How To Be Black

In response to “When Did You First Realize You Were Black?” and several other questions, check out Trevor’s story:

On multiple occasions, I’ve had friends and even complete strangers tell me that I should write something that somehow chronicled the events of my life. “But why?” I would ask them, “Why would anyone want to read about the trials and tribulations of a socially inept black kid from the suburbs with a comically multicultural family straight out of a shitty 90s sitcom. A kid whose life was a constant struggle just to fit in anywhere with failed and usually comedic results?” Nevermind.

I feel as though I should brief you on my background seeing as you probably have no idea who the hell I am. My name is Trevor Henry Ziegler. Pretty typical name for a black male, right? It wasn’t until about 10^th grade that I realized maybe my name didn’t quite fit my physical appearance. Up until that point, however, I didn’t think anything of it. I was just regular Trevor Ziegler, in my own eyes. I saw nothing different about a black kid named Trevor with a German last name.

And don’t get me wrong I’m not ashamed of my name. Not even in the least. I just think my name alone placed this giant label on myself that read: THIS KID IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT. And for good reason, my name alone has garnered more puzzled looks than an M. Night Shyamalan movie (just the really shitty ones though).

Adding to my reputation as a walking anti-stereotype, I was a 17-year competitive swimmer and even competed on a Division I team in college for four years. I also worked as a lifeguard for many years throughout high school and college. So basically for the first 22 years of my life I was a living punchline for the “black people can’t swim” joke. Off to a pretty good start, right?

I was adopted pretty much right after birth to two white parents in an affluent Maryland suburb. My sisters, who are both older than I am, were adopted as well. The eldest was adopted at a young age from the Philippines and my other sister was adopted at age four from India when I was about three years old. So right off the bat I was already “the black guy” in my own family. Pretty much a metaphor for my entire fucking life.

I’ll spare you the details of my birth parents, for now. Spoiler Alert: It’ll blow your fucking mind. Well, hopefully. I guess you’ll just have to read on to find out. Suckers.

Anyways, as I mentioned earlier I was born and raised in a suburban city called Columbia, Maryland of about 100,000 residents. Columbia was a planned community established in 1967. The basis of Columbia was that it was designed to be a series of 10 self-contained villages that aimed to eliminate any sort of racial or class segregation. Thus, every village was said to contain lower-income, middle-income, and high-income housing. Fair is fair.

However, the “village” that I lived in was added in the mid-90s and proved to be an exception to the rule. The area in which I grew up in catered to mostly upper-middle income housing and high-income housing and consequently shat in the face of the designer’s dream of getting rid of class segregation. Until I attended high school, the area in which I grew up in was about as diverse as a box of saltines.

Looking back at my life and the conditions I grew up in, it’s hard to comprehend why I thought my life could ever be normal. I should probably clarify what the word “normal” meant to me back then. To me, normal was simply fitting in anywhere. Normal was surrounding myself with a group of peers who knew exactly what I was going through. Normal was that feeling of not being looked-at or judged a certain way because of what I looked like, how I talked, or the things I was into. I so desperately wanted to just be known as “Trevor”. Not Black Trevor, or that black kid, or the black kid that acts really white, or the black kid that swims, or the black kid with white parents. I would have even settled to be another face in the crowd. Anything was better than what I was going through.

To be continued…

In response to “Can You Swim?”

I only “learned” how to swim because I was forced to in high school. It was literally a graduation requirement! I signed up for the class the first semester of my 9th grade year, to get it over with :)

I’ll admit — I didn’t want to wear a silly looking swim cap, but that meant my relaxed hair would be jacked up all day (the class was in the morning, of course), multiple times a week. And wrecked from all the chlorine. I think I eventually succumbed to the cap, though honestly, that detail is a bit fuzzy.

The class was set up in stations, and the first one was floating. Next was kicking & arm movements, then breathing, etc. I made it through the first two stations, and wouldn’t you know, I didn’t quite make it all the way through the breathing station when the class ended!

Though I’d be hesitant to put too much faith in my aquatic “skills” should I ever really need them (God forbid), I apparently knew enough to graduate (yesssss! no drop-out stat here!).

At the end of my semester in the class, there was only one student left, still struggling through the first station… Yep, you guessed it. A fellow black girl, my compadre. I felt bad for her each time I made it through a station (all 2 of them), especially since the stakes were higher for her — she was a senior! But judging by her senior class picture in the yearbook, I believe she was allowed to graduate too :)  

In answer to “Can you swim?”

I can swim like a fish!  I learned when I was in the 6th grade, at the Boys Club in Union, New Jersey.

We weren’t the kind of family that spent time going swimming in the summer, whch was probably because my mother couldn’t swim.  Maybe it was because my father, sister, or brother couldn’t swim, either.  Seriously, the whole family swam like rocks, and I didn’t like the idea.

I pestered my mother into letting my join the Boy’s Club, and I immediately signed up for swimming lessons. I took to the water instantly, mostly because of our teacher, whose name was Larry Herrighty.  Larry was great, and made everyone laugh alot, and did things that made everyone comfortable, and forget that we were actually learning (sound familiar?).

I progressed through the ranks until I was awarded the title “Swimmer”, which mean that I could swim in any depth of the pool with strength and confidence in my ability to keep myself from drowning.  As happy as I was with this, I didn’t stop.  I went on to be certified as a Junior Lifeguard.  I regularly played water polo.  I was a Boy Scout and earned my Mile Swim badge.  I turned 17 and became fully certified as a Red Cross Lifeguard.  I was on the club’s swim team.

I could swim!

It gets even better… when I was 17, I enlisted in the Marine Corps.  At boot camp, during our swimming qualifications (all Marines are expected to able to swim at least a little), there were only two recruits (out of nearly 250) in our series who earned the Water Safety qualification: Me and a Puerto rican kid.

I can swim in rivers, pools, lakes, even in the ocean, without fear or worry. 

In answer to the Day 4 Question “Can You Swim?”

Oh, yes — like a fish.  Having grown up in Long Island, NY and Okinawa, Japan, swimming came naturally.  It wasn’t until we moved to Altus A. F. B., Oklanhoma, did my swimming become an issue for people.  We were almost the only Black family on base and I was certainly the only Black person in the pool, and I am sure I am responsible for introducing the Afro to white people in Oklahoma. 

A great story about identity and race.

Yes, it’s true. I’m white, 56 years old, and nerdy.
To further establish my whiteness:
Raised in Utah and Wyoming where we had only one black guy in my high school.
His name was Michael Jackson — REALLY.

But I’m writing to tell a different story…
Flash backward to after college, almost 30 years ago…
I’m in my first job as a computer scientist working in Provo Utah (this should further reinforce my white cred).
In a company of software engineers with about 300 employees at the time.
If you threw a rock in the sea of cubicles you would likely hit a Phd, but most assuredly you would hit a nerd.

A new hire moved into the cube next to mine.

Wow, he’s black, I thought.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a black person that wasn’t on TV.
I wonder what he does here?  He sure looks nerd. white shirt, black plastic glasses (the Clark Kent style), black wingtips…

We introduce ourselves:

me: Hi, I’m Ed.
Steven : I’m Steven
me: I work on WMCS (ed note: WMCS is.a long extinct OS)
Steven: I’m working on the Unix port.
me: Cool! I heard they hired a replacement for the old engineers that left. Welcome.
Steven:  Yes, I was doing this same work at Bell Labs before I joined the company.
…(other nerd speak omitted for brevity sake)…
me (thinking to myself): wow, this guy sure isn’t stereotypical, BS. Math, MS CompSci, Cal Berkley, Bell Labs,…
…later that week I overhear the following conversation in Steven’s cube between Steven and the VP of Engineering…

VP: So how’s it going?
Steven : I’m having trouble making tapes on MOFO
VP(disturbed): Did you try a different machine?
Steven :  Yes, but they wouldn’t make on BUFU either
VP (looking slightly disturbed responds with “OK”  and then leaves)

Ouch! What had I just heard?  Did not Steven know that those machine were named using black slang?

Those names were given before he joined the company by his predecessors in that job.

These names were an inside joke, never to be spoken in public AND certainly not in the presence of “the suits”.

So there I sat in my black/white dilemma:
Do I forget that I overheard that conversation?

Do I inform Steven of the true meaning of MOFO and BUFU?

How do I inform Steven of the origins of MOFO and BUFU?

Who am I to give a black man lessons on black slang anyway?

I could claim I didn’t know, no one would ever doubt me.

As with most questions of this kind, the answer becomes obvious when you ask the question, “How would I want to be treated if I was [$other_person]”

Where [$other_person] = Steven

So I walked into his cube and asked, “Steven, if I had a big piece of food hanging in my beard, would you tell me about it?”

After a little thought he responded, “Probably”

• 
  

me: Do you know what MOFO and BUFU mean?

Steven

: No

me

: MOFO is black slang for “yo mama”

Steven:

(after a short delay and look of shock turning to anger): Did those guys make up those names as a joke on me?!!

me

: No, the machines have had those names for years.

Steven

: Oh, ….. thanks for telling me.

So that began a friendship between two nerds and their families….

The strange relationship of a white guy from rural Wyoming teaching a black man from LA to be black.

Steven, being the nerdy son of a doctor and a lawyer in an upscale LA neighborhood, never learned how to be black.

I even took Steven to the gym on occasion to teach him to play basketball.

Imagine the stares of everyone watching a 20+ 6’-8” white guy teaching a 20+ 5’-10” black guy how to play basketball.

He shared a story about meeting William Shockley once at Bell Labs.

William Shockley—Winner of Nobel Prize, Inventor of the Transistor. Yes, that W. Shockley.

I asked Steven if he ever challenged Shockley on his racist views?

Steven replied, “Yes, I challenged him just by being there, a software engineer, in his presence” — he smiled.

I did argue once that there are some family traits that do seem to following families.

6’-2” is considered short in my family.

Maybe to some degree we might expect certain traits to follow in ethnic races also.

“Like I had heard that black weren’t generally good swimmers because they had a lower fat/muscle ratio causing less buoyancy, resulting in more water resistance, leading to poorer swimming results.”

He responded with, “That’s a bunch of crap Ed!”

I replied, “Ok”

Months later our families got together for an outing at the local water park.

While at the top of a platform, Steve and I decided to race each other to the bottom of two adjacent water slides.

We both started at the same time.

I arrived with a huge entry splash at the bottom and then stood waiting for Steven.

After several seconds (seemed like minutes) he trickled out of the slide and moved slowly towards me.

I asked, “What happened?”

He answered, “Blacks don’t float”

(actually we later attributed his performance to his jean shorts — not really the best water slide apparel)

I probably don’t get the black thing, I probably never will, but the proudest vote I ever cast was for Barack Obama.

I still feel this way almost 4 years later and I’ll be doing it again this time.

Not because he is black man, but because he is a black swan.

Ed Lane

In answer to the Day 4 Question “Can You Swim?”

My sisters and I took swimming lessons as children growing up in Ohio and there were plenty of other black kids in the pool with us. Swimming was a freshman gym requirement at my sisters’ (very diverse) high school…funny, I don’t remember hearing of anyone complaining about their hair (too much), threatening lawsuits, etc. As an adult I started lessons again at the Y and spent an hour every Sunday morning doing laps next to old white folks who’d been swimming since birth. It says a lot about my environment that I made it all the way into my 30s before I first heard of the notion that black folks couldn’t swim, and it came from a white man who was trying to talk to me. He said, “I thought black folks couldn’t swim” the way you’d say “I thought chickens couldn’t talk.” Needless to say he didn’t get very far with me! It’s been a while since I did laps but if you threw me into a pool, I wouldn’t drown and I could get out on my own.

In answer to the Day 4 Question “Can You Swim?”

When I started reading this section in the book I almost fell out of bed from laughing so hard. I’m from the 60s generation and living in Newark, NJ at the time the Black rite of passage for us was to sink or swim at the public pool in the summer. I preferred to swim and not get drowned by my fellow bros as we clamored for space in the pool. Back then your best bet was to swim to the deep end of the pool where we knew we could escape the drowning “fun” just have some fun playing “Sea Hunt”.

After graduating in high in 1971 and joining the US Marine Corps I really began to swim. Survival swim that is, like with a full pack on my back and rifle with the expectation that it probably take more than an hour to be rescued if you fell overboard. I always told the other brothers I wasn’t gonna get that close to edge at which point we all laughed.

Swimming really gets the conversation flowing, especially when you snorkel in the coastal waters of St. Thomas.  I literally scared the heck out of folks who have never seen a black brother that far out in the ocean. 

In answer to the Day 4 Question “Can You Swim?”

Swimming While Black

I actually grew up with a pool in my backyard.  It wasn’t until I was at least 9 or 10 that I even encountered the idea that most black people couldn’t swim.  .

I remember my father taking me with him to pickup my brother from Boy Scout camp at the age of 9 or 10, and witnessing the final relay race in the Boy Scout olympiad every camp is required to have.  These things usually start with someone running into chest deep water as the first leg and tagging a swimmer, who tags somone in a canoe, and so forth, culminating in a race around the lake, most of which is in deeper water.

I remember being keenly aware of the fact that there was rarely more than one black kid in each troop, and that all of those black kids(except for my own brother) were all running the first leg.  I assumed it must have been because they were faster than everyone else.  It blew my mind when I later found out that all of these kids had to do the first leg because they couldn’t swim.  I distinctly remember thinking, that’s odd that everyone here who is black can’t swim.

I recall returning to that camp 5 or 6 years later as a member of a different troop(we moved in those intervening years), and of course being the only black kid in my troop(my older brother had gone off to college).  We did the same relay on the last day, and I was doing one of the legs of the race that required you to kayak alone across the middle of the lake.  I was picked because I was undoubtedly the best swimmer in the troop.

I recall no less than 3 men immediately surrounding my scoutmaster and asking him if he was sure it was a good idea that I was going to kayak.  I recall the confusion on his face as they attempted to subtly hint at their concern.  Even better, was the obvious increase in his confusion when I strolled up and explained, “Mr. Jacobsen, they want to know if I can swim.”  I have always appreciated his response, that their concern at my swimming while black, was one of the stupidest things he had ever heard.