I am taking this six week workshop entitled “Race, Culture and Education.” Every Friday morning we huddle in a half circle with this tall, elegant African American man who labels himself “a little black boy from Tennessee.” My thoughts on race and culture keep evolving on this life long continuum with repeated bleeps of experiential learning. After 9/ll I developed a class for my high schoolers and myself titled, “Beyond Prejudice: Appreciating Diversity.” I brought in Islamic, African American, Hispanic and Asian guest speakers and we read literature written solely by minority writers. I quickly realized, however, this was just a drop in the all white bucket that spills out over and beyond my home state of Oregon and throughout many of our all-white lives.
I grew up in a mostly Caucasian community, absorbing the myths woven about non-white cultures with a father who frequently used those derogatory terms we all know are racial put downs. Language and prejudices are powerful ways of separating people. I knew from the moment I could talk that I wanted to keep talking; words were important. So I was born telling stories and I was born with an extremely sensitive nature. I didn't understand why there were White people over here and Black people over there and why one people didn't want to have anything to do with another people. As I grew up I literally felt pain and intense sadness about how hurtful people could be.
I have no idea where my thoughts of unity and human sameness originally came from. My childhood culture kept telling me I wasn't supposed to have anything to do with a Black person but in my heart I knew this was wrong. Why are we suppose to be so hateful just because someone's skin color, ethnicity or religion is different from our own?
On one of our beloved trips to the coast, Dan and I are standing on these huge boulders on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The tide is extremely high and the powerful waves come crashing towards us like a herd of storming buffalo. I'm scanning the far horizon, feeling like a new world explorer, marveling at the infinite beauty spread out before us. I squint my eyes, trying to envision the edge of the ocean and the lands beyond. Just then my attention is brought back to the inlet waters below where both Dan and I spy several gigantic drifting logs. My history-collecting, factoid-loving husband begins to unravel a story I have never heard before about ancient Hawaiians.
These warrior Hawaiians built seafaring canoes used in their battles of war and protection. But the island did not have the necessary straight and tall trees. West coast Cedar and Fir logs, including the Oregon ones in front of us, would float out to sea, get caught up in the current which circles the entire Pacific, some eventually ending up on the beaches of Hawaii where the natives would turn them into watercraft. Later, at home, Dan verifies his story further with the book he had read: “Any logs that got past Hawaii without being snatched or washed up would over the next five to ten years, complete a full orbit around the Turtle and/or Aleut gyres...such trees, the keys to wealth and war, transformed societies all around the North Pacific.” *
The high tide keeps bouncing the drifting logs back and forth, towards land and towards the sea. I am mesmerized by all the movement and by Dan's story. In my mind's eye, I see these logs surfing over the waves, traveling through storms and sun, being homes to resting fowl as they reach a distant shore. The metaphor of the logs overpowers me. It's as if I am standing on these jagged Oregon rocks, on the western edge of the American continent, holding a string strung out across the expansive Pacific Ocean. On the other side is another human being standing on her coastal boulders with the string's end in her hand.
Friday morning comes once again and I am sitting in the classroom with this brilliant, brazen Black man who loves telling stories and loves talking about the discriminatory, historical and stereotypical factors of race. This is one of my revolving doors of light, for every session brings clarity as to why we hierarchical humans are afraid of each other. I come to every class eager for connection, trying to understand this one human race. The conclusion I come to has always been right before my eyes: our connections as humans come through experiences and getting to know each other's true stories.
The floating trees are not bound by good weather or bad, by jutting, sharp, angled objects or seaweed-strewn surfaces. Whether these trees are seen as debris or treasured wood, or simple gifts of poetic meaning, these dead trees bind us to each other and to living.
A month ago, after one of my essays appeared on an online newsletter, I opened my e-mail to discover an address I didn't recognize. A young Middle East parent had read my online writing and wanted to send me an emotional message of gratitude. These parent's words were worth more to me than a bag of gold. That across the seas, half way around the world, I could have touched someone was almost more than I could bear. To also receive e-mail responses from friends in France, Germany, Britain, Australia and Japan shrinks the world's distance and disparity. From America to the Middle East and back again, this particular exchange gives me hope. It is as if this modern form of communication has become our floating trees.
We have divided our continents into black and white, gay and straight, female and male; we are encouraged to live in artificial categories, rather than reaching into real lives. During my last “Race, Culture and Education” class we were shown a clip from a recent CNN report where little African American girls continue to pick the White doll as the most beautiful, the most popular and the smartest. When will we understand that across the seas is another human being holding the very same string of needs and desires we are holding?
After what seems like a thousand seconds of freeze-frame stillness, I turn to Dan and say,“This history of the floating trees is the most amazing symbol of how necessary each human being's life is to the survival of the other.”
*Flotsametrics and the Floating World, Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano, page 198
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