Show and Tell

September 7th, 2012

Today I packed my box to be sent to my permanent site in Albay, (Bicol region of Luzon). It felt good to start the process.  My 16 year-old host sister wanted to look at what I packed.  In the box was a red journal that I keep my pictures in.  I showed her a few pictures from my 26th birthday Brunch celebration.   She looked through the pictures and said they were nice.  Then she went through the pictures again and commented "wait I noticed they are all black".  Her comment seemed strange to me as I thought it was natural to see a group of black people in pictures because that was my frame of reference. Secondly, it occurred to me that not everyone who attended my Brunch was black, but I didn't bring all of the pics, just a few of my close friends.  Instead of being on the offense I remembered that she is not used to seeing pictures/representations of Americans without seeing white people but she has seen pictures of white people without black people. (The irony, I tell you) Her follow up question was "do you not like them?".  I At that moment I wanted to laugh because the question seemed ignorant to me, but then again she is ignorant to my life as an African-American.  I knew I had to answer this correctly or it would stain her perspective of me and other African-Americans.  I knew that she would also generalize my response and apply it to how I engage with my clustermates here, so I had to be on point with my response.I looked through the pictures with her again and told her that part of the group were my co-workers and the other were former classmates.  I then went on to explain to her that the people she saw were part of the Association of Black Social Workers organization. More quesitons followered of course as expected.  She then asked why our organization existed and I explained because of the disparities faced by African-Americans at that time that were not being addressed by the nonblack organizations.  She seemed satisfied with my response but I could tell she had other questions.  Out of this "Show and Tell", I appreciated that fact that she asked the questions and I could answer them.