Respect For History?

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about race...one of my least favorite topics because I never learn anything new talking about it. At least he tries to decipher the issue - problem for me is - I'm not really sure there IS an issue.

History is the monster. And there is no escape. You can't talk your way out of it--at every step we're confronted by our own laziness. It warps our stories, reduces beautiful and complicated narratives about race, sports, agency into cartoonish fairy tales. It's sad. I always thought that what we needed in this country wasn't so much cash payments, but some respect for history. Not history as an excuse for hamburgers, hot dogs and chips, but history as a way of understanding who we--despite ourselves-- really are.

And for African-Americans, history really is the balm in Gilead. I think a lot of us can come to some peace, can come to understand that whatever happened to us, there are limits on what anyone can do to make it right, and while those limits have to be pushed, some of this we're going to have to carry ourselves. And then with a even broader sense we can understand that our suffering is not singular, that it isn't the only suffering. And finally--and most important to me--we can understand ourselves as Zora Hurston did, as more then a litany of abuses, as more than a walking protest, as something apart and distinct from what someone else did to us.

Respect for history? I don't understand what that entails. There is nothing more frustrating that the term "respect" these days. Other than the 49ers. I can't stand the cries of the Ayatollah's and Chavez's and Hamas' of the world calling for more "respect." It is purposefully not tangible and fluid in meaning and never to be resolved - just one long ongoing gripe.

Now I don't mean to belittle the issue of race. I just find it boring and irrelevant to my daily life. I'm not really white and not really Asian. I also think that inside I have a little Italian, a little Black, and a little Jewish. Perhaps if there were a surgery to change race, I'd consider it. I'd add a dash of this and a dash of that, maybe toss in a little Native American to help me get into college. If you take the logic of transsexualism - that in gender terms, there can be a difference inside and outside - I don't see how the same thing cannot be said of race.

I may not be racially black or racially Jewish, but can I be said to be a little culturally black and culturally Jewish? My Jersey Shore nickname, after all, is Gblack. Not Gasian. Or Gwhite. My favorite TV shows are SEINFELD and THE WIRE. Does none of this matter?

Historically speaking - am I a victim or a benefactor of the Chinese Exclusion Acts? Am I a victim or benefactor of slavery? Of the holocaust?

The answer is D - None of the Above.