What’s your color?
I think I wrote a few weeks ago about being referred to as a caucasian recently during a cocktail chat I was having with someone I didn’t know. It sort of made me flinch in the same way that black does now that I have a dark skinned child who is not black, but a honeyed, caramel gorgeous brown. And yet I struggle with calling him African American because no one is calling me Spanish Jewish American. Oh yes, I’m white, and paler than most, but my skin isn’t anymore white than Tin’s is black if we are going to be color clear here. And semantics aside, I’m not white since I’m descended from Sephardim – Spanish Jews – the darkest skin of the race.
I sat next to a charming woman yesterday out in the sunshine in Yerba Buena gardens who is from the Ivory Coast. She said a friend of hers from Antigua wants to have his DNA tested so that he can adopt a child with the exact same background. I said my neighbor has a pit bull dog and had her DNA tested and the dog has everything else but pit bull in her. To what end I asked her – when I wanted a child I didn’t specify what kind, and I got perfect, I aopted my son, the child I was destined to parent.
So today while listening to Ram Dass as I was doing yoga in my hotel room, I liked when he said Maharajji didn’t see people via a lens of gender, race, or religion, but instead as souls. It made me think of Langston Hughes’ poem, My People:
The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
So, also, are the souls of my people.