I don’t quite know how to talk to my kids about who their “people” are.
I want to tell them, “your people are all people.”
I really believe that. What I love about Brooklyn is how people feel they can come here and be who they want to be, no matter where they’re from. I see the Statue of Liberty holding her torch high and I get the chills. Every day in New York I encounter old friends or meet new ones for whom the lure of “Coming to America” is a very real phenomenon. They traveled here from Yemen or Spain, from the Caribbean or Ecuador. Not that it is always easy or fair for all peoples, but they come here with hope, and they are, relatively speaking, free to avail themselves of the opportunities that exist here.
I guess that is why the current political climate makes me sick, why hearing about the hatred of our would-be leaders toward specific groups is so shocking, why reading about the shooting of so many finally-freely gay people is heartbreaking.
I don’t say to my kids that they are Jewish, or point out other Jews. My friends are as likely to be from someplace else as they are to be American. My kids are quite used to receiving kisses on both cheeks from our European friends. A recent party at a friend’s place felt like the United Nations, with people from Australia and Scotland and Ireland and Spain and Poland and France and Cuba and Japan and all parts of America.
I barely even register the accents of friends that once seemed so foreign. I don’t balk at the unique names of kids at the school where I do my arts program in Bedford-Stuyvesant. I am so comfortable being around different kinds of people who make different kinds of choices that it’s hard to imagine that people could feel otherwise.
But I hear that they do. I hear through the rumor mill that there are people in our midst who are not very sportsmanlike, who are not about communicating and collaborating for the best outcome for all.
How come, I wonder. I think, “I wonder why it is that people would really believe that they are better than other people.” I guess I sound stupid, Forrest Gump stupid, or Chauncy Gardner stupid. Simple, and ignorant of all the ridiculous reasons people create to hate and fear others.
I want my kids to feel a sense of belonging, but I want it to be belonging to a diverse community, to people who are free to wear what they want, eat what they want, and do what they want without fear of censure from the group.
The other night I went to the White Party in Prospect Park. In Marshall’s at the Atlantic Center, buying some white clothing for my husband, I told the black salesgirl that my son had called the party racist and suggested it would be “only white people.” I think maybe he had tsk tsked when he said it. She laughed.
Anyway, his fears that the event would only represent a certain group of Brooklynites were quickly allayed. Never have I seen such a mix of black and white at a party. The dance floor was filled with smiling people of all kinds, people complimenting each other on their beautiful white outfits, on the tables they had decorated so proudly and elegantly. Commonalities were what people had in mind, not differences.
Nights like that make me so happy. I remember why I came here to this borough, to this place where there is so much possibility for mixing with other type of people. I tell my kids they are New Yorkers, they are Brooklynites, and they watch as we gather with people of all kinds, trying with all our power to think of no one as “other.”
