3 Reasons Why I'm Not "Buying" Cheerios

No disrespect to General Mills, but this we roll in the Diver household.

I had a dream last night that I was wandering down the cereal aisle at my local CVS and saw a sign: "Cheerios 2 for $4."  The shelves--what someone might see the night before a major natural disaster, Y2K, or Armageddon--were pretty much cleaned out except for one, lonely, sad box all the way in the back of the top shelf which I couldn't reach.

And then I woke up.

Just a few days ago while attending TEDxBoston, someone asked: "So what's all this Cheerios stuff about anyway?" I explained how Cheerios placed a commercial on Youtube depicting an interracial couple and biracial child.  After confirming with her mother that Cheerios are "heart healthy" we see the father on a couch, awakened to Cheerios poured all over the left side of his chest (he does let out a little scream at the end, is he saying "Jan"?).  

And it appears people don't like seeing a commercial that involves a white actor, a black actor and a biracial child.  Like any good capitalistic society, Americans responded to show their solidarity and support of interracial families through articles, blogs, commercial spoofs, websites, and yes, buying Cheerios.

But here are three reasons why I'm not buying them; the product or the claims.

First, because I'm not paying $4-$5 for a box of (processed) cereal.  Call me cheap, call me stingy, call me "not down with the struggle," but I think name brand (processed) cereal prices are getting way out of control for the average household (unless you are the coupon whisperer or live near a Wal-mart or buy your groceries on Amazon.com). Which leads me to my next reason.

Second, because I grew up on generic food, Latin, and British brands.  I have no loyalty to Cheerios.  As a child, the fact that we bought so many "off brand" items (except for beer and processed meats) reinforced the stark differences between the world inside of my Nigerian, immigrant household and the urban, American life I lived once I walked out of our front door.  I wondered why the staples we picked up from the store and kept in our refrigerator and cupboards looked, smelled and tasted so different from the food I saw on television commercials or my friends' lunch boxes (I mean have you ever seen a commercial, in America, on an English-speaking network, for cow's tongue? I rest my case).   

My parents rarely bought "fun junk food" like Oreo cookies, Lays potato chips, Chef Boyardee or Spaghetti O's.  And for a good chunk of my childhood I had "orange drink" instead of orange juice; and what would a good, 1980s, African party be without a cooler the size of a coffin or a trash can big enough for a child to fall into, stuffed to the gilds with ice and the full panoply of Shasta soda cans and a few Huggies thrown in for good measure?  I don't share the America = Cheerios ethos and nostalgia.  Do I identify an American upbringing with Cream of Wheat? Yes. Weetabix? Yes. Bird's Custard, Ovaltine, and Milo? Yes. Cheerios? No, not so much.

And third, because I don't think Cheerios will unclog my arteries.

Aside from babysitting, my first "job" at the age of 13 was volunteering at Washington Hospital Center where my mother worked for several decades as a Respiratory Therapist.  My assignment?  The Cardiac Catheterization Lab where I kept charge over the waiting room while families read, paced, prayed, and waited nervously for loved ones to emerge from procedures that unblocked arteries and restored bloodflow to the heart.  Now I did a lot of eavesdropping that summer and overheard a lot of conversations and advice to prevent repeat visits: exercise...oatmeal...Coumadin.  But no, can't say I ever heard the cardiologist prescribe Cheerios.

But what I can appreciate about "Cheerios-gate" is how it serves as a reminder of an important reality amidst many drinking the proverbial post-racial Kool-Aid: that yes, while in the words of Hillary Clinton James Cleveland we've "come  too far from where we've started from," we still have a ways to go.

Why I'm Not Celebrating National Marriage Week

Since I write about marriage and relationships, I felt a bit out of the loop when I learned on Twitter that National Marriage Week was in full effect. But once I began mentioning to friends: Hey! Did you know it's National Marriage Week?, I figured that their blank stares and side-eyes meant I wasn't the only one who didn't get the memo.

The National Marriage Week USA site lists a bunch of events so I said to myself,  Hm...let's see what National Marriage Week events are going on in the city of Boston -- the largest New England city and the tenth largest metropolitan area in the United States!  I began scrolling through a list that was supposed to show me events in my area, but it really just showed me events in everyone else's area: Texas, California, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Kansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, Texas, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, oh, and Texas.

So figured it would just be faster to put in my state and -- voila! -- a whopping two events appeared.  One in Dartmouth, Massachusetts which my husband had to explain wasn't THE Dartmouth but more like THE Dartmouth's stepcousin, and another in Holbrook, Massachusetts, a suburb about 20 miles south of Boston.

Now, considering that the stated purpose of National Marriage Week is to strengthen marriage, I assumed any associated events would be just that: an opportunity for couples to strengthen their marriage in substantive ways.  Maybe an opportunity to set aside the distractions of the week to sit face to face and connect.  Maybe a couples rub down that might lead to you know what.  Heck, maybe even a room with one of those 7-foot champagne bathtubs like in the Poconos! But no, one of the events was essentially a Saturday evening potluck followed by a viewing of a two-hour, Focus on the Family webcast.  

No disrespect to Dartmouth, Holbrook, or strong marriages, but on this one...I'll have to pass.

The Key a Successful Marriage Union: Separation

It's official.  We're Brendan James groupies.

Our latest BJP (Brendan James Pilgrimage) took us to New York City for Rock Talk Presents: Brendan James.  Part performance, part intimate conversation, Rock Talks allowed the audience to listen in on a conversation between Brendan James and 2011 Emmy Award winning news anchor Phil Lipof; interweaving a discussion about his career throughout a performance of some of his newest songs.  

So with my sister-in-law in tow, my husband and I trekked over to Feinstein's at Loews Regency and settled into our booth for the evening, a room that looked like it doubled as the set of Mad Men.  After giving Phil a pep talk (he found out we came down from Boston and told us he's from Newton, Massachusetts), we enjoyed another great Brendan James performance while turning my sister-in-law into a believer.  And in typical Diver fashion we made our presence known by shouting "TARHEELS!" and "GO PATS!" when the interview questions turned to sports, and by punctuating with end of songs with: "You betta SANG!" and "Dat boy good! (And my husband's best "Nigerian" translation impersonation: "Deh boy iz good!")

For those of you who don't remember Mr. James from my previous post, he's a fellow Tarheel, my favorite "white-guy-with-a-piano," the singer-songwriter my husband stumbled upon one day on iTunes and as been playing on repeat ever since.  Over the last year we've seen him perform live at least 3 or 4 times.  And from one show to the next, he's remained the same humble, down-to-earth, and approachable person who takes time to meet and connect with his audience.  

Our favorite Brendan James story thus far is when my husband ran into him in between sets at a show and requested his cover of Jamie Foxx's Blame It.  Considering we were in Londonderry, New Hampshire at the time, Brendan was a tad skeptical about how it would go over with the crowd. But I had complete confidence that white people still love hip-hop.  Yes, even in New Hampshire.

But what impressed me most about this particular show wasn't so much Brendan James' music, but another theme that came up repeatedly during the interview: his marriage.  He spoke often about his marriage in light of his own parents' divorce and the demands of his music career, particularly one that requires him to spend a significant amount of time on the road and way from home.  As in previous interviews, Brendan mentioned that his wife does not travel with him because she has her own life and interests aside from his work as a musician (to which I'm sure I let out an "Amen!").

When asked about his thoughts on the current state of marriage in America, Brendan acknowledged the reality of increasing divorce rates and declining marriage rates while at the same time expressing hope.  He's optimistic that his own generation -- having experienced the impact of divorce first-hand -- will be even more committed to stem that tide.  And personally, I hope he's right.

Interracial Privilege?

How many of you watched this and said: 'Ive GOT to get one of those watches!'?

"Interracial intimacy is subversive of the racial order."

 Rachel F. Moran, Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance

Read more »

Why Boston

A photo I took the last time my parents were in town.  The Boston church where they were married.

Patriot's Day is coming up this Monday, and it's one of those holidays you're completely oblivious to unless you live in Massachusetts.  Celebrated annually on the third Monday of April, this holiday commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution that took place in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.  So imagine my pleasant surprise when I realized that the Blogging While Brown Boston Meetup I am hosting on Friday is being held in the Crispus Attucks Room! Crispus Attucks, a black man (although I'm sure his racial classification was probably much different in the 1770s), was the first person shot and killed by the British in the American Revolution. In fact, the site where he died is a five minute walk from my apartment building.

Considering the serendipitous confluence of these two events, I thought this would be a good week to tackle the age-old question asked of every black person who is not from Boston and moves to Boston of their own volition:

"Why the $#$@$#%! would you move to BOSTON?!"  

I get it, the city still has quite the public image problem, especially among adults of a certain age group who continue to circulate the common refrain that Boston is "a racist city."  Now granted, about 95% of the people I've heard this from a) have never actually visited Boston or b) were in Boston for 48 hours for a work conference and base their opinion on bad customer service at a restaurant.  But I guess a subjective opinion is subjectively valid.

Well, see, what had happened was, back in 2004, one Sunday morning after church in Durham, North Carolina, I met this guy who grew up in Woburn, Massachusetts.  After a year of friendship, nine months of dating, seven months of engagement, a year of marriage, we gave our friends and family the shock of their lives and announced our move to Boston for my husband's job.  In their minds, Boston had nothing for us: no family, no friends, no sweet tea.  Sadly, I don't recall too many expressions of excitement or happiness; just projections of insecurity and fear masked by a whole lot of questions:

"You've only been married a year, what are you going to do for a support system?"

"How are you going to find a church?"

"Is it safe?"

"You're not really going to raise children in the city are you?"

"Isn't the cost of living really high?"

"Why would you move up there to rent when housing is so much cheaper in the South?"

"You don't expect me to visit do you? It's too cold up there..."

"Why don't black people up there speak to each other?"

Fast-forward four years, I'm still growing in my appreciation of our adopted home.  It has less to do with surviving winters or dealing with the infamous lack of warmth Bostonians display to each other than my amazement at how much a family can achieve in just one generation.

My parents emigrated to the United States from Nigeria in the 1970s.  They came for the same two reasons as the rest of their friends: educational opportunity for themselves and their children.  After spending a year sleeping on a friend's couch in New York, my dad landed in Boston and brought my mom over.  They studied at Northeastern and UMass-Boston full-time, worked full-time, and raised two children full-time.  Living in a rental owned by Haitian family in Mattapan, my parents depended on the kindness of neighbors, friends, the church, and the government welfare system.

What they lacked in material wealth they made up for in deep relationships among their tight-knit, immigrant community.  So now when I walk around the city, the fruit of their sacrifice, labor, suffering and pain, I walk with my back a little straighter, my head held a little higher.  Because I know that the hotels and office buildings where I now run meetings and attend cocktail receptions are the very places my mother and her friends cleaned as a hotel maids and where my father and his friends worked graveyard shifts as a security guards.  And without them, there is no me.

The fact that so many people make blanket statements about places they've never visited speaks more to our propensity to fear the unknown, usually masked as "regional snobbery."  The West Coast is lazy, unproductive, passive aggressive, inclined to smoke weed, and way into their feelings.  The East Coast is anal retentive, mean, cold, violent, expensive, crowded, dirty, and not getting enough sunlight.  The South is S-L-O-W, overweight, hard to understand, not as intellectually engaged, and just straight country.  The Midwest? Well, it's just really cold and desolate.  And the Northeast is a den of abomination and seafood.

But what moving to Boston has taught me is that places are more the same than they are different.  It doesn't matter if the New York Times reports that the South or the North or Mars is the new utopian Shangri-la for interracial families, because in two weeks there will be another article, or study, or interview that says the exact opposite.  People will be people.  Racism and ignorance cannot be limited to a particular ethnicity, geographical boundary, socio-economic status, level of education, or profession.  And who knows, maybe a year from now--heck maybe even a week from now--I may be so fed up with snow and exorbitant heating bills that I start planning a defection back South.  But what I do know, at least right now, is that I love this city.  So when people ask, "Why Boston?"  I simply respond: "Because it feels like home."

Jesus is Not Post-Racial

Poor Gary.  I think he may have been at my church growing up...

In May 2004, I met my husband right before I left town for Memorial Day weekend.  I'd just barely survived my first year of law school and planned to spend the holiday weekend in Maryland to detox my soul.  But over a three week period, every Sunday at church a different person would come up to me, insisting that I meet this guy from church who was starting law school in the Fall.  I knew it was really serious when a friend visiting from Nashville even insisted that I meet this guy.  So one fateful Sunday, a friend finally introduced us after church. There was no love at first sight; no fireworks.  But that meeting sparked the beginning of a friendship that evolved into a romance, engagement and marriage over the next three years.
 
Most people wrongly assume that my husband and I met in law school because we're both lawyers.  It's understandable--we did attend the same law school and overlapped by one year.  In fact, most of the lawyer couples I know connected over Torts or spent long nights "studying" Constitutional Law outlines together, but alas, we don't share the typical "Barack and Michelle Obama love story."  When I tell people that we actually met at church, I find it amusing how often people are taken aback.  I'm not sure why, but I have some theories: A) They assume lawyers are angry at God for law school and conclude that "Christian lawyer" is an oxymoron and our profession is full of soul-less, religion-averse, God-haters; or B) They think that God fits so snugly under the notches of the Bible Belt that He ceases to exist North of Maryland.  And if so, then surely Massachusetts is at the cusp of eternal damnation.
 
Moving to Boston after our first year of marriage entailed lots of searching: a job for me, a place to live, somewhere to park our car, the closest L.L. Bean for winter outfitting, etc.  But searching for a church proved to be an adventure far more hilarious than we expected.  First there was the church that packed us in like sardines, featured impromptu solos from the pastors in the middle of sermons, and took time to recognize "100% tithers" (I still haven't quite figured out the math on that one--how can anything less than 10% can still be called a tithe?).  Then there was the so-seeker-friendly-that-we-don't-make-any-definitive-statements church, where the sermon began with "Well, I think maybe what Paul might probably be trying to say here could possibly be perhaps..." but we really enjoyed the free bagels and the Starbucks gift cards!  And then the suburban churches we visited left us feeling literally and figuratively out of place at their disbelief that we drove in  "all the way" from the city (a mere thirty minutes).
 
You see, neither of us really had to "look" for a church before.  Growing up, we attended the same church that our respective parents attended, and in North Carolina I attended the same church for eight years.  So we came to Boston having done very little church research, with a few half-hearted recommendations from family and friends, and  a resigned "I wish I had a church I could recommend to you in Boston, but I don't," from one of our North Carolina pastors.  As we began church shopping, we talked about what we were looking for--how we would know when it was time to stop browsing the aisles and settle into a particular congregation.  Chief among our concerns was worshipping in a place where we felt accepted and affirmed as an interracial, married couple.  And very early into our relationship, I learned that nothing to do with the demographic make-up of a church's pastoral staff or congregation.
 
When my husband and I were dating, I expected some less-than-ideal reactions from family members, but was completed blind sided by the comments I heard from members of my church (many of whom had no idea I was dating anyone, much less, a White guy).  In one instance, a friend relayed a story about a disagreement with another church leader.  To drive home his point that the other person involved was everything but a child of God, he concluded: "AND he's married to a white woman!"  (Trust me, he didn't intend it as a compliment.)  In another instance, while chatting with a fellow graduate student, I learned about some church leaders who, when talking to their child about dating, ended the conversation with, "You want to marry someone who looks like mommy don't you?"

After we got engaged and entered the realm of church-based, pre-marital counseling, I noticed that none of our assigned reading acknowledged that two people who don't look like each other might actually meet at church and consider spending the rest of their lives together.  So I asked another classmate who was also engaged and in an interracial relationship if she knew of any books that churches or pastors used in pre-marital counseling with interracial couples.  Her response: "No, because there aren't any.  And I think that silence speaks volumes about how most churches really feel about interracial marriage."

Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and I realize that my shock had more to do with my overly idealistic and unrealistic view of church that was, quite frankly, unbiblical.  There is no perfect church because at its core is a community of broken people.  So even in a faith community that holds diversity and multi-culturalism in high regard as a core value, and boasts a congregation made up from every tribe, race, nation, and tongue, Jesus does not simply become a panacea for the racist thoughts and behavior to which we are all susceptible.  It's not enough to simply be comfortable with having lots of different people in the room (but it can be a great start).  In fact, if I hear a church harping on "racial reconciliation" for more than five minutes, I start to get a little nervous. 
 
Our search for a faith community in Boston included many twists and turns, but eventually led us to settle in a Presbyterian congregation where the dominant culture is Pan-Asian.  And on the one hand, I'd like to think that I could find out what our church leaders really think about racial issues by asking: "How would you react if your son or daughter married someone that doesn't look like you?" But the truth is, racism is too pervasive to have a litmus test.  It doesn't matter how many flags from different nations are displayed around our sanctuary; how many worship songs and hymns we sing in other languages; how many AIDS orphanages we support; how many East Africans or Koreans we adopt; how many Historically Black Colleges and Universities we reach out to; how many hours we tutor and mentor children from the local housing project; how many care packets we prepare for the homeless; how many outreaches we hold for the Spanish-speaking community; how often our sermons reference  Martin Luther King, Jr.; or how often our bulletins and announcements include imagery with different colored hands, rainbows, or kaleidoscopes.  But rather, our willingness to embrace and display grace in the midst of messy lives, full of  misconceptions, mistakes, misunderstandings, and missteps around race (among other things).

Why I'm Still A Jill Scott Fan

My new friend is handsome, African-American, intelligent and seemingly wealthy. He is an athlete, loves his momma, and is happily married to a White woman. I admit when I saw his wedding ring, I privately hoped. But something in me just knew he didn't marry a sister. Although my guess hit the mark, when my friend told me his wife was indeed Caucasian, I felt my spirit...wince. I didn't immediately understand it. My face read happy for you. My body showed no reaction to my inner pinch, but the sting was there, quiet like a mosquito under a summer dress.
- Jill Scott

For me, going to the hair salon is fifty percent about actually getting my hair done, twenty percent about laughing with the other ladies at the shop, and thirty percent about catching up on all the issues of Jet, Ebony, and Essence that I've missed between appointments.  Which explains why I'm always so late when it comes to finding out about some celebrity "scandal" or "controversy," one example being Jill Scott's article on interracial dating in the March 2010 issue of Essence; I encourage you to read the entire piece for yourself.

In the article Scott discusses the internal sting felt by her and many other black women upon discovering that a handsome, successful black man is married to a white woman.  She emphatically denies that any of her feelings are rooted in prejudice toward any race or people group, but rather America's history of race, slavery, sex, and a Euro-centric standard of beauty.  The "wince" that Scott feels basically amounts to a sense of betrayal committed by black men against black women.  For black women to have served as the venerable paragon of the ride-or-die chick throughout history by literally and figuratively carrying the burdens, hopes, and pains of an entire people on our backs, a black man's "vote" for a white woman is essentially a "vote" against all of the black women who enabled him to become a success story. 

While I appreciate the historical context Scott provides in the commentary, the problem is that her story is incomplete.  Slavery is part of the African story in America, but it is not the only chapter.  Her article reminds me of a TED Talk given by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie entitled "The Danger of the Single Story."  The author recalls her first trip to Mexico and how American media coverage of the immigration debate wrongly colored her view about an entire country:

I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara; watching the people going to work, rolling up to tiers in the marketplace, smoking, laughing.  I remember at first feeling slight surprise, and then, I was overwhelmed with shame.  I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans, that they had become one thing in my mind: abject immigrant.  I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself.  So that is how to create a single story: show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

Similarly, to recall the history of blacks in America as only about race, sex, slavery, and a Euro-centric standard of beauty robs a people of its dignity and common sense of humanity.  So while it is true that "the Black slave woman was overworked, beaten, raped and farmed out like cattle to be mated,"  it is equally true that people, black and non-black "struggled together, mourned together, starved together, braved the hoses and vicious police dogs and died untimely on southern back roads together."  Personally, I am eternally grateful to the Washington, DC couple who gave a whole new meaning to the motto "Virginia is for Lovers." 

Scott's article received praise, derision, and claims of racism.  And while I disagree with the premise upon which she bases her opinion, I can appreciate her honesty and willingness to speak what many people think and feel but are to scared to admit out loud.  I am still a Jill Scott fan because she kept it real.  And this world could use a little more reality.