I And The Other: A Wicked Inquiry

By Joe Nalven

Imagine a hurricane inside a meditation──that's where we stand in our national conversation on race. But our knowledge of reality is frail. What we need is a daring guide to brave the unknown and push us closer to understanding others and ourselves. The adventurer must be bold enough to climb the mountain of race and ethnicity, away from distort

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jun 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885903653

Joe Nalven

Joe Nalven studied philosophy at Columbia College, anthropology at UC San Diego and law at the University of San Diego. He is a recipient of a Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Affairs. He served as the Associate Director of the Institute of Regional Studies of the California and the Institute of Chicano Urban Affairs. In addition to his academic and community involvement, he is a visual artist and co-author of Going Digital: The Practice and Vision of Digital Artist. Along the way, he was a NCAA fencing champion.

Book preview

Am I the Other?

If the Epic of Gilgamesh carries a teaching,

it is that the Other makes our existence possible.

—Alberto Manguel

INQUIRIES INTO DEFINING MYSELF

I journeyed up to Riverside, to the university. There was a conference on whiteness. Here was an opportunity, so the storyline went, for blacks and Chicanos to study whites instead of whites studying blacks and Chicanos. Turnaround is fair.

I sat in the audience. A law professor came to the podium and talked about how we think about who we are. He was keynoting the day. I went to Africa, and I was met by some who were interested in who I was. ‘What tribe are you?’ I told them I didn’t belong to a tribe. I told them I was an African-American. They persisted, and I repeated that I was an African-American. Finally, one of them said, ‘Oh, you are from the African-American tribe.’

We have lost that tribal identity in America, unless we are indigenous native Americans or think in metaphorical modes of being tribal. By losing the real sense of tribe, we’ve turned to class, race, religion, gender, and political ideology as different frameworks to mark solidarity with some box. I am box X, or I am boxes X and Z but not Q. Our tribe now, some claim, is intersected identity boxes.

Those frameworks are much too dry, too brittle, too antagonistic for my quest to find who I am. I need a better engine to locate that I among the blizzard of images, sounds, feelings, smells, and touches in which the I moves through time.

Let me give you an idea of my engine for self-discovery. It is the reverse of what Arthur Schopenhauer had in mind. He conjured up a crystal with many facets. Behind that crystal was a rose, and that rose was reflected in each of those facets. And each facet said to itself, I am unique. I am different. I am me. I am the rose. But there were hundreds of facets, each saying the same thing—I am unique. I am the rose. Identical reflections saying they were unique. To an extent we all do that in view of our human biology. That humanness is behind the crystal of humanity, and we each experience a unique moment in time and space as an I. Culture mimics biology in similar fashion.

We can communicate that sensibility in poetry, movies, paintings, and simple conversation, but we cannot jump across from one facet of being to another. Not really. We sympathize, empathize, and resonate one with the Other. But we are not the Other. We can substitute a variety of apparent essences for humanity—our culture, our clan, our tribe. Whatever it is, it is still reflected in the facets of the crystal over which we have no control once they are formed. Of course, we can add new facets and perversely misremember the existing ones. Their shapes can be odd and of different sizes. In the end the crystal is a useful metaphor for our biological, or cultural, or whatever matrix through which we experience our individuality. Some may wish to have each facet identical to the other as some collective horde or claimed authentic essence. But we might ask if we do so, have we lost the I or admit to a sadness of a clone?

THE KALEIDOSCOPIC I

My engine in this book is to turn Schopenhauer’s crystal metaphor inside out. Instead of a rose being reflected in each facet of a crystal, each with the faux identity of being unique (as the rose rather than as a rose). I will seek out the many encounters and conversations I have had and place them in a separate facet of the crystal. No surprise here, this is our modern digital technology. Each facet is a different image conjured from my mind. These are the empirical and grounded memories I have. Added to these memories are creative forays, one a hypothetical—a museum of the imagination, another a community analysis. These concepts add to those memories, much like our I weaves together memories and objective sensibilities. Each facet will be unique in the same way that each facet of a reflected rose believes it is unique, a different memory of people and places to comprise a different facet. And when all the facets are filled, we can look within the crystal to find the I of this book. Presumably that is the me who is writing this book. The concepts—one aesthetic, the other anthropological—represent the struggle to move from subjective memory to informed opinion; both occur in the mind, both are part of the I, even as we try to place some distance between them. But that distance evaporates when we try to measure it.

This is the kaleidoscopic I, composed of memories and quirky concepts, not identity boxes drawn from an ideology of intersections.

What is the evidence for this kaleidoscopic I? A mere assertion won’t suffice. We need data, data to determine knowledge—an epistemology—of my Self.

I suggest we hang glide through this epistemology of Self, especially this I.

What do I mean?

I do not see our world as the straitjacket of a society, ancient or modern, but as multiple ways to configure ourselves. This can be more than a momentary pose; some poses serve as a stronger glue, others weaker in holding this I together. These are the configurations of Self that attach to our place in multiple realities whether of the moment or longer time frames. This is a loose epistemology or knowledge of Self—freewheeling, aggrandizing, and individualistic. Some may object to this flight to find the Self; it is too self-centered from their perspective. They prefer an imposition of the Self within social constructs, cultural units that seem more objective, more permanent than they are.

Allow yourself the pleasure of this metaphor for representing the Self, where the many-faceted crystal, the memory and concept kaleidoscope, discloses the I within. This metaphor rests on the welter of memories that seek a coherent narrative of what we understand to be our unique Self. You are free to skip ahead to find an aha! moment. Such a leap will miss the sensuous nature of this I, the I that is an accretion of many facets, not just myself but yours as well, as your mind would drift to the memories you have, and that would comprise each of the facets that make up your I.

Schopenhauer took a similar position in the reading of his book: His rendering of the world as will and representation was an organic whole; it should be read twice through such that the ending becomes another beginning. The reader becomes invested in this wholeness. And since I’ve appropriated his metaphor of the rose, albeit in reverse, I have the same request of you. Read it through twice.

A SACRIFICIAL LAMB

Now I am a teaching assistant. This was part of my training of becoming a cultural anthropologist. I understood that the department faculty was offering a sacrifice to the newly emerging Third College (now with a new name). I was that sacrificial lamb. The first and second colleges saw themselves as excelling places of study. Top-tier faculty moved to the bluff above the Pacific Ocean. From their hard science and their no-nonsense academics, Third College was a bastard offspring. It was an indulgence to the wizardry of pleasing the aggrieved. Instead of embedding classes in existing disciplines, new departments were being created—communications, ethnic studies. The anthropology faculty explained this new reality to me. I was the sacrificial lamb to a lesser god, in their mind a lesser venue of knowledge. I was tasked to be the teaching assistant to Charles Thomas, instructor of a class on black psychology. I did not know Thomas, nor that he was described as the father of black psychology. I went bearing the bias of the main campus. Others likely saw my assignment as a mark—whether that mark was on my forehead, my back, or the color of my skin.

I sat in the bungalow building classroom. Many of the cluster of colleges began in those left behind buildings of Camp Matthews. It was the turn of Third College to task its classes in those buildings before going on to become Thurgood Marshall College. I sat in the front row as Dr. Thomas arranged his notes, the students filling in each and every seat. Each and every student was black, I white. I had many understandings growing up in the housing projects, watching white flight as we stayed on, witnessing the clamoring of New York’s many cultures, working in the Brooklyn welfare office, traveling to the South promoting books to black colleges and white colleges, and listening to Cassie’s life. Yes, Cassie, a mountain, a hurricane, an asteroid exploding in this world. All these memories bounced around this teaching assistant who seemed physically out of place in black psychology.

As soon as Thomas began to speak, one of the students raised his hand. Thomas looked over and recognized the student. Is he going to grade our papers? He, of course, was me.

At that point I knew nothing of black psychology or Dr. Thomas. I was steeped in the various dimensions of psychological anthropology—depth and cognitive—and even trained to listen by a psychiatrist turned anthropologist. But not black psychology, except where people who lived in black communities and thought and felt and expressed themselves as members of their culture. Was there a difference?

I was intrigued. Dr. Thomas addressed the question to the entire class and to me.

He is here to learn too.

This facet of the crystal was nearly filled. He is here to learn too.

But what about how I felt? What was the emotional texture of this moment for me? I didn’t resent being taken off a pedestal of teaching assistant. After all, I didn’t feel that I was on any pedestal, maybe in the minds of those faculty who saw me as a sacrifice to a lesser academic god. To me, the I was relieved, relieved of having to grade papers, feeling pleasure of being able to sit and learn, being able to earn a salary for sitting and listening.

What do I remember from that class?

Actually, nothing.

It was the moment that I remembered. And so the first facet is filled.

In one sense this is an experiment in decentering whiteness: Where do I find myself in that metaphorical crystal composed of so many facets of black Others? If not this experiment, how else to make tangible an I that some would define as white? There needs to be substance, not just a definition. There must be marked moments in time, place, and context, not the ease that a stereotype provides. The stereotype of black and white intrudes on our more robust perception of reality; at the same time, it is a useful fiction to play with and then to step back from, testing its utility at the end of the play.

Now it is time to move back and forth in time, picking memories in clusters and in isolation to fill the facets of this kaleidoscopic I, sometimes to hurry when pushed and at other times to dwell and reflect when tugged in other directions. To find the I behind the memory-composited crystal.

Memories

Time moves in one direction, memory in another.

—William Gibson

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart

and not in the mind.

—Lionel Hampton

PROJECT TIMES

KINGSBOROUGH FIRST WALK

We lived in one of the first housing projects, the redbrick six-story buildings with functioning elevators and surrounded by bushes, fenced-in asphalt playgrounds, and monkey bars made of metal. We lived on the second floor across from the Martins. The Martins had a telephone; we did not. Uncle Eddie would call, and we would stand in their living room, listening to Uncle Eddie spiral out in some wordy edifice. Uncle Eddie was a combat engineer in five land invasions in the Pacific during WWII. No one knew what PTSD was then; he just talked a lot and got angry at times. He took care of Grandma; she had Alzheimer’s, but no one knew what Alzheimer’s was then. Mrs. Alexander lived downstairs, always having another baby. The Martins didn’t approve; they worked.

The projects changed from when I first remembered it. The Italians, the Irish, the Jews. As I aged from toddlerhood to high school years, the Italians, the Irish, the Jews moved out. Somewhere. My idea of Brooklyn was mostly the projects with subway adventures up to the Bronx. Then the projects became the blacks, the Puerto Ricans, and us. Different friends, like the Martins, but still the projects.

The Martins had the telephone, and we did not. Wendell would knock on our metal door. There was an incinerator chute just next to the staircase. Wendell might say, You have a phone call. Your Uncle Eddie. Once, Wendell knocked on the door. Yvonne had come in. My thoughts danced to the rumor that she had sex in Lincoln Park. I was taking care of my wheelchaired brother and wondering what to say to Yvonne. Maybe she was thirteen; maybe I was fourteen. There was a knock on the door. I opened it, thinking about Yvonne. It was Wendell. Your Uncle Eddie is on the phone. I turned to Yvonne and looked at her. I went across the landing and into the Martins’ apartment. Uncle Eddie wouldn’t let me go, his words spiraling out of control just to hold me in his moment. If I dared to leave the phone, there would be an accusation of traitor to family. When I left the Martins’ and opened our door, my brother was still in the same place, but Yvonne was gone. Where’s Yvonne? My brother shrugged; his speech impeded anything more.

THE TWINS’ BASEBALL BATS

Mrs. Phyllis Levkovich was my fourth-grade and my sixth-grade teacher. Then I was off to junior high. She discovered that my dad was Jewish, and she arranged for me to go to a Jewish camp. We weren’t really Jewish by any mainstream definition. My mother was Ukrainian Orthodox. Not really any religion, much more a communist orientation. That was big in New York, and we had been allies in the big war. Still, the camp was a beginning of cultural knowledge from which I was bereft. Mrs. Levkovich’s classroom had its own library. I began reading Nancy Drew mysteries. Not top deck, but I was reading books.

It was sometime during sixth grade that I heard about the twins, Derek and Kenneth Wilson. They used sticks to beat up Mrs. Levkovich. I didn’t know the story, so it was just an exclamation point. A stop and end of era that I didn’t know was an era or that it was ending. Not until I was pulled into the next era.

CHASING THE TYPING CLASS

Off to Junior High School 210 and eighth-grade typing class. Mrs. Carson had us all seated in front of a typewriter, looking left to a page of text. Her hair was short and maybe chemically straightened—what would a thirteen-year-old know? We sat upright, fingers properly aligned to the keys. We weren’t allowed to look at our fingers, only the text. Go. The race was on to type the words on our left. Mistakes would count against us. Oh wow, thirty-four words a minute. Like the projects, the teachers were changing.

Mrs. Carson also taught social studies, or was it science? It didn’t matter. Mrs. Carson gave us room to figure out whatever it was that we wanted. William and I got together. We made believe we were telecasters and ran our flip chart as a film. William had more ideas, and we decided to have a science club. We met over at the Martins’ apartment. Wendell and my sister joined the club. Did we ever do anything? It didn’t matter. We had a club, and William was in it.

THE COURTYARD

Outside on the courtyard, down off the steps to our building, a half circle of bushes crowded around benches. The day was full sun, and I just came out the front door of our building. A few more steps and I’d be on the walk. I stopped. There was a chase. I watched. In and around the bushes and benches. I didn’t know who they were. They probably lived in the next building. The bushes and benches and the sunny day watched too. Her dress kicked up, hair unkempt and natural. A long butcher knife grasped tightly as she ran after a guy. Brother? Lover? Husband? She was shouting; he was too. Around the benches and then off to the other stoop. And then they were gone.

OFF TO SCHOOL—A CALL TO ORDER

These were not movable seats and desks. These were fixed to the floor. The seats folded up and down. Around the room few were looking to Mr. Brown. They talked and created a momentum for what students do. Mr. Brown’s desk was at the front of the room. We heard a loud clap. Mr. Brown cracked the side of the desk, getting our attention. Not a murmur. Imposing, shaved head, a look demanding and getting attention. Mr. Brown’s coffee-toned energy commanded us to listen, and we listened.

I am now going to read a list of students who took the test to get into Brooklyn Technical High School. These students have been accepted and will go to ninth grade there instead of completing junior high here.

Mr. Brown read the names in alphabetical order. One by one. I had taken the test. I don’t know why. We were in the auditorium, and a girl group magnetized us. They should have been on the radio. Gloria led the way. A magnum beautiful voice. The principal thanked the students and talked about high school. My dad went to college but never talked about those career steps that marked one’s destiny.

You have the opportunity to go to Brooklyn Technical High School, Stuyvesant in Manhattan, or the Bronx High School of Science. You have to take a test to get into one of these special schools.

This didn’t make sense, not the test, not the idea of education after junior high school but that the principal was talking about it. I decided to take the test. A wild idea for someone who lived in the projects and walked to school. Mr. Brown read the list of names of those who were accepted to Brooklyn Tech. He read past my name. I knew alphabetical order, and he was now on Thurston. Past the Ns. And then he got to the end.

Oh yes, there’s one more. That was me. The shock of recognition. My name.

FALL FROM A HIGH PLACE

Junior high was not a transition into manhood. It was a transition, but to what? Walking