They Call Me “Negro” |
Embrace Race: Raising A Brave Generation
2019-08-18
 Early family photo in 1951. The author is on the bottom right. |
In 1943 in Manhattan, NY, a 46-year old African- and Native-American man who was a renowned band director and jazz composer marries a 19-year old naive European-American woman of Jewish Ukrainian descent, who wants to sing professionally. I’m the second of five children.
At age four, I overhear Mommy telling her Mom she won’t leave Daddy and me in order to come back home with my whiter looking brother. Every year of our growing up, Mommy takes the whitest looking child to find new housing, and our unwanted family moves in the middle of the night. We’re in new schools, too.
There are no “Mulattos” in our neighborhoods, and I’m constantly asked, “Where are you from? I mean, what are you?” The questioners have distorted faces, uncomfortable with their ambivalence about my ethnicity. Even today, they need to fit me into a race category before they can utter their next sentence! “You’re Saudi – Moroccan – Indian – Spanish – Italian – definitely foreign!” I’m from New York!…
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Tags: Dr. Ruth Baskerville, Dr. Ruth L. Baskerville, Embrace Race, Embrace Race: Raising A Brave Generation, New York, New York City, Ruth Baskerville, Ruth L. Baskerville