Hypothetical Conversation About Being A Cracker

Hypothetical Question-Asking Person (HQAP): What’s it like to be white?

Me: Huh? What you mean?

HQAP: White. You know: honkey, cracker, pale-face, whitey-bajan-penny-ah-pung, G. I. Joe, red-man, yellow-man, clear skin, fair, pinkins… you know. White.

Me: Are you for real?

HQAP: Duh.

Me: I dunno. Haven’t thought about it in over ten years. Actually, I’m kinda over all that race shit. I’d like to think I’m just a person.

HQAP: Ok. Whatever. But what’s it like to be a white Vincentian?

Me: What’s it like to be a black Vincentian?

HQAP: Eh? It’s like… well… just normal.

Me: Yeah. Me too.

HQAP: Um. Really? You don’t feel any different?

Me: Only when people make an issue out of it. Otherwise it’s just… you know… normal. One time in class one of my students made a white joke and I was like, “HELLO! White man standing right here!” And they all laughed and one of them said: “Eh? Sah you not white!”

HQAP: But you’re blatantly white. I mean, if you were any whiter I’d need shades from the glare.

Me: I know, right? Shut up… So anyway, apparently you’re not really white-white if you’re born here and have the accent and know about our culture and so on. Some guy once called me an inside-out-roast-breadfruit.

HQAP: So what are you, then?

Me: Just… I dunno… Just fair-skin.

HQAP: So you don’t feel superior or different?

Me: Oh I always feel superior. But that’s ‘cos I’m smarter than the average bear, not because I’m white. Plus I’m prettier than the average bear. So that makes me feel good.

HQAP: The average bear?

Me: Yogi Bear reference. God you’re so young.

HQAP: But seriously.

Me: Sigh. I just feel like me. Skin colour doesn’t really enter into the equation unless you want it to, unless you force it in there.

HQAP: So you never had any problems? Never felt, in yourself, that you were different?

Me: Like I said, not unless people made me feel that way. Like if they brought it up. But it doesn’t actually affect me in any way, anymore. I just brush it off and move on with my typically Vincentian life.

HQAP: Ah. So it DID used to bother you then. At some point.

Me: When I moved to Barbados to do A’Levels I noticed that all the white people hung out with each other, the black people with each other, the Indians with each other etc etc etc. This is a broad generalization, ‘cos there were also class issues. It was a bit of a culture shock actually. We don’t really have that sort of segregation in St. Vincent. My mother claims that I called home crying about it because my friends wouldn’t lime with each other and I didn’t fit in. I have no recollection of that, but Mum swears it’s the truth. Whatever.

HQAP: So being white WAS a problem for you, then.

Me: Nope. Being white wasn’t the problem. Being Vincentian, and living and going to school in a country that was segregated along racial lines was the problem. We’re not really used to that here. Bajans will tell you that this doesn’t exist. Maybe it doesn’t anymore. But 17 years ago it did. If I went to Harbour Lights (then we called it Harbour Whites) or Sandy Bank with certain friends, then other friends wouldn’t be there. The reverse was true when I went to Reggae Lounge or After Dark. I don’t really remember hanging out with my Indian friends outside school.

HQAP: Wow. So the problem wasn’t your whiteness then?

Me: Nah. It was that I didn’t understand that my whiteness was an issue. It was a whole different story in Jamaica, though; especially at UWI. There I was like an oddity. I think I must’ve seen maybe two, three white people on that campus, students I mean, in the whole three years there. Everyone loved me. And I think only part of it was my sparkling personality and superlative good looks. They loved me because I was white and yet I was down-to-earth. Like they expected me to be all superior and haughty and shit. I had a friend who once told me that she’d made up her mind to dislike me at first because of my skin colour. Then she changed her mind once she got to know me. It actually became kind of a pain in the ass after a while. People expected me to be certain things because of my skin colour. I guess that’s how it is in Jamaica. I even had a lecturer who would refer to me as the “small island white boy”. And there was another lecturer who, whenever he spoke about slavery and Europeans, would glare at me and almost seem to be silently challenging me to apologise. Idiot. Everyone would look at me when he did it too, so I wasn’t imagining it.

HQAP: So that was difficult for you?

Me: It was. Then I dealt with it. I became outspokenly white. I was in the drama society and I’d do monologues about being a white Caribbean man. I’d write short stories and poetry for Creative Writing class with Prof. Morris that bemoaned the whole situation. It was all very arty and literature-scholary. Eventually people got it and started treating me like a real person rather than some sort of strangely exalted duppy. And I think that’s the last time I ever really thought about it until you brought it up. God I haven’t really thought about this stuff in years.

HQAP: Oh. Well sorry.

Me: No it’s ok. You just want to know. I get that. You’re around the same age I was when I was thinking about these things. Perhaps it’s something we go through. Who knows.

HQAP: So that’s it? That’s all she wrote?

Me: Yup. Nowadays I just live my life the best way I know how. Maybe other people have had different experiences. I have a few ex-pat friends (well two really) and I’m pretty sure their experience is more racially charged. But I suspect that’s as much due to their foreign-ness and cultural practices – like being on time – as their skin colour. But yeah, if you want a different perspective, ask around. This is just my experience. You should ask mixed heritage people too. My cousin has a black dad and a white mum. She once told me that she’s black in the states and white here. Go figure.

HQAP: Well thanks for talking to me.

Me: No problem. I think that this helped me realize that I’m no longer concerned with this stuff. That it’s no longer a problem for me. It’s amazing how things can just fade and you don’t even recognize it.

_______________________________________________

A few weeks ago, one of my super-students (past student now, actually – but they’ll always be my students ☺) asked me to do a sort of request post. He wanted to know what my experience is as a white Vincentian.

The above is actually the third manifestation of this post. The first version was quite prosaic, and very academic and philosophical; it basically hung off of a framework of anecdotal experiences from myself and people I know. But it lacked something. What it lacked was any genuine concern with what I was writing. I worked on it for about two weeks before realizing that it just didn’t sound like me. I read it for my cousin, Bops, and told her how it felt like pulling teeth to write it, and she told me the most obvious thing.

She said, “Wivee (that’s my childhood nickname), it’s boring and you’re not into it because you’re over all that. You dealt with it at UWI remember? (She was at the Edna Manley College when I was at UWI – so we overlapped in JA) You got over all that shit long ago.”

She was right. I was over it. I am over it. So I decided that I’d reproduce a monologue I’d done while at UWI that had gone over really well – a monologue about what it feels like to be white and Caribbean. I edited the monologue a bit (for language mainly) and then wrote a short something to accompany it. That’s when I realized that the monologue does not describe how I feel now; it describes how I felt 13/14 years ago. So that wouldn’t work.

I was still agonizing over this post, because I wanted to be up to the challenge of doing a request. So this third draft, if you will, is what I’ve decided to post. The voices of HQAP and Me sound identical. That’s because it’s all taking place in my head. Plus I’m too lazy to try to recreate Javal’s (he’s the student who requested the post - and, theoretically, he's HQAP) voice. He’s actually much more erudite and well-spoken than I could ever hope to be. Plus he knows plenty big words. And he knows how to use them in every day conversation too.

In other, completely unrelated news, I found a few grey hairs in my beard. I thought I’d never have to face that since I went bald ten years ago. I forgot about the facial hair. Perhaps I’ll take up drinking again; anything to kill the pain of getting older and closer to the grave. Sigh.