“Recitatif” – Abdulla
- There are other moments that could be pointed out but I feel like the one that most clearly relates to race has to be the encounter in front of the school about busing. Twyla son’s is going to a school where they’re allowing buses with different race kids in the same bus. Roberta was protesting against this racial integration when Twyla drove up and confronted her. As the confrontation became heated Roberta accused Twyla of being the girl that hit Maggie, also the fact that Maggie was black. She’s trying to showcase the fact that Twyla was abusive towards your own people and the fact that she doesn’t have a right to be for integration if she doesn’t like her own people. From this confrontation you could tell that Roberta is white and Twyla is black. Although it initially seems like the races will be the thing that divides them, after Twyla makes a sign that states “IS YOUR MOTHER WELL?” The entire confrontation ends. This goes to show that it’s very easy to hate someone or despise their way of life when you don’t know who they are. When you are able to disassociate yourself from a certain person or race, you don’t have to share the burden of guilt when attacking them. But since Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were child, it’s hard for Roberta to create distance between them. She probably felt guilty that she was showcasing her hate towards someone who is just asking how her mother is, it’s humanized Twyla in her eyes instead of being just another black person.
- I feel like if you’re an immigrant especially at a young age to a completely modern country, you live two different lives inside and outside of your house. The cultures are so different that one way or another you have to be a version of yourself that you aren’t to reside within it. Especially since I’m from a small isolated country like Bangladesh that’s very conservative and religious, you have to act according to the strictures of society or potentially face being ousted from it all together. When your child your mind isn’t really formed about anything so when you live and was raised in a country like America with its liberal values and more open-minded thinking, but your parents are born and raised in Bangladesh where that is not the case, you become completely different people compared to your parents. You just can’t fathom the manner in which they think and it’s no fault of their own, those are the things that they valued and were taught to value. Whether those things hold racial connotations or any other ancient from thinking, you begin to feel really disconnected from them. In regards to race, the people in my country haven’t interacted with anyone that’s not Bangladeshi so they think they know something about someone when it is actually just a racist stereotype. Like when I was in Bangladesh recently, there was a guy off the street that asked me if black people were more aggressive and was I wary of them? When I first heard it I didn’t know what to say because I just couldn’t understand where he was coming from but then I just decided to say that they’re just people like us. I couldn’t be upset at them for being ignorant, for not knowing. That was a real question that they had and as a person that has interacted with black people, I was an ambassador for them for this person. And so the best things that we could do in regards to dealing with racial or cultural issues if you just understand everyone that’s around us. There’s no way to move forward with a closed mind. Life gets very lonely and painful if we choose to close ourselves off to anybody that doesn’t look like us or behave like us. Especially since we’re so privileged to be in a city that’s so diverse, the best thing that we could do is to embrace our surroundings and do our best not to contribute to the hate that would exist in this world.
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Abdulla, Thanks for these reflections. I noticed an interesting line of connection between your two answers. Both include the issue of children growing up and becoming different from their parents. In the case of Twyla and Roberta, one thing that we see in the scene outside the school is that both have become passionate, committed, active mothers – very different from their own mothers, and this binds them together, even when they disagree about busing. Your own personal situation is obviously quite different, but also serves as a reminder that children often grow up with values and ideas that are not 100% aligned with their parents.