I am not Jesse Owens, or The Blog(s) I wrote on a Sunday afternoon in February

Usually at some point this month of the year, someone mistakenly calls me Jesse Owens.  There are some years where it doesn’t happen… or doesn’t necessarily happen in February, but the occurrence has repeated enough I learn to take it with a bemused smile.  If it is necessary, I will politely correct them to the fact my last name is Olson and my first name includes an ‘i.’   Then I just add it to a reason to tell the amusing story of how the assonance of my name has put me in league with an Olympic gold medalist… even though it should be obvious that:

1. I am not a competitive runner (even when I do attempt that exercise, there is nothing Olympic about my accomplishments).

2. I am not a man.

3. I am not dead.

4. I am not black.

It is an amusing story to relate over a cocktail or the water cooler.  It’s an innocuous, unconscious mistake.  Kind of fascinating if one wants to contemplate how we connect the information buried in our brains.  Or, more to the point, how we incorrectly draw conclusions without even thinking about it.

So I find myself thinking about that story this Sunday morning over my coffee.  It is the second weekend of February and I’ve decided to not go into my workplace to listen to a lecture about black history month in order to give myself and this head cold a day of rest.  And I lament that my opportunity to hear such a lecture has to be in February only, the shortest month of the year.

Of course, it is an opportunity for learning.  It is an opportunity for learning institutions to make a gesture of interest in diversity.  It is an opportunity for me to choose to learn or sit at home with a box of tissues.

Recently I saw a few friends post a video from a 60 Minutes interview with Morgan Freeman.  I’m not going to add the clip to this post and give it an opportunity for more hits… but I did watch it once and saw the carefully edited bit about a revered black actor arguing against the idea of black history month… because every month should be black history month.  Word.  I totally agree with that.  I spent my August evenings watching Eyes on the Prize and December reminding myself of the horrors of slavery.  I confess those were inspired by major motion pictures and the sudden media blitz of a half century anniversary.  But… it is also fodder for that novel whose second draft I have neglected far too much of late.

Whatever my reasons, I find black history interesting.  I always have.  I actually thought briefly about African Studies as a major.  I still think about it, on a graduate level.  Because I want to know.  I want to know every month, every day, every hour of the year.  But that doesn’t mean I agree with the reasoning of posting that Morgan Freeman clip on the internet.

It supports this need to declare that race isn’t an issue.  That like some common cold, it can go away - because we have a day off in January, because we elected a black president, because Oprah is a billionaire, because … we just don’t see it as a problem.

Of course, if we don’t see the problem, we also don’t have to talk about it.  If someone wants to talk about race and its inequities, she is the problem.  The one who sees the world so darkly and unkindly.  The one who wants to spoil the mood by bringing that up when the point is really unnecessary.

I imagine most of the people who mistakenly call me Jesse Owens don’t even know they are doing it.  All of us make similar mistakes.  My mother calls me by my sister’s or aunt’s names all the time.  I’ve forgotten names in the middle of a conversation.  It is a relatively minor mistake… and innocuous for the most part.  It does alarm me, though, sometimes because it is a demonstration that someone really doesn’t know who I am.  Doesn’t know my name.  Doesn’t see me.  And doesn’t see how very different I am from some name that they heard in a PSA for the month of February.

….....

So, I hit a dead end in this blog.  And I’m going to do something I don’t do quite often and just leave it there, my thought unfinished.  Because, honestly, I don’t quite know how I wanted to conclude or even present the argument of my thesis.  It is a collection of observations and reflections… and something I want to learn better to craft in dialogue and writing… how to discuss and listen to and absorb the subject of race.

I opted instead to leave this Word document for an hour and some to watch a movie.  A movie I thought might assist me in finding the vocabulary and through line of a race conversation.  It helped, but mostly filled my head with so many other thoughts of conversations I want to have, history I want to learn in more depth, and social/political/health statistics I want to implant in my brain.

The movie is White Like Me.  It was recommended to me by a friend and former colleague from Urban Improv.  I highly recommend spending the $5.00 to rent it and the hour to view it. 

But I’m not going to tell you what to think or what you should get from watching this movie.  Maybe you will think this 103 second preview is enough to confirm that I spend all my time worrying about non-issues.  That I’m justifying the lazy time at my computer with false notions of social justice and not confronting the avoidance of writing my novel.  That is probably true in some measure (the part about avoiding my novel)… although, in its own way this documentary allowed me to see my book in a different light.

But more than that, I realized this conversation of race isn’t about what other people are.  It is as much about what I am.  That no, I am not Jesse Owens.  I am Jessie Olson.  And yes, there is a half century between our lifetimes.  But the differences between us are not Olympic athletics or generation.  The differences are as invisible as the memory slip that confuses our last names.  The freedom to walk down the street without a purse being clutched or doors being locked.  Access to health care, education, and the simple acceptance that I belong in certain settings.

And maybe that’s the point.  That misnomer is an opportunity to realize not only what I’m not, but what I am.  And use that as an opportunity to learn and start a conversation – be it in February or any other week of the year.