[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]
When you’ve been in a relationship as long as we have, your day-to-day conversation takes on a certain shorthand. One or two words invoke a common memory. A shared look can make you laugh.
When you’ve been in an interracial relationship as long as we have, some of those collective memories are of the most unpleasant and awkward situations. For us, those situations usually concern race. And, admittedly, I’m guilty of using them as a snapshot of a certain person.
One of the earliest of these occurred more than 10 years ago. My husband and I were talking to his father about his advertising business and his client base. After discussing the relative merits of summer camp, and church accounts — seemingly out of the blue he announced that he’d had a couple of bad experiences with black clients and therefore didn't do business with blacks anymore.
Do you ever have one of those moments in your life when you think, “I know I didn’t hear what I thought I just heard.” This was one of those moments. I was torn between thinking, “Oh my God, this is the father of the man I’ve just started dating,” and “Should I start a very frank discussion on race, now?” I made the unusual choice to say nothing.
I Remember What He Said
Elephants have nothing on women. We remember everything. To my husband’s endless embarrassment, every time he suggests I ask his father to do something, I look at him and say, “I don’t think he would want to do business with me.”
Fortunately, this repartee is not limited to family. Colleagues get into the act as well. I often refer to my husband’s colleagues collectively as WMWP (Well Meaning White People). Sure, they’re doing their best impression of limousine liberals, but one or two drinks in, and it’s open season on the rest of us. My husband has a colleague whom I generally avoid socializing with because the chances he’s going to say something that offends me is about 100 percent.
I think during one of our first encounters he talked about buying his then high school-aged daughter, a “Cholo car.” For the uninitiated, I assume he was referring to a car that resembled a “low rider” vehicle. But to this day, I’m not entirely sure. That’s not the worst of it, however. The unforgettable comment came at a child’s birthday party.
Was He Truly Well Meaning?
The WMWC (well meaning white colleague) asks me where I was living now. I responded that we’re in a neighborhood up in the hills. We talk briefly about the local hiking options in my neighborhood, then he asks if I know a particularly well-known black actress/comedienne who lives in our ‘hood. Sure, I say, I’ve seen her taking out the trash and talking to neighbors. Then he mentions that she had once rented the house next door to him. So far, so good — just your regular L.A. style children’s birthday party conversation. Then it came. “You know I was really surprised when I met her.”
"How so?” I ask, knowing full well I shouldn’t continue the conversation. It’s a kids’ party – how bad could it be?
He tells me she once rented from his next-door neighbor. He held the keys, and acted as a property manager of sorts. Innocuous enough. But then it comes. And it’s real bad.
An Insult to Remember
“The thing is,” he said, “I was surprised by how she acted — she didn't do any of that,” he pauses looking for the politically correct word for his politically incorrect statement, “African American routine.” He proceeds to tell me how shocked he was that there wasn’t any of that head weaving, finger-snapping, sassiness that he associated with her characters on television. I just nodded, letting him dig a deeper and deeper hole. What I wanted to say was well, she is an actress; acting is what she does.
Why am I writing about all this? Because the last insult is the last one I’m going to put up with. Now, as always, I knew before I went out something was likely to happen. My husband and I were negotiating on our way out the door as to how long we should stay after this couple said something offensive.
He, ever the optimist, said maybe they’d be different this time. I brought up a comment the husband had made about good vs. bad immigrants the last time we had dinner, and my husband cringed on our way to the garage.
Here Comes the Insult
Appetizers, drinks and dinner were moving along swimmingly until the wife brought up their househunting. They were limiting themselves, they said, to a few all-white zip codes on the Westside of Los Angeles. I didn’t even ask why, but then the wife volunteered. “I know this may sound racist," she started. My stomach always clenches violently when a sentence starts that way. “My parents always say,” she continued, "that when buying a house, you should follow the white people.” She went on to bolster this by discussing property values and “good” schools. I’m sure I was shooting daggers at my husband. He only glanced at me, knowing it was going to be a long car ride home.
This, more than their immigration comments, and more than their comments about “real” white people fleeing Beverly Hills because of the Persian population, made me angry — angry enough to write this, after yelling at my poor husband.
I don’t want to spend time with people who think it’s all lovely and liberal to have me over, but wouldn’t live next door to me. I told him he could see his friend, but I was done. He could explain my absence by saying I didn’t want to endanger their property values by visiting — lest their neighbors think I’m a permanent and value-detracting fixture.
I try to be a good wife. There was a time in my life — a long time where I went off at a moment’s notice, and didn’t put up with anyone’s mess. I think the days of me being a peace-loving wife are over. I am going to live up to my true nature and tell people what I think of them right then and there. Is it career-enhancing, friend-boosting behavior? Probably not. But after 10 years, I'm done being nice to people who are not.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday.
