Race!

As I predicted, as Barak Obama becomes more and more a credible presidential candidate, Race will enter the national discussion on a more substantive level than it has in the last forty years.

Geraldine Ferraro's comments are classic. For a white person to say that an African American who is making professional progress to dismiss that progress "because he's black," is the typical response that many African Americans expect from white America. It is impossible to isolate the modern African American from generations of second-class status. Taking color out of the equation for a second, everyone I know knows someone who enjoys a position of privilege and comfort because his or her parents gave them money or connections, or were able to position them in a good school. Those are things that are not common in the African American community. The reason for that is the black diaspora that began with the Civil War and continued through the nineteen sixties. Then factor in the overt and covert, conscious and subconscious racial hatred in American society that still exists today, and I think it's much fairer to say that Barak Obama is where he is in spite of his racial background.

Becoming a Harvard grad, a senator, and now a credible candidate for the United States, are all achievements than a tiny, tiny fraction of the entire population of the world ever achieve. And to have Geraldine Ferraro dismiss these achievements with "because he's black," betrays a deeply ingrained sentiment that she herself is incapable of recognizing.

But then, to add insult to injury, when she's called on the racism of her statement, she has the gall to claim victim status, saying that she's the object of racist comments! Again, this is just another layer of what the African American community has come to expect from the white community the second it's threatened by a black man's success.

And finally, the perception that all of white America are secret (or not so secret) racists is confirmed not only by media outlets like Fox News, but even by more liberal sources where white pundits try to discuss the issue, either by trying to diminish the entirety of African American history by pretending it doesn't exist, or suggesting that every time someone tries to put Obama's candidacy into a broader historical perspective they are sensationalistic or whining.

The fact is that white America does owe a debt to African American America, one that has never been and probably never can be calculated, and the biggest disappointment of the current discussion on race fails to recognize that simple fact.

Contentment

I don't know how anyone else's life works, but mine seems to change in a minute. One minute I'm managing a sleepy little cafe, and the next I'm a director of human resources for a marketing firm. Then I blink and I'm a starving writer. And in a breath I'm helping start a software company and one of the most popular new theatrical photographers in the city. It leaves me breathless, but I'm not sure I'd have it any other way. How do people simmer along in the same job for a decade?

Yes, along with these whiplash changes there come some incredibly low moments where I'm left to wonder what exactly is wrong with me, why can't I have a normal life? I've watched friends get married, have children, get divorced, all on schedule, and I've missed all of that. Missed is probably the wrong word. While I'd like to be partnered, I don't feel like I've missed something by not being married. I love kids, as long as they belong to someone else. And divorce is something I've experienced second hand on a number of occasions. I don't need to feel that for myself.

But tonight, as I type this, I have to admit that I'm pretty happy and grateful for the life I've had so far. It hasn't been perfect, but thank God for that.

Where It All Began

Here is a picture of where it all began, taken more than twenty years after my auspicious debut at the local community theater. Originally the local post office, when that facility was relocated, the building was purchased by the local community theater for a dollar. The security catwalk, where managers watched to make sure the workers didn't steal made a great light booth. By comparison the space was primitive to the high school auditoriums that I worked in, but was down-right palatial compared to some of the venues I worked later in life as a professional.

Like many, many kids, theater groups represented a haven from the all-too-cruel real world. My first play, ever, was as the mute stage manager in a children's theater production called "Land of the Dragon." I stole the show, if I do say so myself. That taste addicted me and in my early teens I was lucky enough to land in various local productions of Finian's Rainbow, and The Music Man. I moved a lot as a kid, but the summer after my sophomore year I settled down in Le Mars, Iowa and began my theatrical career in earnest.

Because the local community theater was sort of dependent upon the high-school students for the larger shows, they coordinated their larger musicals. So, in three years I did Anything Goes, Mame, Guys and Dolls and Annie Get Your Gun. I directed three children's shows. And when I wasn't preparing plays, I was competing in speech and music competitions.

But I always sort of think as the Postal Playhouse as my artistic home. My last performance there was when my college toured through the area and performed Hamlet. I only played the Ghost and various smaller roles, but that performance was the closest I ever felt to being a star. As we packed up the bus after the performance, a photographer from the local paper came to take a picture of me receiving a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar scholarship check. It ran on the front page of the local paper.

The last time I saw the Postal Playhouse the lobby had been untouched since it's post-office days, with the exception that the clerk's windows had been removed to allow entrance into the theater proper. Old movie-theater seats had been mounted on platforms of various levels that could be moved to form different seating configurations. There was a simple lighting square hung from the ceiling, and there were probably a dozen ten-foot flats that were stiff with the paint of dozens of productions. Off either side of the lobby were rooms, one for the administrative office and one serving as the paint room and concession area. The full basement served as the dressing room and housed thousands of costumes, clothes donated from area closets that had been cut and restitched into various outfits.

Of course, I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing and I shudder to think what artistic crimes I committed on that stage. But it's quite possible that stage saved my life, but the very least it served as the springboard for where I am now and I am eternally grateful.

Mediocre Spice

At my last job, I worked with a woman named after a character from a popular sitcom from the 1960's. For the purposes of this post, we'll call that woman Ginger.

Ginger had a relatively successful career. She came to us from a multi-national company where she'd played a key role in the merger of several smaller multi-national companies. She had an MBA, owned several small pieces of real estate, had a happy marriage, and lived in Lincoln Park. Her talent was to assess a situation, determine which course of action would require the minimum amount of effort to maintain a baseline of existence, and then generate only that amount of effort. She wasn't interested in earning an A for effort. She was comfortable with a C-. Her life looked smooth and comfortable.

And it also looked bone-crushingly boring. She would frequently go to exotic vacation locations and never set foot outside of the spa in the five-star hotel. She would go to punk-rock concerts by bands from the'80's, thinking she was being ironic, ala Alanis Morrisett, and never even be curious about the cultural genesis or context of the music she was hearing. Her presence at these places and events gave her all the character she thought she needed. She had no interest in exploring anything beyond its surface value and as a result she had the depth of a soiled Petrie dish.

One day this forty-year old woman came into the office with a new haircut. She'd gotten it cut because she liked the way it looked on Victoria Beckham. Let's just say that Ginger was no Posh Spice.

I truly hated her.

I thought about her today as I opened my three rejection letters. I was not accepted into any of the PhD programs I'd applied to. To be fair, I have no idea how Ginger would have responded to the news of my failure, but in my imagination I could see her smirking. Ginger had, and frequently exhibited, a superior attitude to just about everyone. (On three separate occasions I closed her office door and told her that laughing at someone in a meeting, and bad mouthing them when they weren't present really did not serve her purposes. I'm sure she never got it.) But I do know this: to Ginger these three rejections would be tangible, objective proof of failure, of inferiority. It would justify her feeling of superiority because she had never received such a rejection.

But the truth is, she also never risked anything. She had an MBA, but only God knows how she got it. There was never any shred of evidence that she was capable of using it. On more than one occasion she took credit for someone else's work, and on more than one occasion she shifted the responsibility for a failure to someone else. She never created or contributed anything that was even partially her own, let alone wholly original.

She lived, and I imagine still lives, a mediocre life.

And while she has more money than I, and holds more symbols of status, I'm not sure I would trade all of her Armitage-Avenue, boutique trappings for a single one of those rejection letters. Because I view them, not as symbols of failure, but as evidence of character. I shot for the moon. I missed, and the accompanying disappointment stings. But those letters are proof that I found the resources to dare to dream and to act on that dream.

For me, there will be other dreams, more effort, and one day I'll have another success. Just like I'll have another failure. For Ginger there will only be a lifetime of people confusing her name with a mediocre sitcom character and a common kitchen spice.