Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible - this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.
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As for now, it must be said that the process of washing the disparate tribes white, the elevation of the belief in being white, was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies.
But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration. And the word racist, to them, conjures, if not a tobacco-spitting oaf, then something just as fantastic—an orc, troll, or gorgon.
And yet, since dignity - understood as recognition - is something that must be conferred, two other assumptions about the human condition must be made: first, homo sapiens are inclined in some respect to regard one another as equals; and second, they cannot live optimally without having some form of relationship with each other. Indeed, both these ideals - that we are an egalitarian and social species - have become so commonplace in many parts of the world as to sound like hackneyed New Age notions.
Difference is often so deeply threatening we cannot bear to listen to it. Much less embrace it. We cannot bear to imagine that we might be wrong and they might be right and, heaven forbid, at least as good in every way as we are. Or better.
The culprit here is an unavoidable sequence of childhood. When people are brought up to fear difference, especially difference of thought, they are easier to control. And society adores control.
My mother in bed at fifty-two. My mother in bed at sixty-eight. When I lay the two images of her side by side, looking for the differences, at first there seem to be few. She was older, thinner, more wrinkled. Her hair, late to gray, was now sprouting a few silver strands here and there. These differences were subtle but present. Harder to spot: me at eleven - out of my depth; me at twenty-eight - still so.