Race spies and revolutionaries

Dad and Mel and I went to Mayfair to see the X Files movie. Blah. Not worth the time, really. On the way home, Dad drove 25 miles per hour with the windows rolled down on North Avenue. And I realized that I don't feel as invincible as I once did. At 16, I wouldn't bat an eye at driving down North Ave. at 9:45 at night. I scorned people who professed a sense of unease. But now, I found myself checking a desire to roll up my windows and deftly lock my door.

I watched mid-town Milwaukee slide by on Friday night, with its condemned buildings hugging construction sites, the bars and the churches side by side, the women and men waiting for buses and clustered around cars, and I realized how much of a different world it's become.

But it's not that a new world has sprung up, underpaid and underdeveloped. It's been there all the time, I just didn't want to admit that not only was I an ignorant outsider, but also complicit somehow in its continued existence.

Now, I don't know what that means. I still don't fully understand how I have benefited from and contributed to Racism as a light-skinned woman of color. The institution, I believe, is what created this economically and racially segregated situation, and I just wonder how can I fight one and the other without even understanding my role.

Now, the guy who wrote Incognegro had an interesting point. He felt that, rather than allow himself to fall into the trap of tragic mulatto, bemoaning his fate to straddle two worlds that won't accept him, rather than victimize himself, he would turn that on its head and use his appearance for good: to fight the institution, as a race spy, as it were. Only, he set his character in a fairly easy time period. Easy meaning, fighting a racism that manifests itself in white hoods and nooses.

But what of today? What's a poor race spy to do? Who am I spying on, in this ambiguous time, when it's hip to be ironically racist. Who am I spying on, riding down the street, watching the sinister institution flow by? My dad, who won't talk to his biracial daughters about the role of race in his and their lives? Myself, the torn pseudo-philosopher obsessed with the color line? The man on the corner shouting "OJ" at us when we didn't stop to give him money for his buddy playing sax? Or the scores of white folks who squeamishly objected to driving through that part of town to get to my utopically de-segreated neighborhood nearby?

Who am I spying on, and what am I doing it for? Racism is far too insidiously elusive now to sink my teeth into. Where do we begin ripping it up?

Miscegenation isn't the answer, even when it warms my heart to watch fuzzy-headed beige babies walking down the street. Because then colorism becomes the enemy, like in Brazil, like in South Africa.

And conversation, especially these days, in the world of race forums and CNN programming and Tyra Show episodes, is beginning to feel like beating a dead horse. Too many pedants, not enough revolutionaries.

To be continued, I suppose.