>>Because the harm done by this practice is great. One of the young children
>>I used to mentor in Harlem was fascinated by the phone on my desk. When I
>>asked why he said he liked it. And why did he like it? He said he liked it
>>because it was white.
>
>And what's wrong with liking an object for its color? If he'd said he
>liked it because it was red, would that make him a Communist? If he liked
>it because it was blue, would he be asserting his cultural background? If
>he liked it because it was brown, would that make him a coprophiliac?
heh. my son was born 5 days after my neighbor's son. we hadn't discussed names and, in fact, each of us chose the name at the last minute, departing from what we'd initially thought we'd name our children. we ended up naming the kids the same name: daniel. we also have the same last name. so, there was danny a. (her son) and danny b. (my son).
best of buddies, they were. i sent my danny b. to public school, they sent their danny a. to catholic schoo. good thing, huh? otherwise, they might have gotten 'em mixed up!
on his sixth birthday, i had a birthday party: the kid's in his class at a rural public school and danny a., who attended catholic school. i hadn't thought much of the whole thing, but I'd forgotten that the kids in the public school probably had no idea who danny a. was.
he got to the party early and was standing in front of a t.v., eyes glazed, frantically pushing the buttons on a game controller. the other kids bound into the room and stopped dead in their tracks when they saw danny a.
i was preoccupied getting birthday stuff together, but i, too, stopped dead in my tracks when i saw five of my son's classmates huddled in the corner. they were whispering among themselves. I become more uneasy, worrying about what they were saying. Oh, sheesh, they're awfullly young to be having a silly, territorial fight like this.
i answered the door, another mom and birthday party attendee. meanwhile, the schoolmates had corralled my son to the corner and asked him to ask danny a. a question. my son consented to do the job.
my danny b. approached the engrossed danny a. and asked, "danny, are you black?"
without skipping a beat, or missing a game controller pad, danny a. replied: "no man, i be brown. see?"
as for the white phone, i'd be fascinated, too. who buys white phones? and, if they do, how long do they stay white, especially people with children, and their neighbor's and relative's children, in and out of the house all day?
all of this is not to say that racism isn't a problem, or that racism in literature isn't a problem. it's pretty clear, if you talk to black people at any length, that their self-perceptions and sense of self-worth are seriously (and often damangingly so) by hegemonic 'whiteness'
OTOH, if I'm to take the homies seriously, they recognize my kid as "criggah". they do so because they are resisting the hegemonic cultural value placed on certain attitudes, styles, appearances, etc. everything from how you comport yourself in public to what kind of babes you dig becomes, when thought about, an opportunity (they think) for resisting cultural hegemony.
kelley