Tag: POV

There was Chapter One and then Chapter Two so I guess you can consider this Chapter Three.

I suppose what I was getting at, if indeed I had any point in mind, was that I don’t consider myself white because the world around me didn’t consider me white. I did refer to ‘white boys’   usually I refer to “Anglos” which encompasses ethnicity and culture because I don’t get Anglo culture – very different from mine up to and including food.

When I lived in the Bronx amongst a  variety of people, most of whom looked like me, I don’t think I had an identity problem (my Aunt Margie and Sheryl notwithstanding). It wasn’t until we moved to a very white, middle class, white collar neighborhood in Queens that the disconnect began. Also I was 8 when we moved and I was just then becoming aware of what was socially acceptable.

Social media, such as it was back in the 1950’s, was blond, blue-eyed, Anglo oriented. For some reason what comes to mind was the cover of Parade magazine, then as now a Sunday newspaper insert, with a cover photo of the perfect American teens – and they sure as hell didn’t look like me or live like me. Television and movies were no different.

Two anecdotes, from a lifetime of similar encounters:

When I was 11 I joined the Congregational Church. This particular congregation was, judging by last names and appearances, Scandinavian, German and let’s just call it British, in ethnicity.  I was welcomed warmly.  Came Christmas time, since I was the new kid, I was assigned the role of an angel in the Christmas pageant. I refused the part. I told the Sunday School Superintendent that I couldn’t be angel because “I’ve never seen an angel with black hair.”

My mother later told me that this lady stopped my mother in the supermarket and related the conversation to her and then added that she was taken aback by my statement and looked for pictures of angels with black hair and couldn’t find any.

Fast forward many years later – early 2000’s. I’m in my late 50’s. My best friend of 10 years, Diane, was a biracial woman with light skin, freckles but who identified Black and had stereotypical Black features. She and her daughter-in-law Von, who I had known almost as long as I had known Diane, were in my dining room and I was in the kitchen making tea when this conversation happened:

Von: What do you mean she isn’t Black?
Diane (laughing): She’s Italian (pronounced Eye-talian – Diane is Southern to the core).
Von: But Mom, her skin is darker than yours!

I came out of the kitchen, laughing, and said to Von “You thought I was Black? What – did you think I just had good hair?”

Thinking about it now, I realize that I grew to feel that I didn’t belong anywhere to any group. Yet everyone thought I belonged to them except for Anglos. I was taken for every nationality except Northern European. Greeks thought I was Greek, Italians thought I was Italian, Spaniards thought I was Spanish, Israelis thought me Israeli and so on. At various stages of my life, and looks, I was also assumed to be part Native American and even Eurasian (Oh those high cheekbones and almond shaped eyes and that  yellow-brown skin…)

As my hair has gotten lighter with age so has my skin. And I don’t think people really register me as being any ethnicity at all. Now I am just old and that’s all people seem to need to know or relate to.

Every white boy I’ve ever made spaghetti with garlic and oil for loved it.

I don’t know at what age human beings first become aware of what they look like and where they fit in; who their tribe is; what group they belong to.

The first four years of my life I lived in an Italian-Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx. I have no memory of awareness of anyone being any different from anyone else. The only difference, in my experience, between Italians and Jews is the day they go to church.

When my grandmother sold the house we lived in we moved to the projects, still in the Bronx but now with a more mixed bag of neighbors. (For those unfamiliar with the term ‘projects’ they are public housing – you know, for poor people.) I remember that our neighbors directly across from our apartment were named “Rivera”.  Since us kids were pretty the same age the doors were always left open and we floated back and forth between the two apartments.

Back in the old days your parent’s friends were called Aunt and Uncle.  My mother had a friend, Margie Yates. Margie was from Jamaica, the Caribbean Island, not the neighborhood in Queens.  And yes, Aunt Margie was Black.  I adored her. I loved to hear her talk, that Jamaican accent – musical and magical.

Walking home from school with my friend Sheryl, I told her she had to come up and meet my Aunt Margie, who I knew was visiting that day. I don’t remember any of that encounter but I do remember that when Sheryl and I went outside to play, I guess I was gushing about Aunt Margie. Sheryl blurted out (this is the 19050’s remember) “But she’s colored! My reply? “No, she’s my Aunt Margie.”

I was perhaps 6 or 7 years old and still wasn’t aware that what you looked like mattered.  No one had told me. I hadn’t experienced being different yet.

When I was 8 we moved to Queens and that all changed.

~~~ To be continued

Every white boy I’ve ever made spaghetti with garlic and oil for loved it.

I used to be 96% Italian, that’s been downgraded to 86% Southern Italian and the remaining 14% various other Mediterranean ethnicities – as you can see. The Southern Italy portion is confined to Sicily yet recent history has my father’s family living in and around Naples. Still considered Southern Italy but not as far south as Sicily.

An exotic little son-of-a-gun, aren’t I?

Mediterranean people tend to the darker side – hair, eyes, skin. And so I do tend. But not everyone in my family tended that way. One of the (many) pointless lies my mother told was that her father had flaming red hair and blue eyes. I found his draft card online and he was described as having black hair and brown eyes. WTH? I have said that my mother never met a lie she would not embrace wholeheartedly but this is a corker. That said, my cousin Camille,  my mother’s sister’s daughter had red hair – Lucy Ball red only natural.

When my elder male sibling was born he was described as looking like a little old man because he had white hair, blue eyes and dead white skin. When I was born 2 years later I was described as a monkey – covered in black hair, black eyes and dark skin. The hair fell off, so not werewolf syndrome but it was also said that I was born with a caul.

Needless to say when my mother took the two of us out she got a lot of sidelong glances. Where did that “white” kid come from? My father was dark but my mother had medium brown hair and hazel eyes, olive skin but not the yellow-cast olive tone that I have. Yet, she said that when she was young they called her ‘blackie’.

Which brings me to – Italians weren’t considered “white”. Indeed we were referred to as ‘blackies’ and perhaps that was what my mother was referring to – racist taunts. in the 1890’s, when there was a large influx of Italians into the United States, particularly in New York City, the general opinion was that the Italians were animals, savages and should be deported.

(Here’s a fun web site – The Racial Slur Database – the page for Italian is HERE.)

I was born in 1946 in New York City, a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-national city where one would think ethnicity wouldn’t be much of an issue. But of course it was. NYC was populated with human beings – and human beings love to hate.

~~~To be continued