Thought on Caucasia

When I left class last Wednesday I felt a strange sense of defeat after our discussion of Caucasia. I couldn’t escape the feeling that we had somehow missed the mark, that we were not being true to the task we had set for ourselves at the beginning of the course. The difficult task of unpacking the man-made constructs which have created a hierarchy hinging on race, sex, gender, and class. This feeling ate away at me to the point where I couldn’t help but blog about it. I also intend to bring it up next time we have class. I’ve thought hard about what happened all weekend and I now feel very strongly that the unsaid dynamic at work in our discussion last Wenesday strikes at the heart of what this class is all about.

As you remember, we were discussing the political climate that is the backdrop of the novel – the turbulent 70’s during which political movements (both those in favor of justice for minorities and their opposites) became increasingly polarized – moving away from the hope and idealism of the 60’s (the golden age in which Deck and Sandy found love in each other). We also discussed where Birdie and her sister, as mixed race children, fit into this new order. And to what extent Deck was responsible for abandoning his family and to what extent his decisions were the result of forces beyond his control. We also touched upon the idea of Birdie and her sister as “canaries” – and how their survival (barely) was a sign that times were in deed changing, that for all the ugliness there was hope for the future – symbolized by the San Franciso school bus whisking black, white, Asian, and Hispanic children to class their skin colors one happy mixed blur.

Does anybody find it curious that we never directly discussed the central political dynamic around which the novel turns???? It is an ever present force that directly shapes the future of all the central characters, though it is never directly mentioned.

This is the early 70’s and there is a reason for the polarization, for Deck’s desire to escape to Brazil, renounce his lighter-skinned daughter, for the Lee family to be wrenched apart despite their love for one another.

The Civil Rights movement, in some essential ways has absolutely failed to achieve the justice it had set out for!!! This is a tragedy beyond compare!!! The ultimate disillusioning let down. Sure some black students have finally been accepted at Harvard (only begrudgingly - if they work hard to fit in), “miscegenation” had produced some intermarrying, and changes in laws had to some degree brought more justice for minorities. Sure MLK’s idealism and vision of a just future, where people are judged for the content of their character, had raised the bar of justice ever higher. But MLK was asisinated, the FBI was jailing what was left of the 60’s radicals, and Deck Lee (a man so intelligent he’d be a well-respected professor in any field he chose if he were white) had no choice but to toil away correcting and obsessing over and being defined by a 400 year old mistake that tore him and his family apart each and every day, regardless of whether he ignored it and tried to "pass" or confronted it directly with a belated interest in Black Power.

The evidence for the this horrible failure is everywhere in the novel. The very air of Boston, of supposedly enlightened Harvard Square (i.e. ostensibly the most enlightened neighborhood of Boston), is poisoned with it - as Sandy points out. Deck still must hide under a blanket when driving through white neighborhoods. Black girls can dream of no better future than being a night shift nurse. A black PHD can’t relax with his child on the most peaceful and quintessentially-Boston part of the city (the common) without being suspected of child molestation. It’s so hard to fight back in New Hampshire and maintain her sense of self (racism is THAT pervasive) Birdie begins to succumb, give in and take on the attitudes of her oppressors – lose her moral compass. There is no quarter for a person of color. No place but slums where they are not overtly singled out, dehumanized, humiliated (the slums themselves are a result of this process). The US is still aprison for a person of color. And this state of affairs affects literally every decision, thought, and relationship of every character in the book. It is the environment in which they live and breathe and to which they must find a way to adapt if they want to survive.

Why then was I avoiding this discussion in class by focusing on and bringing up points tangential to what was really at hand? We got off on all sorts of topics, that while true, interesting and of some consequence to the story we were analyzing all missed the main point!!!! Remember how anxious I was at the end to turn to the sexuality portion of Rothenberg? I DID bring it up because I felt there are many fascinating sections of Rothenberg (I can’t stop reading it!) that are central to the aims of the class and which I was worried we wouldn’t be able to discuss. But was that my only motivation? At the time I felt, “well I wish we’d cover sexuality because it’s the latest front in the war for justice – one being waged in the editorial pages and political roundtables we read and tune in to every day”. But this impulse implies that the war for racial justice and equality is passé – that it’s already been to some extent won. I can’t think of a more resounding refutation of this conclusion than what’s going on around me every day. Clearly the fight for racial justice is in its infancy. So why my reluctance? Why my desire to prevaricate, digress, turn to another subject?

Behind my natural desire to evade, IS the central, foundational idea behind this class. The construction of hierarchy involves everyone – black and white. Unpacking and examining this hierarchy involves shattering the myths and constructs which have given every one of us (for better or for worse depending on your postion) a sense of at-homeness. Of thereness of things-are-OK-and-just-as-they-should-be. Particularly if you are white and in a position of privilege (as I am) - you can’t unpack the fallacy of our supposedly “natural” constructions without compromising your own identity and self.

I resisted because looking at the pervasive racism in Caucasia head on is a direct threat to myself. This is what Rothenberg means when she says any examination of racial/gender/sexual/ethnic constructs is invariably “decentering”, destabilizing, . This is why she warns the reader, at the outset, not to shrink from the truth as hard as it is to swallow. This is what Brodkin is horrified to find out and admit in “How Jews became White Folks” – that the reality at the foundation of her identity is just constructed fantasy – a myth to justify the status quo and the very real political objectives of those who wish to remain in power at the expense of those deemed unworthy. This is also why Rothenberg warns us that an honest and in depth look at the construction of identity will necessarily be a painful and difficult a uphill battle.

As a Bostonian I have all the more reason to evade. My self-identity is constructed on the belief that racism (at least in terms of seeking employment, education, and a better life) was all but eradicated by 1972. On the belief that anyone at that time could, as my parents did (both were working there way through college at this time AND supporting their families) pull themselves up by their boot straps. The “townie” bus rioters are an ugly fringe group – uneducated low class morons.

But these fuzzy beliefs that propped up my sense of self collapse when examined in detail. My parents may have been poor. But they could live anywhere they chose, walk around the city freely with their children (if they had any at the time), seek out jobs, places to live and friends with not a thought about how their skin color factored in. The Irish toughs who beat the black motorist senseless aren't some fringe-fascists from a bygone era. Nor is the motorist, himself. They are all my neighbors, right now, right here. Not a one of them lives and breathes more than a few miles from where I go to class, work, and hang out. They are me and my past. And the world I live in now is in fundamental ways shaped by their attitudes and actions. THe world of Caucasia was only a few years ago. I was alive during some of it. And my childhood was peaceful and sweet and innocent because it wasn't for someone else who sits next to me at work or on the train or in the next classroom desk over. To evade and pretend otherwise is dishonest and missing the point entirely. The act of being honest about these forces and their very real impact on me and my fellow human, right now, right here - in Boston and everywhere - IS destabilizing, scary, traumatic. But if you aren't ready to take this plunge into the abyss where your bedrock beliefs are exposed as mere myth, as ever-changing text with no center, you're just re-enacting and perpetutating those very constructs it is our goal to unravel. We aren't just English students coolly analyzing words and ideas in an objective abstract,scientific manner. To pretend to do so is taking a highly subjective and biased stand. We are all actors, heavily invested in this supposed game. It is a matter that strikes at the very core of our being. A matter of who we are or think we are....