That White Woman is Starrin' at Us

This is the beginning of a series I'm going to do on Thursdays: reflections on time spent with four teenage, black girls.  I drive Queenie, Casey, Nina, and Amelia (not their real names) to church and back home every Wednesday night.  Queenie and Casey are sisters.  Nina is their friend from the neighborhood and Amelia is a friend from school.  They all have different, but equally fantastic, personalities.  Queenie is the older sister and has the intelligence, cautious observance, strength and compassion one would expect from that most blessed of birth orders ( :) ).  She's less prone to violence than her exuberant sister, but she did tell me once that she likes to watch a good fight at school.  Queenie loves babies and wants to go to college to become a nurse -- or someone who cares for babies. 

Casey is a powerhouse.  She speaks without thinking in a way that is (usually) mysteriously endearing.  She inspires me.  Casey has some anger issues and she has a tendency to react in very physical ways.  This combination can cause problems for her, so she has personally sought out help dealing with feelings of anger and has employed advice from others to great effect.  I have witnessed her tremendous growth in self-control through her middle and high school years.  Casey can be overwhelming -- even scary - to strangers, but her friends see her as fun, funny, loyal, thoughtful and honest.  I like these girls a lot.  They live in a nice, single-family home with their mom and dad.  Their grandmother recently passed away.

Nina is much more quiet than either Casey or Queenie.  She comes from a big family that has moved around a lot in the past few years.  Currently she lives in a house with MANY other people: brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents and even-- I think -- some people she may not be related to.  Nina has a great laugh and beautiful smile.  Even though she doesn't like school, she's very interested in learning and curious about the world around her.  This semester she's taking a theatre class (I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theatre; she hates the class.) and appeared both amazed and relieved to find that I knew the word "monologue"; as if she'd found a comrade of some sorts who knew about this crazy theatre world.  She is a sweet, thoughtful girl who knows well how to laugh.

I know Amelia the least well of all these girls.  She recently joined our caravan to church and, honestly, when I first met her, I didn't think she was a great addition.  I've heard the N-word come out of her mouth more than I have ever heard it come from any single person in my life.  She was always saying discouraging and demeaning things to the other girls.  I just thought she was mean.  I've gotten to know her -- and the culture of these girls ("Miss, we're just playin'!  That's how we play.") -- better over the last few weeks and am hopefully growing in understanding and compassion for Amelia.  She appears very self-confident and strong and is quite clear about what she likes and what she doesn't like.  I found out one similarity between Amelia and me last week: we both love the animated movie Anastasia.  In fact, the context of that discovery is what has provided the title of this series.

The series is called "That White Woman is Starrin' at Us" because of our experience eating at Burger King last week.  After church last Wednesday night, I told the girls we could hang out somewhere.  They usually choose Sonic or a McDonald's where the main clientele is black.  That night, however, Casey was tired of McDonald's, so we went to Burger King.  They were the only black people eating in the restaurant.  There was a Hispanic man with two (adorable) little girls and a large group of white people.  The teens choose a booth to sit in and I stood at the counter waiting for the food.  When the food came, I walked over to the booth.  They made room for me and I sat down.  That's when the (not so quiet) whispering began.  "Amy, that white woman lookin' at you."  "She wonderin' why you sittin' with all these niggas".  As the night wore on, the girls continued to stare back at this group of white people and to talk about them judging us.  No attempts at distracting them worked for long, even (gasp!) when I asked them what their favorite movies were.  As long as we were at the restaurant, they were stuck talking about these people who had looked at us.

Reflecting on this experience made me think about many things.  Here are some of them:

1.) I was really amazed how antsy these white people made my friends.  I suggested they just ignore the white woman staring at us, but they would have none of it.  I am still so ignorant about the power white people have in our society.

2.) It reminded me of feelings I've had when we go to the McDonald's where mostly black people eat.  I feel comfortable enough to enjoy my evening, but also not exactly welcomed or wanted (is that the way I should feel?)  Feeling like the minority, or the strange one, can be extremely difficult.  As my last post pointed out, black people are often thought of as "abnormal" in our culture.  White, middle-class culture is expected.  Anything else is strange.  Growing up feeling "strange" (let alone living through centuries of feeling "strange") would certainly make a person more aware of and more anxious about how they are perceived.


3.) This reminds me of literary research done on "the other".  "The other" is someone who is strange, or different in a story.  As I'm about to go into grad school to study the works of William Shakespeare, it especially reminds me of 'ole Will.  Shakespeare lived among immigrants (he actually rented housing from French immigrants), was a country stranger in the city and wrote about "the other" in plays like The Merchant of Venice and Othello.  He knew so much about the world and those who people it.  No doubt much of that wisdom came from his ability to step outside his comfort zone and experience life as "the other".

So...what is it for me to step outside of my comfort zone to experience life as "the other"?  What is it for you to step outside your comfort zone to experience life as "the other"?   Is that even possible?  I hope, I dream, that at least in some way it is.  I dream of a day when black and white teenagers can sit in the same booth at a fast-food restaurant and no one thinks anything of it.  I dream.