How White I Am

While reading a typical summer read, 'Coming Home' (family saga set in Britain), I realized just how white I am. I'm damn white. Not really WASP, because I'm not British, but I'm Scot-Swedish enough to have grown up that way. And we went to a liberal-but-nonetheless Episcopal church when I was little. I think the Episcopalian bit accounts for a lot of this. And my mom's fosterdad lived with us, and he was Veddy British. But let me explain.

If what we are comfortable with defines us, I'm British. Though born and raised in Brooklyn, much of my childhood reading consisted of thrift bookstore British children's lit. That was my mom's fosterdad's gifting. A stream of Brit Lit ran thru our house, and my brothers, also, are very white people. We ate what my mom could call cooking (tasteless British food she'd learned from her fostermom) and what my dad concocted (scary Scottish from his mom and "healthy" early 20th century trends-influenced). We dressed as most of White Americans did in those days, gloves and hats on women, hats and suits on men. Our furniture was large, dark wood, a china closet and buffet in the dining room. Upholstery was either floral or bland. Flowers were important. There was always tea around. If we had nothing at all else, there was tea. Eggs were boiled or fried in bacon fat, no omelets. No garlic, no peppers, no olive oil, rarely a spice. Salt, yes, but black pepper was never in cooking. Mayonnaise was for salads. Gravy was required. And all foods went into the oven/on the stove to boil, at the same time, and served when the meat was leather. Canned peas cooked as long as the beef roast. One's shoes were always shined. Everything was done by rules that had existed time immemorial and would exist beyond our petty lives. One showed no real emotion. If you dared, punishment was swift. Ignore all disruption and carry on was the code. Even church was controlled and dignified. 3 hymns, you're out. And you'd better sing.

I find myself liking and identifying best with British fiction and BBC broadcasting even now. The settings, the clothing, the customs, all so familiar and comforting to me. Much of this I recognize as my grandparents and parents' influence. Both of my parents were WW2 veterans, and the British influence- even programming, really- on that generation was enormous. It's been said by Gore Vidal that it was a systematic campaign of the media at that time to re-British Americans so they'd jump into the war to save Britain. Along with that identifying went a certain brand of racial prejudice, as well. A caste system, if you will, that we bought into as a family. And we weren't British, but close enough. The British were #1, then anyone Episcopalian, and on down the scale from there. Of course it was never discussed, but it was the order of things. It was a disruption when one of my brothers married an Italian Catholic, even though they'd been like family to us for years.

So it is, but shouldn't be, a revelation to me to see this, blankly, now. I'm oh-so-very-very-white. Despite my Mohawk blood, despite the bit of French, though I married a Jew and am a practicing Pagan, I'm white to the core. Looking around my living room now, I see how white I am. Floral couch, dark wooden furniture, wing chair, right down to the arranged framed art and photos and vase waiting for flowers, I'm a white girl.

Questions and Theories

What if a ghost is sometimes simply a time distortion? What if there's some kind of an unknown wavelength that snaps a photo, or briefly bodily transports someone, which/who is witnessed in another time? What if what we call "dissociation" isn't always a psychological state, but sometimes a spontaneous and uncontrolled movement into another dimension? I often find myself reminding people that what we thought we knew 500 years ago is laughable now. And logically, what we think is truth and science now will be primitive in the future.

The problem inherent here is that this can't (yet) be reproduced in empirical tests, so can't be proven by our current standards. We are limited by the constraints of proving what we don't have the capabilities to prove. So this is just a theory.

Just as colors can't ever be satisfactorily explained to one who's never had sight, we are also blind. There is much we look at, attach emotions to, and cannot control, therefore it remains the unknown. I do hope that the race survives long enough to discover some of these mysteries, even harness them. It certainly won't happen in this fearful superstitious phase we're in. But I do hope.