I haven’t had much to say lately. I mean, who cares about a middle-aged mostly white lady living in the so-called “Whitest City in America” (there actually are whiter cities than Portland, I’m afraid) preoccupied with the natural aging process when others--yes, I mean Black people--stand to have their lives cut short. No one needs to hear from me on most matters. I also hate the idea of silence equalling complicity because what’s wrong with just shutting up sometimes? Unfortunately, those in most need of putting a sock in it are the least likely to do so.
I can’t even be a stereotypical deflector, leaning on my “one Black friend,” because I don’t have any here. Though to be fair, I don’t have any friends in Portland. That’s the problem with being unemployed and never leaving the house.
Another problem with living in a city where there are very few Black people is that attempts at allyship tend to come across as performative and embarrassing. In the early feel-good, color-blind ‘90s, t-shirts declaring “Love See No Color” were sold on the streets of downtown Portland. At least they weren’t being peddled by white people, I guess.
It’s no less cringey now to stumble onto a neighborhood where no Black lives are being lived yet everyone has “Black Lives Matter” signs in their yards.
I’ve always thought it went without saying that Black Lives Matter, but I’ve started realizing that’s because we came of age in a very different time. Sesame Street debuted in 1969 and even though it portrayed a fictionalized NYC, the cast was diverse, the setting was urban (not “urban” but literally a city), Spanish was taught and no one lost their minds. During that era, clothing and toys for girls weren’t all pink and princessy. It seemed perfectly normal for all kids to wear pants and play with Legos or Tonka trucks. Who can forget “William Wants a Doll?”
Growing up in a lower-middle-class Portland suburb, everyone was considered white despite surnames like Lopez. Kaufmans weren’t Jewish (at least at the time) and there might be one Black kid per class, often biracial. Most minorities were Southeast Asian or Pacific Islanders.
After the first day of third grade, my neighbor came up to me at school and said what I heard as, “I have a Cover Girl in my class,” but the words didn’t match the disdain in her voice.
“Is she pretty?” I asked, fumbling for the response she wanted.
“No, she’s colored!”
It was only then I realized she was referring to one of the three Antolin sisters, members of a Filipino family who lived down the street.
This same neighbor’s older sister, who I haven’t seen in over 30 years (and was allowed to buy cigarettes as a teen because she had a note from her mom) recently tried friending me on Facebook. “You probably don’t remember me…” she messaged. How could I forget?
So, yes, I’m old. It’s kind of unfathomable that in 2020 racists and nazis are tolerated and women are losing bodily autonomy. I’m not sure when it all went to hell. The 1980s? Obviously, the ‘70s weren’t some progressive paradise or we wouldn’t be where we are now today. I guess it’s naive to assume that because the nation already went through a reckoning in the ‘60s, racism, sexism, and all of the other isms were solved.
I hate to even admit this, but I’m actually enjoying this moment in time because change is actually happening--and fast. Who needs Confederate statues or the police? For me, personally, I’ve been relishing all of the food media drama. I’ve despised the cool kid, millennial tone of Bon Appetit since Adam Rapoport took over in 2010. Dude lost me when he wrote about getting too old to date 20-somethings (I swear this article exists but can’t find any evidence of it on GQ.com).
Media has always been overwhelmingly white. No shit. It’s also classist as hell. People online have been grabbing at the tidbit that Rapoport’s assistant, a Stanford-educated Black woman, was only being paid $35,000. That’s par for the course at a legacy publisher like Conde Nast. Me, I don’t think Stanford should have anything to do with it. That pay would also be shit in NYC for someone who went to community college--or no college--but that individual would never get hired in the first place.
Apparently, Anna Wintour always asked job candidates what their father did and where they summered (though without being so gauche to use summering as a verb).
I’ve probably told this story before in another format, but one of my first temp jobs in NYC was as an assistant at a landscape architecture firm whose clients were like Tommy Hilfiger and David Geffen with homes in Mustique, a Caribbean island I had never even heard of. The woman who ran the firm was extremely high maintenance, and my point in even bringing her up was that she would ask questions about where I went to school and my background to decide if I was someone worth her time. I was clearly not.
I mostly answered the phone, but also had to make in-person reservations at restaurants I had never heard of at the time like Savoy. I would get into trouble constantly, for forgetting to write down phone numbers, dressing too casually (I’d never worked in an office before!) and I don’t even remember what. Once, during the height of hot, sticky summer, this woman wore the same, very distinctive green, silk cheongsam five business days in a row, and that run included a weekend.
There was no internet, just a computer, phone, and a rolodex. Once, I was given the task of finding out when the earliest jitney left from the Upper West Side. There was just one problem: I had no idea what a jitney was! I just assumed it was a boat. If you hadn’t grown up in the Northeast, why would you know what the Hampton Jitney was?!
Anyway, it’s easier for me to talk about classism than racism, though everything’s intertwined.
At the very least, I can show a little support financially. I just donated to the Black Resilience Fund, a local cause that seems worthy (and not just for the bagels). Things are kind of overwhelming right now, but this is a good resource for finding places to donate if that’s your thing.