"So how long have you known you were a..."
"A mutant?"

Oh, X2.

For some reason I feel like I just came out to my mom.

Don't get too excited ladies, I still (for better or worse) am hetero in all sexual tenses, but of course as you have always known there are some of you I would marry in a second. (Soon as we go legal) No, my sexuality has remained the same, but in alot of ways my orientation has been flipped all upside down.

Just a few moments ago I pretty much blamed my mom for being at the heart of the black complacency problem in America. I caught her off balance when I told her to "watch what she said" when making some comment about the crazy folks in my organization. I told her unfortunately those are the only kind we can get, and that people who look us up and down and then sit at home and do nothing are the worst kind of enemy we have. I told her that I would leave the NAACP if I had somewhere else to go. If there was an organization with enough balls and enough of a proven track record to go to I would go. I'm still waiting.

She said that everything I was saying was true and that she agreed with me 100%. I don't know what came over me, or what has been coming over me for the last few months, but it has seemed like a progressive "coming out" or rather an unmasking as I encounter the world as an educated adult.

Maybe it began with dinner at with Chris' parents in New York. Me, Chris, Sarah and his parents all crammed together in the favorite little Italian resturant on the corner, drinking wine, feeling fine. As the night got later, the wine and the atmosphere seemed to grow darker simultaneously, and even the tomato sauce seemed to grow thicker. We talked photography, New York, Chris' amazing portfolio, the scam artists at my job, Sarah's involment with SoWeBo, and

"you wanna do something on the children's stage?" "oh sure..."

and "where are you kids going tonight?" "Out dancing! WOO!"

and "What else are you doing this summer Erica?" "I have a little traveling to do, you know the NAACP sending me everywhere..." "Wow! The NAACP!" "Yes I am a member of the Board of Directors" "WOW! That's great, how'd you get that?"

And so I go into my spiel. And what a spiel really. I have gotten so good at it, I almost feel guilty about it. It's like a routine. Tell them how good you are doing in school, tell them about all your accomplishments, tell them about the civil rights "movement" so they feel a part of it. Show them what a good example of your people you are. It really hurts me to write this, but its true. I play they game just as well as everyone else who shares my burden of wearing the permanent undergarment of brown skin.

And so somewhere in the middle of the conversation we got to talking politics and civil rights. Somewhere in the middle of the second bottle of wine Mr. Chris' dad, father of my best friend, father of a gay eccentric photographer who despite himself attempts to remain conversative in his own views, began to really hurt my feelings. Like a papercut, I didn't realize that I was hurt and how bad it hurt until later. He began to introduce random statistics that said that racial profiling in fact does not exist, that said that studies have shown that blacks commit more crimes, speed more on the highway, don't acheive well enough to attend the best schools so to hell with affirmative action, that he used to work in such and such school and this is why he thinks that black community makes themselves out to look like victims. That this is essentially our problem, and we, like him, need to just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and stop looking like someone is hurting us all the time, like we are victims. In alot of ways, I agreed with him. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that although there isn't someone out to get us, sometimes there really is.

I don't think it was then when I changed. I don't even know that I have changed or woken up or if I have always been. I just know that lately there have been parts of me that are crying out and that realize that this is not the world I grew up believing in. Maybe it was little things here and there, and maybe just an abundance of things recently, like sitting in the back of The Spectator for the second time, alone, watching, wondering where young semi-militant, rainbow-colored-glasses wearing, almost-colorblind people like me fit into that whole picture. Or hearing that there might actually be a chance of me being cast in a substanstial role in the fall show about Asia because the makeup will probably be all white-face. How acting, my school, my friends, hell even the president have made me feel blacker than I have ever felt before. How coming home to Racial Utopia Columbia seems faker and ever and out of place, more shallow, more real.

I read the obituary of a young black boy in the newspaper today and I was sitting at the kitchem table trying to keep my breathing from getting out of control. His friends on the basketball team said they would wear his picture and number on their warm-up shirts at the national championships. And I couldn't help thining about how I had seen that before, when Dre died senior year, when my friends wore armbands at their basketball game, friends from both teams. And how the rivalry wasn't between the two teams playing on the court, but between those kids and the rest of the world. I though about senior year, and how I went to three funerals within about six months, and how I spent alot of my time organizing a community forum about the violence and demanding better guidance counselors. I told my mom I was amazed at how all that happened, and I still managed to do well on the SATs, hold a steady job, get good grades, participate in the NAACP, choir, Poms team, drama club, direct a show, write a few plays, choreograph, dance company, perform in Disney World, etc. People always ask me how I can do as many things as I do at one time. We faced so much trouble, so many people killed, locked up, or even worse, being successful at the horrible things they were doing to themselves. We had it real rough for a while. I told my mom, "After all that, this stuff is a breeze."