White interests and civil rights realism: Rodrigo's bittersweet epiphany.

• Author: Delgado, Richard

INTRODUCTION: IN WHICH RODRIGO LAYS THE FOUNDATION FOR HIS ASTONISHING THESIS

I had just settled down, taken off my tie, and was about to go over the two-page handout entitled "Information for Wedding Parties" that the minister of the small church had handed me minutes earlier, when I heard a knock and familiar voice from the other side of the anteroom door.

"Professor?"

"Rodrigo!" (1) I exclaimed. "Come on in."

Seconds later, the familiar lanky figure of my smiling friend strode into the little room that the pastor had generously allowed me to use before the walk-through. "I'm glad you're here. We wondered if you would make it."

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," my young friend replied, shaking my hand warmly. "The flight was late. Giannina took a separate cab to the hotel, which is just down the street from her mom's place. (2) I was going to drop her off, but time was running short. Is everyone else here?"

"Everyone but the organist. We're waiting for a replacement. She should be here any minute now."

"What's that you're reading--the guest list?"

"No, instructions for the wedding party. They tell you where to stand, when to speak, that sort of thing. There's a section in here for you, too."

"Uh-oh, then I'd better read up. What happened to the organist?"

"I just learned about it yesterday. At first she said she didn't know any black or Italian music. When we explained that we hadn't requested anything like that, she said she still didn't feel comfortable. Most mixed race marriages don't last, she said. Nothing we could say dissuaded her, not even that we're both in our seventies, widowed, and our first marriages were happy and lasted thirty years."

"You're joking, right?" Rodrigo said. "I guess you never know where attitudes like that are going to crop up. Just the other day, something similar happened to Giannina and me in a restaurant, and I'm much lighter looking than you."

"It's funny how strong the social aversion to interracial marriage remains years after the abolition of formal laws against it," (3) I said. "Did we talk about this once before?" (4)

"Way back when," Rodrigo said. "We identified two views, including a materialist view that restraints on interracial marriage and romance are necessary to facilitate exploitation, since the offspring of those marriages would be of indeterminate race." (5)

"Like you," I said, with a smile.

"Right. Hard to figure. Someone looks at me and can't tell whether I'm white or not. (6) The sort of person to seat at a good table in a restaurant or near the back. This makes everyone uncomfortable. Then, we talked about a competing view, which holds that the taboo against interracial intimacy is a product of deep psychoanalytic forces and fears." (7)

"Right. The one places profits and material advantage at the center of our system of racial hierarchy. Then, the prohibition against intermarriage is just a means to an end." (8)

"Instrumental, a way of assuring a nice clear racial line, so we can know whom to exploit," (9) Rodrigo added. "The other view, by contrast, says that the aversion to racial touching, mixture, and intimacy, is central to, and lies at the very core of, our system of white supremacy." (10)

"For this view, our whole system of school and housing segregation is a means to an end--keeping little black and white school kids from getting too friendly." (11) After a pause, I added, "And the organist incident reminded you of all this?"

"It did," Rodrigo said. "But now, reflecting on some books on race I read the other day, I think I see a way to go deeper. Maybe I'll run the idea past you later at Teresa's. Is someone at the door?"

A discreet knock was followed by the door's opening to reveal the jovial face of the minister who, two days hence, would preside at my wedding to the beauteous widow Teresa. "How are you two doing?" he asked.

"Fine. I've been going over my marching orders. May I introduce my young friend and colleague, Rodrigo?"

"How do you do?" the minister said. Then, turning to me: "The substitute organist just arrived. She's in my study selecting music with Teresa. Are you ready?"

As we walked back to the wedding chapel, Rodrigo and the minister talked about a period in U.S. history in which my young protege was intensely interested. It appeared that the minister, as a seminarian, had ridden one of the original freedom buses and marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama. (12)

The walk-through itself lasted less than five minutes. "You'll all do fine," the minister said. "Call me if you have any questions. You, too, Teresa."

"We'll see you in two days, then," I said, shaking his hand, then fishing in my breast pocket for the checks I had written out ahead of time. "This is for you, and this one for the organist."

1. CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE WHITE COMFORT ZONE

   An hour later, I was seated in Teresa's comfortable living room while she performed a last-minute operation in her kitchen and we both waited for the arrival of the two young people. After a few minutes spent in reverie, I heard a car door slam outside and voices on the steps.

   "Hi, folks. We're here." Rodrigo's cheerful voice gave way to Giannina's tall figure, followed by a toddler holding a teddy bear and sucking his thumb.

   The toddler took his thumb out of his mouth long enough to say, "Hi, Grandpa." I wondered briefly who had taught him to say that, then the kitchen door opened. Teresa entered, wearing a simple dress cut from an elegant Italian material that took my breath away, tray full of beverages and cookies in hand, and motioned that we should all make ourselves comfortable. Rodrigo picked up little Gustavo, held him up for Teresa and me to greet, and then walked into the bedroom, closing the door.

   "We brought his favorite educational video, but I'm guessing he'll be asleep in ten minutes," said Giannina. "It's past his naptime, and he was starting to nod in the car on the way over."

   "What do you have there?" I asked, pointing to a bookbag she had deposited on the living room table next to the tray with our refreshments.

   "Some books Rodrigo scooped up at the last minute. Something to do with what you two were talking about earlier. I'll let him explain that himself."

   As though by magic, Rodrigo emerged from the bedroom door. "He's on the bed, watching Barney. I bet he'll be out cold in a couple of minutes. First, he wanted to see your bathroom, Teresa." Giannina gave a knowing smile, and when Teresa and I must have looked blank, she explained, "He's learning self-control right now, if you know what I mean. Wherever we go, he wants to see the toilet."

   "And how the seat goes up and down," Rodrigo added, "and his portable potty fits snugly. When I showed him, he seemed very reassured."

   "If he falls asleep, that'll give us at least an hour," Giannina said. "The professor just asked what all these books were about."

   "Oh," Rodrigo replied, "some recent books on race I'm thinking of assigning next term."

   I turned my head sideways and squinted at some of the titles. "You've got David Cole's No Equal Justice (13) and Randall Robinson's The Debt, (14) which figures prominently in the reparations debate. And I see you have"--I indicated a hefty volume with familiar looking writing on the front--"Perea, Delgado, Harris, and Wildman's Race and Races (15) which was just reviewed by five writers in the California Law Review. (16) And that last one looks like"--Rodrigo obligingly rotated a bright yellow volume for me--"yes, I guessed it. The Miner's Canary, (17) by Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres."

   "And I bet you're going to tell us what these diverse volumes have in common," Teresa said, picking up the tray and motioning that I should start it circulating. "Try these cookies. Gus baked them himself yesterday."

   Rodrigo looked at me quizzically, muttered something about my hidden talents, and said, "I've actually got a few others outside. Books, I mean. Including one for the two of you. But they all do have something in common. And it has to do with what Gus and I were talking about earlier: whiteness and white transparency, (18) but in a radically new guise."

   "I'd better explain," I said. Rodrigo tiptoed over to the bedroom, opened the door, and peered inside, as I recounted to the two women what our conversation at the church had been about.

   "Sound asleep," he said upon his return, putting his thumb to his lips. "And he went to the bathroom before turning in, just as we taught him to do."

   "We're all anxious to hear this mysterious idea," Giannina said. Then looking at the two of us: "I tried to get him to tell me earlier as he was collecting those books before our trip. But he said he was still working through it."

   "I was," said Rodrigo. "But now that I've mulled it over, I'd like to run my thesis past you. It doesn't have to do with race and romance specifically, but with broader realms of discourse and action. It's a more generalized thesis that helps unify diverse phenomena."

   Out of the corner of my eye I saw both Teresa and Giannina smiling knowingly. My young protege was never short of a new thesis, I thought, or shy about sharing it with us.

   "I, for one, would love to hear," I said. "Why don't we pick up our drinks and head into the study? It's more comfortable."

   "And we're less apt to wake the baby," Giannina added, picking up her teacup and leading the way.

   1. In Which Rodrigo Explains the Point of Civil Rights Law

   We all settled down in the comfortable, wood-paneled room, Teresa and I looked up expectantly, and Rodrigo began:

   "Have the three of you noticed how uncomfortable some of our white friends are with discussing, or even using the word, 'racism' these days?"

   "I have," Giannina said. "Just the other day my reading group was talking about one of those books." She pointed to the pile Rodrigo had lined up next to his place on the coffee table. "A new member kept asking whether the authors were not, as she put it, obsessed with race. She was surprised when none...