The Longest Most Awkward Breakup EVER!

Our daughter is out looking for a car within her price range.  She's been paying off a debt for awhile so a car loan is out of the question.  This is just another blip of the most bumbling clumsy breakup ever.  Maki's ex has not had a lot of experience in committed relationships.  I believe this was his first.  And it looks like breaking up is no more a natural thing for him as building a relationship was.  Nice guy, maybe.  Incredibly clumsy about things when they are important -- like commitment, and being sensitive to another person's good judgement regarding her future as much as he is interested in his.  

The load is not on him.  It is also part Maki's.  This is also Maki's first real relationship and she wound herself around it as tightly as one can, as soon as one can and learned a huge lesson because of it.  I remember as a little girl she was in love with the Littlest Mermaid -- and thinking back on it, she relived it in this relationship, giving up everything for love.  She was willing to give up family, culture, voice.  Yes, she was spunky and seemed independent, but in reality everything was all about the boy -- family vacations, place to live, when to move in together and that she would give up on her college to do so, what they would spend on,  who they hung out with which excluded much of her former relationships including us, her family because of he felt awkward and uncomfortable around all of us.  Again, nice boy, but really uncomfortable outside of his box.

He is moving back East, his home area, to go to grad school.  It became increasingly a reality to him that he really didn't want the relationship to continue into His Future.  That's what he calls it "My Future."   And it was over.  But did initiative come from him beyond saying it was over?  Maki took that on for both their sake.  She moved out, stored things in the garage and rented a bedroom for $400 a month  with one of their friends because it was too sad to be broken up and still live together.

Broken-hearted, she puts on a carefree face on facebook and moves on the best she can accepting the reality that it's over.    He calls for her to take care of his dog while he is in a month-long military maneuver to save him some money two months into the breakup otherwise, poor dog would be in a kennel.  She says of course.  Breaks down.  She wonders if it is going to be like this all the time when she sees him.  I say, "Yes, as long as you are doing things for him, it is not a clean breakup where you're going on with your life."    So she texts him, "I just can't do it. "   He says, "No problem. "   And then does what he should have done on his own, which is to send poor Charlee to his sister's farm where he can run free and eat right and be happy.

She moves all her stuff into a storage out of the garage so they don't have to see or talk to each other when he gets back from military maneuvers Friday this week.   Her plan to have moved into a condo was  dashed because she has been laid off with the 300 Comcast employees who were hired at the same time, ending July 1.  She rents a storage unit and moves everything into a storage unit, preparing to move back home for the work of job search.  I ask her why she has so  much stuff to merit renting a storage unit, offering space at our house.  She said, she took a lot of stuff that he did not want to take home to save him the money.  I sigh.  There's plenty of time to deal with that at another time, but I wish with these emotional ties, she would not have to deal with the stuff that she no more needs than he does.   Her last day of work she had called to ask if she could come home to stay from that time.  That was great, but then she paused,  "Oh, no!  I can't!  I promised to clean the apartment, at least part of it!"  

Shocked, I admit I need some clarification.  I asked, "uh . . the apartment you haven't lived in for two months while he has?  He can't clean his own apartment?"

"Well, I don't want him to be mad."

"He's moving out and away.  He broke up with you."

"Well, yeah, but I told him I'd clean half." (Do these two know that there is no half?  And probably, in my opinion, never been a half half relationship?)

"Maki, you know this is a first, right, in the history of women being dropped?"

She texts him and lets him know she couldn't return from Eugene to clean his apartment and he says, "No problem."  His dad is flying in to help.

This morning, Maki gives us the news.  Adam wants his car back.  The company (his mother;s) denied Maki and her father (with his flawless credit rating)  the ability to take on the lease.

Surprise!  The longest most drawn out and awkward break up continues.  She says, "I have learned never to wind up so much of my affairs with another person and wil never ever do it again."

I couldn't resist.  "I wonder why you chose to lease a car anyway with your debt?"

She said, "I didn't.  He did it for my birthday."

I bit my tongue.  An hour later, and looking at Craig's List and turning to the RG for something within the range of what she can afford with our help, $2000, and coming up with "motorbike"  I finally said, "so he's taking back the birthday present, and also is going out into the world clueless that we girls like to pick our own cars?  Real classy."

He texts her she can just leave the car at his friend's house (where she is renting a room for $400 a month) and leave the key with them, for his dad and him to pick up on their way out to the East Coast where Adam Johnson will finally be at home among his peeps.

I've a chip on my shoulder so I said, "It's kind of a white thing to want to take it with you.  His parents probably told him he had to get the car."  Maki rose to his defense, of course, saying he didn't want the car, and it was a birthday present.  Maki's dad remarks, "hmmmmm.  I wonder how his dad knew that the car company wasn't going to accept you before you knew, and knew to fly on over here."  I want to say, what kind of guy gives a birthday present that puts you in a "lease situation" where you need your dad to pay it, and then puts you in a situation at the last minute when you have to get a car on his time frame?" 

There is a long, awkward pause with her dad's question as she stares without blinking with nothing to say, and we could almost hear the click click click of her brain whirring.  Definitely, the longest, most awkward drawn out break up EVER!  It should finally end on July 3, 2013, an excruciating nine weeks after it first began.

Postscript:  Sigh.  It continues with one more accommodation needed by him.  He wants the car, with very little notice, tomorrow.  Will cannot  help make that happen because he is giving up a lot of work and cannot add another day plus we would have to get a motel in Portland. Being a reasonable and kind man, however, we are all willing to get up and out of here by 7 am on Wednesday to make sure we have the car to Adam way before he needs to pick his dad up at the airport at 10 am.    Adam has sent a text that he does not intend too accommodate us, and that he needs the car tomorrow night (despite the fact his father does not come in until the next day.) PERIOD.    Maki read his text hoping that we might be able to do this.  I returned her stare, and turned, laughing.  We live in the real world here and in the real world good people work things out the best they can.  We were willing to do that. Perhaps being in the army he thinks that people will jump if talked to in that manner, salute and say Yes Sir!  However,  even if  Mr. Adam thinks the WHOLE family should jump to accommodate his whims as Maki too often willingly did, it just is not realistic.

We will keep our mouths shut as Maki washed the car and cleaned it and filled the tank because we probably would take the high road too.  We don't say anything as she drives off tomorrow to take care of business and have the car available that evening to accommodate him.  Certainly, we will all drive up as soon as we can the next day to pick her up and take off for the next chapter, lesson learned, for her life.  Hopefully, she has a few more things to add to her list of traits a man must have and one of them hopefully will be respect for her family because she deserves it. 

She's been on a few dates now, and taking it slow,  not really thinking of anything serious, but the good news is that all are  much more respectful of her.  It took this to wake her up to the lesson that she deserves to be valued for her whole self as much as she values her partner, his friends, his family.  She should feel supported to bring her whole self in to the relationship, and not just leave everything behind in exchange for his world only.  I would say that the people I know she has dated are real men, and very much with their destiny in their hands and ready to treasure or share with someone rather than needing so much accommodation, so much adoration, so much one way.  More than that she is surrounded by quality women, including her parents (yes, I know Will is a man but we're a team) -- her Winnemem family,  her mom's closest Sisters -- Aunties and her Godmother who are back in her life, now that she is ready to enter this  next chapter.

I feel for her.  She did give her heart, and because of the kind of person he is, she put her life goals on hold, quitting college to move in with him.   I am proud that she learned that giving up one's whole self cannot make a selfish relationship a good relationship.  If one treasures, one also should expect to be treasured.  To build a relationship, the glue is the shared commitment to make one another happy and be true to one another. Next time, I pray for her, a reciprocal and loving relationship which lasts.

AINU

Grandpa said he had Ainu background.  Some of my family talked about it from time to time. On of my regrets is I did not pursue it.  At the time we as children just knew we were Nihon-jin and wished to be nothing else.  The language, the family, the foods, the values, all of it was Home.  But we always remember what Grandpa said to us.

Was it Ainu or Shinto which lay behind his teaching us about the ancient rocks which had a spirit, that everything had a spirit and taught us not to take life lightly.  I don't know.  Was it Ainu or Shinto which follows our ancestors, reveres them?  Europeans call it worship like they do their Christ.  But their Christ has to be perfect and omniscient.  Our ancestors touch our heart as they age, and become weakened in the body, and loving and compassionate and happy in spirit.  And they are around us when they leave their bodies behind, our guardian angels when we need them.  Is that Shinto or Ainu?

I wish I had enough days of reverence to have asked Grandpa.  But I only need to look at the path I am on to know that I know on another level -- not Ainu or Shinto -- but definitely my ancestors throwback girl.

The Future is in Good Hands

Situations like the trial for the murder of young Trayvon Martin brings racism to the national consciousness and picks at the oozing scabs.  Our language, our response, the pain we feel are on two sides of a line, a line which divides us by color.  That line treats each of us racially from the time we take our first breath.  But we have CHOICE and we can NAME that line (racism) and then denounce it in word, thought and deed.     We all experience the national trauma of the country's racist history built on the foundation of cruel slavery, unique among all forms of slavery -- 1) based on color  2) human beings treated as chattel, violently stripped of all humanity  3) for one's whole life and whose babies are born into it and remain for their whole lives from the first moment they draw breath 4) purely economic reason with a recent history; as I told my students, for cold cash, not the passion of enmity.  When I say all of us suffer from trauma of this national legacy, I mean all of us.  However, the trauma is felt differently on opposite ends, as different as the namecalling which is in the news today:  Cracker or slaveowner and the N word or your life is worth nothing; you can be dead by a cracker's whim, rich man or poor man.  Racism serves a purpose in our country, so it's never been discarded.  It divides us so we don't see who really interferes with this country's ideals that all people have the freedom to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  We just get side tracked into Black and White.  Black includes all peoples whose work is exploited for the running of things and it's based on pigment or some other physicality which easily sets us apart.  And White includes light skinned people, rich or poor, perhaps reviled as part of an immigration wave, definitely exploited, kept poor, but there was the miniscule reward to insure safety and hold out a bit of promise on the basis of pigment if that race line is kept in place.  For the sake of their grandchildren's safety, they felt they had to hide their northern or eastern European last names, hide or allow ancestry to be forgotten  and inside in the hidden part of the heart that seed of slavery planted its seed as well as resentment and shame for having to give up one's cultural identity.

This murder trial and the way the defense is waging it is a flashpoint, a button which brings that sensitivity to the racist underpinning of our society out in each of us.  I feel it.  I don't want to even hear the news.  I see others feel it reading the threads on Facebook, the defensive postures of some.  The flash of impatience of others.   As a teacher I spent most of my adult life with young people, middle schoolers, a time when one really begins to be interested in who they are, where they fit, do they fit and a time where fairness is a big deal.  I have to say, even now, retired over ten years, I think the most beautiful people in the world are young people,  beginning their journey, second only to  the adults they have become.

I disown the national perception of racializing.  I reject that it is human nature.  I believe it is brainwashing and manipulation, an opiate to some and for others, a loose noose, a cocked pointed gun.  Russian roulette if you're lucky.  I believe that the human being is good, strong and intelligent and has a great capacity to give, tend and risk with great courage:  I have examples:   even after being born into slavery for generations and never experiencing it, African Americans still loved freedom, yearned for it and were the first to stand and give their lives to freedom and still do.  To be able to muster up Hope and Commitment deplete of any in their surroundings is unimaginable courage and love.  Being Human must be about courage and love.  Then there were the Garretts who lost everything they owned at the age of 60, Quakers, part of the Underground Railroad.  Losing all of ones material possessions was the punishment levied.  And Thomas Garrett, being sentenced, said he would do it again until this evilness is done.  The Garretts are just one of many people on the underground  who chose spiritual and what was right over material and physical comfort.  Anyone who is 60 knows how long it takes to own a home, how important it is to secure an elderly life.  I have to believe that it is Being Human to choose right over evil, and the spirit over material safety. So, yes, I choose not to see us as divided and I do not credit  racial consciousness as human nature.  That is not to say, that the United States, in reality, is not based on racializing, because it certainly is but that's a choice made by unquestioning it at its foundation.  We are traumatized by it by a long history, we are traumatized by our social upbringing in school systems, dealing with other systems in order to have shelter, food, health, education and pursuit of happiness, daily.  And these flashpoints, like the murder case of Trayvon Martin, and the racist defense tactic touches a nerve and brings it up for painful discussion, each of us experiencing it as a great division.

We can reject that system which relies on that division and the glorious beauty of all our differences as human beings will be evident -- like my classrooms in Snoqualmie Middle, Cherry Valley Elementary,  Monroe Middle, Madison Middle, Jefferson Middle, Roosevelt Middle and Sheldon High School, and the UO College of Education became for me.

Most of my students, if we are looking at the racialized paradigm are, in racialized language, white.  Being young, and intelligent, and open they went through some exercises which made sense to them, and then bloomed in front of my eyes.

In Madison, Troy Shawn and Eddy came up to me handing me these green tickets saying, "here's our pass." 
    "What? 
    "We're doing a simulation about South Africa in Mandelblatt's room and we have to show you our pass because we're Black South Africans,"
It just popped out of my mouth, "You don't need those.  You're in Angola now."

The gleam in their eyes and the grin on their faces can only be described as wicked!  We looked at each other.  I made a bargain.  "Not in my class this period.  I get to teach this class, but my prep?"

A revolution was born.  Out of my portable every morning five young students began to wage a Free South Africa Movement.  Every day I would call Mandelblatt and assured him they were working hard on South Africa, researching what to do in the case of dismanteling Apartheid with their own twist.  They convinced the students and the whole faculty to begin to divest and boycott.  They had a freedom song.  They wrote a constitution for a free South Africa.  Admittedly, I happened to have a poster in my classroom of a constitution which I intended to hang until South Africa was free.  It was torn and raggedy but it still hung there.  They even called the tv news.  Oh, no!  But they did, and they sang their freedom song for the newssteam.

The librarian took her equipment out of Mndelblatt's room.  The office wouldn't talk to him.  I did not know this until I checked in that night and he responded with, "I really don't want to talk today, Misa.  I've got a headache.  It's getting out of hand."

"Hey Mandelblatt," I joked, "Do you think Peter Botha has a headache too?   I thought it was just the tv camera person interviewing him.

He listed all the things that happened to him that day, dictionaries taken out, the media equipment, can't even get someone to type his stuff and mimeo it.  (Yes, this was all pre-xerox and computers.)
He told me to send the revolutionaries back.  The simulation over. He needed his film projector back.

I asked how we can make this a win-win for the boys.  He argued, the reality is that South Africa is not free.  The reality is what the simulation teaches.  I argued, asking "what is it we want the boys to learn" and that we could not teach that South Africa would never be free.  But we agreed on one thing.  This was his class.  And for the purpose of this class he was trying to teach how bad it was in South Africa under Apartheid.  He was not trying to teach a hope but the reality.  That is another simulation.    I honored him for allowing the boys to wage their rebellion within the simulation and he agreed he did feel a lot of pride for them but also felt hurt.

It was his class after all.  It broke my heart to give them the bad news.  I met the kids and explained Mandelblatt's position and in real school reality they had succeeded to shut his classes down.  He was proud of them but with the grades, he felt he had to be fair to those who played within the simulation rules.   I told them that he will be consequenting them and told them to understand that heroism against a system as huge and evil and global as apartheid, sometimes  heroes are punished, martyred, like Nelson Mandela, in prison but yet free and very much part of the anti-apartheid movement as a leader.  Whatever grade they were given, they should see it as being one with Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko.  They understood, and sobered, they went to class.  The South Africa simulation was over.  They received a "C" for the simulation and an "A" for revolution in their heart.  In the long run, David and I celebrate that the future really is in the Troys and the Eddys -- in their hands.    Apartheid ended in 1991, less than a decade later and Nelson Mandela was elected President in 1994.

About that time, I was teaching in Jefferson Institute of Multicultural and International Education, eighth grade.   That is the setting of my next example.  I wanted to make the writing of the Constitution more interesting than the deadly lesson it becomes with a textbook.  I decided to do a simulation with this, dividing all the students into colonial delegates representing their colony during the writing of the Constitution.  They all memorized the preamble of the Declaration of Independance including  'That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness" to set the tone.  They all researched their speeches.  They all researched their special interest which would inform which speech they would be giving -- or so I thought.

On the day of speeches, Sari Gomez, who was giving a speech against slavery stood up.  I don't remember the words right now but it was all about her real heart and her belief.  Her voice was confident and passionate.  The rest of the delegates spurred her on.  And when it came time for the vote, I had my Mandelblatt moment.  Unanimously obliterating the institution of slavery every one of them from Rhode Island to Georgia stood up and proudly announced, We the delegates from _____ Colony cast all votes to end slavery in our new country!"   Although one part of me thought  What was I going to do?  the other part was moved to tears.   The thundering applause from my 32 students, mostly white,  made it clear that they were very aware of the triumph they made out of the simulation.  Hannah Ames had a big smile, having made the motion to demolish slavery, standing, and waving her arms about in a victory wave for sure.  (She went on to integrate the wrestling team for the school district, first girl wrestler).

I was choked up.

I took the podium and told them "today, you did something incredible.  You took history,( I pointed at the textbook,) and you molded it into your own hands.  You are different than that first Continental Congress."  And I gave them the statistics of the makeup, all male, all European, many lawyers.  "Together, women and men, many backgrounds and upbringing,  all of you served your country well and with honor today.  Because of your choice, your country and your descendants will not have to go through a Civil War which would break your nation apart.  You have prevented Jim Crow Segregation and the brutality and inequality of it.  There does not have to be a Great Civil Rights Movement because by now, the country would live up to the ideals of freedom for all you brought here with your vote.  Because of you there will not be racism and our school would be a regular school instead of special because of our Racism Free Zone.  We have a lot to celebrate today because of what you accomplished."

PARTYYYYYYYY!! 

This being said, I hope that these moments they gifted me with -- just a tip of the iceberg of many many moments when each student molded my classroom with their own hands, bringing their families in, their stories, their dreams, stood up for someone whether it was at the State House for school funding, in front of the city council to save their rec center, or make sure someone was safe on the bus who had been tormented day after day.  They made of my drama class a Gay Straight Alliance center, something one of my students let me in on years after I was retired and had said with regret, we should have and we didn't even think of it even with all the culture clubs, and was assured there always was a GSA in school and they called int Drama.   All this and more were  transforming and healing not just the classroom but sometimes the whole community.  We mourned Cesar Chavez death, memorialized King each with a re-dedication to justice,  welcomed home the Viet Nam vet (these were student inspired and led events) and quietly sat in the little theater where one of the vets took that time to wheel his chair back and forth on the stage, and put to rest what has haunted him his whole life, his buddy's death while 100 middle schoolers witnessed in silent respect.   We took 30 students and parents on the road each year, each year guests of a tribe.  It was the students' idea, at each place, to give back to our hosts.  It was planned, like taking the Shakespeare production there and act it for the little children, or an impromptu gesture when they saw anti-Indian graffiti in the bathrooms, immediately  painting of the rec center so that the little kids wouldn't see it.  I learned as much as I taught.  I received as much as I gave.  More, I think.    My students come from all hues of the beautiful human rainbow -- none of them colored white, flesh, or black.  Their eyes flash if there is something unfair which needs to be dealt with.  Their grins widen when they can do something awesome as one.  Their coloring flashes or glows when they make their mark, count their coup, turn things so upside down, right side up.  That's what color they are.  Can you visualize it?

I believe it is from 35 and still going years I have spent in the company of youth White, Black Brown, Red and Yellow that I have hope, and that I have love in my heart, and I believe it is because of the younger generation (some now in their 40's now) that  I always will drop the "prejudice bruise" the pain I carry from the national trauma of racism to grasp a beautiful, precious relationship, a glimpse of a future in another generation's hands or the past made right by them.  A lot of them became teachers, I mean A LOT, so the future is definitely in good hands.  And for those who didn't, many of them my Facebook friends, they are still educating, and touching the next generation reaching  way out to all the directions and far into the future.

Why saying Weirdo White Cracker is not Racist

A flurry of Facebook debate rose around the flimsy defense for Zimmerman, murderer on trial for killing Trayvon Martin, a young Black Man full of promise killed because Zimmerman claims to have felt threatened in his neighborhood.

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Racism is prejudice based on race backed by the full weight and power of the institution, law, society behind it. Yes prejudice hurts, but without the full power of the institution it is prejudice, not racism. Prejudice hurts, it may even traumatize. It's ill mannered at the least. I'm not downplaying that. However, I am saying, in this discussion of race, calling a white person a cracker is not racism. When Trayvon uses it to describe the killer stalking him as a weirdo cracker, he is not being racist.

Racism is a line of division.  On one side is the "racist list." All kinds of people can uphold racism with a spectrum of behaviors from blatant thought. words, and actions like the KKK, Aryan Nation all the way to supporting with silence, or apathy or cowardice. The list supporting racism even includes people of color shoring up racist institutions and action by being gatekeepers, laughing along with a racist jokes against them, cutting down someone who is speaking against racism by a stamp of approval for the racist side. These are people of color being pro-racist. You can be on that side of the line of racism by being a Supreme Court Justice white or black who gutted the voting rights act, defending this racist murder by putting parents on trial and the victim on trial for calling this vigilante stalking him a white cracker, etc etc.

On the other side of the line is the "anti-racist list" ALSO the full spectrum of humanity. This is a list of people who are committed in thought word and action to obliterate racism by standing up against it, acting against it and educating oneself to understand that racist line better. Of course, people of color as a state of survival and health have to stand up to it. It's a powerful stand to take rather than alienation, fear, self hatred. Who wants to be Clarence Thomas or S.I. Hayakawa? Remember him? Japanese American Pres of SF during the Student Movements who was an apologist for the concentration camps during WW2 who put his parents behind barbed wire (It wasn't bad. It was fun to be a kid there) and disrespected the students of color he was supposed to care about by bringing in armed and ready for combat police force to stop the demonstration which were being supported by clergy and NAACP and other organizations. So the list on the anti-racist side, for example, on this thread, John is reading the heck out of literature which has to do with that relationship of all kinds of people including white people to racism, thinking and then educating. I'm taking his reading list down. Would you join me, those of you who are taking names like cracker so personally in the context of this murder trial, taking comments made about Christianity personally, in this context?

This line of racism exists all the time in our racialized country. Which side are we on at any given moment -- especially when we feel poked and personal. Making the decision to be racist/pro-racist or anti-racist in this racialized country is a daily exercise. I encourage everyone not to be tempted to get into this reverse racism argument -- over  names used now in this moment to defend of a man who murdered of a young Black man with such a bright future or to resent  affirmative action during times which make it tough on everyone to get into colleges or get a job.  All of this is just "red herring" in support of an unjust system which divides us so that a few elite robber barons can gain from our misery and division. Choose always to be powerful.  Choose always to be on the side of the line which rejects all the isms designed to divide us.  Choose to be Outside the Belly of the Beast.

Comedian Louis CK on the subject of Crackers.

Russell Mean's Welcome to the Reservation

My Mind is on Trayvon Martin

It's so obscene I can't even listen to the trial nor say the name of the murderer of young Trayvon Martin. I can't listen to the defense, see the old footage, listen to the replay of Trayvon fearful of this creep stalking him in the night as if he were prey.   It is angering. We're just a couple of generations after Jim Crow, remember, the time when young Black men could be viciously and violently killed for being Black BY LAW!! If this isn't the ugly face of the traitorous Confederacy slave states with their violent, ugly empire of Jim Crow Segregation again! That's what this reminds me of. If it's ok for a hateful, fearful, disturbed white predator of a  man given authority by the State to be a vigilante of his neighborhood, licensed to have a weapon to kill this young Black man full of promise for no reason, what is the difference. Trayvon used a WORD, "white Cracker"  to express a real fear that night, a white cracker stalking him  in a darkened street who means him harm. And we all know what that un-nameable fearful fiend filled with racial hatred used to express his fear because Trayvon Martin is dead, murdered, even though he called for help, even though the police knew.  If that is not angering enough, the defense of this ugly fiend proposes as a part of his defense that Trayvon used a "racist word -- cracker" and was in fact taught by his upbringing to use that word.  I CANNOT LISTEN TO THIS and not be angry.    Are parents supposed to teach their young men "Don't EVER call a white man a name or you might be killed?"  or "even if you are being stalked by white people who want to hurt you and kill you and erase you because of your Blackness, don't EVER call them cracker because they will kill you?"  Sounds like a lesson for the racist segregationist south enforced by crazy KKK vigilantes in the night out for blood -- like this sick fiend on trial. How is this a defense. Remember the "twinkie defense"?  There are satires out now about this Cracker Defense and I understand satire.  But I can't listen.  There is nothing about Trayvon Martin's death that I can be arm's length about.  Last night I left the room rather than listen to tv liberal pundits with their self-important voices, excited to yak about the racist stupidity coming out of the trial,  repeating repeating repeating each gem of outrageous stupidity,  pontificating the stupidity of it as if the tv audience were stupid and needed to hear something horrible over and over again to understand how fascinating their news analysis was.  I could not listen to the "entertainment factor" liberals get out of someone else's pain by enjoying to excess their clever words picking at another person's intellectual and moral flaws.

What's in a name.  I remember when Will and I were in Brooklyn, walking down a street of brownstones with neat front yards and iron fences.  An elderly Black Man stood watching us -- two Asian women from Idaho and a Hippy white guy -- walking through his neighborhood.  I smiled and he nailed me with a look of hatred which made me shrink and see what he saw.   I felt the stab of "Jap, Gook."  In racialized Amerika, though, like a knee jerks to a tap, I have a choice to pause and decide, " It is not about me.  It's about our history."   I even imagine that if I moved IN rather than be a tourist, over time, the gentleman might nod back when I smiled.   Why do I imagine?  Because that has been my experience in this racialized country.  The divide may always be there in the back of the mind, but it is shelved to make room for relationship.   Them's the rules for polite reasonable people in a racialized country.   The Difficulty of living together is not personal.  I am not oblivious about stores in the community run by Asians who do not live in the neighborhood and who are fearful of the Black community, un-trusting,  doing business which takes from the community and but never becoming part of it.   I have experienced the judgment of Asians too as third generation Asian myself.  Race festers.  And relationships are very hard to develop across the divide in this country.  So what do I think of the glare I received for a smile?  Is it wrong?  Is it right?  Neither.  It just is.  Welcome to Amerika.  That's one mind exercise we who live in Amerika can choose, learn learn learn, experience, experience, experience away the borders between us and build as much as one can.  Then there is the other, to take offense, to personalize, to be defensive, to be offensive, to take bad experiences and generalize from them, to accept hate and fear of the State and become a pawn of racist thought and stay stuck in the systems which invented Amerika, its foundations built on brutal taking of land from sea to shining sea and the slave labor to build it.   Breathing in the fear, division, violence and forming oneself into tools.  We have to make a choice every day.

Have I ever used racialized labels.  You bet.  All the time.  Every time, I feel weighed down by institutionalized racism, every time I see someone victimized by racism, every time I'm walking along minding my own business, thinking good thoughts and am slapped by racism by some White Cracker in what my girlfriend called our city (Eugene), Haku-Jin (White people)  Oregon where everything beautiful we have fashioned to address racist isolation to open and welcome everybody, and I mean everybody, has been easily disassembled by whimsy because it was not treasured enough -- a nationally renowned Indian Education Program, a remarkable school, Jefferson Institute of Multicultural and International Education,  an exemplary Human Rights Commission in the city, to name a few; and every time a person of color who has given of themselves from their experience and heart is thrown out as if worthless, or, the person themselves, dismissed through the personnel policy of the revolving door; and every young Black or Brown young person who is sacrificed for  white people in authority to learn anything, and for every sleight I've received as an Asian woman who is tribal because I am Asian, look Asian, am awoman, and follow tribal, You Bet!!  At the same time, do I seize every opportunity to choose differently?  Yes, yes, yes.    If I have to choose my prejudice over this beautiful person, this beautiful ideal, this beautiful project, this beautiful opportunity, this beautiful idea, this beautiful relationship, I will happily drop my prejudice with a grateful heart to all the beauty which crosses my path, and therefore defines my path.

I am reminded of what Margaret Cho said.  It really resonates.
"I wish I could be white for a couple of hours, you know, have a hobby,  go on a vacation, relax, get a manicure."

Which brings me back to young Trayvon, watch a movie, buy some Cheetos, go see a friend to hang out.   Just relax.  Hang out.  I wish he could have.  We are so much less for having lost such Promise.

And in an alternate universe, I envision that.  Just hanging out another summer day rising before him.  Growing, unstunted by racism, into manhood.  Completing college.  Maybe becoming a man who teaches children to become strong young men and women, fashioning his part of history with his own hands, adult hands, elder hands, leaving behind a legacy worthy of following.  That's what I will dream today for Trayvon Martin, a wish for the world that the blessings of such a young man could have blessed a road in front of many more like him.