The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Emery Boyle-Scott,
Milwaukee, WI.
I want to belong in a group, and it’s nice to belong until someone looks closely. My whiteness is always sidelined when people learn about my lesbian moms. Don’t look closely and I have all the privilege. But, then it disappears and I’m not allowed, I’m questioned on everything. There’s no box for my diversity. There are literally dozens of us, but we’re not connected.
Judith Angelo
Cleveland Heights, OH
I began with six words from Alice Walker’s novel about FGM, Possessing the Secret of Joy : “The secret of joy is resistance.” I’m a white radical lesbian feminist, and I associate them with my primary teachers about race in America: Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider) and Derrick Bell (Faces at the Bottom of the well). Lorde’s elegant accessible and mercilessly insightful prose at the intersection of race, class, and sex gave me a steady lens and a decoder ring, and Bell answered the despair clarity can bring with fierce humor, speculation, an outsider interpretation of civil rights history, and a story of the gleam in an old black woman’s eye describing her dealings with white folks.
Racism endures, oppression endures. Joy is not something to wait for til we are free, it is essential to OUR endurance, to achieving integrity in captivity.
Lynette Faye
Devall, WA
With less legal, societal, and sometimes even family support, biracial same sex relationships are often under even greater strain. And when they collapse, wounded individuals are left wondering which factors may have contributed the most pressure.
I realize “rubbled” is not word, much less a verb, but I like the distant echo of ‘rebel’ – that faint, involuntary, consequential label one is assigned after choosing a partner of a different race…and so I employed poetic license.
Andrea Hyson,
San Francisco, CA.
About two months ago, I finally met a new employee in another department. This woman and I had numerous phone conversations but hadn’t yet met. I decided to stop by her office to introduce myself. Another employee was at her door as I approached. As I turned into her office, the other employee introduced me and woman literally had a physical reaction. She jumped back in her seat and looked shocked and while recovering said, “You’re Andrea.”
It caught me off guard but at the same time I smiled. I am so use to people having some preconceived notation of who I am. I just shook my head and presented my hand with a smile. I do my job and run my business based on my knowledge base not my color or sexual orientation.
I’m a CPA who owns a small tax business while working a full-time job in the tax department of a privately owned investment company. I am approaching my 10 year anniversary.
As an out lesbian with short hair (sometimes bald) on the butch side of the equation, I am who I am and can’t and never would change it. I like me.
Jamie Haines,
Franklin, VA.
As an inter-racial lesbian couple in Virginia, we have to plan carefully. Will that small diner be safe? Can we vacation safely in that city, country? Can we hold hands? Will we have to take Mr. Confederate Flag stalker back to court? Every single time one of us walks out the door, it is the same: “I love you. Be safe.”
Shelley Ferrand,
USA.
After the initial shock of their coming out, I realized that THEY are the long search for fruits of my 1960’s labor and radicalism. So, when I see the economic travesties in our community, after I pledged on campus 40 years ago to give it my all to help end my people’s suffering, and we suffer still, I think of my daughters and realize their courage is that long-awaited fruit, no matter how small the piece out of the whole pie.
Janice Vassar,
Champlin, MN
I often get comments like “You don’t look lesbian/gay”. My response is that I’m a “stealth lesbian”. People assume that I’m heterosexual. I make it a point to be very out at work. The thing about coming out is that it is endless; I have to come out to people all the time. It’s important that I come out because LBGTQ people come in all shapes, sizes, colors and gender expressions.
Kay Thorson,
Richmond, VA
I “can” pass for straight (if I want to) in uncomfortable situations, but so many other minorities or ethnic groups cannot. The fear is the same.
Julia Rivers,
Milwaukie, OR.
As a high school student dependent on scholarships in order to attend college and reach my goals of a much higher level of education, every day I am consumed by the thought of how I can make myself stand out. What will make the people in charge want to give me their money out of all the other students that are consumed by the same thought every single day. As a white girl from an educated family who’s only “pity” case is the death of my dad and being a hardly out lesbian who has not suffered from any discrimanation, my odds of earning scholarships are dependent entirely on my academic ability and my interest in STEM as a female. I am not one for labels-not about my sexual orientation, not about IQ’s, not about religion and not about race, but if you can not label yourself as something unique, you’re more or less SOL when it comes to earning scholarships.
A peer of mine is being recruited by well known schools across the country. Not the best schools, but decent ones I would consider safety schools. Her SAT’s are significantly lower than mine. Her GPA is lower than mine. The difficulty of classes she takes is lower than those that I take. The hours and diversity of community service she participates in do not match up to mine. Her “well-roundedness” consists of running track and school. Her family income is significantly higher than that of my single mother who is a school based therapist supporting two children …and yet, she is able to apply for a vastly larger number of scholarships than am I even eligible for, simply because she is a first generation college prospect who would add a dash of color to those mediocre college campuses. I understand the need for diversity, it is one of the top criteria for my upcoming decision of which colleges I will be applying to-but diversity should be attained without handpicking students deliberately for their race. I should not be excluded from competing with my peers simply because I am a mix of races that do not alter the color of my skin and come from an educated family. It is presumed that the education of my family means I have greater educational opportunities than first generation college prospects, that being a majority means I can walk onto a college campus, have a check and an education handed to me and provide a stellar education for my future children. And yes, I am acutely aware that the color of my skin has made my walk of life significantly easier. But the opportunities I have are no greater than my peers.
As students of one of the worst public education systems in the nation, it is a feat to get Oregon public school students to graduate, let alone be accepted into a decent university, and being a long time resident of a low socio economic town, every student here needs all the assistance paying for college we can get; regardless of race, family history, gender, sexual orientation, athletic ability or any other factor that forces us to wear a label on our backs saying “I’m the scholarship kid because (insert label of choice here)”. So my coping strategy, as I learned from my single mother who has shouldered her fair share of stresses in her life is this: add humor. I will not influence the powers that be to change their minds about my lack of labels, but at least I’m not a white boy.
David Chase,
New York, NY.
Apparently some people feel that “all oppression is not equal”. My experience as a gay white man unfortunately has not always been one of solidarity with non-gay non-white people.
Growing up as a child in Woodstock, NY in the 60’s and 70’s I was brought up to be supportive of all struggles for civil rights. Of course it was racially based discrimination which was most in the news at the time. But since becoming an adult and coming out of the closet, what I’ve found is that some members of the same racial minorities whom I supported and still support in their struggles, do not support me in mine. Some of them feel perfectly free to make the most horrifying anti-gay statements in public without recognizing that if you substitute “black” for “gay” they are saying the same things as were being said about non-white people in the 60’s and 70’s.
It is very hurtful to be told that the extensive suffering of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of society which is still happening today is not legitimate, that only racial discrimination is “real” and that the LGBT community has somehow “hijacked” the civil rights movement. To be told that “You’re white so you could ‘pass’ and avoid discrimination, just don’t act gay in public” denies my human right to live an open, honest and truthful life, and denies the very real fear and hurt I and others have suffered as gay people no matter what my race.
I expect that there are many who will read this Race Card and say “There they go again, gay people hijacking the conversation about race” but I can’t hear the word “race” without thinking about discrimination, and I can’t think about discrimination without thinking of myself. All I can say in closing is that until we are all free from discrimination, none of us are truly free.
Kristen
Milwaukee, WI
As a white, middle-class lesbian, I often focus conversations regarding diversity around how I am a part of the subordinate identity. I talk about the struggles that I have had and how I have worked to be proud of my identity. But, because of that, race is largely missing from my discussions surrounding diversity. Because of that, I think I often part of the reason that the race conversation doesn’t move further forward in our society. In the past I have equated the struggles that I have had with the struggles that people of color face – and that is not fair. I want to push myself and others to think more about race and less about the ways in which we might be a part of a non-dominant identity.
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