Beyond White

Published in slightly edited form Dec. 6th, 2017 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     A friend and I were laughing last week about the insidious antics of someone, and the words “Oh, that’s beyond white!” came out of his mouth.  I don’t remember who we were laughing at.  It could have been something from the current slough of national politics.  Maybe it had nothing to do with politics whatsoever.  It could have been anything, anybody.  Outrageous arrogance associated with whiteness is a contagious disease in our culture, and it takes conscious effort to resist.  No one is immune, not even people from other races.

           

     Last Friday night Nikiko Masumoto performed her one-woman play “What We Could Carry” for the Reedley Peace Center.  I’d been wanting to see this play since I first read about it in the Fresno Bee five years ago, when she returned to the Valley to farm with her family.  The play is a re-creation of the 1981 testimonies of Japanese-Americans who suffered the WWII internment, testimonies which led, eventually, to formal apologies and minimal monetary restitution from the federal government.  It was one of the dark chapters in U.S. history, but, as one of her characters says in the play, this chapter, in terms of how our country has dealt with other (i.e., non-white) races, is not the exception, but the rule.  From that point onward in the play, we listened to their testimonies differently.

           

     Mas Masumoto, Nikiko’s father, has been a friend to me since he performed in my first Humanities event in Parlier, early in 1991.  He was teamed with the poet Omar Salinas from Sanger, a town which is less than 5 miles away from the Masumoto’s farm in Del Rey, but the two writers had never met.  Race and social inequality associated with different occupations can create divides “below” white, as Mas testifies in a beautiful short piece called “In the Fourth Grade” published in his first book, Country Voices:  The Oral History of a Japanese American Family Farm Community (1987.)

           

     I have always loved watching Mas give presentations, but Nikiko’s performance was something else.  It was breathtaking.  With only a kitchen stool and battered suitcase as props, she created times and places of the evacuation; with just a music stand and microphone she transported us to the hearing rooms where the testimonies were first given token (and only later serious) attention.  The civic necessity of a whole community speaking up in their own defense was overwhelming, as the different people who did so showed up in Nikiko’s body, came out of her mouth.  Her passionate representation of those people, men and women, young and old, quietly respectful and righteously outraged, gave me new respect for the power of theater, of face-to-face communication, however ephemeral it might seem.  In the blink of an eye, that woman can change hearts.

           

     And changed hearts is what we’re going to need if we’re ever going to move beyond white, beyond the supposed superiority of that race of people and the privileges still associated with it.  Beyond white is where we need to go.  And as we move into the season where Joseph and Mary take their historic, arduous trip to Bethlehem, where they, as swarthy folks of Jerusalem, would be counted and taxed for the white folks in Rome, we have yet another opportunity to move in that direction.  Peace unearth.

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Trudy Wischemann is a rowdy mixture of European peasants who writes.  You can send her your beyond white experiences c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 03247 or leave a comment below.

Bethlehem

Published Dec. 9, 2015 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

     Slouching, walking, riding a donkey, we’re moving toward Bethlehem in these last weeks of lengthening nights.  We deck the halls with garlands of evergreens and strings of lights, maybe even a little mistletoe to celebrate that first Coming, the immense journey from Nazareth to the City of David, from peasant child to newborn King.  But we also do it to ward off the dark until we can see the days lengthening once again.

     Bethlehem.  All I have to do is hear the word or see that sacred place name to feel the roots of my belief, my faith.  It marks the time as well as the geography of that turning point from old testament to new, the moment when some of God’s children added the word “forgiveness” to their vocabulary.

     How far is Bethlehem from Damascus, I wonder, or from Jerusalem, for that matter?  From Beirut?  Cairo, Baghdad, Istanbul?  In the Bethlehem of our hearts and minds, it is much further than miles.  It is the place where “fear not” was spoken and heard by shepherds and wise men, a plain carpenter and his child bride.  Fear not, because a new way of living together has just been born in this stable, a new, upside-down order where the poor will not be hungry and the rich will slink off into oblivion if they don’t learn to share.  Where the kings of countries will not slaughter their own people, where little children will be suffered instead of die in suffering.

     Some of us are innocent bystanders in this long, wide story.  Others are soldiers in God’s army, at least in their own eyes.  Then there are the nurses and chaplains, the generals with their strategies and the presidents with their real job, to make peace where there is no peace, and none desired.  There are the arms makers, arms sellers, arms negotiators, arms detonators.  There are arms in the hands of innocents and sinners alike in this long, wide story, this historic sweep.  Back and forth we go, corner to corner, dust pans in hand, removing the debris until the next government bombing, the next terrorist attack.  Back and forth, over and over.  The sound of broomstraws is everywhere.

     Bethlehem.  I could not call myself a Christian if it weren’t for the Christmas story.  It entered my heart as a child, long before I would learn about the faith, decades before I discovered God, the Great Spirit, the Light.  Images of Mary astride the unshod donkey in the cold night, finding shelter with the animals instead of humans, the cattle lowing in approval and welcome – those images tell me who I am in ways the cross does not, at least not yet.  The cross is a harder lesson to learn.

     But now is the season of Bethlehem, and making that journey could be the best therapy of all.  When our cities and small towns appear to have been infiltrated by citizens of Damascus and Beirut set on keeping the old, cold war going into eternity, let us mentally follow Joseph and Mary into the unholy world of Herod and Caesar.  Then, following instructions, let us slip away with them unscathed, the infant safe in our arms.  Let us dig in with them for the long haul, keeping watch over our flocks and discerning God’s direction in the constellations, taking heart from the angels and preparing for the cross.

     Bethlehem:  you couldn’t have come at a better time.

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Trudy Wischemann is a neophyte shepherdess who writes.  You can send her your star and angel sightings c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.