Well Ok…Chuck Berry’s song was Back in the USA, not Black. That was just a cute play on words. I’m told that as a writer I have a thing called ‘artistic license’. I keep it in my wallet right next to my driver’s license.
You may have read or heard me say that often in my life, and especially during my time in the Marines, that I’ve struggled with not being white enough for white people nor urban enough for Black people. I assumed that was an issue unique to me. But it’s been kind of strangely comforting and surprising how many Black Americans have written to me that they too walked an uncomfortable line between the Black and white worlds. Just one more thing about being Black in the USA. Just one more invisible-to-white-people American anomaly. Just one more thing that Black Americans do every day that white Americans haven’t ever done any day. Walk that line.
I grew up white. Full on white on a small dairy farm in an all-white town in the back then all-white state of NH. A few years ago I read an article written by a Black woman on the experience and effect of growing up Black in VT. She was honest and insightful enough to have come to the realization that she had unconsciously adopted white supremacist values…what we now refer to as an unconscious bias. Things like hair texture and colorism. Who’s good and who’s not. Who’s a criminal and who’s not. It made me realize that I too had unconsciously adopted white supremacist concepts. And values. It's a challenge for anybody – white or Black - to come up in America and not have that unconscious bias.
I was aware for a long time that I would not be described as “Comfortable in my own skin” - a thing that I thought would be wonderful to have - but I don’t think I knew why I wasn’t. But as I moved from the information technology, three-piece suit, business world – an identity that I never wore well - to the outdoor world as a backcountry ranger, and as I have become more and more involved in first striving to create more ethnic diversity in the outdoors and now full-on racial justice…or what I actually prefer to call racial reconciliation…I've reached a solid level of comfort in who I am…the good, the bad, and the ugly! Especially the ugly.
I live in Grand Junction, a small city in western Colorado that is white and Hispanic brown, but not Black. For quite a few years I lived in the cute, 100% white, mountain town of Durango CO where my adult son still lives. Before that the similar towns of Estes Park CO, gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park; Aspen CO which needs no description; the mountain ski of Killington VT; the wind surfing mecca of Hood River OR; and Moab Utah, the mountain biking capitol of the world. If you took the entire Black population of all of those towns combined, you wouldn’t fill a short bus.
Grand Junction is kinda rednecky and I get really tired of some of the bumper stickers - “Don’t blame me. I voted for the white guy both times”; F*** Biden; and the, huge Blue Lives Matter flags fluttering from the bed of the over-sized, jacked-up, redneck trucks. But when I go to Durango - both to see my son, old friends, and now my Civil Conversations Project public speaking coach - I often think how awesome Durango, or any similar, small, outdoor recreation town - would be if it were as diverse as America actually is. If there was a mix of skin tones on the street, in the expensive ice cream parlors, in the many brewpubs and restaurants, in the gear stores, yoga and aroma therapy studios - whatever the hell ‘aroma therapy’ is - and plethora of natural food stores.
But there is no diverse, cute, small-ish town in an enjoyable outdoor recreational environment anywhere at all in the United States. Not one. If there were, that’s where I’d be living. When I’m in a place like Durango, I feel Black. Really Black.
Durango and Aspen and Hood River and Killington and Moab and Estes Park are not racist places. I’ve never once had a hard time in any of those places and in each of those places I still enjoy great and lasting friendships. But American racism caused the weird and unreal and un-American demographics in every one of those places. Those towns aren’t so white because they’re known racist enclaves. They’re not. They’re white because they themselves are victims of how race is played out in America. And white folks in those towns don’t think about it, because white is so culturally normal.
As a person commented on Substack, “American racism has for so long been the cultural norm, that it’s impossible to see.” Unless you happen to be Black. And then you see it, feel it, and experience it everywhere. But as the commentator so insightfully said, “Once you do see it, you can never unsee it.”
What’s cultural norm? Cultural norm was when Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly told her vast audience 13 years (and five days) ago that Santa Claus is white. “Sorry kids, that’s just the way it is.” So culturally norm’d out is Megyn that she could not imagine that a positive and happy thing that is a make-believe fantasy could possibly be make-believed into being non-white. She couldn’t imagine a jolly Black guy giving out presents to children. To Megyn, that just wasn’t plausible.
But Megyn wasn’t alone. This Christmas season has seen reports on several folks who displayed an inflatable, Black Santa on their front lawn only to hear loud, angry complaints from their neighbors. Once you imagine Santa as Black, it’s just a short step to teaching the history of race in America…and who knows where that would lead? Full disclosure, the highlight of every Black Santa controversy I read was that the rest of the neighbors fully supported the Black Santa version of Christmas. And Megyn got fired.
Several years ago I was interviewing a man in Marin County CA for a story I was writing about the controversy over changing the name of the local school district from ‘Dixie’ to something that did not immediately conjure up an image of a rope for the very few Black people who lived in Marin County. He had a good description of cultural normalcy. ”When fish look up from the water and see people or other animals walking along the bank, it doesn’t occur to them that those people or animals do not have gills. Gills are the only thing they have ever known.”
The purpose of The Civil Conversations Project is to open people’s eyes to racism, the thing that so harms this country. Because as that same commenter wrote, “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”
And this…a subscriber emailed me to let me know that this year she decided to donate to several non-profits that she felt were making a difference instead of sending her uncle a tie that he neither wanted nor needed. She thought that you Civil Conversationalist might want to consider the same. Your gift would be much appreciated.