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Tickets for my solo play, Tell Me Your Name, are now available through the Ross Valley Players Web Site! Click here to buy your ticket. I'd love to see you there.

One of my friends introduced me to two-minute anime of Tolulope Ogunmefun (born in England of Nigerian parents) riffing about the mispronunciation of his name by fellow English men and women. Listen closely,

Check out one of my favorite excerpts from Tell Me Your Name, my one-woman show, which I performed at The Marsh Theatre, Berkeley. #tellmeyourname #video

Dao, my service rep at the Berkeley Toyota dealer is expecting a baby. I know because she told me. I am pleased at so many levels. I spent much of my legal career fighting to bust open the doors to good paying jobs that previously excluded women. The automotive repair world has few women, and hearing about transmissions and timing bells from a pregnant woman of South East Asian ancestry in a busy auto shop . . . thrills me just a tad. As Dao walks up to my car to greet me, I notice that she looks pregnant, most definitely. Still, I refrain from blurting out, “Wow Dao, you’re expecting, congratulations.” Here’s the rule: unless you see the baby crowning or you are in the delivery room where a C-section is being performed, do not ever ask a woman if she is expecting or make any comment to suggest you think she’s pregnant. Not a WORD. At last year’s service recall visit, Dao tells me she’s just returned from their honeymoon. Mazel Tov, who’s the lucky guy? She describes Charlie, as a “typical American mutt,” part Polish, Irish, German, a bit of everything, you know, just a regular white guy. After congratulating Dao when she tells me they’re expecting, I ask if she and her husband have picked out names. “I told Charlie, our baby’s not gonna get any kinda ghetto name, like the names some of our friends have given their children. If it’s a girl we’ll name her Madeline and a boy, Lincoln. I want our baby to have names that people will vote for if they run for President.” My mind goes into high gear. Didn’t we elect Barak Hussein Obama (who used to be known as Barry) into a second-term as President of the United States? I want to engage Dao in a conversation about the assumptions that underlie her comment. I smile, congratulate her once more, and tell her that Madeline and Lincoln are lovely names. Dao’s desire to give her children Americanized names, speaks to her hopes that they be accepted and fit in more easily among their peers. It was common for immigrants who came to the United States in the large waves of the late 1800s and early 1900s to change their names for various reason: to sound more American, to better fit in, to adopt a new identity in their new country, to avoid discrimination, to expand business opportunities. According to numerous books and official documents about the workings at Ellis Island, it is a myth that people’s names were routinely changed there. (Subject for a future column). It happened in various ways, at the children’s schools, the union halls, the job site, when the building owner didn’t know how to spell foreign name on the rent receipts. “Giuseppe Bianchi, how about we call you Joe White.” The sooner immigrants could fly under the radar, the sooner they would just be as Dao puts it, typical American mutts, just regular white people. These days few immigrants change their names. The New York Times examined 500 name change applications in 2010 filed with the Civil Court in New York City (the city with the largest foreign born population) and of the 500 name change applications, only a half dozen appeared to be Anglicizing their surname. An almost equal number of Russian and Eastern European Jews were reverting to their original family surnames. Several individuals named Mohammed filed petitions to change their names, no doubt in response to anti-Muslim sentiment. According to sociologists interviewed for the NY Times news story, as the US has become a more multicultural country, names reflecting ones’ ancestry are more acceptable. The newly arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s could more easily blend into the whirling sea of Europeans, and those immigrants eventually became part of the great American melting pot. Today’s immigrants from Asia and Latin America, with more distinctive physical characteristics, are unlikely to blend in with a name change. I returned recently to Berkeley Toyota for routine maintenance, and was greeted by Jim, standing in for Dao’s while she was on maternity leave. I inquire about her. “Yep, she’s great, out a few more weeks with her new baby.” “Girl or boy?” “Girl.” “How wonderful, I bet her name is Madeline.” “How in the world did you know?”

My Sunday morning hiking pals and I are huffing our way up some tough hills in Berkeley’s Tilden Park. We’re talking about our children. Women from different walks of life, 50 and 60-somethings – lawyers, teachers, a dentist, and a computer scientist – we know each other through mutual friends, work, and children. Not everyone is a mom, and those who are have college-age children and young adults finding their way in the world. We’re talking about the people our children date: those they seem to be attracted to and how we feel about that. Lakshmi has just returned from visiting family and friends in Mumbai. “I was surprised that many friends are sending their children to university in the United States.” Lakshmi recounts her conversation with Sandya, a childhood friend. We know she is an upper middle-class Hindu. “I told Supriya: ‘Go to New York, have a good time, study hard and play, of course. But don’t for one minute think you can marry a BMW.’” Lakshmi to Sandya, “a BMW, what does that mean?” “You know, Black, Muslim, or White.” I laugh, recognizing myself in Sandya’s admonition to her daughter. When my son Antonio, aka Tony Levine, is dating someone, I look for clues in hopes of learning that the young woman is one of our peeps, a Latina of some sort (we do come in many varieties). And if not Latina, I have my fingers crossed she is a person of color. If I do ask Tony point blank about his love interest’s ethnic or racial background, I’m usually met with two questions: “Why do you care? What difference does it make?” “I’m just curious, son.” My mother’s words whirl inside my head, “stick with your own kind.” In a the segregated South Texas town where the Mexican-American and white kids had nothing to do with each other, there was little chance I might be attracted to a white boy. The reality was that we pretty much distrusted and despised each other. Once I left South Texas, I no longer lived in a binary world and got to know all kinds people, and to my great surprise . . . when I was attracted to someone, their racial and ethnic background didn’t get in the way. I was an equal opportunity romancer and rejecting my mother’s provincial views greatly expanded my romantic horizons. But when it came to settling down, I longed to be with someone who didn’t require a lot of explanation in order to understand the forces that had shaped me. For a period of time in my 30s I declared a moratorium on dating white men. “I’m on sabbatical,” I told my friends, “ethnic studies 101, is not being offered this semester.” I began resenting how attuned and well-versed I was about mainstream culture, and yet how little most white people knew about my group’s experiences, our history. Given that I did end up falling in love with and marrying a Jewish man, it feels hypocritical that I have a strong desire for my son to choose someone from my group. I’m not alone in having these feelings. I’ve heard the same sentiments from Latina, Asian, and African-Americans friends. And I hear the delight in the voice of a Jewish friend, “Leah got engaged, she met a nice Jewish boy.” Mazel Tov to the happy couple and their parents. I imagine that my white friends have these feelings, and wouldn’t dare cop to them for fear of how they will be received. It’s OK, that you have these feelings. Really, it’s within your control. What you do with these messy uncomfortable thoughts, that seemingly contradict your values, well that’s another matter. The power of our tribal in-group biases is huge, and while it’s most difficult to grapple with the discomfort presented along racial and ethnic fault lines, we are seemingly hard wired to find ways of belonging. Numerous psychology experiments grouping people into random groups (tall people, brunettes, first-borns), find that individuals quickly develop positive connection to their group, however defined, and even began seeing their group as special and want to preserve their group. I’m more forgiving now when I feel the longing that my son fall in love with someone from our group, because this desire is overpowered by an even stronger wish. I want my son to be happy, and whoever loves and appreciates him will have me in her court, no matter who her people are.