Lisa’s Story, Part I: Race

I have very vivid memories of celebrating the holidays with my Muslim Arab grandparents. My grandmother was born in Detroit Michigan, the daughter of Syrian immigrants, while my grandfather immigrated to the United States from Lebanon during the Depression. My Jido and Sito (grandfather and grandmother in Arabic) celebrated Christmas rather than Ramadan. They decided that this was one way that they could try to fit in to the predominantly white Christian New Hampshire community in which they resided.

Every year, my Sito would set up her Christmas tree in front of a huge bay window in her living room. It was always important to her that the neighbors could see the tree from the street outside. In other words, it was important to find some way to signal publicly that our family was assimilating. Yet, my grandmother was running around the kitchen preparing dozens of traditional Arabic dishes, the house smelled of kibbe and rice and cigar smoke. The volume was loud, the vibration was frenetic. Family members were debating, speaking passionately and running from room to room while Arabic music played in the background. Christmas day was not a day when we went to Church - there was no religious aspect to our gathering. The day was about family, food and a hot and heavy poker game was always the main activity. Privately our world was very different than what was being publicly communicated by the strategically placed Christmas tree in the window. It took me years to untangle and understand this public/private dichotomy that was so much a part of my growing up years.

As I continue to unearth memories like the one with my Jido and Sito during the holiday season, I have realized that my history and identities have been shaped by razor sharp and politically charged dualisms. I am a Jewish-Arab American, mixed race, mixed class, lesbian feminist. When I walk into a room of strangers it is often assumed that I am white, straight and middle class. Some might assume that I am Jewish, but rarely do folks assume that I am Arab as well. I have learned two important lessons from living this reality. The first is that things are not always what they appear to be. In other words, we cannot determine another person's reality or lived experience by just looking at them. The second is that perceptions are very powerful not only from the perspective of the person who holds the perception, but also from the perspective of the person who is being perceived a certain way. For example, white people feel free to say racist things to me assuming that I am white. They are quite surprised when I not only challenge them on their white supremacy, but also when I let them know that they are talking about me, half of my family and my community. The perception that I am white gives me the opportunity and responsibility to challenge racism, yet at the same time it does not negate the fact that I am mixed race and that racism personally and painfully impacts my life and the lives of Arab people.

We live in a white supremacist culture that banks on dichotomous thinking and ways of operating to keep people divided and fragmented within themselves. As a result, those of us that do not fit into either/or boxes experience an enormous amount of pressure to choose one "side" of ourselves over another. I am committed to the work of understanding that the only reason Jewish/Arab, public/private, visible/invisible, Black/white, privilege/oppression, pride/shame are dualisms is because of the socially constructed either/or framework within which we live. In other words, these false separations do not exist within me, but are imposed upon me by the society around me. I am a whole, complex person that experiences all of these realities. I am not fragmented parts. However, the struggle for many of us that carry multiple identities is to not internalize and become paralyzed by a society that rejects our complexity all in the name of keeping things simple and easy to categorize. As a result, my work personally and politically has been about learning how to use all of the socially constructed dualisms that have been imposed upon me as a tool to challenge their falseness, live as a whole person and to work for a more just society.

I started doing social justice work almost ten years ago. I naively assumed that in progressive circles one could bring their full self. After years of anti-oppression training and organizing work I now know that many "progressive" people and organizations are just as invested in either/or dichotomous thinking and in perpetuating oppression as the world around us. There are two experiences that come to mind that highlight how difficult it is being mixed race in movements for social justice.

Several years ago, I helped to found a challenging white supremacy organizing and training project in New England. Although the focus of this project was on developing a cadre of anti-racist white people to work in their own communities to launch anti-racist projects, People of Color guided the direction of the work and held the decision making power. I happened to be the only mixed race person involved in the process. Throughout the development of this project I discovered that many of the anti-racist white trainers and organizers with whom I worked struggled with the fact that I identified as a mixed race person. Because I did not "look like a person of color" (and particularly because I am Arab) it was often expected that I identify as white. The fact that I identified as mixed race and that I was involved in a project focused on challenging white supremacy work in white communities seemed to be, in the eyes of some anti-racist white folks, a betrayal. In other words, if I was truly a "good" anti-racist white person I would have identified myself strictly on the basis of how I look, the privileges that I have and/or are perceived to have (once I identify myself as Arab my privileges usually go out the window) and how the outside world perceives me.

I was told on several occasions that the fact that I identify as mixed AND actively engaged in organizing white people to challenge racism was only a mark of my own confusion about who I am and where I belong in the "racial scheme" of things. I was often told subtly and not so subtly that I should just get over it and make a choice-"white" or "of color"! This "middle of the road" stuff -in other words being mixed and messing with the neatly arranged racial categories-just made things more complicated. One would think that recognizing my privilege, challenging white supremacy and working to be accountable to mixed race people/people of color who are darker skinned than I am would be exactly what I should be doing to be accountable. In my view, this would include challenging white people and other light skinned mixed race/People of Color on racism. Somehow, though, my insistence that I have a responsibility to challenge racism was somehow an "admission" in the eyes of some white people and people of color that I am white. Shouldn't ALL of us--regardless of race-- be challenging oppression in any areas where we experience privilege?

Five years ago I attended a conference in Boston, MA focused on race and racism. As with most conferences there were many workshops to choose from. I chose to attend a workshop about women, spirituality and anti-oppression work. During the course of the workshop the facilitators, a white woman and an African-American woman with whom I had worked on other organizing projects, divided the group into two caucuses: a white caucus and a woman of color caucus. Just prior to breaking up the group, I raised my hand and asked where mixed race people were to go. This question opened up a flood of questions and challenges towards me. The white women in the room, including the white facilitator, said that they felt that I should caucus with them because I could pass for white. Most of the women of color concurred with this. Then, the facilitators spent ten minutes talking to the group about the privileges of being able to choose. Throughout this entire discussion the level of tension in the room was palpable. Finally, the group resolved that I could "choose" where to go. By the time that the group broke up to go their separate ways, I did not feel as if I had much of a choice because the anger in the room was so palpable. Many of the women of color were angry with me. Many of the white women felt as if they had made an "anti-racist" intervention by challenging me on my racism. Yet, as the group broke up, I walked towards the room that the women of color were to meet in. As I approached the door it was quickly slammed in my face. It was at this moment that I learned a very important lesson: moving beyond dichotomous thinking and practice requires a great deal of forethought, knowledge of history and accountability. All of which I was not mature enough politically to understand or deal with at the time. As a result, I ended up deepening divides rather than bridging them.

These experiences were very painful for me. Yet, they have also made me understand how important it is for me to be accountable to those that experience oppression in ways that I do not, and to develop a deep political analysis of power, privilege, institutionalized oppression and assimilation. More importantly, these experiences have challenged me to develop a vision of how each of these situations could have opened up opportunities for both white people and People of Color to discuss and deal with issues that we/they either avoid, experience as too painful or simply do not know how to grapple with. In each of these situations I would have welcomed an opportunity to talk about the complexity of race and the politics of skin color. I would have also welcomed an opportunity to talk about the importance and limitations of identity politics.

Identity politics have given many of us an opportunity to define and claim ourselves as complex and whole people and to build community with those who share common experiences in the struggle for justice. Yet, identity politics have also limited our ability as progressive activists to build coalitions and solidarity across movements for social change and between communities. Ironically, because white people and people of color often use identity politics as a tool to "divide and conquer" we simply replicate the racism/internalized racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and adultism that we seek to eradicate in the world around us. This is something, irrespective of race, in which we are all complicit. Having said this, I do not want to understate the institutionalized power that white people have to enforce and perpetuate racism. However, I also cannot ignore how often we, as People of Color/mixed race people, allow the chaos that is created by white supremacy to keep us divided and pitted against one another. As such, we often look upon one another with suspicion, distrust, anger and sometimes hatred. I yearn to have these discussions in a loving, direct yet challenging way. I want us, as People of Color/mixed race people to do away with measuring and challenging one another's legitimacy so that we can begin to go to those places that are difficult to reach and that require each and every one of us to recognize and take responsibility for our own contradictions.

In my own case I believe that being personally impacted by racism, sexism, homophobia and Anti-Semitism while at the same time taking responsibility for where I have privilege is not a contradiction. Audre Lorde, in an essay entitled: "Age, Race, Class and Sex", in her book Sister Outsider, reminds us that exposing ourselves in the work and valuing difference can lead to transformation and solidarity. She states: "Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals. For Black and white, old and young, lesbian and heterosexual women alike, this can mean new paths to our survival."

Over the past ten years, I have come to learn how difficult it is to struggle with my own contradictions. However, I do so because I am committed to "creating new paths to our survival". Along the way, I have been fortunate enough to meet people who are looking to "sharpen their self-definition" so that we may work together to create a world in which complexity and wholeness are valued. I cannot control how others perceive or categorize me. However, I do have choices about how I use everything that is real or perceived about me to work for justice. In other words, I have come to realize that our contradictions, experiences of assimilation and/or internalized racism, homophobia, classism, etc.... can all be used as tools for building solidarity and community among us. We can use all of these difficult experiences to reach out to one another and to create new paradigms for relating to one another as People of Color/mixed race people that do not replicate or perpetuate white supremacist ways of thinking and being (the "divide and conquer" mentality) in our own relationships, communities, organizations and movements.