Dr. Mimi - The Snap Diva Sings

Hello Rev Greg,

I am writing directly along with posting because it has taken a while to get back to you and blogs are soon lost to the obscurity of archives.

I am not always sure if your comments are sardonic or sincere (both of which I generally enjoy). In this instance, your comment and question can be taken either way.

If in this case you inquiry is sincere, then, yes, the all of the story is true, including the portion regarding the Black Panthers--keeping in mind that there has been a substantial amount of colorful language that accompanied the incident that has been omitted, and a vague recollection of some talk about ending racism.

Posted by: Chikushonin 智倶諸人 at June 29, 2004 09:12 PM

Wow, Chiku, I just found this story. It's very intense. I'm going to print it out and read it more carefully.

So that whole part of the Black Panther is real??

Rev. Greg

Posted by: Rev. Greg at June 17, 2004 09:53 AM

Dear Dr. Mimi,

Racism is alive and well. The question is, to what degree do we contribute to the problem. After all is said and done, it is our environment, which Buddhism teaches is the manifestations of our karmic reward. It is part of what is described as the four sufferings, birth (to carry forward the chains of the karmic reward resulting from our past actions; old age (not having hope for the future); illness (encountering a person that we hate); death (the fear and sorrow of parting from the ones we love). These four sufferings are the lives of deluded common mortals in a nutshell.

If I judge my own life from the perspective of karmic reward in this existence, I must be accountable for both great evil and some good.

About myself, I was born in the middle 50’s, the second of four siblings, girl, boy, girl, boy, four-years and three-days from first birth to last. Our parents where practicing alcoholics that divorced when my younger brother was exactly 4 months of age. Our mother did what she could to raise four children by herself with the tools at her disposal. When she was drunk, her usual condition when she was not working, she would lament her situation and often say, “I’d never said anything bad about your father, but…” What can I say? You don’t miss what you have never known.

We were poor by American standards. We survived on Welfare and Government Surplus (I still feel nauseous at the mere mention of powdered milk), under the table waitress work kept the beer flowing in our three bedrooms duplex in our Government Housing Project in South Seattle, which we simply called “The Projects”. This is how our mother survived. How my siblings and I survived, both inside and outside of our family, is yet another story.

Setting aside the dysfunctional nature of an impoverished single parent family, until I was 9 years of age, it was a good life, living in a neighborhood with many other children to play with. In the summer we would sometimes “sleep-out”. Sleeping out was something to do on too hot of nights. 20 to 30 of us kids, ranging from 6 years to late teens would take our blankets and pillows and sleep outside in the area between and behind the groups of duplexes that formed a large unfenced common back yard. We would lay awake until about 2 am when our parents had passed out or otherwise gone to sleep, and someone would say, “Who’s comin’ to limb cherries?” (Limbing cherries is breaking off limbs of the tree and harvesting the fruit later.)

In a group, we would silently slip out of the projects and raid the rich peoples fruit trees, which would invariably result in a mad dash back to hide under the covers and pretend the police were waking us up with their floodlights and questions following our denials of other questions with the Policemen asking where all the cherry pits and apple cores came from. A parent or someone’s boyfriend would come out and swear that we had been there all night. In the morning there would be hell for some of us to pay, but on those nights, young and old alike were poor folk being falsely accused by The Man who means to keep us down.

This unspoken code of honor among poor folk and thieves ended for my siblings and myself when I was 9. Why? Because other than my younger brother, I was the only white boy in the close community we called the Projects. When I was 9, the Civil Rights movement was under way, the race riots began in the South, my friends and neighbors progressed from Colored Folks, to Colored People, from Negro-Americans to African-Americans, and from Black-Americans to simply Black. As for myself, I followed the progression in the eyes of my peers from White Boy to Honky, from Honky to the local symbol of The White Oppressor, descendent of slave owners.

My environment nurtured the development of survival skills. They were simple: Talk fast, hit hard, and run like the wind—in that order, the last not always an option when the odds were ten or twenty to one.

It was perplexing, being the embodiment of all the White Man’s oppression of the Black minority, when in my reality I was the minority being punished for the past history and present inequalities of my race.

The girls were at times the worst. There was Shelia, a very large girl for her age, who would try to get my six-year-old brother to call her little brother, Buzzy, Nigger so she could hit him without mercy and without reprisal from her mother--a beating that I would take in his place if I were there at the time. I learned first hand that hitting back was a guarantee that everyone else would join Shelia that could run fast enough to get a lick in before I could follow my brother’s escape home.

Then there was Vicky, a girl the same age as me. We kept a stray dog that followed my younger sister home and then would not leave. My younger sister named it Victor. When we figured out that Victor was a girl dog, my sister renamed ‘Victor’ Vicky. An unfortunate change in gender names that she said was my idea when Vicky from across the street found out. This is when I developed my survival tactic for fighting with girls. It was also simple. I would hold their ankles while kneeling on the ground in front of them and take whatever punishment they would offer.

One summer, I must have been about 12, when the Black Panther Movement was in its heyday. The talk in the Projects was that the Black Panthers were coming to town, there was going to be riots, and the Black Panthers were going to burn down the homes of the White Oppressors. Justice would be served. In the street side windows of our neighbors’ homes a big black letter ‘B’ was taped to the inside of the windows. The ‘B’ was meant as a signal that Black People lived there.

My mother became frightened over the talk and put a ‘B’ in our front window. The ‘B’ in our window drew an angry crowd of about 40 or 50 of our ‘friends’ and neighbors demanding that the letter ‘B’ be removed. My mother was crying and pleading--to her the ‘B’ meant ‘Do Not Burn’. It was getting ugly when a member of the Black Panthers came to our aid. He climbed up on our porch, wearing his signature black leather jacket and black beret, and when the cheers from the crowd subsided he asked, “What’s this about?” An angry man in the crowd answered, “That white bitch gotta take that ‘B’ down ‘cause she ain’t Black. It ain’t right!”

Our new champion replied, “Poor white people aren’t our enemy. They don’t have it any better then we do. The Black Panther Party isn’t about Blacks against Whites. We are about ending racism. We are about All Power to the People. It’s fighting the oppressor, the greedy rich man, the drug pusher, and the pimp that wants to keep all poor people down. They don’t care about the color of your skin. Now, you all get on home and leave this lady alone. And you take those ‘B’s’ down out of your windows. Nobody’s burning anybody’s house down. We ain’t about that.”

My tactics for fighting with girls served me well on a special day in Junior High School, the day that the Black Student Union was formed. I suffered the indignity of a couple of hundred kids laughing at me getting beaten up by a girl, but I avoided much more serious injuries by not fighting back.

On that day, along with five friends of Filipino origin who had befriended me, together attended the first meeting of the newly formed BSU. When we walked in, there was an uproar. Shouts of “Get the F out!” “You don’t belong here!” “Time to kick ass!” One of my friends protested, “We just want to know what this is about. Is it only for Blacks?” A Black youth’s voice of reason rose over the P. A. system from the platform in the lunchroom, “It’s cool. If they’re for us, then we’re for them.” This was answered by an even mixture of clapping and jeers. My humbling that followed later in the courtyard was alms from the jeering section.

I was thirteen that year. Later that same year, when my Filipino friends began to ridicule me for trying to fit in by attempting to conform to their code of dress, it seemed to me that it was my lot in life to be the minority within any majority. I had the realization that all I could be was me—whatever that was. It was interesting to learn that at the moment that a person stops trying to conform they become a leader. I chose my own weird style of dress and was shocked when I saw that increasing numbers of my schoolmates were dressing like me! I didn’t appreciate that either.

The next year we moved out of the Projects. I went to a new junior high school. One day the following summer I was at the Seattle Center. I was there with an adult friend, a counselor in a YMCA outreach program that I got involved with through friends at my new school.

The amusement park was closed for the season with the exception of the putt-putt golf. As we exited the putt-putt golf, there was a large crowd of Black youths that were headed in our direction. It was clear that something was not right. I became separated from my friend who veered to left as I veered to the right trying to avoid the crowd of several hundred moving toward me like a dark cloud. Facing this crowd with my eyes averted as I edged to right I found myself up against a steel pipe guard railing next to a long fountain and pond. The crowd was upon me and one young man put his foot on the lower railing, turning to look out across the pond and blocking my way. I stopped and attempted to go around him when another young man stepped in front of me staring angrily in my face, while others moved in behind me blocking my escape. I was just about to attempt to jump over the steel railing and into the pond when a frantic voice rose from somewhere back in the angry crowd, “No! Stop! Wait!” It was Vicky from across the street that I had not seen for a couple of years. She grabbed my hand, introduced me by name and said, “He is our brother and he goes in peace!”. Without waiting for a response Vicky pulled me by my arm through the angry crowd shouting “Let us through! Make room! Get out of the way!” as an aisle opened up in front of us like the parting of angry black sea.

When we were at the edge of the crowd I tried to say thank you and find out what this was about, but Vicky just gave me a shove and said, “Just get the hell out of here as fast as you can.”

I happened to encounter Vicky again a couple of months later walking down the street one day. I thanked her and asked what that day was about. She told me that the Police had hassled them, arrested a couple of their friends, and that the crowd was looking for revenge. I never saw Vicky again after that day.

At the end of this summer, I had taken the bus to Capital Hill looking for my older sister who had run away from home and was living with some hippies in a rundown apartment building. She was not there, but outside was a man trying to get some of the hippies to go to his house for a Buddhist meeting. They turned him down, but to his surprise I asked him if I could go. He said I was kind of young and wanted to know if it would be all right with my parents. I told him that my mother wouldn’t care. I told him that a friend and I had crashed a meeting earlier that summer (we were taking a shortcut through someone’s backyard, heard the chanting, and let ourselves in through the open patio door.)

After school started I took the bus to Capital Hill from home in the evenings. We had meetings every night. They consisted of the district chief, his wife, and myself, and occasionally whomever I could get to come from school. One night he took me with him in his car to collect money for the World Tribune. His car broke down in the Central District of Seattle. At the time, this was the ghetto area of Seattle, a dangerous area at night. We got out of the car and walked.

We had not gotten far when several people came out of the storefront of a pool hall. They demanded to know what we thought we were doing in their neighborhood. They had issues with me being white, and my friend for being there with a white person. We were both in deep shit. To my amazement, out of the pool hall and across the street comes my best friend from the third grade. We exchanged smiles and greetings to the disbelief of the others, and were told to get the hell out of there with warnings of what would happen it they caught us back again.

My first couple of years in High School I enjoyed a kind of immunity. There was a lot of racial tension and our school was often covered in the 6 o’clock news. There was a gang of Blacks that engaged in strong-arm extortion tactics, shaking down the white students for money. We called them The Rip-offs. These were the kids I grew up with in the Projects. We had a measure of fear and respect for each other and left each other alone.

The usual opening comment to their target for a shakedown was “Let me hold a quarter”. One day when I had the feeling that this gang was going to break our unspoken truce, I walked straight up the leader of the gang with a crowd of uneasy students milling close by and said, “Hey Greg, let me hold a quarter.” Greg had a look of shock and surprise on his face, as did everyone else who stopped what they were doing and turned toward us. I said, “I’m serious. I need it for lunch. I forgot my lunch money. I’ll pay you tomorrow.” Not knowing what else to do, Greg gave me a quarter. I didn’t need it; it was the ‘talk fast—show no fear’ survival instinct at work. The Rip-offs and I avoid conflict with each other for almost two years.

At my High School there was a system to get the students to pick-up their lunch trays. There was a 10 cents refund given when you returned your tray. One day I had borrowed a dime from a lady that worked in the lunchroom, and was also my next-door neighbor, to make the cash deposit to go along with my lunch ticket. When I returned the tray and received my 10 cents, I went to return the dime, but the lady was not there. Figuring that I could give it back when I got home, I headed for the restroom. I was aware that the person behind me at the tray line was still behind me, but didn’t know why until he confronted me in the restroom.

He was new to the school and hung out with the Rip-offs. He wanted the dime. I refused. A crowd started to gather. He said he knew I had it, raised his fist and said I had until the count of three to give it up. On the count of three he hit my face. I stood there and asked him if he was really that hard-up for a dime. This was answered by another blow to my face. At this time the crowd had swelled. Cornered in a restroom stall it was time for a new tactic: on the second punch I faked being knocked out. I fell with my head along side the toilet. When others started going through my pockets I ‘came to’ and stopped them. Now the crowd was much large. Someone asked, “Who did this to you?” I said, “Someone that was really hard-up for a dime.” I think it must have been that hard-up somebody who’s foot came through the crowd and kicked me in the face. I fell back on my new tactic alongside the toilet, and someone said,” Damn! That dude’s has a glass jaw!” and someone shouted “The Vice Principle is coming” and the room cleared out.

This was the last week of my junior year. The truce was over. I left the restroom and went home. I called the school and reported what had happened, and gave my attackers first name. I was told that I should not have left the school, and the principle, a black woman, told me that their was no black student enrolled in my school with that name.

That evening I gave my neighbor back her dime and asked for her help. She had been talking to this person just before I asked to borrow the dime and had called him by name—that is how I knew what his name was. She denied knowing whom it was that I was talking about. She was also a black woman, with children attending the High School. No doubt that it was because of concern for her children that her memory failed. I did not return to school that year. In the fall I requested a transfer to another High School. Initially I was turned down, but when I recounted this story, they must have decided it was in their best interest because I got a call back from them telling me that I lived within the boundaries for the school I requested and that I should never have gone to the other school in the first place.

At my new school, while the older boys played football in the park across the street, no need for jerseys—it was Black against Whites, I made-out with my girlfriend between classes and went to my Buddhist meetings at night.

I had enough credits so I graduated early, in January. That spring I found myself back at my first High School. We had rented the gymnasium at the school for Brass Band practice. At the end of our practice the High School Basketball team walked through coming back from a game. We were sitting in the bleachers in the gym. The team stopped in the middle of the court and someone asked who we were and what we were doing there. The Band Leader explained that we were from Nichiren Shoshu of America, a Buddhist lay organization and that we were practicing for a parade in Los Angeles. One of the team members said, “You are all Booties? You a bunch of Bootie Buddies?”

I was sitting in the middle of the bleachers and called out, “You always were a loud mouth nigger.” My Brass Band let out a collective gasp, and our antagonist demanded, “Who said that?!” I stood up and said, “I did.” The appearance of the Basketball players face turned from anger to a big smile when he recognized me and said, “No way! You’re a Bootie Buddy too?”, then back to angry again saying, “Don’t be calling me nigger!” To which I answered, “Why not? Your mama does.” His teammates laughed at the retort and they headed for the locker rooms with my childhood friend called back “You ain’t my mama. Damn bunch of Bootie Buddies! I’m gon’na kick me some Booties!” What can I say--I got guidance.

Fortunately, I have not had to use the tactic of playing dead, I have not had to hit anyone since I was twelve, but through my youth and as an adult I have had to use the tactic of talk fast and show no fear.

While racism is not funny, humor can be a great aid in diffusing tension. Once I wandered into a tavern with a strictly Black clientele. The look that I got when I came through the door told me that I might not have made the best choice of establishments. Show no fear: I went up the bar and ordered a beer. I sat down and soon began to be taunted by a black man with reddish colored hair. No doubt that he has some Irish blood in him, and a bit of an identity crisis. He began trying to draw me into a confrontation to impress his friends with comments that ended with “Ain’t that right, Whitey?” When his comments became more menacing, and he repeated, “Ain’t that right Whitey?” I answered back loud and clearly, “Whatever you say—Pinky”. His friends laughed up a storm saying, “Did you hear that? He called him ‘Pinky”. Damn, that sure is cold!” I smiled, finished my beer, said, “Thanks for the conversation…Pinky”, and left with everyone but Pinky smiling.

On another occasion I stopped to refill my coffee at a 7-eleven store. Just as I got to the front of the line a middle aged black man came into the store, stepped in front of me and demanded of the clerk, “I need some hand lotion. Where is the hand lotion.” The clerk directed the man to one of the aisles and he protested, “There ain’t no hand lotion. Damn! Ain’t this goddamned gyp-joint got no hand lotion?” The clerk, also black, offered to see if she hand any in her handbag that he could use and went into the office in the back. In the meantime, I am left standing there, waiting to pay for the coffee I poured into my travel mug.

As the clerk returned with her hand lotion the man turned to me menacingly and said, “Do you know why I need hand lotion?” As the clerk looked at me with a worried expression on her face I replied, “Yes.” The man looked at me and said, “Is that right? Why do you think I need hand lotion?. I answered, “So your hands don’t turn ashy.” Raising his eyebrows in surprise he said, “That’s right! Can’t be havin’ my hands turn white! Un-uh, can’t be havin’ that. How the hell did you know that?” I said “It’s the same reason I don’t eat fried chicken and watermelon at the same time.” There was a brief moment of silence then the three of us started laughing uncontrollably. The man said, “You alright” as he left the store. I paid for my coffee and the clerk said, “Sorry about that.” “No problem” I said.

My wife was born in Guam where she ‘fit in’ racially, her mother from Taiwan, her father second generation Japanese born in Hawaii. She moved to Hawaii with her father when she was twelve, and to Washington State at age 15. In Washington, she lived in a small town that was predominately Caucasian, until she left her family to live on her own in Seattle. In the years in between, she learned what it is like to be the object of racial discrimination. While her face is Asian, the rest of her is strictly American. As a result, she used to worry about how our children would be treated.

Our first son takes after his grandfather who is dark in complexion with dark hair. Our two younger sons have light complexions and blond hair that caused many to think my wife was their nanny. One of my co-workers speculated to me that our oldest son was from a prior marriage. I told him that he was thinking way to hard.

When our first son was five, my wife decided to explain to him his heritage. She sent him to talk to me because he insisted that he was white. I held his arm next to mine to show him the difference in color. He asked me if he wasn’t white, what was he. I told him he was a Mexican. He asked me, “If I’m a Mexican, why don’t I talk Mexican?” I asked him what makes him think he doesn’t talk Mexican. He looked at me perplexed, so I asked, “Can you say ‘Taco’? Can you say ‘Burrito’?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “See, you do talk Mexican!” He smiled and accepted that he was a Mexican.

On Fourth of July, we were invited to some friend’s home for a Barbeque. These friends, the husband is Caucasian and the wife was born in Korea. Her mother’s second marriage was to her current husband, a now retired American serviceman. We were all together that day, along with mutual friend who is an elderly Korean woman. I related to them all the history of our son’s Mexican heritage. This was to explain an incident on a recent family outing.

One Sunday afternoon my wife and I packed the kids into our car to visit a playground in a nearby logging town. The streets were mostly empty. I noticed that the few cars that passed by in town were filled with Mexicans and I commented to my wife, “I didn’t know there was such a large Mexican population here.” As soon as I made this comment my oldest son, who had just turned nine, popped up from the back of the car and excitedly said, “Where? I want to see! I’m a Mexican!” When we got home, in consideration of the fact that he was now 9 years old, I broke the news to him that he wasn’t really a Mexican. He took it fairly well, all things considered. I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to get the news from someone else.

Our friends laughed at the story and our elderly friend said, “Oh I get it, Mexican means ‘Mixican’. “No it doesn’t” I said. “Then why did you tell him he was a Mexican?” she asked. I said, “If you aren’t born Korean, it doesn’t matter what you are, does it?” The two husbands of the Korean women laughed so hard I thought I might have to call 911 for the older one, and all three Korean women laughed and nodded their heads in agreement.

Yes, racism exists. I applaud your advocacy for your son and admire the strength of character you have manifested at your work. I am sure that it was not an option for you, personally, to not make the choice you made in reporting the likely child abuse while knowing the difficulties that might, and have, come your way as a result. Principles come at a cost, but history has proven that setting aside principles exacts a much high one.

My own life experience is that racism is ignorance, pure and simple. I don’t think that it is enough to simply refuse to participate in it; it must be confronted and exposed for what it is. The same is true for all forms of inequality that Buddhism teaches arise from the three poisons of ignorance, anger and greed—a truth that was not lost to the member of the Black Panther Party that aided my family in my youth.

To my mind the goal is not simply to be neither the abused nor the abuser; we must not condone inequities through pretending that they do not exist, or sitting by idle as they occur. We have to confront our own racist and self-centered attitudes in the process.

My wife does not understand why I call her a racist when she roots for the Asians, because they are Asian, in sporting competitions and during award shows. She say’s it’s only natural.

Perhaps she is correct. But is it harmless? What do you think?

As for myself, when I drive my car, I always brake for women, children, and other small animals—never giving a thought to the rate at which light is absorbed by their skin.

Sincerely, Chikushonin 智倶諸人
Daikudoshin, myokaku, myojisokukyo/
Namumyohorengemyojisokukyo 南無妙法蓮華命時儈倶經

Posted by: Chikushonin 智倶諸人 at June 13, 2004 09:37 PM