Nakedness and Race

There is something about race that seems very involuntary. In the book, My First White Friend, I remember thinking that there is something similar between nakedness and race. Let me explain.

The chapter that I am referring to was about a girl who had recently moved from the downtown center of Denver, to a nice, whiter suburb twenty minutes away. It was a small enough distance for the plea of returning to make sense to the small girl but her father, the primary reasons for their relocation, saw other factors as being more imperative to their situation. She described what it was like to go into a much whiter school half way through the 7th grade. There was so much that was 'understood' about her because of the color of her skin and so the students didn't ask questions and the teachers did not expect greatness. Here recollection of what that shift was like was illuminating, in the way that it showed the easy access to personhood of another.

I have found that when I am in cross-cultural settings, I wish that I could hide my skin. At times I feel like it screams uptight, pretentious, and annoying and those are all characteristics that I would love to distance myself from. Additionally, I feel like it is this 'thing' that needs to either be addressed (humor is often the most natural vehicle for this) or ignored in the vein of educational enlightenment. When I walk into a room in this setting, I feel understood. Not necessarily for who I am, but for what I represent, and rarely do I get to correct or inform that understanding. My experience walking into a room like this is rather limited. However, it is the situation that so many people face everyday.

A solution of colorblindness would say that the color of a person's skin has no bearing on who they are or what they are capable of achieving. I would agree, but I also think that it is foolish to make this colorblindness retrospective, flattening the playing field of history in an attempt at irresponsible, majority guilt satiation. The color of my skin has informed who I am. I have been treated a very specific way, in places of majority and minority, and I have come to expect that treatment. I have been taught to behave in a certain manner, view my education in a particular way, respect my elders, and eat my food; all of this being informed by my skin.

To understand someone by their skin is selling them short. It is like saying that I have seen the model of a person's car, and in turn know their music tastes, culinary inclinations, and choice of career. It is foolish and limiting, for both the 'understander' and the 'subject'. There is great vulnerability in race, because it can never be hidden. It is nice when I am with a majority culture because my race(nakedness) is much less obvious and normal, thus making it a conversation that is not important to our gathering.

I went to True Vine Missionary Baptist Church today and I was one of the two white people there. The other one, she drove. I felt naked in a lot of ways. I felt 'understood' without being consulted and their abundant warmth made that okay. This is where there is beauty in being a minority. Very rarely do I reflect on the implications of my skin color in my life, but having it become a rarity forces me to do that.