#deep thinks

You know, if ghosts in any form exist and are discovered to be extra-dimensional beings in a curled-up dimension in our space-time reality, we'd have to rethink a lot of things we tell our kids like: "monster's don't exist." and "there's no such thing as ghosts".

I'm closer to an atheist than anything

I say I'm agnostic because I'm open to any possibility

I think energy connects us all, whether it's Cosmic or the energy of Love and Devotion from a benevolent god or the fickle humors of gods that just want to poke it with the zappy stick to see what happens

But here's the thing

My grandma is in heaven and I 100% know that because she called me shortly after she died to tell me all about it

There are things we don't understand in this life

Ten minutes after getting my coat off and settling at my desk I hear,

“Black people have a tone, I pick up the phone, and as soon as they speak I go, Oooooh! That’s a black person on the other end!”

Now I’m not saying I haven’t said some stupid things to people. I’ve got a whole list, for example, probably not a good idea to talk innocently about aliens around someone of Latino descent. Or to assume that just because someone is Japanese they like Anime and want to watch it to you. Or my worst, upon finding out that a girl was from Bulgaria, babbling every time I saw her using words like ‘strong’ and ‘resilient’ and I am ashamed to admit it, ‘burly’.  I’m guilty as charged, and had to step back and BOW DOWN to the knowledge that we all stereotype because its easy, and we have to make an effort not to do it, and to recgonize it. 

You see, when I’m getting ready to say something stupid and/or culturally insensitive, its usually at a time when I am attempting to reach out the most. It’s when I want to say, I really, really, like you! I want to get to know you better! Let me show you how well I know your culture!

NO. 

DON’T DO IT.

Don’t speak about someone’s culture as a automatic “in” to get them to like you. Do a little more listening. Be a little more polite. Speak to them, as you would to a general American stranger you didn’t even know. Shoot the breeze and avoid politics, race, religion, sexuality, ALL of it. If they want to speak about their culture, they will let you know!

I’m still working on this, everybody is.

So it’s MLK Day and people are uncomfortable, and wanting to “share the dream” while nervously tittering about reverse racism, and civil rights. 

So I didn’t go batshit crazy just because this girl, who probably thinks I’m really cool, and sweet, and oh so interesting, tried to extend a hand with her statement and say, 

O________O

Actually.

O_______________O

I’m not going to lie. 

O_____________________________O

I don’t know what she was trying to say. Whatever it was, it was lost in translation. 

She said, “I hear their voices, and I go, ohhhh. You are  defintely black.” ...and the other girl agrees.

And I’m like, count to three. Let it be. It’s MLK Day, she’s uncomfortable and stereotyping just to add SOMETHING to the conversation because she soo wants to be a part of the conversation or whatever this is 

O_____________O       I think.

Problem was, I wasn’t a part of this conversation. I was just suddenly having one of those moments where I realized I was one of maybe 6-7 people of color in an office of 50. Again. Having to play cultural referee, cultural guru, cultural teacher to somebody who doesn’t know they are being inapprorpiate, and don’t, please don’t, speak around me that way. 

Tone and intonation exists.

Accents exist.

Slang exist.

Ebonics exist.

Culture exist.

Economic barriers exist.

Economic barriers to education exist. 

Alternate languages are born. 

Culture shock happens.

I agree that all these things exist.

What got me going wasn’t the fact that she said, “All black people have a tone” but that she said it at work. 

This was a conversation between two white girls at work. 

This should have been a conversation between two white girls after work in the privacy of their own home. 

I don’t care what you do behind close doors. 

At work is different. At work there is a black person sitting next to you, slowly working themselves from irritation to seething irritation that she has to listen to two girls she might have thought would make good friends speak about black people as if she wasn’t black and hadn’t been sitting next to them for the past three months.

And oh, I suddenly have a tone that is different from you? I suddenly have a way about me that is just ingrained? Are my teeth different too? You know? So I can speak this paticular way? Is my voicebox made different too? My face? Is it in the blood for me to ‘sound black’, and when I don’t conform to your standards of what ‘black is and is not’ 

So..... O___O

what am I?

O___________O

When I’m not sounding ‘Black’ I mean. Did I somehow crack a secret code? Find the missing link? Make my way to the civilized side?

This is me musing guys. I’m not angry at all, (I’m literally and utterly baffled) I’m downright confused. I literally don’t know what she meant, means, is. This my friends, is my culture shock.

I’m black. I grew up highly educated with parents who grew up dirt poor and spoke Ebonics. They literally had to train themselves out of it. In the comfort of our own home, we cackle, we slur our words, we say our colloquial phrases, our little made up words that are unique to our family tree way of speak, we grunt to say pass that! We grunt in agreement, we hum, we squeal, we make bell noises, we make growling noises, we use no words at all and have a conversation based entirely on sound, and facial expressions. 

And it is so fun. And it is so freeing. And it says, “you’re home!” Relax, be yourself.

Outside of the home, we speak the Queen’s English (or do you call it the King’s?) so well that once my father was tapped on the shoulder and told in broad daylight by the lady behind him, “I thought you were A RICH WHITE MAN!” and she was happy to say it. Literally gleefully pleasantly surprised.

You speak so well.

You speak, just like us.

Hm.

There are some words, in the English language that just can’t convey the feeling of a paticular facial expression. There are some words that other languages have, that just don’t translate well into English. 

We all know this.

There are some words, unknown to those who haven’t had a proper ‘education’, and so use sounds and hand gestures and facial expressions to convey the meaning of a word never learned because their vocabulary never had the chance to expand,and so you make do.

We all know this.

This is what “Ebonics” means to me. You ‘make do’ (this is starting to sound like one of those made up phrases that actually already has a word) with the simple words you do have, to make a phrase you haven’t heard before but are struggling desperately to convey.

This is not the language of “black people”. 

(Everybody and anybody can be ‘uneducated’ and not have access to the resources they need)

This is the language, the tone, you assigned to them without their knowledge or permission. 

This is you putting them in a box. 

For no reason.

This is you judging them not by the content of their character, but by what you percieve to be the color of their voice through the phone.

This is you pretending that doesn’t matter.

And this was me, telling you, when counting to three didn’t work, that I didn’t want to hear anything else about how black people sound considering I was black and I thought I sounded just fine. This was me telling you that not all black people sound the same, and we don’t have the same tone, and from one state to another we don’t have the same words central to our people as if we speak dog and all you hear is

Bark! Bark! Bark!

and think Dog. Because that is what you see when you hear it. That’s what you imagine. As if we aren’t Great Danes standing among Chihuauas and collies and poodles and pitbulls and terriers. and our 

Bark! Bark! Barks!

don’t sound the same at all. 

I’m not ashamed to come from poor roots. I’m not ashamed to come from a long history of food stamps and hungry bellies. I’m not ashamed that my Grans can barely read, and dropped out of middle school when she was a child. I cherished her crooked mispelled handwriting in my Birthday cards for what it was. A card from Gran. 

I’m not ashamed to be Black and come from poor roots. I’m not ashamed that when you say, we have a ‘tone’ I’m lumped in. 

I’m irritated that you needed the box in the first place.

I am so confused.

I don’t understand how a guy can hold a girl’s hand for over 48 hours, hold her hand, help her to the bathroom....

He let her squeeze his fingers as she shook in pain. 

He offered her a bag to puke in. He rubbed her knees, held her back. 

Offered her ice in a cup.

And when it was all said and done.

Gone.

How do you go from hand holding to---

                                                                 ----I won’t pick you up from the hospital.

How do you go from hand holding to---

                                                                 ----I won’t give you back the carseat your mother bought for your baby that is in my car because I think the baby isn’t mine.

Really?

9 months of pregnancy, 48 hours of handholding, and now, right now, you choose to question whether or not this baby is yours?

I am so confused.

Black babies when they are born, are sometimes light as milk cream. Sometimes they are born dark as black cherry stained oak. Sometimes their bellies are a whole shade lighter than their little arms. 

Over time, the color becomes more regular, more even. Even as I type this though, I know that there are spots on me, whole shades different, all over. 

You can usually tell how dark a black baby will get by the backs and edges of their ears, the nail beds, maybe even between the toes.

This baby was born early. This baby was born light. At birth this baby was the color of buttermilk cream. 48 hours later, after blinking up at the world she had calmed to a golden oak stain and was declared safe from the NICU.

What should have been a celebration turned into....

I don’t even know. 

Her ears are dark like black cherry stained oak, and the rest of her body is golden oak stained. She went from being told right before her birth that she may need to be hooked up to tubes and machines for 30 days, that her life was in danger to--

                    --ready to go. Breathing quietly, safe in her mother’s arms.

I am so confused.

Who waits, until this moment, 

out of all others 

to say they weren’t sure the baby was theirs. 

Who goes from so many hours of holding hands to 

                                         refusing to sign the birth certificate?

I am so confused, and saddened. 

When I went to see them, I was so happy they were safe and healthy, her mom, told me, “Oh we are waiting. He’s coming. After work. He’s coming.”

....................and he never came.

Not until days later,roused by angry phone calls at her apartment. Finally picking himself up to bring her, her carseat. Taking her back to the apartment, she pays for. 

How could he do that?

I don’t know what to think, but of such grief. That baby yawned in my arms without a care in the world. She kicked at my hands without knowing what kind of world she was coming into. Her mother smiled at me, in that quiet, tired way all mothers do.

Yet both were left.

Yet both were so easily discarded.