Cultural Compositions
As I sat on the crest of a mountain this weekend attempting some respite from the recent chaos of the world, I looked out on either side of me at two immense valleys. We like to think that the valleys and mountain ranges we observe today gently rose from the ground, harmonizing along the seam of the horizon where Earth meets sky. The reality is harmony almost never comes naturally in nature. The valleys of that wilderness were carved by massive glaciers gliding violently along the surface of the Earth, remnants of a devastating Ice Age. Ultimately, that same source of destruction became a source of thriving life and we are fortunate enough to be inspired by the ostensible perfection of the vivid compositions that resulted.
Today, if you’ve seen the senseless shootings on your Facebook feed or the current state of this year’s election race, we are at the end of a cultural ice age and overwhelmed by misguided fear because of it. We were frozen, stuck in a way of thinking that resulted from centuries of separation, elitism, and oppression. Since before the Civil Rights movement, the glaciers of racial distinction have been melting causing many to lose the ability to distinguish differences. This terrifies people because of our fear for what we don’t understand. It’s a natural survival mechanism humans developed, but we have to stop making decisions based on these fears and assumptions, like the decision to shoot. This misguided fear begins with uninformed conviction and a mindset rooted in inherited assumption. It ends with conscious understanding.
I grew up on the hyphen of black-white in America. Living on the hyphen means creating who you are in the face of being someone who is neither and both. I was the ‘light-skinned’ kid in a predominantly black community in Oakland and the ‘oreo’ in a predominantly white community we later moved into, as if well-articulated thoughts and education disqualified me from “blackness.” Regardless of how I create my own identity outside the context of my skin color in this country, people see me as black, and levy their expectations accordingly. The way society sees you will always have an immense impact on the way you see yourself.
Understanding this, think about how the black community sees itself. This struggle is at the core of The Black Lives Matter movement. Although senseless police brutality was the catalyst, it is a stand to say the expectations and fears society holds of the black community are no longer acceptable and being quiet is no longer an option. Please note I didn’t say my white Jewish mother’s life matters any less, but she will be the first to tell you her life isn’t under any threat simply because of the way she looks.
I constantly hear people say they had no idea how prevalent it really is so I want to share a story in hopes of raising some awareness. Ironically, I was on my way to a racial studies class with one of my best friends. We were at Cal Poly Pomona, the fifth most diverse public university at the time. Out of 22,000 students White, Asian, and Hispanic each represented 30% and Black students represented, brace yourself… 3%. For some perspective, I was 1 of 6 black architecture students in 6 years. As we strolled to class talking and laughing, a campus police cruiser hastily cut us off and the officer stepped out, demanding to see my identification. She refused to state why, so I refused to give her my ID. She asked me to calm down and told us that he and I fit the description of a pair who was involved in an altercation in the parking lot.
I indignantly gave her my ID and in that moment the back-up showed up and things got interesting. Immediately playing the bad cop, he slowly steps out of the car, chest puffed and informs me that they need to hold me there until the victim can identify me. I was being assumed guilty until proven innocent and last I checked this isn’t the way the system works, unless you’re black apparently. They attempted to detain me, and even had the nerve to pull my friend aside-who happened to be blonde with blue eyes-and assure him that if I was forcing him to stay there he can help them by turning me in; looks like we didn’t both fit the description after all. This sounds like a joke and I truly wish it was.
After I settled down, I told the officers that it is illegal for them to detain me without a valid reason and I would be getting a lawyer. They glanced at each other, then back at me and gave me my ID, but not before telling me that I could still confess before I go, relentless racism.
In their eyes, I wasn’t an aspiring Architect or a loving son or any of these things that define who I really am. I was a ‘B’ on that driver’s license, a thought process they had inherited and reaffirmed as a form of protection.
I tell this story to drag a pitch black marker through the line that says how this happens. Let it go. Every day in this country someone is followed in a store, pulled over for nothing, ‘randomly’ searched, or denied a second chance because of the color of their skin. Some people even lose their lives, their family, and their future. Whether you see it, it’s real.
The glaciers of a cold time in American history are melting, mixing cultures and ideologies along the way. Just remember that the unsubstantiated fears we hold of other cultures we don’t understand can be overcome by tapping into our deepest fear of all, our fear of ourselves. Hopefully when we can finally overcome this fear and move past our expectations our society can look back on all of this chaos and appreciate the colorful composition we’ve created.