WTF......but worth repeating......

Ok so today I’m going to ramble!!! It is one of those days that the thoughts are flying through my mind like debris in a tornado and I do not have the energy to grab hold of one and make it grow. So maybe what I need is to follow the advise of Sean Connery’s character in Finding Forester….. “write first think later”
So I am going to write and I ask your forgiveness in advance as I know that I will ramble and digress and wonder aimlessly among the flicks that are my thoughts for the last couple of weeks. And it is the very intrusion of these flicks that have prevented me from writing on some more important topics that were on my list of things to do this past week. Included in these flicks are what I consider some very valid questions, but ones that I have not or will not ask because I do not think that real positive dialogue will develop and the point of raising questions to promote dialogue. Now my disclaimer on this is that when I say that I have not and will not I am referring to persons in my life or world that have caused these questions to rear their ugly head.
I think one interaction this week that will kinda sum up a lot of my confusion, if you want to call it that, is something that happened between myself and someone very special to me. This man entered my life over 3 years ago and he has been in some respect everything to me in that time. We have had priceless times and missed opportunities, openness and solitude, honesty and miscommunication; but above all that we have had the preverbal elephant in the room. So you may be wondering what name that elephant goes by…racism.
Yes, I said racism. It is funny, originally I didn’t think that race/ethniticty was an issue with us, I guess that is because I have dated outside my “race” a lot. I tend to look at people, or in this case men, as who they are not what they are. Every group has its good and bad. As a young child I lived in the south, where we only had black and white and that was how racism was taught and looked at. A person fell into one of those two groups. Then, when I was 12, I moved to South Florida where half the population was hispanic. Side note here, I am part Indian, or as some label us part Native American, but growing up I was taught that I was white. So when I saw hispanics I looked at them as being just like me. And growing up in South Florida if you wanted to date and you were ‘white’ and you were going to limit yourself to just ‘white’ you were going to drastically decrease your pool of possibilities. However, like I said, I never learned a distinction between white and hispanic. And quite a few of my boyfriends growing up were hispanic and they were great guys, the best.
Now that I have digressed, as I said that I would, let me get back to the story. So my hero, forwarded me one of these text messages that used to be only in email. This one basically asked the receiver to confess their first thought about the sender when they had first met. Well, even though it has now been years, I remember everything about our first meeting. I already knew that he was a decent man, we had been online friends for months. I already knew what he looked like, we had exchanged pictures. But what he didn’t know was that I had just had my heart broken by the guy that I thought was my everything. And one of the reasons that I agreed to meet him in person for lunch was to see if I could even do it.
So I must confess at this point that I had no expectations at all for the lunch. I was simply focusing on getting through the meal and expecting to do so so poorly that I would not hear from him again. What I was not ready for was to be totally captivated by this larger than life, intelligent, witty, handsome guy; but that is exactaly what happened. Since that day, though, life has lead us, along with him, in different directions. And because of the different paths that we are on, I tend to keep from him some of my purest feelings. The answer to his question, what was the first thing that I thought when we met, is one of those thoughts. Somethings are better left unsaid and this is one of those things. (Now for those of you that think maybe we could have happily ever after, if only I would tell him how I really feel——I have, he knows, but keep reading and you will know too.) So I told him that I would not tell him anything more than every moment spent with him was etched on my heart and treasured in my soul.
However, curiosity got the better of me and sent the question back to him. I wondered what he thought that first day, years ago now. His reply was “what a nice sweet white chick.” There was his confession of the preverbal elephant that had been between us all along. He could not look at me and see me without seeing me as white. It is funny, I am only part white, but it is my white part that defines me in his eyes. And as we all know there is nothing that we can do to change the color of our skin or our ethniticty.
Another disclaimer at this point, I had figured out that my being ‘white’ was an issue a long time ago, so I accept it and even though from time to time it does hurt to know some of the things that he has said to me were only sincere in the capacity that my being white would allow, how I look at him and how I feel about him has never changed. However, I have these moments when I chose to get in your face and point out the obvious. Guess what, this text exchange became one of those moments. So I sent him a text message that asked if he knew or wanted to know what the difference between him and me was. He asked me what and I told him. “When I looked at you I only saw a man, I did not see a latino.”
Do not hold your breath waiting for his reply. What do you say to that? I have called you out and I am right. I put you on the same plane as every other man in the world and you do not show me the same respect. I look at you and see you, all your strengths and weaknesses, and I choose to love you and respect you. What did you do to me? You looked at me and saw that I was sweet and nice and WHITE. My strengths and weaknesses were valued within the basis of my being white. I was judged and sentenced accordingly. Some days I wonder why you still talk to me. I have heard you complain to me about not finding in latinas what you have in me and it hurt. There are days that you have made it hard to be there for you unconditionally, knowing that what you seem to want you had right in front of you but would not accept. But I think that it is even harder to hear you say anything positive about me, to me it doesn’t really matter because you have labeled me as white. See when you quantify the way that you see someone you reduce any validity that you may have had in complimenting that person or telling that person anything of depth or honesty.
I wonder when we will look at people for who they are and not the color of their skin or the language that they speak or the place that they were born. But then if we did that we would not be able to hate each other so easily, because we would see that we are all just alike.