"We Chose Survival"

     

    We Chose Survival, 2021, by Ruth Lindemann

    The first thing you do when you get a copy of a newly-released book written by your mother's one and only lifelong friend is to stare at the pictures on the cover. Next, you flip through and look for more pictures of your mom, who has  been gone for 10 years already She hardly ever spoke about her childhood. You flip past the first part of the book in Austria (which you discover later is filled with betrayal and fear) and with interest, you see the two of them in Longview, Washington standing in a field, wearing shorts and halter tops with saddle shoes. (It's on the bottom left on the cover.) In 1949 they have grown, and stand together again with peter pan collars and sweaters. There is also a picture of Ruth with Shirley and Ruth's boyfriend Fred (later her husband for fifty-six years)  sitting outside of a lodge at Spirit Lake,  posing like they are going to be on the cover of an album, confident and cool as only high schoolers can be. 

    Then, you start to read the words around the pictures. This is a life of ongoing upheaval and stress. Attending fourteen different grade schools, each with "vile racism and anti-semitism." This is a life that includes pain I  never thought about; her stomach being literally pinned together after surgery due to lack of proper supplies during the war; the smell of kids who can't bathe regularly, the school fights and being called a nigger, the weariness and fear during the ongoing cloud of the war. 

    I know very little about my mother's youth; much of what I know was confirmed here;  she went to Camp Fire Camp in the summer, she loved Spirit Lake, and she dated in high school.  I didn't know about her extensive list of daily chores, or how much she and her brother both played piano. Ruth was envious of her in many ways; her life had stability and white privilege,  even in their meager circumstances. How my mom once stopped talking to Ruth so that she could attend a dance with a boy who didn't want to go with someone who was friends with a Jew. Those are the kinds of things that only a very strong bond can move beyond. 

     I later heard the skinny dipping story from Ruth and my mom when I was much older and they decided to visit us in Japan, and was pleased that they had been so daring. Whenever Ruth was around, there was always a lot of laughing; they had a shared enthusiasm for adventure. Together, we watched pearl divers and they bought pearl necklaces. 

    I was glad to read the testament to the closeness and ongoing friendship with my mother, but even then, Ruth is always aware of possible danger at every turn.  "My criterion for non-Jewish friends was this: Would this person hide me from the Nazis? If the answer were no, we would not be friends. Only two or three times in my life was the answer yes, and these were friends I could trust. I most cases, the answer was maybe, and the friendship was only on the surface and would not last. Shirley was a special case. Our friendship lasted for over sixty years, but through all those years I fortunately didn't need to test it.

    The book was written to "share recollections of a Jewish child in fascist Europe." I share the preface here as a testament to the spirit of this book -the bulk of which I've ignored here in my own selfish search for memories of my mother: 

The sentences and syntax are, at times, awkward and repetitive. These flaws reflect that fact that I had to translate my memories from the thoughts of a child who had a sparse knowledge of English, and later from the disconnected diary entries of a teenager, traumatized by the dichotomy and mixed messages of her world. 

Thank you,  Ruth. 

John Henryism

 Sharing this guest post from Renton Technical College VPI Dr. Stephanie Delaney's February 12th newsletter, with her permission. You can find her at www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniedelaney 

Do you remember the legend of John Henry? He tried to out hammer a steam powered machine and he succeed! Unfortunately, he later dropped dead of exhaustion. I remember watching the Disney cartoon about John Henry when I was a kid (this isn't, of course, a link to the cartoon, but gives you the idea).

"Successful Black people tend to die much earlier than their white colleagues."

A couple of years ago I was at a conference where they talked about John Henryism, a term I had never heard of before. It referred to a situation where Black people worked incredibly hard to succeed in this white world. And they often did succeed. But at what cost? Mortality. Successful Black people tend to die much earlier than their white colleagues.

Being Black in the white workplace is really stressful and stress can be lethal. When we have conversations about white privilege and some white people say they don't have any privilege, they are not thinking about not bearing this incredible burden - the burden of simply being Black. You can think of being white as being the steam engine and Black as trying to do the same work with two hammers instead of steam power.

When we succeed, it is not accurate to say, "See, there is no racism because Black people hold positions of power or experience success." It is accurate to say that success can happen in spite of the racism in the workplace . . . or the college. And at what cost? Poor health outcomes? Early death?

We often celebrate when people succeed despite the odds against them (think every commencement ceremony you've been to). We need to change that narrative. There is no glory in suffering.

Trying to reduce and eliminate that pointless suffering is one of the key reasons our college needs to be laser focused on dismantling the systems of racism - the policies, procedures, and negotiated agreements that keep barriers in place that are designed to hold people back. Rather than celebrate when people manage, against all odds to succeed, let's get rid of the barriers and celebrate that instead.