I’ve written before about being brown in a black and white world. It really is, I think an advantageous yet unfair position because I can sift in and out of both worlds, all worlds. No one knows what I am and more importantly, what side I’m on. I sit on the fence watching all those around me engage in these race battles and I take snippets of this and snippets of that and I can continue to straddle the line. Folks think I am: Greek, Italian, Pakistani, Indian, Sephardic, Iranian. Once on an Air France flight I had to ask for the customs form twice and the stewardess said “What do you mean, aren’t you French?” They hardly ever say “Are you American?” and I’ve not ever once heard someone say “you look Afghan” although after I tell them where I am from they immediately say I remind them of this girl:

She doesn’t look like that now, and really neither do I. Years of war have changed her both outside and in, and years of figuring out how to live life have done the same to me. It’s the luxury of not looking Afghan, of living in America, it’s the luxury of the luck that I was born to the people I was born to.

These really are circumstances of luck. I mean, you didn’t pick being born white or black or brown or asian. You didn’t pick your station in life (but we’ve done away with those in American, haven’t we?) As the saying goes, we play the hand we are dealt. But what a stupid saying. It doesn’t even mention the game we are supposed to be playing – is it poker, blackjack? And in all of those games you have the option of getting new cards if the ones you hold really suck. Or, if you just want to try your luck with others. It is just a lie and created to make you feel as if you are trapped and that somehow you can still win even with a shitty hand. You can, but only if the other player’s hands are shittier. And they might be. But what a risk. And I’m not much of a gambler.

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What a dangerous topic race is. No one wants to own their own inner racist. No one wants to believe that they see color or act on color or make decisions based on anything but the true inner workings of a person’s soul. But you lie to yourself. You see color you just ignore it when it suits you. I don’t know what it is like to be white even though I thought for the longest time I was. I don’t know what it’s like to be black, having almost never felt exposed to overt racism. But I see where these things crop up, I see people trying to convince themselves they are good people even though they have never broken bread with someone of a different race, “Well, there just aren’t that many of them around here” or “It’s not that I don’t like them, I just don’t have much in common with them.”

I’m not saying this is an attitude attributable only to whites. Hell, I have a friend who said she didn’t have any white friends except me. Wait – huh? Black are allowed to not be friends with whites too? Whoa.

So, see, this is a problem. You cannot actually know how to not be racist simply by searching your soul for the part of you who doesn’t hate the ‘other’.  Fuck, it is easy to not be racist if there are no people of other races around. I mean, you don’t actually have to go out of your way to avoid them and you don’t know enough about them to hate them as a group. I’ am fairly certain that Asians and blacks don’t hate each other in Vietnam and Africa. It’s not an inherent ingrained thing. We are not born to hate or to distrust, we learn it. By being color blind. Because really, if you never see another color other than your own what’s there to look at in confusion?

I have a challenge for you, dear reader. And this may seem contrived but hey, humor me. If you don’t have a friend of another race, make one. Yes, go out and make one on purpose. Because you do not know until you know, you don’t know what your heart will bear and how you feel about people and things until you sit down and ask and learn and know. You don’t need to convince me of anything, but if you don’t have friends of different races and backgrounds I am going to assume that somewhere in your inner mechanism of humanity, you are holding onto a shred of fear.

As for me, well, I leave you with this thought. My whole life I thought I was a one and then I began to feel like an other. I always believed I could blend and change and adapt like a chameleon and, it turns out, I too was lying to myself. I cannot say it better than Marissa Tomei in one of the greatest trial movies of all time, My Cousin Vinnie: