:::by amanda:::

I attended a poetry reading at a soul food cafe last summer. A friend's classmate had invited her to attend and she asked me and my husband if we wanted to go as well. Her classmate wasn't there that evening so we had no one to smooth the way for us. Is this how it feels? I wondered. To be the only white people in a room full of black people, feeling the suspicious glances, listening to them read angry poetry about "the man" and knowing that, unwittingly or not, we were "the man." To listen to them crack jokes about white people and trash black people who tried to act too white. Was that how it feels to be black? To walk into a restaurant and realize you are the only black person in the whole place? To receive nervous glances if you are a tall, imposing black man?

Much later on, I read a quote about Native American spirituality and how upsetting it is when white people try to claim it as their own. "They've taken our land and our future," the quote said. "And now they want to take the last thing we have left--our religion." In a way, I felt bad for going to the poetry reading that night. The people there had to live in a white world all the time. They probably had racist co-workers, disapproving neighbors, insolent store clerks, and disappointed teachers to deal with all day. They had to deal with a million things I had never dreamed of--knowing the people in the white world around them were silently accusing them of being too loud, too opinionated, and too lazy. They might have had people approach them for drugs or sex as they walked down the street, though they weren't drug dealers or prostitutes. They came to a place where they could open up without fear of judgment and what do they find but a table full of uptight white people. Whenever I remember that evening, I always feel a little bit guilty for intruding, but then I remember that we were invited to be there. I still don't know how I feel about it.

As the evening commenced, the man who organized the poetry reading stood up and encouraged everyone to discuss current issues. "Do we want to talk about government or community tonight?" he asked. Community? I wondered. I tried to imagine myself as part of a community, borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor, strolling through a local farmer's market. I couldn't conjure up any personal concept of "community." Several people voted for a discission of community and spoke about their frustration with the standardized tests their children were required to take to graduate to the next grade. I realized that I had a thousand opinions about these tests--I had discussed them with my friends and co-workers many times. I kept silent, however, and thought about the shift in perception I'd just experienced. Why had I instantly denied that I had a community? I work twenty hours a week helping children in my community find books. The other twenty hours I spend doing library outreach to daycares in my county. I frequent local businesses, both chain and family-owned, and claim ownership of the ones I frequent most (it's not "Publix," it's "my Publix"; not "Subway," "my Subway").

We never went back to another poetry reading there, even though we all enjoyed it quite a bit. I met a wonderful young poetess who had self-published her second book of poetry, its cover adorned with praise from Nikki Giovanni. I heard performance art and personal, emotional poems, music I'd never heard before, short pieces on religion. But I could never shake the feeling that I was intruding upon something sacred--that no matter how I felt about them, they would never accept me as part of their community.

<< 2003-07-23 @ 7:57 p.m. >>

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