Though the exact details have yet to be worked out, it is a sure thing that I will be leaving New York in July, and almost as certain that I will never live here again. This move suggests itself, in fact, it has been suggesting itself for some time, but that doesn’t make it easy. I have finished growing up here, and I know this city has done things to me that I don’t even realize.
Living in New York has confirmed a few of my worst fears about the world, namely, that it really is as big and scary as I worried it would be. But New York has also provided its own kind of comfort in the form of insights that have sprung up at unexpected times.
My first year at IS 162, I co-taught a sixth grade ESL class with a girl named Stephanie. She could not look less like me, considering that we are about the same age and both identify as white. She is six inches shorter than I am, and has medium olive skin and very dark, very curly hair. To the eye, I am certainly “whiter.” But one day, quite by accident I discovered that our students didn’t see it that way.
In my coursework for my ESL master’s degree, we talked extensively about African-American and Latino/a identities. In these conversations, White American was always “dominant” and “mainstream.” But within the borders of Bushwick, my school’s Brooklyn neighborhood, whiteness is “other,” it is not the norm. I knew this. What I didn’t know before I worked there is that the factors involved in hanging the “white” tag on someone have absolutely nothing to do with having straight blonde hair and green eyes.
My sixth graders had been working on autobiographies. I was sitting with a group of four of them, checking in on their progress on a section in which they had to provide information about their home countries. Cristela, John, Gustavo, and Joseph were crowded in the back corner, jockeying for screen time on the classroom’s one computer. We began talking about their work, but as is so often the case with kids, my teacherly questions were volleyed right back at me.
“Where you born?” John asked me.
“Maine,” I said, “Up north, next to Canada.” Cristela scrunched up her nose. She wasn’t buying it.
“You were born here? In this country?” I nodded.
“So….what…are…you?” Gustavo asked slowly, like he wasn’t even sure how to pose his question.
I started to explain that I am American, that some of my family came from England in the 17th century and some came from Germany in the 19th century. For a moment, I was pretty impressed with my impromptu lesson. But those four bright, disbelieving faces stopped me.
Cristela squinted her eyes and zeroed in on my face like she had my number. “Talk like a white girl,” she said. Commanded, really. Now it was my turn to be bewildered. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Don’t I sound white all the time?”
Gustavo shook his head vigorously. “No, you talk normal.”
John agreed hastily. “I don’t understand white people. They use weird words.”
I had to know. “What kind of words?”
“White girls say ‘like’ and ‘totally’ all the time,” Cristela explained. The boys nodded emphatically and they all cracked up at the mere mention of such ridiculous sounding language.
Something clicked. I did a brief impersonation of a Valley Girl, a pop culture icon even I am a little too young for. Every other word is ‘like’ or ‘totally’ and the pitch goes up and down constantly, even in the middle of a word. What had been polite chuckling exploded into uninhibited laughter.
“You talk that way with your friends, miss?” Cristela giggled.
“No. I can’t barely understand it when people talk like that,” I said.
“And English is your language!” said John.
“You see?” Gustavo said. “You not white like that. You like us.”
I don’t know what my face may have looked like at that moment or what I said after that. Whatever it was, I hope Gustavo heard, “Thank you. It’s an honor.” Because it has been.
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