The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Erik Shawn Frampton,
Charlotte, NC.
I am the descendant of a line of plantation owners in South Carolina. As a gay man, my upcoming marriage will finally occur on our 20th anniversary together. My larger southern family struggles to see my identity as sacred, just as they struggle still to see minority life as sacred. But what progress. From chains to wedding bells with a gay Asian man.
Richard Holmes,
Durham, NC
As racism and hate-crimes have proliferated and reversed so much progress in the last few years, I despise that the haters are overwhelmingly the same race and gender as me — white males. This is especially pronounced here in the south. Those who are harmed are rightfully fighting their treatment and seeking a better future, but those of us who have always enjoyed white privilege, not to mention male privilege, perhaps have a greater power to change our demographic to be more humane and rational. I have searched and failed to find the right opportunity or organization targeting the real cause of the problem — my own demographic. Help?
Mary Fruin,
Charlotte, NC.
I think that Rev . Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Dream is nowhere near being fulfilled when our big corporations are illegally paying big bonuses to managers to hire & promote minorities and women (read: not white men) and giving soft metric well paying jobs to minorities while chasing white males out of jobs to give them to minorities in many situations. We are surprising one race to elevate others, in many cases lowering the bar. Why not hire the best person? Why not promote for good work? Many men in my community are becoming stay at home fathers, not because of want but because their wives have a better career path due to hiring practices.
Lisa Ayame Eckenrode,
Asheville, NC
I spend too much time on the /hapa reddit but it’s the only place I can find mixed community right now
Kasey Nichols,
Clemmons, NC.
I’ve known I’ve been adopted since I can remember and never questioned my ethnicity until I reached middle school age because we had to fill out cards with “check yes if Latino, African American, white or other.” Biologically I’m Mexican and Italian, but I was raised white with my dad being Greek and mom “white.” I kept asking myself what am I? I don’t speak Spanish well and I grew up with a white southern family, but my blood says Mexican and Italian. I worked in retail and Hispanic people would assume I was Latina from my short stature, olive skin, dark eyes and dark hair and started speaking Spanish, they would stop when they saw the confused look on my face. Especially when I go out with my Mexican boyfriend. However, I don’t resemble either culture. So what am I? I’m an American born and raised. I’m a mixture but I don’t need a label. I am ME. Just a person.
Brynda Jean Smith,
Chapel Hill, NC
Everyone has talked about the casual racism of their childhood, but it took me a while to see how bad it was growing up in Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, Louisiana, and I’d managed to suppress it in my memory when I left at 18 in 1990. Reading your book reminded me of things I heard just casually tossed around as a kid. Every time I hear ‘jury rigged’, I think wait, that’s not right, I grew up hearing ‘N***** rigged’. I remember a classmate asking the one Black girl in our class ‘do Black people shave their arms?’. I remember ‘mixed kids are always so pretty’. ‘She has 4 kids and not one of them is in jail!!’ These and more were uttered by supposedly liberal, white, Unitarians and other not-evangelical Christians. My mom lost a local election because someone found out my dad was a member of the ACLU and her opponent spread it around to trash-talk her. As an atheist, I was treated as a circus freak by other kids all through school. I haven’t even touched on the misogyny or homophobia. It was so embarrassing being from Louisiana for YEARS. I used to call myself an ex-pat to show how different the state was. I’ve finally been away long enough that it’s all a distant memory, but between the Speaker of the House and the 10 Commandments thing I’m having a lot of PTSD-type flashbacks.
Dan Tarara,
Greensboro, NC
I’m trying to be a better human. Some days go well. Other days not so much. It’s not as if I have a score card to keep track. But in the moment- sometimes after the fact, I realized a person to person encounter was less than what it should have been or could have been. I fumble. And I hope I can be better moving forward.
Marlys Ray,
Durham, NC
I will be attending a Dinner A’Dozen event this month at my church.
Daniel,
Charlotte, NC.
I do not want to say what country I am from, because I want you all to guesstimate my ancestry? Where would you say I am from? What part of the world do my features reflect? Please explain your responses! Please share your thoughts with me.
I am NOT from the U.S.A.
I am NOT from Canada.
I am NOT from South America.
I am not from the Americas.
Lynn Scott Cochrane,
Washington DC.
I grew up in a deeply segregated Charlotte, NC in the 1950s and 60s. When my high school, North Mecklenburg, was finally integrated in about 1963, there was one black girl who always sat alone in the cafeteria. She may have been the only black girl in the school that year. I KNEW I should befriend her, but I didn’t have the courage, to my everlasting regret and shame.
Gary D Patterson
Gastonia, NC
Here comes the stupid husband, boyfriend, tradesman, etc. in a commercial. He is almost always white. Why?
Cindy Castevens
Winston Salem, NC
I’m white, and feel ashamed about my color every time I’m around black folks whom I don’t know. I think of all my ancestors and my race did to Blacks, and I’m ashamed and horrified. This guilt makes it hard for me to just be myself around Black people most of the time..
Stanley E. Lindsey (Stan),
Newberry, SC
My six words came from one of the assist football coaches
I grew up in a small town Lincolnton, NC (About 20 miles north west of Charlotte, NC) In 1976 I decided to try out for Quarterback position. In 1977 my freshmen year with me playing QB we ran the table, 8-0 Conference Champs Yep! And the rest is History. Just look at the NFL today. God is Good!
Nicole McFarlane,
Fayetteville, NC.
I’m a 43 year old black woman who has spent most of her adult life living and working in the South. I notice that when my weight fluctuates I’m perceived differently — as different stereotypes associated with my race, gender and sexuality. At times when I’m heavier, many assume me to be a hostile and intimidating presence, no matter how accommodating and unassuming I behave. They may sometimes even assume I’m a lesbian or asexual. At my thinner size people are convinced that I’m younger and express dismay when I don’t “keep it cute and on mute.” Some are downright perplexed by my confidence and consider my assertiveness as “uppity,” which is something, believe it or not, I’ve been called to my face by seemingly polite white people. There’s much more to be said about how, whether fit or fat, the morphology of the black female body is always a particular subject of scrutiny. The failure to appear as “cute, “or to conform to an explicit and intentional social performance of diminutive proportions, comes with special pressures in cases where gender and race overlap. It is my belief that the hyper-vigilance I and many other black women have developed to fend off microaggressions might actually create the very health issues like hypertension and diabetes that I work so hard to avoid, regardless of my size.
Sonya Williams,
Baltimore, MD.
I grew up in a unique area of North Carolina in what is referred to as a ti-racial community. My Indian family are the Cheroenhaka Nottoway and Meherrin Indians of Southeast, VA & North Eastern, NC. When I went to college, during a lecture in my anthropology class, the professor was discussing a dig that took place on the Nottoway River and how 193 bodies were removed and placed in the Smithsonian collection. After the class, I approached the professor and told her I was a member of this tribe, but had never heard about this. This was in 1985 and that knowledge has haunted me every since. I contacted the museum on many occasions and was told by staff that “the Smithsonian does not house human remains.”
I new this wasn’t true, but I had no legal way to get to the information. This went on until President Clinton enacted the, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which forced institutions to return all Native American artifacts and burial remains. After this, the museum did in fact admit to having the bones; however, they will not turn them over to the tribe because the act only covered federally recognized tribes, not state recognized. Therefore, we still wait for our ancestors to be returned to their eternal rest which is promised to all by God, but is being denied to my people. I am currently writing a book to bring attention to this injustice. Not to promote hate of any race, but in hopes that everyone black, white, red, or yellow, can agree that no human remains should be held in museum cases.
Thank you for doing this project. I have so enjoyed the stories. It was hard for me to pick just 6 words. I have many 6 word stories I can tell; being of a multi-race background.
Khuwailah Beyah,
Durham, NC.
For as long as I can remember people have said to me, and sometimes to my mother, the I “talk white” or that I’m trying to be white because of the way I speak and some of the things that interest me. I have never quite gotten this. I don’t have “white sounding” name, but I do speak like I’m American, which I am. Growing up I did not quite understand why they would say these things to me. I didn’t understand why a lot of black kids taunted me about the way I carried myself. My mother would just explain it away and say, “You just more after the white side of family baby. Don’t worry about them.” A relation of mine, on a few occasions, greeted me, “Hey white girl.” White people label/labeled me as different from “the rest of them.” My interests are varied, I listen to all sorts of music because that was what was being played in my household, and I like what I like. I refuse to defend my blackness to anyone. I refuse to let the status quo dictate what kind of person I should be and what type of interests I should have. I am educated, I love to read, I love to travel, I speak well, and that should not constitute “being white.” But the flip side of this is: when I express anger or irritation, I am thought of as an angry black girl/women and that I have an “black girl” attitude. What does that even mean? I should be able to express my anger without being a labeled a problem or an agitator. I have a good sense of self and that’s the way I was brought up to be as Black Muslim woman in the South. I don’t “talk white”, I speak as if I am educated and I am. Deal with it!
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