As the child of immigrants, I’ve often laughed at the culture clashes and distinctive behavioural patterns – My Big Fat Greek Wedding is almost an autobiography, apart from the small detail of the wrong country (Russia), and how I am still unmarried. I live in a world where race, culture, nationality are visible, identifiable, noticeable. I am not color-blind when it comes to skin: I celebrate the entire rainbow. However, North American society is not tolerant towards minorities, prejudice and bias run deep, systemic discrimination and white privilege are real, not debatable. Previous musings include:
- On race and racism; Vanilla’s perspective
- When nostalgia is impossible
- Vanilla’s presence at a BLM gathering
The more I’ve tried to educate myself to avoid unconscious biases about minorities, the more I’ve learned about the commonly held perceptions about whites, and I’m uncomfortably aware of the weight of my white privilege and just how impossible it is for others to be color-blind when they see my skin color. #lossofinnocence #poorlittlewhitegirl
My eclectic tastes draw me equally to ballet as to African dances like kuduro/semba/kizomba. Unfortunately, not only do I have negative sensuality, but it is a well known fact: white people can’t dance. I mean, if Dave Chapelle says so, it must be true? Still, I can’t help it. The music makes me feel alive.
After one too many comments about how I can’t shake my hips like the other girls in the class, GT pulled me aside at a party and told me I should stop making such disparaging skin-based comments: it made the others uncomfortable. It was a silly stereotype, it wasn’t true, I was part of the team, not all black people can dance, just drop it Vanilla, ok? It’s in bad taste. Because I was too wrapped up in my insecurities, I didn’t listen to him. A few weeks later, following a constructive criticism during practice from Teacher, my response of “yes, well I CAN’T pop my hips any more, I’m white, I’m missing a few joints to have that kind of mobility” produced a tirade from Teacher.
I’m sick of this “white” business. There is no white, there is no black, there is just dance. You are not a white dancer. You are A dancer. Your job is to move to the music. Music doesn’t care what color your skin is. We all hear the same music, we all dance to the same music. Yes, kizomba is from Angola, but every country dances kizomba. One of the biggest kizomba festivals in the world is in Moscow. And in Sweden. And in the Netherlands. Are you going to tell me all those people can’t dance? Kizomba is a dance of the world. Stop with this stupid bullshit and get to work. I told you to pop your hips. Pop them.
Ok then.
Back when Beaut introduced me to Kizomba: “The music is so good! Except for the French Kizomba music, that stuff is crap. And there is so much of it! The French love to believe they invented Kizomba. They think it’s theirs now, they have quite the history of claiming whatever they like from other cultures.”
Walking home from dance class last week, I ran into a guy I used to kickbox with many years ago. Beautiful black guy from Europe, he always was a looker. We chatted a few minutes, catching up on each other’s life. When he found out I’d quit boxing for dancing, he was intrigued. “What kind of dancing?” Kuduro/Semba/Kizomba, with the odd moment of Salsa. “Lol, taking us over, are you? Hey, relax, I was joking. It’s cool, you have good taste at least.”
Kizomba is a dance of the world… a world in which whites have a long, violent history of cultural appropriation.
I love my school. I love how much enjoyment we derive from watching each other grow as dancers. We are all on the same journey together, regardless of our individual levels of competency. When I am with my team, I do start to believe that dancing is dancing, and kizomba/semba/kuduro is a dance of the world.
At the end of yesterday’s kuduro class we had a boys vs girls showdown. The cheering in these videos makes me so happy. (Same choreography as in this post.)
Just like my boxing gym was a perfect example of what could be if tolerance, respect and acceptance were the norm instead of the exception, my dance school gives me hope that occasionally, as a species, we can set aside our differences long enough to listen to the music and enjoy a quick dance. Fun fact: my boxing gym and my dance school are in the same building. So maybe, this has nothing to do with Coach and Teacher’s leadership skills and values, and everything to do with the specific GPS coordinates of the location. The chemical mix of the cement used in the building – undetectable fumes produce abnormally peaceful & loving human behaviour?! Must be it.
Discovering ratchet 
This makes me want to take up dance!
But I am hopelessly uncoordinated. So instead I will just wiggle in my chair like a weirdo. I mean, that’s almost the same thing.
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If you can walk , you can dance . There is no problem in that . Hope I can help
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I can actually hang with the best of them as far as dancing goes, even though I’m whiter than a bleached bed sheet. I took a lot of years of dancing in my younger days, and then there’s always the drunk me that thinks I am dancing a lot better than I probably am.
In the States, the media fuels racism faster and easier than anything else can. Headlines are thrown across the television to rile up the masses. We all turn against one another. I have taken to not watching the news and not giving a shit. When I started getting the mindset that I was still waiting on my White Privilege Card, and then getting pissed off when I started thinking about how our colleges offer scholarships specifically geared toward African Americans, but none for white people, or Asian people …. I decided that mainstream media was filtering into my brain too much, and so I haven’t watched it since.
I mean, I still hold those thoughts to be true, but I don’t take it out on said race for their being an unfairness in opportunity (as I see it, anyway). It just is what it is.
There’s actually a website (can’t remember the name of it right now) that people with “White Guilt” can go to the website and donate money to African American’s that want specific things because it’s the mindset that white’s can get whatever they want, while others can’t ever obtain it. Another thing to piss my white blood off.
The patients I see, come from every spectrum of color and nationality. The way I see it, if you treat me with kindness, I will return the same. I don’t see color. I see eyeballs. I look at them 40 hours a week. That’s the only thing that goes through my mind.
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