99 Problems

Recently I went to dinner with two black friends (their race will be relevant, just give me a moment here). We ate at a chain restaurant in Mississauga. The youngest of the group - a pretty teenager with a medium sized afro, dressed casually in short shorts and tank top appropriate for the steamy summer weather - elicited a sharp look from the beady-eyed manager at the front. The manager  then walked into the dining room where we were seated. The room was recessed from the rest of the restaurant, with no other exit point except the entrance to the room (i.e. there was no reason for her to pass through it except to observe who was in it and depart). 

She walked by our table, flashed us a plastic smile and went out. Her off-putting attire - ("prison guard in a women's prison" chic perhaps?) coupled with stringy blonde hair, mannish, dun-coloured pants and a large set of keys at her side - reinforced a sense of unwelcome.

Well, that was weird we collectively noted. I wondered how often my friends, and specifically other people of colour, had these weird little moments - where they felt they were being observed or assessed merely for walking into a room, driving by, entering a store, or, walking in the "wrong" neighborhood, with the "wrong" colour skin. 

They have 99 problems that white people in the same situation have absolutely no understanding of. I'm not talking about the overt acts of racism such as racial profiling by the police and the phenomenon known as DWB (Driving While Black) which are obviously horrendously offensive and dangerous. It's the smaller things that are difficult to explain, to quantify. How do you assess, describe, that sense of not feeling welcome, of not feeling that you belong? That you are there on their sufferance?

I get a little bit of that as my racial identity has always appeared ambiguous to the outside observer. So labels tossed at me about being an "-ist" this, or a "-ic" that, tend to be met with subdued hilarity on my part.

The only people I have ever met who have aggressively accused me of blatant intolerance have inevitably been white, middle class or upper middle class liberals or "progressives" (usually male) who have their political correctness barometer on high and have been exposed to a heavy dose of liberal white guilt.

Labels affixed to me have included: racist, elitist, homophobic, anti-sex, unfeminist. Not that I, and approximately, oh, 100% of the population do not have elements of this in their psyche (we all do) but I do struggle fiercely every day with either combating my own stereotypical feelings about various groups or I am fending off the enormous number of idiots I encounter who just feel absolutely entitled to express their curious ideas to me about race, ethnicity, or, sexual orientation. 

I am dogged by issues of my race wherever I go ... and have been since a young age. It ain't so bad. In a way it has driven the most racist impulses that were embedded in me at an early age somewhat out of my system.

The environment I grew up in in Hamilton was unfriendly to the influx of Italian immigrants. There were a lot of unrepentantly told wop jokes and snarky comments about immigrants in our hood. Even our working poor/working class neighbours seemed to think they had more rights, or stature, than their Italian-born neighbours and their offspring. It was unpleasant, somewhat hostile, and likely why we tended to congregate together (as many immigrants do) in certain neighborhoods. 

But, on the other hand, immersed in a population of people of almost exclusively European and Anglo descent, there would also be the intrusive questions and interrogations from them about my background usually prefaced by "Are you Italian on both sides?" Note to the inquisitive: racially "ambiguous" people don't like to be quizzed about "where they are reaaallly from". 

The question, "Are you black?" usually seeped out in a restrained, apologetic tone or sometimes it was in a somewhat accusatory tone. So, so sorry to disappoint ... I guess you could blame it on the Carthaginians colonizing Sicily or Sicily's proximity to Africa, a scant 100 or miles or so across the Strait of Sicily.

Conversely ... my forays into the world of non-Italians usually was met with a menacing look, or worse, that signified, "Why can't you hang around with your own kind?"

Flash forward to my escape to Toronto the Good, Toronto the diverse, Toronto the tolerant, when I was 19 where I met my future husband who is of Japanese descent. I don't like to refer to him as just Japanese; I think because his people have been in this country for 100 years (since the First World War in the early part of the 20th c.) I think he, and his family, deserve the right to be called a Canadian. So there's all the silly bigotry that goes along with being a bi-racial couple which, admittedly, is very much less unusual now than when we started dating in university decades ago. 

Still, it's not a pleasant experience wandering into a small Ontario town where we are often met with quizzical glances, coldness, and, sometimes outright hostility. So much for the mosaic. I guess as long as you partner up with the same colour on the mosaic, that's cool.

On another night, not so long ago, I was at a house party, basically the only white person there, the guest of a friend in her home. My appearance caused some raised eyebrows I believe. At one point, my presence might have elicited a long tirade from a woman with a decidedly frosty air on how bi-racial people had to pick a side in terms of self-identification and as white people didn't see them as white ... they (the ambiguous looking bi-racial people) should, and must, declare that they are black, not bi-racial. As I glanced around the room, I was easily the person who might best be described in this manner to the unknowing.

Well ... this is awkward, I was thinking. Luckily my friend, the one who had invited me, launched into a spirited defense, unasked, about how her black friends were always asking her about who I was and what I was and how did we come to be friends.

I loved that girl so intensely at that moment. We had both been through a boatload of heartache because of this friendship over the years but we had never discussed it. I never told her the opposition I received from my family, the "friends" I had lost, or the ugly, racist remarks that white people had made to me about black people during, and because of, our friendship. She never told me that people were interrogating her about our friendship or giving her grief.

What can I say folks, idiocy comes in a rainbow of colours and hues.

I wish we'd all just leave the people of colour and the not so white people like me alone to supposedly ruin this wonderful country with our industry, our amazing cultural histories, our superior cuisine and exquisitely beautiful children. I really do. 

Black Like Her

Ambiguity about my racial identity (how others perceived me specifically) has shadowed me since I was about eight or nine. In my teenage years, I found myself in a very curious dilemma. Often, many times, I was asked about my ethnicity. People seem to have a burning need to place you in a racial or ethnic box of some sort. Maybe so they can figure out what to think of you.

I was often asked if I was indeed Italian despite my very Italian first name and surname. I went by the more ethnic sounding Michela Alfano then (the name on my birth certificate). If I answered yes, the question On both sides? would inevitably follow. Yes, I responded, on both sides. A strange look followed, the wheels and cogs of their tiny minds turning, straining. I would try and allay the uncomfortable silence with a joke. You thought I was Ukrainian right? (Or some other ridiculous possibility.) No, they often asserted. Something else. Another awkward pause. But I always knew what they were thinking. And sometimes they would say, You aren’t going to be insulted are you? I thought you were part black. Sometimes this was said shamefacedly as if they felt they were dealing me a terrible blow. Sometimes it was said in a tone with a vaguely malicious tint. Why did I never just say, Why would I be insulted by that?

Yet the most frightening scenario was the one that follows (an anecdote that I recall in an essay called "My Heart of Darkness"):

At the age of nine, I often accompanied my mother to her Saturday job. She operated a stand in the Farmers Market in Hamilton where I grew up. It was a long grueling day; we usually arrived at 6.30 a.m. The back of our yellow truck, with my father’s name in the title, “Frank’s Kitchener Cheese”, emblazoned on the side in big red letters, had been retrofitted in the back to open up into a window with display cases that faced the aisle of customers in the market. We unpacked the boxes from the back of the truck and set up the blocks of cheese, the bags of olives and grated Parmesan on the shelves. We sold the goods through tiny windows on either side of the back of the truck. 

To say I “worked” there would be a laughable exaggeration. My working habits were fitful and lackadaisical. I was, admittedly, a lazy kid. The immigrant work ethic was not for me at that time. I would more likely be found wandering through the market down the aisles of fruit and flowers, meat and cheeses, looking at the produce and talking to the people that worked at the stands who came mostly from farming communities and small towns outside of Hamilton. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the freedom to wander around the market unfettered at such a young age.

I often played a game where I stopped at each stand and pretended to purchase different goods, marching along and simulating the gesture of packing the food away into my imaginary cart bulging with food. I know I played this game a number of times but once, and probably the final time, I acquired an entourage of three rather rough looking girls who were approximately my age. My memory may be skewed but I am fairly certain that two of the girls were white and one was native Indian. My eccentric, if playful behavior, attracted their attention and I became a source of interest to them. They began mimicking my gestures (which I quickly ceased doing).

As they followed me around they began to play an unnerving guessing game, trying to determine my ethnicity: going from the absurd to the possible: Maybe she’s Polish? they whispered. Maybe she’s Greek? A Chink? Or maybe a Wop? This was accompanied by snickering and laughter. I was never one who could be accused of having a poker face nor any amount of physical courage whatsoever; my fear must have been palpable. I made my way back at a much hurried pace to the stall where my mother worked, my game now forgotten, praying that I would reach it before they leapt to the logical conclusion of their guessing. I felt I had to elude them in this elaborate cat and mouse game because each guess at race or ethnicity was a shade darker than the last … I felt the urgency of having to get back to safety before they hurled the final epithet.

As I neared my mother’s stall and as I catapulted myself into the doorway of the truck, they lobbed the final blow: Maybe she’s a nigger! with such irrepressible glee that I was relieved to have escaped into the smothering closeness of the truck which doubled as a stall. I felt I had made a narrow escape. I had eluded them but just barely. I was shocked and hurt (but why was I shocked and hurt?) by their conjectures. They saw me in a way I did not see myself, in a way that my circle of friends and family saw to be pejorative and ugly. 

For me to be mistaken as black was something my mother could not wrap her head around – it was absurd and strange to her. I looked like my father. I was completely his own. He had thick, nappy hair (curlier than my own even – he resembled his own mother) with very full lips and a generous nose. He had dark olive skin and tanned very darkly. My mother could not even entertain the idea that anyone would think that of me and she was duly indignant.

In a perhaps not so odd twist of fate, I started to consciously physically emulate the type of person that I was assumed to be by some. I teased my abundantly curly hair into an enormous Afro and tamed it with Afro Sheen. It was so large that people would openly stare at me on the street, at school, at work. I wore cosmetics that were specifically designed for darker skinned women in dark browns and deep plums on my lips and cheeks.

And then I began to notice something very odd. Many times on the downtown streets of Hamilton, I would be greeted as "Lala". So convinced were the greeters that they would march right up to me and say, "What's up with you Lala? I was calling you!" This happened a number of times. Lala, it turned out, was a very light skinned black girl with an enormous Afro whom I had not met but had heard of. I never did meet the elusive Lala face to face but I think I had caught sight of her once.

My close friend Y and I were on a bus on King Street near James in the downtown core and she happened to look out the window and spotted a face in the crowd. Y turned to me and said, "She looks like you!" I turned towards the girl on the street. She did indeed look like me (with better skin and a prettier face). And I thought to myself, "So! That's her!" I had met my doppelganger.

When I heard tales of rumours that I had been here or there (and I knew that I had not indeed been here or there), I suspected that it was Lala.

Since that time, my racial identity has remained murky and when someone guesses now it is usually their own ethnicity as if they are seeking a kindred spirit: Venezuelan? West Indian? South American? Spanish?

Nope, try again. We'll get there eventually. It doesn't bother me now so much although I do often wonder: why do you need to know so badly?

Portions of this essay were originally published in an altered form in Italian Canadiana, 
v. 22, Nov. 2009