Tag Archives: travel

Black in a small town

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I wrote this a couple of months ago and never got around to posting it, so, here tis:

Never before have I been so interested in being black. Seriously. It’s weird.

I grew up in a small, mostly white, town. My parents had friends who were white, but also many who were black. So I knew other kids growing up who’s skin would get ashy and who knew why I freaked out about getting my hair wet.

The first place I lived that wasn’t my small town was LA. Very different. Lots more Spanish everywhere. Where I was, there were far more latinos than black people. But I never felt out of place. I was just another freshman from the east coast.  (But I should also note that the campus I was on was mostly white, so maybe that says something about me too.)

Then I moved to NYC. Famously a melting pot, though it’s not quite as melty as NYC would want you to believe. I read an editorial in the Guardian (I think) the other day that made a good point – NYC has shared spaces (i.e. the trains, certain parks), but there are places that are less shared (look around the McDonalds and then look around a random East Village Thai place). I learned that I could more easily blend in certain neighborhoods (Washington Heights – Dominican; Bed-Sty – Black) than some of my friends; that I could blend as easily in other neighborhoods (the Village, Midtown) and that I had to work a bit and rely on learned behavior in others (uber fancy restaurants, Upper East Side). But I rarely felt out of place because of my skin color. When I did, more often it was because of my bank balance.

I’ve been to London, Hanoi, Saigon, Rio, Salvador da Bahia, Vienna, Athens, Prague, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam. I’ve lived in Providence, RI. I’ve spent long periods deep in Trenton and Atlantic City as well. I’ve traveled to the American South – visited plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. But I’ve never felt blacker in my life than I do in Ashland.

Now, this is not the kind of black that I feel when I visit family in the South, or see fields where people who looked like me spent thousands of hours in the hot summer sun.  Not the kind that says, “My soul is grown deep like the rivers.”  This is the Other kind.

My mother told me stories of when she first came to my home town. Children would come up to her in stores and rub her hand to see if the brown would come off. Many people there had never seen anyone who was black live and in person. I don’t think I really understood what that meant until I came here. The simple fact that I can’t buy stockings,
or hair products – things that I’ve always been able to get everywhere I’ve been – is a revelation. Thank goodness for the internet. How my mother did this before she could just order hair products from Amazon, I do not know.

Caught the Tropicalia bug again

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(If you have Spotify – here’s some background music for the post: Prohibiting is Prohibited)
I suddenly caught the Tropicalia bug again. There’s something in that music that niggles at me – like there’s something in it I need to know but it’s just beyond. Some of that is a function of language (my Portuguese is limited, to put it nicely), some of it a function of culture and history.
Brazil is the only country I’ve been to where the culture seems so familiar and so foreign. I know so little. I feel like I should know more than I do, more should be instinctive, but I’m so far behind. Growing up, I was taught or absorbed a fair amount of European history, and basics of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Middle Eastern, African and North American. I was taught that to be well rounded and a citizen of the world (and you should be a well rounded citizen of the world), you should know a little something of the history of it’s people.  And while a good chunk of what I was taught was from a decidedly Occidental, if not outright colonial, point of view, I felt I knew the basics of most places.  Until I got to Brazil. I realized I knew nothing.
My knowledge of the country before I went – it had been colonized by Portugal; they grew coffee and sugar cane; once a year they have a big party with a parade; there’s some ocean; and there’s a statue of Christ somewhere. If you’d asked me before my trip was planned, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the Amazon rain forest is there.  But events? Nothing.
I learned a bit more before I went.  But facts only teach me so much….
When we landed in Salvador, I was struck by familiarity.  I saw people who looked like me, or like family. I saw food that seemed like food my family made. I felt a vibe that made sense. But at the same time, it was all new. How was that possible?
Slowly I’ve learned more – the slave trade there was different. I remember being told that families and village groups were more likely to be kept together. Language and religion from Africa survived longer. Despite those differences, I’ll bet that if my grandfather or my grandmother visited the Bahian countryside, they’d fit right in. Those things that I picked up about my own cultural history as an African American, I felt reasonate in Bahia. And yet –
I’d had no idea that there had been a military coup, no idea about the political censorship, no sense of the fights over land reforms, nada. Things that, while they may or may not have a direct impact on a modern Brasilan’s life, it’s in the culture. It’s why some things are the way they are, why some of the songs I love are what they are. É Proibido Proibir (Prohibiting Is Prohibited) is a great song, but even more meaningful when I know that it was written in a time of governmental decrees prohibiting many things.
Since I went, I’ve learned a bit more.  Much of it prompted by the music I fell in love with. What little Portuguese I know is mostly what I learned reading the Portuguese lyrics side by side with the English lyrics.  But poetry isn’t just about what the words mean – it’s also about signifiers, references, metaphors, allusions and so much of that is lost on me.
Perhaps if I listen to it long enough, and read enough, one day I’ll understand.