Ra-ra-ra-racism!

It is the holiday season, dear readers, and I attended a Yankee swap gift exchange the other day to celebrate.  You know, the kind where you open presents and then steal other people's presents if you like them better than the one you got, all in the name of Jesus.  If you are strategic, you bring a crappy gift (bonus points if it's from the As Seen on TV store).  If you are a sucker like me, you bring a nice gift and walk out with one of the crappy gifts.  It's all very American, really.

Being a sucker doesn't bother me so much - I'm too deeply programmed by middle-class white woman hospitality (it's not "being a sucker," it's "making sure others are happy!") to dwell on that.  But what did stick with me that night was an incident that is, sadly, a common occurrence in everyday life if you are the kind of person who happens to get out bed every morning: the Vaguely Racist Comment (VRC).  Oh, VRCs!  They come up when you expect them, they come up when you least expect them, they come up when you are neither expecting nor not expecting them.  They are always, as a matter of principle, uttered casually, and, also a matter of principle, extremely difficult to challenge.  They are usually in public spaces where it would make you stand out in a bad way if you were to do anything other than nod, or smile, or laugh, or pretend they didn't really just say something vaguely racist (and by vaguely, I mean overtly).  That is the brilliance of racism - it is so embedded in our social exchanges that it seems like common courtesy to just go along with it.  The nature of racism is that it makes those who call it out appear to be the rude ones.

That's the thing...sometimes I'm one of those rude people, which may explain why I don't have a robust social life.  I realize I'm really not that much fun to be around, because the vast majority of our cultural humor is predicated on social inequality.  And I'm one of those Debbie-Downers who doesn't laugh.  Or I try in some awkward, flailing way to intervene.  It doesn't matter how many VRCs I've witnessed...I have yet to have a beautific teaching moment come of one.  It almost invariably ends with me laughing tersely and saying something like "I don't know about that, y'all" and then people change the subject before they have to think too hard about how much they benefit from racial inequality.

That's the typical script, anyway, and the incident at the Yankee swap was no exception.  We were halfway through opening the gifts when the VRC slipped - nay, strolled out into public conversation: the white man beside me announced that he wished he could have brought an Obama Chia Pet.

These are hard moments for me, dear readers.  Perhaps you have encountered them too.  You hear a white person say something like, "I wish I could have brought an Obama Chia Pet," and the room of almost entirely white people erupts in laughter, and you aren't exactly convinced that, deep down in their heart of hearts, they really know that an Obama Chia Pet is racist as hell.  In fact, you are fairly sure they don't. 

Here is evidence.  As the laughter was dying down, I added "Not a good idea!" with an awkward laugh (I know, I know...my VRC interventions need polishing).  For the sake of a more personal challenge, I noted to the white man beside me who had made the comment, "You know, there is this great video clip of the white guy who made the Chia Pet saying "I don't know why this is racist!"  I said this with a tone that implied that of course this man beside me knew it was racist, and surely he would find additional sad humor in the fact that the white guy who designed it would be so tragically misled.  But that's not what happened.  What you want to happen is never what happens.  Instead, another white man across the room said "I know!  I don't know why either!"  (Crap!  I didn't curb the racism...I gave it wings!)  And then a white woman added, as if this was a sufficient explanation to close the conversation, "They have one of every president!"

And then the next person started opening their gift and any chance of a beautific teaching moment (if there had been any chance at all) was crushed by the opening of a leg lamp nightlight.  (Gah!  Intercepted by the Vaguely Sexist Present!  How many interventions am I supposed to handle by myself?  Sweet Mother of God, I'm only one angry white woman!)

And so I wasn't able to say what it was I really wanted to say, or have an honest conversation about why, yes, an Obama Chia Pet really is racist.  With the exception of two international students from China, we were a room of well-educated white people...it is definitely a problem for a white person to bring an Obama Chia Pet for another white person to open up as a hilaaaaarious Yankee swap gift.  Even on its own, no matter the race of the gifter or giftee, the Obama Chia Pet is super problematic.  Because I wasn't able to state why to the well-intentioned white people at the Christmas party, I will do so here.

Let me tell you, if you didn't know about this already, Obama's head has been made into a Chia pet - the controversy surrounding it is portrayed in a disappointing way in this CNN video.  It's one thing that he's the president, "not a damn plant!" as the black woman in the video so aptly denounces.  But it is Obama's blackness the makes this Chia pet so horrifying.  Yes, the Chia company offers Chia pets of other presidents' heads...but all of our other presidents have been white.  Only Obama's Chia Pet lets you grow the Black president of the United States an Afro.

And Black hair is distinctly political.  It has been stigmatized and eroticized, degraded and objectified.  Black hair has a history of oppression, parody, mimicry, marginalization.  It has been straightened and hot-combed, pulled and stitched, 'relaxed' and greased until it is believed to resemble the highly prized, wavy, shakable locks of whites.  It has been caricatured in minstrelry, front porch jockey statues, social Darwinist drawings, and pimp and seventies-hippie Halloween costumes.  Black hair is not neutral territory.  We finally have the first Black president, but just as Hilary Clinton can be reduced to a nut-cracking feminist who doesn't know better than to stay out of the public sphere, Obama can be reduced to an Afro-growing plant for your "desk, home, or school."  (Yes...let's be shamelessly public about our race-based mockery, shall we?)  The commercial - where owning the Obama Chia Pet is said to be a "symbol of Liberty, Opportunity, Prosperity, and Hope" and allows you to make the statement that "I'm proud to be an American" - could be on SNL or the Onion if the Chia company weren't taking itself absolutely seriously.  The only 'statement' the Obama Chia Pet really makes is that white people still feel at Liberty to Prosper off every Opportunity to parody Blackness.

The thing is, if I had really said these things at the Christmas party, I would have been written off as "taking things too seriously," even by those people who I know probably agree with me.  It is a Christmas party after all.  Time to be generous and good-spirited and to pretend oppression is the stuff of fairies.  And I would have further cemented my reputation as the wrong person to invite when you want to have a good time.  Which is unfortunate, because I do enjoy having a good time...for some reason my version of 'good time' doesn't always match with the 'good time' had by the people I work with.

And I know I can't challenge everything.  We can't call out ever VRC, or else we'd never stop to breathe.  If people of color stopped and said something every time they experienced racism, they'd never get through their day - being a vocal white anti-racist makes this startlingly clear.  I have to remind myself to walk the line between challenging other white people and not trying to prove that I'm a good white person, taking on the burden of racism as if I have any idea what that means or that it is up to me to 'save' the people of color.  When VRCs arise, I'm never entirely sure which side of the line I'm on...the point is really just to remember that the former can easily turn into the latter.  We must never be too self-congratulatory.  But I also believe there is such a thing as being too silent.

Also, white antiracists can't just write off anyone who isn't perfectly politicized.  We can't afford to alienate all the well-intentioned white people we know who issue VRCs.  The only way we cultivate future white antiracist allies is to prod them just enough so that they do not shut down entirely and we are not entirely complicit to public racist discourse. VRCs really aren't made for teaching moments, even if we want them to be - those happen at a later time, when you are away from the public spaces where paranoia of accountability prevents any honest discussion.  Sometimes you can only write out what you wanted to say, even if you didn't get to say it to the people you wanted to say it to.  At least it will have been said.  And that has to be enough, at least for now.