"Dee-Dee"

     Dee-Dee cupped her hands around her cup of hot coffee.  She stared at its caramel depths, its color reminding her of the skin that she and her husband Christopher dreamed their son or daughter would have.  If they ever were blessed with children, they dreamed of how it would be a combination of both of them...a little African-American DNA and a little European-American DNA.  Their children would be a genetic mixing of the two of them; Dee-Dee's full nose, Christopher's green eyes, Dee-Dee's lush lips, Christoper's square chin.  A human equality puzzle that fit together perfectly...a new race, who by the power of its presence, would end all the racism in America.  She and Christoper dreamed that one day in America, everyone would be one color.  One day.  Dee-Dee sighed as she heard her father's voice mocking her, bouncing around inside of her head.  "You never know what fruit will fall from the DNA tree!"  The pragmatic part of Dee-Dee's brain knew that in the unpredictable world of DNA, their child could come out looking like Alsha, a young woman in the Book Woman Club.  She had deliciously-dark ebony black skin, a button nose, thin lips and blue eyes!  Her mother and father both had light brown skin.  DNA had it's own agenda!  Still, Dee-Dee could dream a world where the far edges of each race faded away and where, then, there would be no more need for divisive racial definitions. 
     "Look, Georgia...I'm sorry!  I should have prepared you for the Book Woman Club!  I should have told you that you were going to be the only white woman there and that there would be opposition to you attendance!  It wasn't fair of me to invite you to the meeting and use you like a pawn in my private agenda to shake those women up!  I was wrong, and I really am sorry!."  "I don't understand, Dee-Dee!  What did you think I would do if you had told me I was going to be the only white person there?"  "You wouldn't have come!"  "Your wrong, I would have come!"  Dee-Dee cocked her head to one side, raised an eyebrow and stared at Georgia.  "Well...maybe not!  But I would have at least asked you if the other women would be open to me coming or if they would have been offended."  Georgia thought for a minute and then said, "I would probably have come if you had been able to say that they wouldn't have minded me being there!"  Georgia took a long sip of her coffee and set the cup down.  "You knew my being there was going to be a problem!"  "I said I was sorry, Georgia!"  Dee-Dee took her friends hand. "Please, forgive me!"  Georgia wrapped her hands around Dee-Dee's hand.  "Five Starbucks visits and you pay!"  "Four", Dee-Dee counter offered.  "Five!  There will be no negotiating."  Georgia released Dee-Dee's hand and held up five fingers.  Dee-Dee smiled and said, "O.k....Five!"  They both went back to their cups of coffee and pulled at the ragged edges of this society woven out of so many varied textured yarns and sewn together with so many different colored threads; the cloth thread bare and stretched out of shape in the tug of was of competing components.  Dee-Dee looked at her chocolate brown hand wrapped around her coffee cup and then glanced over at Georgia's pale pink hand holding her cup.  And idea began to take hold in Dee-Dee's head and it began to drip from her mouth. 
     "You know, Georgia...we can be sitting in the same room, at the same time, at the same table, eating the same food, right next to each other, and our experience as an African-Americans and as a European-American will be very different."  "So, I'm a "European-American."!"  Georgia grinned ear to ear.  They had been through this race title-exchange over and over again.  "I thought I was human."  "Well, that's what you say you are!"  Dee-Dee stuck her tongue out at Georgia and laughed.  Georgia crossed her eyes and said in a mechanical voice, "I am from planet Zercon and I come in peace!"  They laughed loudly together, causing heads in the coffee shop to turn.  Mouths covered, their laughter quieted to giggles.  "I know, I know!" Georgia laughed softly, "Black and White are just "colors".  It is our heritage that defines us!  The world according to Dee-Dee!"  "Serious, Georgia.  Be serious with me, just for a few minutes.  I'd like to play this game with you, for a few weeks.  Might give you some ideas for your writing and information for my Diversity Training Workshops."  Outside of her work at the museum, Dee-Dee conducted Diversity Training Workshops for Non-Profits and Corporate Institutions.  "O.K.", Georgia responded, curious.  "What is this game that you want to play?"  "Let's play, "What was Different?"  Dee-Dee's brown eyes met Georgia's blues.  "The game's called "What was Different"?  How's it played?"  "We'll, I'm kinda making it up as we sit here."  Georgia laughed.  "O....K!  How do we play this game that you are making up as we sit here?"  Dee-Dee laughed and said, "Well...we go places together...like the mall, or a grocery store.  Dinner.  Here, places like this Starbucks, and if something happens to me that I feel is because of my color, I ask you, "What was Different?"  You report on your experience, right then and there, and tell me the story of what is going at that time and place and if you think my experience is different from yours.  Then I'll tell you my interpretation of the very same experience and we can compare notes."  Georgia thought for a moment and slowly nodded her head.  "O.K.  This might be interesting.   Only I get to initiate the same senerio if I thing that something is different in my experience that is not the same in your experience because I am white."  "European-American"! Dee-Dee countered.  "And I don't think there will be many times that you are treated differently because you are white!"  "Oh, you mean like I wasn't treated "differently" at the Book Woman Club meeting?" Georgia jutted her jaw forward and hung her head to the side. "Huh? This can be our "Looking Glass" adventure!" Georgia folded her arms across her chest.  "Looking glass adventure?  What are you talking about?"  Dee-Dee frowned in confusion. Georgia threw both hands up in the air.  "You know, Alice stepping through the looking glass!  Each of us stepping through the invisible boundary that separates our worlds in the racial divide of America.  I know you're looking at this game as some eye opening life exercise for me, but I'm throwing that expectation right back at 'cha!  I think you are going to be just as surprised as I am by the results this game of yours.  You get a front row view of "White-World", I mean, "Euro-World" just like I'm gonna get an inside look at "African-American World".  Dee-Dee rolled her eyes.  "Believe me, I know more about "Euro-World" than you'll ever know about my world.  We are inundated with European culture from the day that we are born.  Television commercials and ads about your hair, your sun tan lotion, your families, your movies about the inner-sanctums of Wall Street where we will never gain full entry ..."Euro-World" and it's values, privileges and entitlements served up on a silver platter just beyond our reach."  "Soft Sheen Hair Relaxer commercials, Cover girl's Queen Latifa, and the Cosby's - a middle class family of color!  And are you going to tell me that there are no African-American stock brokers?" Georgia countered.  Dee-Dee leaned forward, stabbing an index finger in the air like a sword. "Commercials recruiting us to meet the European model of beauty, and the Cosby Show has been in re-runs, how long?  All I see are sitcoms where we're back to the stereotype of the minstrel player - the clown with little depth and masked humanity.  That's why I don't watch T.V. anymore!  And I don't see many brothers having access to the kind of power that European men have in those Fortune Five Hundred Companies controlling the wealth of America!  You have a lot to learn in this game we are about to play, Georgia!  You want to act like the world is all equal now and that everyone has the same access to power and opportunity, to the "white-boy network"! "  Dee-Dee's index and middle fingers from both hands made quote signs in the air between her and Georgia.  "Really, so that's what I think, huh - Dee-Dee?  And who's producing today's television minstrel players?"  Dee-Dee bristled.  "I'm not naming names, but he sure isn't white!  Maybe you need to take a closer look at yourself and your own assessment of some issues, Dee!  Access to power and opportunity?  I'm single, my dad's dead and I have no brothers or uncles!  I'm not the one married to the "white-boy network"!"  Georgia's index fingers slashed the air and mirrored Dee-Dee's fading air graffiti.