Masks

***********************************

A few years later I was at a shitty shitty club in Brockville called Caroline's. This is the place where I once saw a really long lineup for the men's bathroom result in pissing into the sinks while drinking beer and having conversations. No one even cared. It somehow seemed normal.

Fort Drum is an American army base across the river and 45 minutes east of Brockville. Every so often, several yahoos from there like to go up to Brockville and whoop it up, acting like they are the cat's ass, big shots, etc. They are almost always assholes. You can point out a guy from Fort Drum from across a crowded room. That is, in fact, just what I did. They were just coming into the club when I sensed them. There were four (stereo-)typical urban black males, about my age at the time, which would have been 19. I was wearing a button-down light denim blue long-sleeved shirt (my favourite at the time), khaki dress slacks and glasses. I forget why I was wearing those clothes actually. I may have been at some function earlier that evening. In any case, I was the opposite of the rest of the blacks in the bar. (Edit: Blacks in the bar? It was me and the two foreigners!)

They saw me when I saw them. They looked at me oddly. They slowly made their way to the bar area (for $2 beer). Two of them continued along the bar, swung over in my direction and eventually made their way to a clearing directly in front of me, maybe ten feet away. As they approached they could barely contain their laughter.

Finally they stopped. One of them pointed at me and said, "Man, HE AIN' BLACK!"

I was seething with anger even before they stopped in front of me. It was the one time in my life I wanted to actually fight someone. Beat them up. Me versus both of them, who have combat training. Me, whose only combat training was in Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. But I wanted to pound them into the ground. I'm not sure why I was so angry with them, but somehow, my friends foresaw what was about to happen. All it took was for me to start to take a step towards them, and two of my friends grabbed me by the arms and led me away. I consider that a bit of a miracle that they should even realize that something was going to happen. As far as I knew, they weren't even paying attention.

***************************************

In New Orleans in February 1996, my white friends were either hassled by, or looked funny by local whites who didn't understand what I was doing with them walking down the street. They just didn't get it.

I was in New York City in April 1998 for what I consider the best bachelor party I have ever been to. That deserves its own entry, but while walking down the street with my six friends, one of which was black, I was hassled by a Nation of Islam man because I was walking with "these white devils".

In 1999 the family of the girlfriend of an old friend of mine moved from Ottawa to North Carolina. It was a white family. (It seems odd that I now have to point this out.) She had an 11-year-old brother. It was his first day of school. He was going to get on the bus, while his mother was going to see him off, just like the line of 10 of so homes along that road. He got on the bus and drove away. About 12 seconds later a hysterical white woman ran over to the boy's mother screaming at her.

"You cain't put your son on that bus! Your son's WHITE! He goes on THIS bus, not THAT one!!"

Now if there was a safety issue involved, like perhaps the black kids would have given the boy a hard time, then I suppose there might have been cause for concern, but that wasn't the issue. In fact, the boy, after riding with those kids for months, got along quite well with them, and had friends of all colours. The issue with the hysterical woman was that she was outraged that a white parent would allow her child in the company of black children. The transplanted Canadian woman told Ms. Hysterical where to go.

**************************************

I learned in Grade 1 that I was "different". During that year, I was treated differently. Poorly, actually, and I wasn't listened to when I complained to the teacher about how I was treated. (In fact, I was dismissed again 11 years later when I spoke in front of the school board about it.) Over time I realized how things worked. How blacks are treated around the world. But overall I was treated very well. I rarely had any real incidents of racism or anything. Above all, though, I knew that the struggle that blacks around the world face, is my struggle. It isn't over. I have to face certain realities that whites do not.

Or do I? I grew up with no concept of a "black neighbourhood". There were maybe three black families in all of Brockville, and compared to the segregation I noticed in NYC, Georgia and Louisiana, we pretty much fit right in. We acted like everyone else around us. That was all we knew. We were the sons and daughters of immigrant families who wanted us to blend in and live the "good life" that everyone else has in Canada. Sure we were occasionally treated poorly by some people (who, for some reason, all seemed to live on Perth Street or Victoria Avenue) but all in all, we were just like everyone else, and everyone else knew it as far as I could see.

In Montreal, blacks are just another ethnic community. Blackness doesn't seem to mean much, really. The only "thing" around here is the English/French thing, and even that isn't such a big deal until you get east of here. (Edit: Please remember that I wrote this nearly five years ago.)

However, no matter where I am in Canada, I ALWAYS acknowledge other black men when I'm walking down the street. There's always a nod in my direction, always eye contact as if to say, "We're on the same side. We are the same, you and me, and I feel comforted in this."

In NYC, there are black boroughs. Black people have different accents. Black people are explicitly marked as different, either by the white majority or by the blacks themselves. I never got the same kind of acknowledgement there that I get here. It's in a different manner that I can't quite explain. It was more detached.

I often get asked to explain things about the black community, or black issues. Often, I can't, because I am part of the white community, yet apart from it sometimes. That's why I have been called an Oreo cookie. A recent (white) girlfriend said that I was the whitest black guy she had ever met. She was surprised. I wonder if she was disappointed in some way. Maybe she wanted a "black experience", whatever that is. Hell, I'd like a black experience, myself.

But I get the feeling that black women, more than other women, have certain expectations of me as a black man that simply do not exist. In any case, I don't even bother wasting my time any more. I don't even exist for them. (Edit: Or so I thought. I may be quite wrong about this. By the way, why are there almost no black female bloggers? Am I the only black blogger in Montreal? In Quebec? In CANADA?)

When I was in NYC I fully understood that I am not really a part of their community, because I wasn't raised the same way. But people still expect me to act a certain way based on the way I look. Sometimes they get upset when I don't act/look the way the want me to. That isn't fair. I'm not saying that this is unique to me, but this is just the way it is expressed in me.

Sometimes I get tired of putting on masks. But I do it because it is simply easier to let people think what they think and see what they want to see. Fighting the perceptions isn't always worth it.

Well, I had a point, but it seems to have evaporated into thin air. That's your task. What was my point?