What's Race Got to Do With It?

I was raised in lily-white Janesville, WI. I honestly do not remember my first introduction to a black person. I do remember Hmong refugees arriving in town, only because I shared a music stand with Helen Luong.

When I began taking violin lessons in the 4th grade, sometime soon after, it was 1974, 1975, maybe 1976, a person who dressed the same but looked different arrived at Washington Elementary.

Helen and I shared a music stand off and on each school year. Her musical talent quickly surpassed mine and she was moved to first chair. About that same time, sometime during junior high school at Franklin, Helen changed her name.

I remember the first day of the new school year, the fall of 1977, maybe 1978. As roll was called, the pronunciation of Huong Luong fumbled off a teacher’s tongue.

Snickers and curious eyes raced around the class, looking for the new kid with the funny name. It is not good to be different in junior high school. Playing violin was bad enough; I was just grateful I had a normal name.

When Helen raised her hand to acknowledge her name and attendance, I about fell off my chair. When’d she change her name, and why?

I wish I could say we shared café lattes after class as she enlightened me on the pressures of socialization and assimilation, but like I said, this was junior high school.

I simply accepted her explanation that she didn’t change her name; her name had always been Huong. Acceptance. Not sure why it was easy. It just was.

We graduated together, Parker, Class of 1983.

Whatever it was, the massive culture shock I experienced from leaving Wisconsin for college in London, Europe’s version of the Great American Melting Pot, it served as my anchor. People are different. It is not a choice. We just are. Acceptance.

Then, the next chapter of my understanding of race relations was written. I graduated from college in a city that is 80% black, Washington, D.C.

Once again, acceptance was my credo. Living and working in D.C. though, changed my vision. People are not really all that different. And skin color is not a determinator of whatever differences I once thought existed.

My buddies on the second floor of Nebraska Hall, Tony and Fast Eddie, introduced me to so-called black music, rap; funny how Run DMC is now remembered as those cool guys who sang with Aerosmith.

If I knew where they were today, I don’t know if Tony and Fast Eddie would acknowledge the color-blindness I strived to achieve back then; they liked to pick at our different heritage, especially during pick-up basketball;

Tony, why are you calling me Saltine?

Because you are the whitest cracker we ever seen.

I don’t know, because today, so-called black leaders (Bill Cosby aside), keep pulling black America from mainstream America.

Jesse Jackson comments on the American tragedy of Hurricane Katrina by sticking a sharp stick in white America’s collective eye. It was not until Jesse Jackson labeled the New Orleans Superdome the “belly of a slave ship” that I was forced to see black faces, rather than human faces. And I resent it.

It is indeed a truism that racism is taught and learned. It is not part of our DNA.

But I have to wonder, who is doing the teaching, and who is doing the learning, when Jesse Jackson invokes such images upon America?