The South evokes the romantic: magnolias and Scarlet O’Hara, gulf shore sunsets, sugarcoated accents, and hushpuppies. Though from the North, it also remains mystifying, distant and remote, preserving a culture that appears to have settled like dust and history. Political corruption, Hurricane Katrina, and Jena-6 substantiate our fears as drive over the Appalachians, along highways, through the Bible Belt, past dirt roads and Baptist churches. We travel, over the Triborough Bridge, out of New York City, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and into Georgia with the certitude and comfort as we traverse for a higher cultural purpose (Tom Waits, Glitter & Doom, Atlanta).
We observe communities from the car windows (like a television screen): Confederate bumper stickers, kitschy lawn décor, truck stop strip-club signs, and pro-life billboards that flicker blood stained parts and fleshy fetuses. From our Fox Theater seats we were insulated again, separate, reminding ourselves that we are different, blue-blooded, defining ourselves by a temporary existence against the red curtain of the South.
On this trip, my boyfriend is meeting my extended family for the first time: my aunt (a chain-smoker, bleach blonde hair, legs much younger than her face), my uncle (Southern native with a golden beer belly, a master of the grill) and my two cousins aged 15 (recently discovered how to manipulate men with her breasts) and 19 (recently discovered beer pong and expressed interest in breast reduction surgery).
Our southbound road trip reminded my companion of his experiences hitchhiking: rest stops where women leave bathroom stalls in track marks and tears and Deliverance type scenes where drawling men loll, “Yoouuain’t from around heeere.”
He fears being recognized.
“Whatever… I look the same as you…we have the same nose.”
This is my version of comfort.
“People see it in my face, Kate. I’m a Jew.”
He asks me what my family will say when they find out.
“Nothing,” I answer. “Why would they care?”
Upon arrival, we are graciously offered the quaint comforts of a suburban home: a front porch with a swing, a sweeping pool, a sprightly Golden Retriever, and a pantry the size of my bathroom. My aunt and uncle’s Atlanta home is centered in a commuter belt that is becoming the residence of a growing number of minorities, against the will of their white neighbors. Throughout the weekend, we are informed of the developments: what “niggers” were moving in where.
We do not challenge their objection.
My family is made up of Midwestern Catholics and Lutherans who exhibit no remorse or shame in subtle or overt racism. While my parents curbed the use of racial epithets in our home, my extended family has never shied from the “N” word.
This is my family and not so distant past, however, the majority of my family and friends are from the Midwest, where racism sounds like this:
“Downtown has a lot of…low-income people.”
(Euphemisms)
Or
“Black people just commit more crimes. Look at the numbers.”
(Justifications)
I had introduced my boyfriend to my family several months ago and his Jewishness was treated jovially. My mom reiterated that she doesn’t care at all (making jokes that she doesn’t cook Kosher) and as he was leaving, my grandmother hugged him and said, “You’re all right…for a Jew.”
Everyone laughs.
“Grandma loved you,” my aunt told him, “She said you couldn’t get enough of that pork, that Heavenly Baked Ham.”
“So she just loved a Jew eating pork?”
Everyone laughs.
In the kitchen, my cousin’s boyfriend whispers to me, “Is he a Jew?”
“Yes.”
“But he was eating those hot dogs.”
“Well… he doesn’t practice.”
“Yeah, I knew he was Jewish, I could tell.”
As an English professor and a Marxist, my boyfriend has dedicated his career to exposing the political posturing behind governmental and religious orders. Teaching one of the most culturally diverse student bodies in the country, he speaks candidly about systems of oppression, the failures of the capitalist system, disenfranchisement, and the perpetuation of classism. He introduces theory, feverishly and passionately, believing that he is giving every student the tools to confront racism, social stratification, and injustice.
Unlike the professor’s discourse with susceptible 18 year olds, confronting a faceless constituency, or disparate academic peers, there is a new delicacy and sensitivity required in taking on your girlfriend’s family’s political and religious beliefs. We aren’t even married.
Someone mentions Obama.
My aunt is spurred: “I wouldn’t vote for a black man. Hell no- no way. Are you flippin’ crazy? You have no idea what I deal with…all those black bitches at work.”
She lights a cigarette.
“But…what does his candidacy have to do with the women you work with?”
“No way. Nope. Never. Never voting for a black man.”
She pauses seriously and taps the ashes from her cigarette, “You might think I’m stupid or ignorant, but that’s just the way it is. That’s what I know. And I would be caught dead before voting for some black.”
My 15-year-old cousin adds, “You should see them try to read at school. It’s like, de-de –der…and I’m like, ok-aaaaaay… spit it out, ya’ll.”
For the first two days, we ignore our reactive instincts to confront my aunt when she cutely describes them as “Ni-gers” or when my cousin playfully denigrates the black kids in her school. When my aunt and uncle talk about how lazy and incompetent their black employees are, we sit quietly sipping from straws and talk about whether it is going to rain.
This proximity is uncomfortable. My family, my past, and my life are on display. So are his. We communicate in looks and whispers. I am angry that he thinks my family’s religious and political beliefs are relevant. He thinks he is selling out, avoiding harmful discord to float around a pool and drink Margaritas. We are caught between our families and our histories, our words and our beliefs, our politics and our relationships.
He thinks he is a hypocrite. I am defensive.
By Sunday at 3:00 a.m. we begin to fight.
We fight about the right to be racist and the right to teach it. We fight about whose responsibility it is to tell my young cousins that their racism is destructive. We fight about the difference between the Jewish, black, and indigent experience. We fight about privilege and education and whether people should be held accountable for their own prejudices. We fight about our own histories, whether our pasts are relevant, and whether they can be reconciled.
Hopelessly, we begin to gather our things to leave. It is 4:00 in the morning and we hear voices near the garage. I open the door to see my cousin and her friends sitting by the pool. When she sees me, she says in a loud whisper, “It’s okay! You can come out!”
“We had to hide the black kid in the bushes,” she laughs.
Just then, a tall black kid jumped over the picket fence and smiled at us, embarrassed and relieved.
They all huddle, giggling and I watch as she flirts with him, the same as she flirts with the battalion of white boys who come over to watch her dive and flit about in her rainbow of bikinis.
“I am beginning to learn that I am not who I think I am, but what I do,” a friend once told me.
As we travel north on I-95, tensions subside and we both agree that we hate highway food. We are collectively comforted that we live in a city where everyone despises the suburbs and makes regular use of the word “gentrification.” In the morning, I will wake up and read the New York Times and talk about grad school where I will write about the fetishism of the law and cultural constructions of self-identity. We will talk about politics and racism in America and the importance of the coming election. We will talk and talk…about theory…and practice…theory and practice…the difference between who we think we are and what we do.
