No kidding, that is what I keep getting asked since finding my paternal family. At first I was confused by the question. First of all, I have always known I was part black. Secondly, to use Grandma Betty’s term, I am ‘poly-racial’. Yet no one ever asks me, “How does it feel to be French?” I suddenly find myself listening to impromptu dissertations from my black friends on racism in America. Before confirming my black heritage, I hadn’t had these discussions. Now I am receiving emails of poems by Maya Angelou and advice on haircare, as if my hair suddenly has new needs now that it knows it is black.
I suspect that my black friends are concerned that finding out that I am black upsets me, that I might be ashamed in some way. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Cameron has a lot of work in San Francisco, so his company rented him an apartment and he brought me with him. While he is at work I have been doing volunteer work with the local congregation in Oakland. That’s right, Oakland. The congregation is all black, with the exception of one Hispanic and one Japanese who is married to a black. Their two little boys are beautiful, as mixed children so often are. The four-year-old walked boldly up to me, thrust out a chubby baby hand and announced, to my delight and amusement, “My name is Hezekiah Yamamoto!”
I live in a mostly-white suburb which touts its status as “the safest city of its size in the United States”. The difference between my home territory and Oakland is black and white. Literally. I am trying to adjust to the crime. My first day out in Oakland we finished one street and someone came out of the building and warned us not to turn the corner; there was a shooter and the cops hadn’t caught him yet. So we went the other way. We returned after we were advised the coast was clear. This was a typical day.
I am aware that going from door to door in Oakland may not be the safest occupation for a light-skinned person like myself. During my first week I wore my favorite red wool coat, and while walking by groups of loitering gangster-types on the sidewalk I began to feel uncomfortable, like I stood out a little too much.
“Do you think this red coat is a bad idea?” I asked my new friend Carmi.
“Yeah!” she emphatically replied, but with a look that said, “Duh!”
“You might want to try to blend in more,” she said.
Was she- yes, she was!- suggesting a costume change? To me, who, as one friend put it, is “always in costume”? No one loves to play dress-up more than me. I have worn the garb of various cultures: Persian, Hawaiian, Indian, Chinese -and pulled them off pretty convincingly, in my own opinion. But African-American? Could I? Should I? After all, it’s for my own safety. (Yeah, right! Who am I kidding? Everyone knows I always secretly wanted to try this.)
“What about braids?” I asked her.
“Yeah, that would look cute!”
“Could I get away with corn rows?”
“Sure,” she said. “Or you could do ‘twisties’. Lots of people have them.” She’s right. My uncle David has them, as well as dreadlocks. But let’s not get crazy.
My friends back home in Wonderbread Orange County are having trouble with this idea. “You’ll never pull it off,” one warned. That was all the encouragement I needed. She may as well have double-dared me.
It’s true, I would probably be ridiculed back home for “trying to look black”. But not here in Oakland. This is a land of many colors. I was surprised at how diverse the population here is: everyone here is some version of black, white, Latin or Asian. Still, I feel more comfortable with my black friends here. And safer. Although I am not likely to be mistaken for being completely black (my nose turns up too far for that!), I think my looks are ambiguous enough so that, with a new hairdo and some big, gold earrings, I can at least put the question in people’s minds.
My hairdresser friend Karna has agreed to go along with this plan and is just as excited as I am about it. She has been described as one who “revels in the ridiculous”. A girl after my own heart and just right for this job.
I have been reading a book on genetics that explains that science proves that not only do all humans come from a single man and a single woman but that there is no such thing as race. Color is literally skin deep. Genetically, nothing distinguishes us from one another. Race is therefore purely cultural. So after observing the culturally diverse population of Oakland, I have decided that the strongest identifier of ethnicity is, not skin color, but hairstyle. Case in point: Alicia Keys.
So by the end of this week I will have a clearer answer to the question, “How does it feel to be black?” I am curious to find out. It may be that I will be treated differently, I don’t know, but I suspect my conclusion will be: black is beautiful. White is beautiful. Poly-racial is beautiful. If you don’t think so, then you haven’t met Hezekiah Yamamoto.
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