I did not know because I purchased the book online as part of a chance to win a trip to “Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Meditation Retreat on Maui!” Yes, I bought a spiritual book in the hopes that I would get a free ticket to a tropical island where I could luxuriously listen to lectures at a fancy hotel and meditate to the sounds of the ocean and the view of hot surfer boys. I would never have bought this, had I known what it looked like. Look a little closer and you’ll find section one printed in blue type with blue-tinged images, section three in the same style, but with sepia tones, and the great middle section apparently hand-written in constantly shifting sizes, directions, and style, ALWAYS IN ALL CAPS, and lovingly illustrated with shapes, flowers, animals, and lots and lots of naked people, frequently obscuring the text itself. Look at the pages, and you’ll see there is a small stack of white, regular booky-looking sheets at the front of the stack, and slightly more at the back, but they are held together by the central 2/3 of the book: dark brown pages with the texture of grocery bags. It is a perfect square, with a cover that reads the same whether you’re holding it like a literate adult, or glancing at it sideways, semi-conscious, or doing a headstand in front of it, and that is only the beginning of its material weirdness. I’ve had a lot of luck in my life judging books by their covers and this one would not have received a fair trial. If I had not known of the joyous awesomeness that is Ram Dass, I never would have read this book. I love the apparent absence of serious pressure to showcase a Good White Person, and no compulsion by Black creators to add them. Of course I still want that in life, but now I really appreciate it when White people are nonentities in Black shows. I needed that confirmation that Black people didn’t think as badly of White people as I did that we weren’t all terrible that we could maybe be friends. I admit that when I was younger, I looked really hard for that representative Good White Person. I’m pleased to watch Black television shows with no Good White People. Being Black is, apparently, just being White but harder. How Not to Talk About Raceīlack attendees got to silently listen to lots of well-meaning White folks talk about how, y’know, they felt bad about it, but they wouldn’t want to be Black because they would be profiled, targeted, have a more difficult life, etc. We may label another country as the enemy, but if we recognize the religious, cultural, and national connections between them and our own people, it’s much harder to Other them. When an intersectional perspective informs your Nationalism, it’s more difficult to draw hard lines between us and them. Why Nationalism Sucks & Intersectionality Rules
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