Where Do We Fit?

Last Tuesday when I went to volunteer for the Baltimore Youth Refugee Program I had an interesting experience. Like usual I went to Patterson Park Charter School and met with the kids and helped them with their homework, but after everyone had gotten some work done we decided to cross the street over to the park on account of the beautiful weather we had last Tuesday. Once we had safely gotten everyone across the street to the park all the kids scrambled for the slide, a swing or the seesaw and us volunteers either watched or helped to push the kids on the swings. As I pushed Shamso on the swing I started to look around at all the other families and kids at the park, which was quite a few because the park was swamped, and I noticed how much of a minority I was in this setting. I mean, besides the other volunteers, I was the only white girl my age. Looking around this was a completely different world then what I was use to, many of the mothers looked to be no older than me and I saw one girl that must have been nine months pregnant who could not have been past 17. This is such a different park setting then what I was use to as a kid, first of all, I had a swing set in my backyard, and our local parks were usually filled with kids of the same color and economic background as us. Also, I grew up in the country so we had our own yard and green grass to play on. So what I was realizing as I looked around was all the immense differences between Baltimore and my hometown of Pomfret, Connecticut. I mean this time, I was the one being stared at, pushing the black child on the swing and I know people must have been thinking what I was doing there because clearly I did not belong to the same economic class and I was not the same color as them. So I guess this is what it feels like to be the one who doesn’t fit in, and, as shown in Alice Walker’s story, we all secretly want to fit in.

Alice Walker’s story strongly relates to my experience because it shown the lengths that Dee, or “Wangero” takes to try and fit in with society. From the background of Dee’s life that the narrator provides us with, we get the sense that Dee never liked being the “minority” and one of the poor black kids that were viewed as the scum of society. So, as a result, Dee gets herself out of there, of course thanks in part to the unappreciated hard work of her mother, but she escapes, and turns around and transforms herself into a beaming image of African pride. Now one might think that if she was trying to fit in then she might decide to dress as the white people dressed, and speak like they did, but due to her headstrong, independent nature, she tries to rebel against society’s accepted norms and tries to become the opposite of a socially accepted lady. However, in her effort to rebel and be proud of her heritage all she does is become exactly like all the white people who would gawk at the blacks and make-fun of their ways. She says to Maggie, “You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But the way you and Mama live you’d never know it.” She also uses a Polaroid camera, something a typical white women would own, and takes pictures of her mother’s home, to show how “those people” lived as if it was not a part of her own heritage, but something much below her. Then, she begins to take things that represent her heritage and getting all excited about them and saying how “priceless” they are and wanting to display them as symbols of her pride for her heritage. What is so amusing about this is that she’s taking these “priceless” quilts with all this history and is using them as decorations that make the objects useless, claiming that this is how they should be handled, and Maggie would only, “put them on a bed and in five years they’d be rags.” The truth is, however, that Maggie would actually use them for their real purpose, and they would not be some trophy to hang on the wall, but objects with actual memories and people behind them. So in reality what make these quilts and churns so priceless, is the value that they hold in the hearts of those who use them to remember their past. So while Dee is trying to boast about her intelligence by saying how valuable these things are only in a material way, Maggie knows that the true value is the love that Grandma Dee put in each stitch as she sewed a quilt meant to keep her family warm.

What’s so ironic about Dee is the way she tries to stand up for black people, but here she is putting down the way they live, and trying to take away her family’s heritage to put it on display like it’s something from another world. Dee even goes to say that her mother and sister don’t understand their heritage, even though they are the ones that are still living it. The poem by Ezra Pound, however, presents a reality about the relations between black and white people in the 1960s. The poem gives us an image of a black branch or “bough” with petals on it. If you think of this poem and the relations between black and white people, the petals are meant to symbolize the white people, and the bough is the black people, wet with tears from their struggle for acceptance. If you think about a flower, the petals are the things that are noticed, but the stem is what provides all the nutrients and support. If you think about a city, even a city today, even a city like Baltimore, it’s the black people who do all the manual labor, and it’s the white people in the skyscrapers who make all the big business deals that are given all the attention. It’s the black laborers who build the skyscrapers and clean the streets that allow the city to function, allowing big businesses to be able to be in the city and be noticed. So perhaps little has changed since Ezra wrote this poem, maybe too few blacks become the petals, and too few whites are the stems.