Dear Readers,
Several years ago I worked on the possibility of a musical I wanted to create called God Is Back and She Is Black. I basically come from a very white Catholic upbringing but my own ethnic heritage is quite diverse - Native American, English, Scotch-Irish, and French. If I met someone from New Orleans they would ask if I could be Creole because my skin has a dark rose tint and my eyes are green; that Cajun mixture of Native American and French. I guess I could have said, "Yes."
The story about this mixed race as told to me is about my grandfather who lived his life and was murdered for being a "half breed"; part white and part Cherokee. The K.K.K. (klu,klux,klan) didn't like the idea of a "half breed" being a sheriff, a property holder with a store and horses for trade. So someone arranged for a dispute and his death. My mother, only ten years old, saw this tragedy with her own eyes. The coroner called it an accident! Then my grandmother lost everything because she could neither read nor write and with ten children and two stepchildren to support was left penniless.
Because of this intense family background,this whole notion about being of a mixed race is a reality I grew up with but always thought of myself as white. In college my circle of friends looked like a mini meeting of the United Nations. I loved the experience of meeting so many different people with so many different backgrounds. As life unfolded, I became engaged to a "black" person, even though he had a white father and a black mother. He looked black and that was all it took to create a constant turmoil around our relationship. There were even discussions that if you had kinky hair then you had to be black. Since he was half white and half black, why wasn't he considered white? The whole thing seemed so racist. The relationship did not last. We did not want our kids to go through so much prejudice and our families were so against the marriage - we turned away from each other.
During this time, I began to wonder if God came back as Jesus and Jesus would be a she and she would be black, what kind of a reception would the Savior receive? I recently started thinking about the race issue again now that we have a person who is a woman as a person campaigning to be the President of the United States along with a person who is half white and half black. Everyone says he is "black" - are we back to the "kinky" hair as a symbolic proof of blackness? Why do we not see him as white, or Native American, or Hispanic, or Asian? Chances are just like the rest of us, the DNA would show a very diverse ethnicity. The whole thing about someone being a certain race based on the color of his or her skin, or the make of his or her hair, or the origins of parentage still seems racist to me.
Looks like we have a long way to go before we can accept one another as the individuals that we are without the labels forced on us by what is currently popular, or in vogue, or glamorous.
If God were back and she were black - could we go to church, vote, eat, play, and work together or would we first have to rethink the whole issue of race plus gender? If we are going to choose someone because of race and/or gender, then maybe we should get a DNA breakdown just which race a person is and also how many male or female traits a person has ... it gets so complicated. And, what would happen with a gypsy like me with so many mixtures and mutations ... some predictions are that in the future the whole earth population will be coffee colored. What will we do then for labels, classify everyone as a "star buck?"
Taking all of the above into consideration, I intend to pick my president, my spiritual reflections, and my circle of friends because I think the choices are appropriate for me not because of race, gender, creed or righteousness. What do you intend?
Amber Silverstar
http://www.ambersilverstar.com
