is the Aussie way of life, and it brings a casual freshness that I love to my daily relationships and interactions. Because of their humor, Aussies are not easily offended, which is why many do not understand the great offense caused by the skit. I don't believe that the "blackface" skit was meant as it has been interpreted in the greater global context. Although the skit will cause a great many Americans offense, I do not think it was meant as a racial slur.

To my Aussie friends, our offence at your jest is not overly sensitive. We call ourselves the land of "liberty and justice for all;" we mean that phrase (from our pledge of allegiance) especially toward those among us who had long been deprived of full equality because of their skin color. I hope I live to see the day when our societal wounds around slavery, segregation, and civil rights are finally fully healed. Until that day, when justice and equality are complete and injustice based on skin color passes away from our living memory as Americans, we'll laugh alongside you if you joke about our quirks; but jokes about color will cut us too deeply, exposing the shame of a history we have long struggled to set right.

Have You Ever Gone Hungry?

"How can I possibly succeed at my side of our division of labor, if I haven't bought food to cook for all the people I love?" I wondered out loud toward Greg. It was a dramatic question; I had loaded it, and was ready to injure myself with his answer or mine. A couple of weeks ago, I was getting worked up about my dreaded grocery lists. I gave voice to my worries that we would not have food for dinner since I had not forced the stars and lists and car and trading hours of the stores to align properly. I was defeated by my own lack of organization.

Since we have been in Australia, we have owned one car. Before we left the USA, I knew having one car would be challenging for me, and that Greg would usually need the car traveling back and forth between the projects he manages at work. I knew before we came, in theory, what my life would be with one car, and I committed to it beforehand. In actual practice, figuring out public transportation and biking and routes and kids is part of my adventure, and generally, I like solving the four dimensional puzzle of going places. Most of the time, I enjoy my new, car-lite life, but sometimes I struggle with the organizational powers required to make everything run smoothly in our little castle.

Having one car has forced me to be much more organized than I ever have been in taking care of my family, and much more organized than I like to be. My natural gifts are creative, not organizational, to put it quite mildly. For our family's day to day life to rest on my organizational "aptitude" feels quite precarious at times. I sometimes suspect that Greg and I might need another wife to keep us organized; but, not being bigamists, I guess we'll have to do without. For better or worse, and by our mutual choice, I am the CEO who runs the daily life of our home.

In spite of my deficiencies, I seem, usually, to be able to plan for appointments, so that they are on days when I have the car and can thus keep them. I don't find it too difficult to keep nappies and wipes and snacks with me, clipped to the back of my bike trailer. I don't usually struggle with being organized enough to eat at certain times so that I don't run out of the energy that will peddle MJ and I back up the big hill to my house. I love to cook; I like to plan meals. All the aforementioned organizational tasks in my life I accomplish with relative ease; but separating the items I need for individual meals out to individual store lists--butcher, baker, candlestick-maker? This task baffles and tortures my dreamy, creative brain. The actual separating of groceries into lists feels to me like swimming in honey, and I feel like I may drown at any time while my pen rests in in my hand with a pad of paper before it. Will I transfer all the right items to the right store lists from the menus? Did I get everything listed? Will I find almonds at the grocery store or the fruit and veg? Should I list it twice so I don't forget? How many packs of diapers? Will I come in under budget? Are we out of toilet paper? What if I forget something and I don't have the car to go get it later in the week? The questions hang on me like a pack of little screaming dirty kids (not my kids--really bad, annoying ones).

That's where I was, mentally, when I stood in the kitchen, discouraged and hopeless, my head hanging down, pen and unfinished lists in hand. Greg just walked over, and gave me a hug. He looked in my eyes and said, "Have you ever gone hungry since we have been married?" The truth, as usual, pierced through my neurotic perfectionism.

Greg's kind, honest reminder soothed my tortured mind, and silenced all the screaming questions on my list. I don't have to perfect my lists to be a good wife and mother. I don't run this family alone. Greg knows me, even, maybe especially, my myriad weaknesses. He has known and loved me since I was 19, and far crazier and more disorganized than I am now. Incredibly, he has loved me for more than a third of my life, through 90 lbs of baby-weight gained and lost, through depression and bad hair color, through colicky infants and stretch-marks and unhealed insecurities. He has helped me wage an intense and enduring war against my own perfectionism, and he would help win this day's battle too. His love has been sure and steady and calm and true; and love doesn't mind picking up a few things at the grocery store to tide us over until I can face all my dreaded lists. Thanks honey. You're the best, and I hope you know that you are my hero.

Sarah and the Three-headed, Fire-breathing Monster

When I am on holiday, shopping at a common grocery store in a foreign country is a great adventure and a fun experiment; but when I began my life as an American expat in Australia, shopping at a common grocery store was like facing a fire-breathing, three-headed monster that stood between me and feeding my family. I couldn't find things I knew must be there like baking soda, cocoa, and creamed cheese, while other (apparently American) items such as cornmeal and crisco are mysteriously "mislabeled." Walking in and looking at all the unfamiliar products and brand names overwhelmed me, and the task of grocery shopping, which I had once enjoyed, became daunting and discouraging. I felt like the three-headed, fire-breathing monster of grocery shopping might consume me, that is, until I met Sarah.

I was sitting in a pew at our new church in Sydney when Sarah found me before the service. I was carrying the weight of my own cultural and practical ignorance, and feeling strange and alone and foreign. Sarah perkily introduced herself and said, "Oh, my friend Nerida (mutual friend that I had met in Austin) sent me an email about you. I have been waiting to meet you! If you need anything, please give me a call. I'm on maternity leave for three more months, and I'd be glad to help you in any way I can." Her introduction and friendliness breathed hope over me, hope that I would have a friend, and hope that there would be at least one Australian that would help me if I needed it.

By nature and practice, I am very straightforward and terribly honest. When I lived in Texas, I often felt immersed the confusion of Southern "politeness," and I regularly had trouble discerning what people meant by what they said. When I arrived in Sydney, our pastor's wife Susan gave me a short tutorial on Aussie cultural communication, "Australians are very straightforward and up-front. They tend to mean what they say, and say what they mean." By my American-who-lives-in-the-South communication decoding key, Sarah was glad to meet me, but might not really be interested in helping me with a mundane task like grocery shopping. By Susan's Aussie decoding key, Sarah really did mean that I could call her and ask for help. The question about which decoding key to use paralyzed me for a couple of days. Finally, after searching the grocery store on four different trips for cocoa and being at a loss as to what to pack in my children's peanut-free school lunches, I decided to use Susan's key on Sarah's introduction and offer, and I risked calling to ask Sarah for help.

In Sydney, every day, the shops close by about five so that everyone can go home to their families. On Thursday, however, shops stay open until the very late hour of nine o'clock; and many people shop on Thursday nights for the week's groceries. Sarah first shopped with me on a Thursday night in February. She willingly braved my terrible driving and helped me find the mall that contained all the stores I sought (In Oz, grocery stores are also at malls with all the other shops). Sarah tutored me on products and brand names. She helped me find foods that would suit our tight budget, and shared delicious recipes for things I had never cooked before, like roasted shoulder of lamb. She showed me what to buy at the grocery store, the butcher, and the fruit and veg shop. While we shopped, we talked about babies and sleep, post-partum depression, husbands, and our mums and dads. We both came home refreshed as new but true friends, and with all our week's shopping done. We had such a great time that night, that Sarah's husband Dave and my husband Greg thought it would be good for us to go every week.

So, nearly every week on Thursdays, for the time we lived in Sydney, Sarah and I headed out on the everyday adventure of food and friendship. If you looked at us on paper, we might not have made good friends. Sarah has an important job as a risk manager at a major bank in one of the world's most metropolitan cities. I am a displaced Texan homemaker. But week by week, we found common ground in our faith, in our love for our families, and in our appreciation of new experiences. I could ask Sarah any questions about my new homeland without her making me feel silly, and she loved sharing in all my new discoveries. We shared our histories and dreamed about our futures, and neither of us was threatened by the strengths of the other.

You see, when you face a three-headed, fire-breathing monster of any kind, even if the monster is only a supermarket, having a friend with you makes the difference between triumph and defeat. When I was overwhelmed and sad and lonely, a strong new friend found me. Sarah kindly carried me until I found my equilibrium in Australia. I don't think Sarah ever knew it, but she single-handedly slew the very first threatening monster I encountered in Oz as she bravely held out the hope of her friendship while guiding me through the supermarket.

Adrenaline, Ferocious Love, and Entrusting

A few weeks ago, on the way to school, the girls and I took a wrong turn and had to cross under the bridge where the scary men live. Given my childhood fear of under-bridge trolls and adult fear of potentially aggressive drunk men, I was pretty terrified. I had nearly all that was precious with me in my girls, and my usual hero Greg was miles away at work. I felt the power from an adrenaline surge rising.

I remember the first time that the protective surge of adrenaline rose in me. I was 23, and Jordan was 4 months old. We were in a truck stop paying for gas somewhere between Dallas and Houston. Jordan always loved truckers, and was cooing happily at a very large plaid-ish one who was getting dangerously close. He was talking sweetly to her, but the adrenaline assured me that he was interested in acquiring my colicky infant. I remember how the plan flashed in my consciousness in the blink of an eye. If he touched the handle on her carrier, I would grab the beer from the ice barrel, and BAM! With one swift blow to the head, he would fall before me, and truckers everywhere would know not to get too close to my little bald, moon-faced baby girl. Fortunately, that trucker had enough sense to recognize a hormone-crazed new mother and he backed away without incident.

It is not just humans that can cause a threat. When Meryl was two-and-a-half, we were feeding ducks at a lake when an aggressive swan came running up to claim our bread. He was honking and he looked wild with hunger. In a flash, the moldy bag of bread was transformed into a weapon that I swung back and forth before us clearing a a swath of safety. The swan's neck met the bread, and with one swift hard blow, he knew he was defeated. He waddled off in shame, and I yelled irrationally after him as my friends and their kids watched in shock and horror. Soon after the "bread bag incident" the aforementioned swan disappeared, but my family's lawyer (AKA father-in-law) says that I can "neither confirm nor deny" that I had anything to do with his disappearance.

As a woman, I am strong and bold and honest. As a mother, I am (reasonably) firm and (relatively) structured. As a mother whose children are threatened, I am wilder and more ferocious than a tiger in India. Like every good mother I know, a threat to my children brings out the grizzly power of what my friend Jennifer calls "Mama Bear." The force and magnitude of my love for my children frightens even me. I would go any distance and pay any cost to protect them. I would stand between them and a freight train, and I would gladly sacrifice my own life to keep them safe. (I feel a little freaky writing all of this out, but every good mother I know feels the same way. I think it is part of our "hard-wiring.")

As we peddled quickly toward the bridge a few weeks ago, a plan formed in my head. Unlike many mothers, when I hit "fight or flight mode," "flight" is mysteriously missing in me. On this particular day, if threatened, I would become a ninja (with no training whatsoever) and use my bike lock and chain as my weapon of choice. I pictured myself as a slightly older brown version of Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels, with less cool clothing, in a bike helmet, and against impaired enemies, but you get the picture. We bravely peddled on through, and the "dangerous" drunks just said a lazy "Good day." The bridge and adrenaline surge passed and I felt a little silly. Is it my skill or mental acuity or physical power that keeps us safe? Honestly, if the safety of my children depends on a nut like me, they are never going to be safe.

As the girls get older, and as I slowly grow more mature and less likely to attack innocent pond animals, I am learning to temper the power of protective adrenaline with trust. Every day, my authority over my children diminishes, and with it, the control that I possess over keeping them safe. Out of necessity, I am learning to entrust them to other people who also love them: their teachers, a few of my trusted friends, and my husband, Greg, who cares for them as much as I do, but in a masculine way. Most of all, when I am unable or absent, I am learning, at a snail's pace, to trust God with their care. I trust God to watch over them because God works everything for their and for my good; his resources are infinitely greater than a beer, bike lock, or a bag of moldy bread. Most of all I trust God to watch over my girls because I have to believe that that God loves Jordan, Meryl, and MJ more wildly and ferociously than I ever will.