Rebecca Walker:
Reflections from Black, White, and Jewish
a report from the Re-Imagining Gathering
by Doug King
posted 11-1-00
Rebecca Walker is considered one of the most audible
voices of
the
young women's movement. Following graduation from Yale University, she
founded Third Wave Direct Action Corporation, a national nonprofit
organization devoted to cultivating young women's leadership and
activism. In their first summer, Third Wave initiated an historic
emergency youth drive which registered over 20,000 new voters in inner
cities across the United States. Rebecca is a writer and has been
included in women's and black studies anthologies; she edited To
Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. She
has hosted a television forum on inner city teen violence and was
recipient of several awards and currently speaks about Third Wave
feminism at colleges and conferences across the United States and
Canada.
(From the Gathering program book)
The reading-plus-commentary nature of Rebecca Walker's
presentation makes it hard to summarize. We offer here a few scattered
glimpses and a recommendation that you get the book as soon as you can.
Reflecting on her writing of an intensely personal
memoir, Black, White, and Jewish, Walker said that "in an
ahistorical culture like ours, to remember is often an act of
resistance." Our culture makes it difficult to heal past wounds,
she added, so we are left "acting out the pain we feel from these
ancient wounds."
So she read passages from her early childhood, and the
dawning awareness -- coming mainly from a little boy whom she really
liked -- that she was different, and her growing desire to be "a
not-black girl."
She read of visiting with her mother's relatives, and
learning from her Uncle Bobby to shoot a hunting rifle, and learning
"to walk like I'm touch, like I have a gun on my hip." She
learned from her uncle what it meant to be called a "cracker,"
so "the difference and the hostilities of race are etched into my
life."
Before writing the book, she said, "I had little
memory of my childhood, and I realize it was a way of coping, of
avoiding the pain." But by remembering, she went on, and letting
the details emerge and unfold, "I was enabled to come to terms with
the memory, and deal with my parents, and to become a person."
But with deep pain she acknowledged that her parents
are "not willing to change their perceptions of themselves to
accommodate the realities of my own experience." So she asked how
we are to re-imagine without coming to terms with our differing
memories, and the differing meanings we give to the same incidents.
"How do we process past wrongs if we can't agree on what it
was?", she asked.
Walker also read and talked about her travels to other
parts of the world, especially in Asia, as a young
adult. One of her discoveries was that while "in the U.S. my race
defines me," in other countries "I find I'm defined by my
relations, by my dealings with other people."
She told of being asked by her lover, who is black,
what it's like "to have white inside me." She can't answer
about race, she says, which is "the biggest cultural construct
there is." But she adds that "I find the whiteness is a lack
-- a lack of a non-neurotic quality."
Wrapping up her talk, Walker said that "I have
never been granted the luxury of being claimed unequivocally by any one
group, one people."
She then offered to respond to questions from the
group, and Thandeka, another presenter, noted that Walker had pointed to
the question of whether within all our memories we might find some
absolute truth. Thandeka suggested that Walker was implying that
absolute truth, if it is to be found anywhere, lies in the
acknowledgment of the pain in our lives.
Walker responded that she has found "the ultimate
liberating moments" when she has been able to sit down with her
parents "and realize that all our truths are on the table, and all
are legitimate, and none needs to dominate."
A couple women asked very practically about dealing
with race in their own inter-racial families, and Walker's response to
these was to urge that people talk with each other, and keep talking,
and be sensitive to what others (especially the children) cannot say.
Another person asked how Walker's experience might
help us to make changes in our own communities. She answered by pointing
to the important or narrative, our own stories, as helping us grow into
our own identities and to understand and respect the identities of
others.
Spiritual growing is one part of that, she added.
"I've learned from Buddhism that it's really important to face and
live with our discomfort. Learn to be comfortable with our own
discomfort." That has been a vital part of the growing that
occurred among the varied members of the voter registration bus tour:
gay members of Act Up, South Bronx high school boys, preppie high school
girl and more -- all jammed together in the same bus, all at each other,
but learning to deal with each other and keep working together.
"That," she concluded, "was the real achievement of the
trip."
Her final comment focused again on her relationship
with her parents. "The fact that both my parents have been unable
to embrace this book ... this has been soooo painful to me." Yet
through all of that, "I still love my mother, she's sacred
to me. I realize I love her unconditionally ... and I have to
do that ... and that love liberates me." Maybe those
words, too, pointed to a hint of the absolutes that she has found
through the painful process of writing her life.
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