Blinded

Back-to-back appointments yesterday with the opthalmologist and optometrist left me dilated, blinded by light, waiting, tested, poked, measured, deadened, puffed with air, filled with drops and told I was a "good patient", which is worrisome. I must talk to Mallory about this "compliment", which I am sure must be my biggest fault. I opened my eyes wide and let the drops enter, filled out the patient information completely and earnestly struggled to figure out, is the first group of letters or the second group clearer? "Can I see the first one again, please?"

I remember before Mo's surgery she was supposed to drink barium, and I sat in the hospital with her for hours while, after drinking one of the two required bottles, she refused another drop. Stressing out, I tried different methods of persuasion, none of which had the slightest effect. In the end it made no difference whatsoever. The surgery went on as scheduled and the world didn't stop spinning and now that emotional time is a distant memory, the details of which are mostly forgotten. Waiting rooms, hospital cafeterias, balloons, flowers, unmarked hallways to the morgue, a moaning woman down the hall...

Then I went to the video store and rented RIZE, a documentary about a wave of hip-hop street dancing called "...'krumping,' a wildly athletic style in which arms, legs, and bodies fly with a frenzied abandon that moves at almost inhuman speeds. Rize follows the birth of clown dancing and krumping in South Central, and records how many young people have adopted the dance as a style of competition, offering a safer and healthier alternative to the gang culture that has long dominated Los Angeles." (MTV.com)



I loved the documentary because it's about authentic art that rises up from the people and isn't created from the top down. You can tell it's art because it continually changes. At one point a dancers says the moves keep changing every day and if you're not there, you miss it. And then there's the sorry truth that minority art forms change as mainstream culture continually co-opts the "others" culture and makes money off their art.

The only problem I had with the movie is when footage of krumping was juxtaposed with African tribal dancing. It was strikingly similar, but what was the message? That African Americans have this kind of dancing hard-wired into their DNA? That kids in South Central are like African tribes? That both groups are acting-out violent events as a means to....prevent violence?

One lie that we are taught as good white children is that African tribes are "primitive", and that modern technological "progress" has made us more "civilized", and smarter. Of course that is just ridiculous. (God, I love the movie Hairspray!) I am sure that African tribes have been and are more civilized than our "modern" mainstream culture. We run around the world killing people and telling everyone else what to do like a big fat dumb bully.

You can see this ideology of racial superiority reflected in museum exhibits. Have you ever walked through one of those "halls of civilization" that takes you through "man's" progress through time? I went through a narrow walkway in a museum once that began with a window displaying an African gourd, used as a noisemaker during dancing, placed beside a modern baby rattle. Gee, what is the connection between those two objects? Both used by undeveloped people? It went downhill from there, ending with the triumph of modern civilization, technology. There we were, the smiling heterosexual white couple, our 2.5 kids and our possessions. Kids on school field trips are unconsciously absorbing these messages, making meaning of it deep within their subjective mindsets. I am pretty sure there is no critique in the classroom when they return. This is how we learn unconscious racism. We don't even know it happens. As adults we don't even know we are racist.

Maybe being a good white girl (a "good patient") also keeps us good oppressors. We dutifully take in the museum, treat it reverently, like it holds The Truth about civilization, see ourselves on top of the pile and we are pleased. Hell! Why would we question that?