A Thing Called Race

The TV in our hotel room in Budapest was turned to CNN International and a German anchor was reporting on Hurricane Katrina. The report was quite lengthy and I cringed as footage from New Orleans consisted of black people suffering, hurting, and crying for outrage from the world. In Prague, an African is an uncommon sight. After Jewish extermination by the Nazis and German minority expulsion, the Czech Republic has been left as a pretty homogenous country – so much so that its first president, Vaclav Havel, stated in the 1990s that it could be to its detriment.


Exhibit A: little deviance from a certain skin tone on the metro.

Last night I attended One World’s documentary film festival. It is among the biggest deals in town. For 60 Czech crowns, I saw a marathon of the Oscar-nominated Street Fight, Dimmer, Mad Hot Ballroom, and part of Favela Rising. So as I sat in the dark theater among a white Central European audience, I wondered what did they think about America? What did they think about Street Fight, a movie about the 2002 Newark mayor’s race that involved two black men and became the center of African American political consciousness as the likes of Al Sharpton and Cornell West threw endorsements? What did they think when two groups of Newarkers fought riotously on the streets over who was more representative of their city: dark-skinned incumbent of 30 years Sharpe James or light-skinned Stanford graduate, Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law Cory Booker? James accused Booker of being a Jew and a white republican. Booker fought back the slander by saying that his diplomas were gained with his African ancestors’ blood, sweat, and tears.


"Near white" Cory Booker vs "Real Deal" Sharpe James

What did they think about Mad Hot Ballroom, a movie about a ballroom dancing program that every New York City 5^th grader must participate as a city-wide competition? What did they think when they saw kids with skin colors from dark to pale, hair from straight to coiled, accents from Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, and eyes of every shape dancing the merengue, foxtrot, and swing? I could not help but think that this must have been Martin Luther King’s dream. There were two kids who weren’t allowed to dance because of their religions. “It looks fun. But for now, we like being the DJs,” reasoned one of them as he fiddled with the CD player.

What is this place called America and New Orleans and Newark and New York? Are we some kind of joke to the world? Or are we something that everyone envies? Why were peoples from a different continent brought to America to pick cotton? If America realizes its error in so doing, then why are African Americans disproportionately so poor? Why must they cry on international television for help? Why does a race-blind right to vote involve a race-conscious decision of for whom to vote? Maybe I wouldn't have these sorts of questions if I saw this mix of movies with a different audience. Maybe the absurdity of America would just seem normal if I saw this in a lower Manhattan theater. But I try and try to rationalize the contradictions of our society. And, It seems that our greatest asset regrettably continues to be our greatest source of fear and apprehension. I only wish that I lived in a New York dreamland when I was 10 and barely aware of a thing called “race.”

Don't they just look enviably awkward?