A Hard Story to Write

The story I am about to tell is a hard story to write. Not because it is a story that I don’t want to write, but because it is a story that can be difficult to tell. Aside from my need to exorcise my feelings and hurt on this topic, it is my hope that, by talking about it, you will recognize similar experiences in your own life. Perhaps obviously, we don’t live in a perfect world. Regardless, we must continue to try and understand one another and to heal ourselves, our relationships, and our world—don't give up!?

The story is about my lifelong friendship with a young lady that has been a family friend since early childhood. Growing up in Berkeley, California my mother’s closest friend was from a young inter-racial family like our own. My mother’s friend was of Polish descent and her husband was of Japanese descent. They have two children, a boy and a girl. The boy is the biological product of both, the daughter is from the mother’s previous relationship, many years earlier. While I felt close to both siblings, it was their beautiful daughter that came to have an interest in me as we were growing up—it was an unrequited love that still haunts me today and continues to make me sad, decades later.?

As a very young child of about 4 years old, Pam let’s call her, was a roly-poly, joyful, tomboy and snot nose little girl with lovely blonde hair. As we grew up through childhood and adolescence, we would occasionally have the opportunity to be in each other's presence. As I was perhaps a couple of years older, I think she looked up to me as the older boy. Years later, in my teen years, it came to my awareness that she liked me...in the romantic sense. Having dated both of my childhood best friends, I came to realize that she was interested in me that way. I had never really considered her to be romantic material, however, since in my mind she was still that snot nose, roly-poly, little tomboy.??

At 17 I moved out of the house and got my first apartment in Berkeley. My best friend from childhood moved in with me a short time later. After a year or so, I moved to New York to pursue my interests in becoming an actor and writer. It was during my time in New York that Pam and I started corresponding, the old-fashioned way, through handwritten letters. Soon, we were professing our love for each other. After a few years of living in Brooklyn, scooping ice cream and bussing tables, I moved back to Berkeley and enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute to study filmmaking.?

Although I did stop in to visit her at her job working at Berkeley Hot Tubs, I didn’t pick up with the romantic sentiments we had been sending back and forth, while I had been in New York. At that time, I was trying to come to terms with my own sense of identity and how I felt about myself and my relationship to the world around me as a racial and ethnic minority.?

Writing stories that involved race issues was something I had always had an interest in. Indeed, my father was a sociologist and wrote about race issues, albeit from a scholarly point of view. As a person that had been interested in acting, however, I became aware that I did not fit neatly into any specific type or stereotype. That is what got me interested in writing my own stories. Indeed, I came to develop a keen interest in understanding my own experience and trying to dramatize it in short stories, novels, plays, and screenplays.?

In addition to feeling that I did not fit into any stereotypical casting category I, perhaps obviously, was raised by minority parents. Their thoughts and concerns, as such, informed my own. The sensibility I came to acquire grew out of this experience. I was aware that the assassination of Martin Luther King meant that there were people in this country that didn’t like us. As a child I marched with Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers to Delano in protest of farmworker mistreatment. I was aware of the Jim Crow South, Emit Till, etcetera. Let it suffice to say that, since childhood, I have been aware of and have struggled with trying to understand these issues, at many points becoming quite angry about them and the injustice they represent...and yes, at times I felt anger and resentment toward?white people because of it.?

Moving to New York to pursue acting was something of a fantasy. It was around the time the movie Fame came out. I remember fantasizing about attending the School for Performing Arts in New York and partying with the other diverse students in impromptu songs in the cafeteria. The reality of the place, however, was not lost on me.

New York was segregated in a way I had never really seen or had not been aware of previously. The Italians were here, the Jews there, the Latinos over there, etcetera. Even though there is obviously segregation across society in terms of race, ethnicity, class and the like, it can take a little more effort to see in California. In any case, rather than experience New York as a melting pot where I could joyfully break out in song and dance at school, I experienced more of what I had been experiencing up to that point in my life—confusion, the occasional first-hand experience of racism, injustice, anger, and hurt feelings about it all.?

And this brings me to the point of why I could not bare my soul and true feelings to Pam. I remember so clearly sitting on the front steps to her parents’ house, her seeking to rekindle our missive romance in person. I could see that she looked up to me and loved me without reservation. And that she was looking into my eyes, seeking the same quality and level of emotion. I was unable to return her love in the same way.

As I look back on that moment in time, there were a number of things that prevented me from reciprocating her affections. Part of it was that, unbeknownst to me at that time, I was carrying around a lot of baggage regarding race...experiencing more of it every day. New York had only made it more clear that race was going to be a problematic issue in my life. Another thing that made it difficult is being bi-racial. As a bi-racial person, especially one with highly educated parents, I am not always recognized as an African-American.

My running joke is that, as a kid in elementary school, I was often thought to be Hawaiian...anything at all but Black. It was another of many veiled insults I have experienced around race and identity. In any case, it was these and perhaps other issues related to my failure in New York that caused me great chagrin and contributed to our doomed romance.

Not only had I developed a level of confusion and anger about race at the tender age of 19, but as I mentioned, I am often not identified as being black. I think in the back of my mind, I just did not see a fit with Pam. How can I, somebody with one foot on a banana peel when it comes to race, be with a White person. Doing so would actively hinder my need to feel and be a part of Black culture. How could I possibly explain these things to Pam when it has taken me almost 40 years to write about it. I think I knew that Pam was not going to get me any closer to feeling a sense of identity with other Black and Latino Americans.?

I began writing on this issue saying that I hope that it would be helpful to other people. And yes, I think it would be very helpful to the world to hear others including, and perhaps especially, White people talk about their racial feelings and experiences in a constructive and self-revelatory way. In addition to the sort of confusion I felt, I know for many people being raised by intolerant or bigoted parents can cause similar confusion and hurt in children and young adults. By sharing our personal stories we can all learn a lot from each other and learn to not only accept others, but accept ourselves.

My other message here, however, is that like me at 19, we don’t always know how or what we are feeling, or can’t put what we are feeling into words. Much like I didn’t have the words to tell Pam what I was feeling. Undoubtedly my silence on our romance and the space I put between us hurt and bewildered her. I was just not ready to open up.?

We need to be forgiven for the hurt or confusion we have caused other people. Next time someone behaves in unexplained ways, ask them what is going on. If you are still miffed, just wait it out. Often times, the mystery we want or need answered will be revealed in time. We just need to give it space. We also need to forgive a troubled world that can make it difficult feeling comfortable in it.?

#genuineleadership #authenticitymatters #diversitytalk #newleadership #leadership #webdevleadership