United States of Race
United States of Race
Episode 14: You Can't Control People's Perception of Your Identity
Alex grew up in a tight-knit community that often turned oppression into prejudice, and that’s exactly what pushed him to start thinking differently about race and society.
They were taught very much that different races had ethnic personalities, everything was racially based. And my grandfather, that was the basis of how he thought about different people's. Different nationalities slash races had different personalities. It wasn't good or bad. It's just fact. They are just different types.
DB Crema:This is United States of Race, personal stories of how our earliest memories determine a lifetime of relationships. Each episode features one guest sharing their experiences with race. Listen, without prejudice to their real, uninhibited stories, because by sharing when we first learned, we are all different, we find the common thread that shows us how much we are all the same. I'm your host DB Crema. Today, we're joined by Alex who grew up in a tight knit community that often turned oppression into prejudice. And that's exactly what pushed him to start thinking differently about race and society. So when did you become aware of race?
Alex:Yeah, I think that's, it's kind of a funny question, because everything is altered by memory. And so it makes me wonder, you know, some of my earliest memories of race are, you know, maybe in first or second grade in the school yard, reciting a racist song, which I'd obviously been taught, you know, and everybody universally sang, about Chinese people and Coca Cola. And I don't know why it was so ubiquitous, by the white kids anyway. But it was, and I have no idea where it came from. My elementary school touted itself as the most diverse elementary school in the country at that moment. You know, it was a upper middle class neighborhood with lots of professors and business owners and restaurant owners. And it was exceptionally diverse, ethnically, racially, you know, but it was hardly like, some kind of Shangri La utopian, you know, integration story, right? But yeah, but yeah, the super racist song that everybody's saying, was I aware that it was racial when I was in second grade, or whatever it was? I don't know. But I mean, like the entire elementary school knew this set it repeated it.
DB Crema:Did the Asian kids sing the song as well?
Alex:Probably not, no. But not as if any of us noticed.
DB Crema:Did you have any sense of inappropriateness about singing that song?
Alex:I think my initial reaction to it was, I thought it was strange. And honestly, I think that a lot of my childhood memories, now that I look back at them, when I was confronted in some way, with what I would now call overt racism, my reaction to it as a child was, I was kind of perplexed or confused, because it seemed a little non sequitur. You know, and like the the earliest childhood memory I want to tell you, it was when I called a girl who had recently immigrated from Africa, Blackie. And it was this moment, that kind of got embedded into my memory. And that's and that's again, it was like, it felt like it came out of nowhere. Now I know exactly where it came out of, you know, but at the time, it's like, I felt blindsided by it. Like, where the hell did that come out of? I...so I was very unpopular. At this point, I think the most unpopular boy, you know.And there were lots, you know, there was a social hierarchy, even in fourth grade, and I was completely at the bottom of it. And by then I had, like, I had a real chip on my shoulder, you know, I was expecting to be abused and bullied and degraded one way or another, and even sort of the nice popular girls, I felt like were mocking me, even when they weren't trying to, that's the way I would take it anyhow. So by then I was already like, fully on the offensive-defensive. And I have no idea what the conflict was about. It had nothing to do with this girl. Like, she was from an English speaking country in Africa is all I remember, because she had, you know, an interesting accent. And I don't even think that she was in some way the perpetrator of this latest slight on my dignity, you know. It was probably just, you know, the nice popular girls had included her and she was somehow with them. But I vividly remember the moment - she was above me on this little slope on the playground, you know, but it was definitely that moment of like, all I have is this whiteness that you don't have. And the moment afterwards, I was like, Where the fuck did that come from? Cuz I'd never said anything like that to anyone before. Or since. You know, and then they I got brought into the principal's office. And before he said anything, I was like, fully in tears and just like bawling, you know, like, you know, the whole thing. And so, yeah, and so that was a lesson that was at the expense of somebody else. Right. So that's the lesson that I benefited from at an early age. Right, like recognizing that there was this thing that was just, you know, that could just come out of me? Because it could, because it would work somehow, for me. But it was at this girl's expense.
DB Crema:Did you have any concept in that moment about what was behind that? Like, what the power was that you were wielding?
Alex:I feel like I must have because I was so immediately upset afterwards. Like, obviously, it felt like I had done something terrible. So without, like, somehow knowing that it was powerful, I wouldn't have used it. Right? Why would have said that, in particular, you know? Why didn't I say shorty or whatever, a foreigner? Or girl? I don't know anything else. Right? That's what came out. And I think, I mean, I see like, in hindsight, to me it taught me a lot about conditioning. Like, I'm conditioned to this.
DB Crema:Do you have any recollection where that conditioning came from or how you how it got formed? Right?
Alex:Like, I know exactly where it came from, you know, in my household. But I grew up in a very, very tight knit Russian, you know, Jewish diaspora. I mean, my parents, and their friends loved Ronald Reagan. And they spent, you know, every week to all hours, bemoaning the Soviet Union, and talking about how they, you know, sort of the systematic, truly systematic entrenched racism that they experienced as Jews in the Soviet Union, and how, you know, they were denied everything. And they had Jew stamped in their passports. And then, on the flip side, fully absorbing, like the angry black man myth, you know, that the republicans were putting out in the 80s, the welfare queen sort of images. There's a lot, there was so much on the television like that, you know. The implied language was, you know, there's so much of it in there. But any time, black people were discussed, around the dinner table in these larger gatherings, which happened all the time, every week, whether we're talking about jesse jackson running for president over talking about, quote, black on black violence, that was true for them.
DB Crema:Do you think that your parents carried those ideas with them from Russia?
Alex:Yes
DB Crema:Or did that form coming here?
Alex:No, it did not form here, at all.
DB Crema:As Russians were they aligned for like, well-aligned for the Republican viewpoint?
Alex:I think coming from Russia, they had very fully formed racial ideas. And coming from Russia, they came to the United States being completely primed for all the myths about African Americans, all the myths about Asian Americans, all the myths about Native Americans. Like, to me now, and like, as an adult, or even as a young adult, the point of view seemed like just preposterously un-self aware. You know, just totally like, my suffering can't compare to the suffering of others, like my suffering is ultimate. So to back up a little bit, we came to this country as political refugees. Right? So we had no official right to come into the country, we didn't come to the country legally - not by normal legal means. Right, we came as a special case. And our special case was we were Soviet Jews. And because it was advantageous for the United States, we got the special status. Go forward with this same people who got here as political refugees - move forward 30 years, right, they're like build the wall. So as an adult, and I hear them saying this, talking about illegal immigration, you know, I just, I see red instantly. Because it's saying that having your children made prisoner by a cartel - that suffering is less worthy than the suffering you went through in the Soviet Union. Because why? Because you're white, and they're Brown. You know what I mean? It's just like that attitude was very unacceptable to me as an adult. And as also as a kid growing up in that diaspora, growing up in this very liberal, diverse school system. I didn't get it. I didn't I understand. In the Soviet Union, you had your quote/unquote, race written into your passport. So you were a Kazak, you were a Jew, you were a Georgian, you were a Belarusian, whatever. Yeah, and that was who you were. And the Soviet Union was incredibly diverse. The one thing they did not have was black people. And, you know, everybody learned everything they knew about the world, from these little children's books, these little Soviet children's books. And in the little Soviet children's books, Christopher Columbus was a hero. And this is what they learned. And this is what they believed, you know, and that's like, the foundational myths of their childhood. And they brought them here, and they fit perfectly into whatever the television was telling them.
DB Crema:Why do you think they, your parents, but people more generally have this need to hold on to those myths that don't even have anything to do with them? Nor does the changing of the myth or the modification of that myth impact them at all?
Alex:I mean, I think that, and I think I do this, and I don't know, if everybody else does this. We build our identities on what we're not more than on what we are. So. So why do people hold on to these myths that have really nothing to do with them? I feel like my parents felt oppressed. My parents were oppressed, in their context, in the Soviet Union. They were objectively oppressed. They were denied jobs solely based on their ethnicity, you know, they were discriminated against overtly. And I feel like you build your identity on, initially on what you're not. So well, I'm a Jew, but I'm not stupid. And if we study hard enough, and you know, work hard enough, we'll show that we're actually better. It's a reaction, that could go a number of different ways. And I feel that my mother, certainly, in response to being told that no matter what she did, she would always be a Jew, and therefore have something fundamentally wrong with her. Her response to that wasn't, this whole idea of characterizing people based on the accident of their birth is a bunch of crap. That was not her reaction. Instead, her reaction, and many other people's reaction was, no, we're better than you are. And we're better than you are, because the values that you are upholding as good are bullshit. And the thing that we're about is better, right? So like, for Jews in the Soviet Union, it might be being smarter is better than being strong. You know, and so just very super simplified, you know, but as like a child, right, forming these identities. So okay, well, they'll always beat the crap out of us in the school yard. But we're gonna get straight A's. And they would get the shit beat out of them in the schoolyard. You know, my older brother, who was there longer than me who went to first grade there was identified as a Jew by his teacher, and separated in line from everybody else. Like, there was no way to hide. You couldn't pass. They would make sure to call you out. So like, you had to find a way to feel like what they were saying about you was false.
DB Crema:How did you form your opinions very different from the environment you grew up in?
Alex:Yeah. How did I form my opinions different than my parents or how did I turn out differently from them? I don't know that I have, in some ways. Which is to say, certainly, my attitudes are different and my worldview is super, super different. But I'm undeniably their genetic product, and have, you know, some combination of their psychological and emotional makeup, right. So I must be more similar to them. It's interesting because my grandfather, who is the most overtly racist person that I've met. No, maybe the second most overtly person that I've met, to be honest. But um, we're practically identical twins. We look almost... our mannerisms are exactly alike, we fly off the handle in the same way, we have the same temper. We're almost the same person. But yeah, we have these vastly different views. We grew up in different countries, at different times. I honestly think it doesn't have anything to do with me, I think it has everything to do with just my environment. I suspect given the same stimula, if you put me into my grandfather, right, I'd probably turn out exactly like him. It's just a completely different context. A totally different environment. I was taught different things. That doesn't mean I was conditioned any differently, but I was just taught explicitly different things.
DB Crema:So I don't understand that difference, because you were taught in your home environment. And clearly, you're taught by your environment, as well in school, through social osmosis, all those things, but, so I don't understand the difference between conditioned and taught and how you see that effect having impacted you.
Alex:Um, that's a good question. I certainly think that, in general, I chose my exterior environment over my home environment, dramatically in all my choices growing up. I think I'm like super American, even though I'm super judgy of Americans. I'm still super, super American. So it's not strange that I would adapt the values and the lessons of super liberal affluent white America over the Russian Jewish diaspora. But on the other hand, even in the American culture, that I was immersed in outside the house and in the Russian diaspora were the same racist ideas. They were packaged differently. They came from slightly different places. But the ideas were exactly the same. I think just the difference between conditioning and being taught something is just implicit and explicit. And so the teacher, you know, the white teacher, in the elementary school looking out on a sea of white, Asian, brown, black children, most of them from affluent families, explicitly taught a kind of 1970s, colorblind kind of curriculum, right? What's inside really matters, you know, sort of reciting bits of the I Have a Dream speech. Things like that.
DB Crema:So what about the schools now? You're in the schools like, what...
Alex:Oh, wow, man, the schools now, jeez. I mean, 11 years ago, I came into the town where I am still working. The business manager came into the little interview that I had with the superintendent. He just happened to walk into the office, and he looked at me and said, oh, wow, the diversity hire. And he was joking. I think, because I was a guy, or because I was a Russian, or because I was a Jew. I don't know what he meant. But he was very jaunty, and thought it was a great joke to say that I was the diversity hire. This place was so white, that a white guy
DB Crema:Nice white parents. with a Russian sounding name was the diversity hire, I guess, according to this dude. But now 11 years on, the foreigners are coming into town, and boy, are there some people who don't like it, especially with the women who work in the office, especially the women who work in the cafeteria, and over the years, they've said overtly racist shit to me and complained to me about the foreign accents that they have to deal with, right, because I pass pretty well as white. Listen to my acce t and everything. You know, um.. because I am white, and som how it might make them feel omfortable to tell me all this eally, gross racist shit they r ally want to say out loud. T at's the other thing that's am zing. Like, they really want to say it out loud a lot. You kn w, like the anger, the ha red, it's in there. It just ha to find a way out, I guess. Th racism in this school system i not subtle. Then you have al the really powerful stuff, yo know, from the concerned whit mothers.
Alex:Yeah, yeah, that. Yeah. I listened to that podcast. You get the real systemic stuff from them because they're just concerned for their children's education and they don't want this or they don't want that.
DB Crema:You mentioned as you were talking about the lunch ladies and other people in the school and how they feel comfortable talking to you and the way you put it, It's like they feel comfortable talking to me like they see me as a white man. It stood out to me because...
Alex:Why shouldn't they?
DB Crema:Why shouldn't they and like...
Alex:I think it's a good question.
DB Crema:Why? You don't seem to associate yourself that way.
Alex:Yeah so, why did I say, I'm passing as a white man? I think that it's a very recent change that I've had in how I understand my own identity as a white man. Because I think that a few years ago, I would be quite adamant that I did not feel white. And it was probably only since I got involved with this active school integration program that we have, and started going to their annual conferences, which are pretty intense and sort of amazing, in terms of racial education in America, that I started to really question that refusal, the pushing away of that identity of being a white man. And it's interesting, too, because at the same time, one idea that I've held on to, you know, since I was educated at a very early age, about the Holocaust, and intense anti-semitism, you know, in modern Soviet Union, that you don't get to decide your identity. That your identity is imposed on you, right? The Jews in Germany wanted to be as German, they were dandies. They didn't wear, you know, kippots, they didn't have pe'ots, you know, they didn't do any Jewish stuff. They were Germans, you know, and then the Nazis came around... like, you know, I think it's very easy for people to hold contradictory ideas, and contradictory identities in their mind. So, you know, through most of my young adulthood, and my adulthood, I would never fully admit to being a white man. Just not an American, just not the standard, not vanilla. Whatever. Just not that though. Yeah, until somehow, just a few years ago, right, I applied that same principle that I knew about other things to whiteness. You mostly are, how you're treated. Your day is defined by how you're perceived by others, and how people react to you on the most basic level, you know. And when I colored by hair all sorts of colors and would go into a store, and everybody would be suspicious of me, that was a choice. You know what I mean? Then I just cut all my hair off, and everything was chill after that. I had full control over it. That's, I mean, really, it's about, it's about control. That idea is central. Is there something about your identity that you have control over? More importantly, is there something about the perception of your identity that you have control over? Because I feel like it's the perception of the identity that affects your daily life. You know, but I think that the sort of the saying, like, I'm not a white guy is about also not wanting to let other people define who you are.
DB Crema:I like that you brought it right around to um...something I was thinking about as you know, you talked about changing your hair color, and that you could control the reaction to you. There's a privilege in that. And I like that you brought it around to this point about like, there are things you can change, you can control how people treat you react to you. And there's a lot of things that one cannot change about themselves and control.
Alex:I think there's a lot of things that you can't control when it comes to people's reactions to you. But that said, I feel like I in particular, am certainly one of a very few people in the history of humanity. Let me rephrase that. I don't think there have been very many people in the history of humanity who were quite as privileged as I am. In terms of just sheer power, sheer control over how people perceive me. I'm not adept at it, perhaps I might not have the skills. But I don't even need to have the skills. Because one glaring thing that I've noticed in my life is that I can fuck up royally, and have nothing but good stuff happened to me. And that's happened to me over and over and over again. And that's because I have a massive safety net in the guise of my parents. And it's also because I'm a white male in America and I have a life free of violence. Completely free of violence. That, to me, it puts me like immediately in the top 20th percentile of the current human population. Right away. The main enormous disadvantage of any kind of privileged is that, if things go well for you, if you're popular, if you don't have learning disabilities, if things come easily to you, you never have to adapt. You never have to do any creative problem solving. You never have to struggle and overcome. So yeah, like I'm tremendously privileged. I feel like I'm sitting on a pile of history, right? I've got everything that a human being ever wanted through history, you know. It also blinds you. You're blind, you don't know what you don't know. You're looking at the world through this tiny little peep hole. You're never going to take on somebody else's perspective. You can't do that. You're incapable of doing it. But you can trust that they are an expert on their perspective. Mostly, I think, my mantra over the last couple of years has been a humility of perspective.
DB Crema:Thanks for listening to United States of Race. The podcast was produced by me, DB Crema. Our artwork is designed by Aly Creative, and our show is hosted by Buzzsprout which makes it easy to start a podcast, get it listed with all the directories and get your message out to listeners everywhere. If you love great storytelling, you can follow United States of Race on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and show us some love by rating and writing a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Also, you should share this podcast with your friends and anyone who believes in the power of building connection through sharing personal stories. Or you can follow us on Instagram at unitedstatesofrace. And if you have a story to share, send us a message at unitedstatesofrace gmail.com. Until next time.