On Writing and Race

A reviewer recently made the following comment in a review of “What Binds Us”: “I also really loved how matter-of-fact Thomas-Edward’s ethnicity is mentioned and that, while of course his ethnicity is part of who he is, he is first and foremost a person who lives his life and who just happens to be black.”

She is the first reviewer to mention Thomas’ race (he narrates the story). And she is correct, race is integral to who he is but it is not all he is.

As James Baldwin wrote of “Go Tell it on the Mountain”: “It is a fairly deliberate attempt to break out of what I always think of as the ‘cage’ of (black) writing. I wanted my people to be people first, (black) almost incidentally…” I knew from the beginning that "What Binds Us" was going to be, above all else, a story about people. And because it takes place in the world, those people would be different. Yet any of the character’s races could be swapped without too much impact to their story. Just as Matthew and Thomas could very easily have been a boy and a girl.

I have wondered why no reader or reviewer has mentioned this is an interracial love story. Was this fact simply overlooked? Or, was it just irrelevant to most readers? Probably as a result, I followed the controversy over the casting of black actors in “The Hunger Games” with horror and disappointment. Did these people objecting to the appearance of black actors in a story they supposedly knew and loved, really live in the same world I did? Did they only watch Woody Allen movies and old episodes of "Friends" (remember that rather infamous subway scene where every single passenger was white?) Is that what fostered their pristine all-white worldview?

I remember at Christmas (the TSE and I host dinner for assorted friends and neighbors) looking around the dinner table and realizing mine was the only black face. At my own table. In my own house. Yet every single person was a close and cherished friend. Why? Because I choose my friends based on our commonality, on the content of their character, on the mutual respect we each have for the other’s choices; it is a choosing that has nothing to do with race.

At Penn the black kids asked me why I spoke as if I was white. That bugged me. And later, as an adult, I went out with a white guy who made the same complaint. “Why,” he asked, "do you talk like you went to Harvard?” “Well first of all I went to the University of Pennsylvania, though as far as I know the Ivy League does not have its own dialect.” He ended up dumping me because I wasn’t, he said, “black enough.” In college my friends were mostly white, in part because they were gay and out, as I was, while most of the black gay guys weren’t and seemed in fact to avoid me; I had no patience for the closeted. And the white kids didn’t question my authenticity which was, quite frankly, nice.

Years ago, a coworker on learning that TSE was white asked “What’s it like living with someone of another race?” The question shocked me, but I thought hard about it. Up until that point all of my boyfriends had been black or Puerto Rican (not that there were that many; I can still count my boyfriends on one hand, without need to employ both thumbs, and I can name them. In sequential order.) For the record there is no difference.

I’m aware that TSE is white just as I’m aware that I am taller than he is (though he claims we’re the same height). An ex-boyfriend once said, “I can’t believe you married a white guy.” I didn’t marry a white guy,” I countered. “I married Stanley who is white.” The difference was lost on him.
Perhaps it is these experiences that inform my worldview, a worldview that is reflected in my writing. And while I write fiction, I believe like all writers, my fiction is grounded in my own experience.

Thomas for his part seems to experience race only abstractly: “Dondi had visited over Easter break freshman year…The house seemed too small for him and everything looked shabby in his dazzling light.” But he is clearly aware of his race as he remarks bitterly, after being mistaken for a waiter at the White Ball, “Some people don’t see much beyond color.” And later when Dondi’s doctors ignore him, he tells them, “Do not think that because I am black I am not a part of this family.”

In "Now Voyager," Bette Davis muses, “Oh most every woman wants a man of her own and a home of her own and a child of her own.” It’s an expressed, deep seated want not unlike Matt’s desire to make a family, a home with Thomas. The deeper you look, the more similar we are. Race, sex, sexual preference –it’s all superficial differences. Perhaps one day we will reach the point where there is one race: Human.

Until then I’ll keep writing stories where the characters are first and foremost people who live their lives and who just happen to be black, or white, or gay.