Transcribing and redacting the tapes has given me a more nuanced sense of not only who my father was but of who I am as a second-generation immigrant of West Indian heritage, as a breed, as a black woman, and as an offspring of artist parents. Of course, my father and I often discussed race and politics and the conversations often circled around to his West Indian heritage. Here is a part of one of those discussions.
dm: When’s the first time that you saw that people perceived of you as a Negro.
Reggie Major: It was always being perceived. I never made that discovery.
dm: Never? I’m asking because that’s what people ask- When did you first become aware of race? I know I have a sense of always being aware of race as it was always an issue within our household, but I have heard some black people talk about they didn’t have this sense of it until they went out of their comfortable community where they found out there was this difference.
I don’t think that’s true. Why? Because of my parents, because of my vocabulary. I didn’t learn cracker from a box, I learned cracker from my father and my mother. Both of them! They emoted about these people. My mother would talk, not just about the woman she was working for but that she was expected to do this or that just because she was Black.
So, you’re saying there is a level of denial going out there, because of the conversations. You are being warned being educated about what you will face so you know it from the beginning.
Yeah. It’s just that. I know that.
Toi Derricotte, a writer I’m reading, could pass in some circles. In her book The Black Notebooks she tells a story about his little white child calling her nigger and she’s running home, running away from the nigger and she doesn’t realize that she is the nigger. After she gets home she’s told the facts of life. I wondered about that. I mean, how could you not know? But then I thought maybe I was more aware because I was brought up in a political household and because of the construct of our family.
You would have been the same no matter what the construct of our household was. Because there was no way to raise a colored child in this world without telling them. And you don’t educate them. You don’t say, “Look out for this and look out for that.” You tell stories. You tell about disappointments.
So at certain points there is a case of amnesia or a severe case of denial when people are telling those stories.
They might have gotten shocked. I was shocked. When I was in New York I knew about apartheid, but I came in from college and I went to Central Park West to some friends I had seen the day before and a man wanted me to take the back elevator and I was pissed. I told him, “No!”
But you know, but you’re just not prepared for it.
Ethel Allman Major and Wilfred Reginald Major (my grandparents)
And again, our family was pretty big and we’ve got every color. That was the other part. I heard stories about black and light skinned people, and I know it was true. But wasn’t in our family, it couldn’t be in our family. You look at Dad and Aunt Margaret. (Grandpa very light and Aunt Margaret colored more like my grandmother)
So we were not a part of it, but again I would hear these stories. Like Genevieve, she went to Howard (University). And Genevieve was light, she could have been lighter than dad and she had to pass that paper bag test. (A brown paper bag would be held up to one’s face and if you were as dark or darker than the bag you could not be a part of certain groups or activities.) It was for real. She came in saying “Do you know…?” And so I can’t speak then for the consciousness of those people who were raised to believe that that bullshit was true.
Do you think that separation was simply a separation that is geographical say American Southern and West Indian or is it about class and caste?
It was caste and class. You listen to Nat (Dr. Nathaniel Burbridge, a light skinned, politically conscious doctor from Louisiana who was the child of a doctor) and he told the same stories.I think that the problem lies somewhere else and there I can’t really make the separation. Part of it was just immigrant. There’s no getting around it. When immigrants come over they just hustle their butts.
They come over on a mission.
Yeah, a mission. But the other part is that when you run into West Indians no matter where the hell they’re from, they are raised to be educated. West Indians stress education period and I think that’s a big difference. I think education in America is class-based. I believe that was a key the combination of the drive of the immigrant coupled with a cultural affinity (towards education) Again Aunt Margaret, she sent nine kids to college. One of them in Puerto Rico, Rose I think went to Canada, I’m not sure. She worked for the consulate in Haiti. Rose was a native French speaker by the time she was seventeen or eighteen. I just accept that. That’s what they do.
Please add a comment: When did you first realize that you were defined by a color? WHen did you first see yourself and/or others as Black, Yellow, Red, Brown, White?
If you are interested more of the Journey of Tapes click here for the start of the story.