Skin

I'm off to the Nation's Capital in a few minutes where Hubby is having a piece performed in the chamber music festival in a concert at 11:00 p.m. (!) at a bistro, believe it or not. We're also going to try to catch a string quartet concert at St. Andrew's church at 8 p.m., and we're planning to leave at 3:00 (we've already missed that ETD) and it takes four hours to get there. Yes. We do cut things kind of close, don't we? Fortunately, our accommodation for the night is booked, so that helps.

I have been thinking about something for a while. My mother-in-law is a good person. I would not say that she is racist, but she does have a habit of not looking past a person's outward ethnic appearance. For instance, several years ago, when we went to Orland0, Fl0rida and they took us to a couple of theme parks (you know which ones I mean), in the restaurant in the morning I pointed out the busboy to her and said, "Doesn't he look like R (my nephew, her grandson)?" She took one glance at him and said, "I got news for you, he's the wrong colour!" I just shook my head and said, "Look at his face, not his skin," whereupon she had to agree with me that he did bear an uncanny resemblance to the relative in question.

It happened again when we were visiting on this trip. She was talking about Hubby as a boy, when he was a rock-and-roll guitarist. To quote her, "He wanted to be the next Jimi Hendrix and I told him, 'I've got news for you, he's black and you're not!'" I did not bother remarking on this, it was so obviously an ignorant comment.

Next is my mother, an educated woman (unlike my mother-in-law) who grew up in a more cosmopolitan city and is herself a member of a visible minority. While she professes not to "see" the colour of a person's skin, she still comes out with generalizations which drive me crazy. For instance, she'll specify traits that are supposed to apply to all members of an ethnic or national group: Italians, Mennonites, First Nations. The comments are often complimentary, but they refer to an identifiable, specific group. Whenever she comes out with one of these, I want to say, "Yes, but I'm sure there are plenty of [insert ethnic names here] who do not fit that description."

My own take on all this is that it is impossible not to see physical ethnic differences. Claiming not to do so is just stupid. It's all right, though, to identify someone by colour of hair, height, style of dress, etc. when you are sending someone off to the train station to pick up a friend, but it's not all right to say, "He's the black midget with dread locks," even though that would be the quickest way to identify him. It's as though pointing out that someone is black or Asian or a dwarf or fat or missing a leg or has a purple strawberry mark on his face is insulting and "racist". I don't get it. Isn't it the person inside the skin that matters, not the skin itself?

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