Will “White Folks” Come Between Us?

 

Children choose their friends mostly by happenstance, I think.  They have no say in where they live or who moves in next door.  They are confined by vigilant parents to their front yards or, as they gain some years, to the block on which they live.

Their schools are populated mostly by the children who live within a few blocks or maybe a mile or two.  There is no Match.com (yet) for four-year-olds to mine for play dates or “besties.“

Tommie and I met like that.  Named after her father, who apparently was hoping for a male heir, Tommie and I were born six months apart and lived less than two blocks from each other.  Her mother died when she was quite young, so her dad was left to raise Tommie and her older half-brother and half-sister.  He did his best, but a mother’s touch was visibly missing.

Tommie is very dark.  Her skin mimics the texture of silk velvet and the blended colors of piano-key black and Belgian chocolate.  Her fine features suggest a family tree populated by the handsome and elegant people from Somalia, with their aquiline noses, smaller heads and bright, white smiles.  She had a curvy figure long before I developed anything resembling a curve.  The boys seemed to be drawn to her like metal shavings to a magnet.

My mother wasn’t usually crazy about dark people.  In fact, the more my little friends appeared to be NOT dark, the better she seemed to like them.  For me, her biracial child, that point of view was deeply confusing and I instinctively rejected it.  I’m sure to Mama it seemed as if I deliberately sought out dark-skinned friends just to challenge her.  Perhaps I did.

But Mama felt sorry for Tommie, being motherless and all, so she took her under her pale white wing and allowed us to be friends.  Mama treated her to an outfit that matched mine for the first day of high school.  Before that she had helped us both understand the meaning of the booklet “You Are A Woman Now,” and schooled us in the selection and use of feminine hygiene products.  And she tried her level best to convince us that all boys were evil sex fiends who had  nothing on their minds except getting into our day-of-the-week panties.

We couldn’t have been more different.  I loved school and excelled.  Tommie liked the hallway and lunchroom camaraderie of the school experience, but she had little interest in the words that filled the spaces between the brown-paper-bag-protected covers of those text books.  With a lot of help from me, she managed to graduate with me and the rest of our class, never to set foot in a classroom again.

Life took us our separate ways – I went to college, got married, and had a baby; in that specific order.  Tommie got a job, has never married, had a baby and stayed in the Chicagoland area for all these years, while I lived in Milwaukee, Chicago, San Francisco and now Atlanta.  We were on different paths, but, thanks to her, we never completely lost touch.

Yesterday, Tommie called to wish me a happy birthday.  Whenever the caller ID displays her name, I have a concurrent assault of conflicting reactions.  I don’t want to answer because I know the call will take longer than my stamina will endure.  At the same time, I feel guilty for being such a bitch, for who else has put up with my aversion to phones and my failure to ever reach out to friends just to say ‘Hi.? Tommie has remained loyal all these years, in spite of my trifling ways, as she calls them.

This time I took a deep breath and answered.  Tommie was unusually hyped, even for her.  She was watching MSNBC, indulging her drug of choice – politics.  During the 2008 presidential election cycle, she would have me on the line for hours railing against her favorite target:  White folks.

There was a time when Tommie would remember to watch her mouth around me, in deference to the “white folks” who happen to be my immediate family members.  Not any more.  She even refers to white folks in disparaging terms when she calls my mother!  But of course, instead of my mother letting Tommie know how much that hurts her feelings, she complains instead to me.  Neither of us can bring ourselves to call Tommie out on her blatant prejudice.  We make exceptions for her because of our history with her.   And I feel extremely conflicted about that.

Yesterday’s subject was how “the white man” at Morgan Stanley ignored her documented self-classification as a risk averse investor and lost $200,000 of her rolled-over 401(k) in the recent economic calamity.  She insists he wouldn’t have done that with a white investor’s money.  My attempts to explain that it was her responsibility to monitor the investments this guy made on her behalf make her angry.  She has never been big on listening.

The final straw followed the conversation’s shift to Herman Cain.  Although she allowed as how she would never vote for Mr. Cain, she believes he is being unfairly targeted over the sexual harassment claims because, and I quote:  “Back in those days everybody was doing that sort of thing.  Those white folks were notorious for it and they are still doing it.”

“My problem is the way he has handled the situation since it was leaked,” I responded, biting my tongue.  “He should have told the truth from the beginning.”

Her response?  “The white folks lie all the time!”

Recently I wrote about some time I spent with old friends who happen to be white and Republican.  I hadn’t seen them for many years and was somewhat shocked to learn of their membership in the Tea Party. Whereas early in our friendship, it was easy to accept our political differences and move along with the fun and games, this time it was not. 

Something has changed, and I think it is me.