I’ve Owned a Mirror My Whole Life, Thanks
by Edmund J. Janas, II
Really, the following essay could have multiple titles, but I’m told two is my limit. Hmm, I’ll have several, thank you!
“Wait, Am I Black Today? A Memoir in Passing”
or
“If I’m Black, Why Does Everyone Think I’m Jewish?”
or
“The Only Thing I’m Passing Is Judgment”
or
“Black, Polish, and Confused: A User’s Guide”
or
“You Scare Me—And Other Compliments”
or
“Who Do I Pass For This Week?”
I figure if I can have several ethnicities i can have several titles to the same essay
Among my father’s Jewish broker and his family, I was seen as Polish/white. Help came naturally, even with talk of taking my company public in the late ’90s. Later in life, when our money took flight—partly from my overextending to take care of everyone, even folks who wouldn’t help me if I were on fire—I was flat broke, starting over. My father’s conferred white privilege evaporated like a drop of water on a hot skillet as a nurse questioned why I stood by his hospice bed, waiting for those final moments. Pop was..as we say in New England, Wicked White. and as I fell asleep beside him, his twin-like arm twisting around mine…I woke shortly after midnight on Memorial day 2017, …and Pop was gone. I kissed him on his forehead and the nurse apologized for being “rushed” earlier. I gave her a look of pity. Sad but true story. Some of us, to use a double negative can’t not stop talking about race, because it intrudes into our most intimate and private moments, unannounced and disrespectful in every way imaginable.
Flashforward six years later, at the SBA, I heard how impossibly competitive BIPOC “grants” were. (Think: Hunger Games with no cooperation) I was told I needed perfect credit, healthy revenue streams, and to put my house up for collateral to get any help.
“Wait, I’m in a new, unproven industry, and yes, I have assets, but they aren’t fully developed.”
It fell on deaf ears. White boys are told their ideas are enough. I was Black now, and I had to be perfect to get help.
“So, you’re telling me the only way to get help is to not need it?”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
“Well, I wish you told me that 4 months ago when I started this business plan. Since more than 80% of startups fail, telling me to put my home up for collateral feels more like a setup for homelessness than help.”
When I was 26, my Aunt Lorraine brought me to the mansion of Black philanthropist Peggy Cooper Kafritz. For the first time, I was seen differently. Peggy, with her biracial children, asked, “Do you need anything, like help with your education?” I politely declined. Her offer hung in the air. I thought, as she sat their at the top of a staircase wide enough to drive a city bus through, she looked regal, and for a moment, I saw my mother reflected in her face. “My brothers and sisters have it worse. Save your help for them.” Aunt Lorraine stayed silent.
My mother died six days after my 16th birthday. If she had lived, I imagine I would have been seen as a Black boy needing guidance. But from as early as I can remember, I was treated like an adult who didn’t need help, especially when it came to navigating life as a Black man. My father, though ever-present, was wholly incapable of preparing me for this. I had to learn it on my own.
Shortly before I left D.C. in ’98, I found myself working with high-end but often low-class consultants, one of them a white Latino. One day, he proclaimed: “I hate my mother!” I sat there, stunned. For an hour, I couldn’t process it. I’ve known people with crack-addicted mothers who wouldn’t say such a thing. As a Black man and a Polish man, cherishing mothers was ingrained in me. What could a healthy, wealthy man’s mother have done to hurt him so?
One day, he walked out in a fine suit, inviting everyone to drinks—everyone but me.
“Why ask everyone but me?” I asked him as our 3 office mates radiated awkward and tense silence.
“Honestly, Edmund, you scare me,” he said.
I laughed. “Good!” [insert dead-pan psychotic R.B.F]
He was the first one fired. Before I moved to California, he called me up, begged me to take a consultancy gig so he could ride my coattails into a world-class organization.
“How much does it pay?” I asked.
“$150 an hour. They really need a database designer—I’m sure they’ll pay you anything!”
“No thanks.” Click.
At a civil rights protest in D.C., a famous leader posed for pictures with the young Black men who made the journey cross country to attend. When it was my turn, even though he knew my aunt, he snapped: “I don’t have time for this, Lorraine!” He grudgingly took the picture. I sat quietly in his entourage for the day. I wouldn’t say I was seething, but the incident got me thinking. When my aunt handed me the photo later, I made sure she wasn’t looking before I tore it in half. Talk about symbolism! Pressure, on a diamond, comes from all sides.
Before anyone tells me, “You don’t look white,” let me say this: I’ve had doctors who didn’t know I was Black. I’ve owned a mirror my whole life, I know what I look like. Now, if those doctors were looking up my butt and family jewels and didn’t know..you don’t either…so, nice try.
The truth is, sometimes I passed in rooms; other times, was questioned. When I was broke, the assumptions were one thing. In prestigious spaces, dressed in suits, they shifted. Now that I’m older and I work from home, or barely…I don’t mix much with people, because people these days, stink. But, I will be returning to acting and that industry is a madhouse worthy of a book, I’ll share that another time.
My first acting gig was as a stand-in for a Jewish kid in American Sunset. My first major union role? A Portuguese detective in Brotherhood. In Cambridge, living with a Chinese landlady, people thought I was part Chinese. Race is always in the eye of the beholder. I wasn’t trying to pass—I was just living.
At 16, I studied in Italy. For the first time, I wasn’t an oddity. No suspicion, no expectations—just being. I loved it. Just 16, and it felt like I was out of the American pressure cooker, if only for a semester.
A sister, my actual blood half-sister once told me, “You’re not as white as you think!” I laughed. “Bitch, I know who I am. I know who my father is, and yes, in this culture, he’s considered white. Accident of birth, a tragedy in the making. But I’m not white like that, and I’m not reaching for it.”
I’ve had Black cops assume I was white because I had my beautiful sister (this time unrelated) in the car.
Black folks, two strangers who hadn’t known me for a minute prior, one introduced by a school friend: “Your mother was Black, you’re not!” Another guest of a roomate in Northampton, “To the U.S. government, you’re just Black.” I laughed and said, “No, to the U.S. government, I’m just a n***,”* and watched as he realized I was neither offended or shocked by his declaration.
“As a biracial person, or… let’s say, as a ‘racially ambiguous’ person, we have to live with the reality of complete strangers coming up to us and feeling comfortable asking, ‘What are you?’ or worse, telling us what we are! ‘Oh, you’re definitely [insert random ethnicity here].’
Could we pause for a minute and imagine going up to a mono-racial person and saying that? “You know, Mr. Freeman, you’re Black!” My recommendation: make sure your health insurance premiums are all paid up.”
One Summer in Cambridge, a group of new Russian friends suddenly ignored and shunned me. I asked my cool Russian friend, Elizabeth whey they were suddenly being assholes to me. She said: “They think you’re Jewish!” I was dumbfounded. My friend continued, “They heard you say ‘Oi vey’!”
“What? Are they stupid? Who doesn’t love the way ‘Oi vey!’ feels on the lips and tongue?!”
Latinos ignored me, greeting my friends instead. I’ve seen it all.
Now, with age and that look that looks like I have no priors and I have nothing left to lose, hardly anyone tries me. But trust, I’ve been kicked out of parties. I’ve lost jobs, and I’ve almost caught charges standing up for my people.
My mother was Black— therefore, so am I. Yes, I’m also Polish and Indigenous, but my culture is Black and Polish. I’m African American and genetically about 60% Polish/Scandinavian. Where does one end and the other begin?
I’ve never believed in the lie of race. But culture? That’s real. Whiteness is a power system built on a myth, ever-changing and as nonsensical as the construct of race.
People, my own family and some rando strangers have told me, “You’re JUST Black!” As if their self-conception was challenged by my drawing breath.
That’s silly, like denying my father—something I would never do. And they say it as if my father was a stranger, as if he didn’t guide me through every chapter of my life. They say it like, he had no part in my conception as if he were an innocent bystander sending thoughts and prayers from a red state, as my mother climaxed alone — may she rest in peace with the ancestors.
My mother taught me: “When they ask what you are, you say, ‘I’m Black!” She didn’t want me to deny my father. She wanted me to love being Black, and that’s why she taught me that way. And to my father’s credit, he didn’t feel any way about it. Both of my parents were very secure in themselves, and my childhood was completely harmonious in this one respect.
In Florida (a decision I still regret), a white classmate convinced me to pay her husband $1,500 to fix my car. When we graduated, she got a good job as a designer. Me? I was stuck in a trailer park in the Davie swamps. They dumped my car at a garage and asked for $150 to get it back. The cops came.
“What color was he?” they asked.
“White.”
“Well, we can’t help you then.”
When I opened my office in Northampton, a letter was attached to my windshield, threatening to kill me, calling me a “Jewish fag.” If I were truly passing, I could turn off the topic of race and go about my life. But we, people of color, don’t get those breaks. It’s always on—and twice on Mondays.
Even in my investigative work, when I mentioned a Black victim or a white suspect, people would turn away. Sometimes it was our own people, too. But if I added, “And four white victims followed,” suddenly, they leaned in. And honestly, that’s heartbreaking.
Pressure comes from all sides, and so does pre-judging people on skin-deep appearances.
So, yes, when Kamala Harris says her administration will help Black men wanting to start businesses, I am intimately aware that we do. And my European half fully concurs, shall we take tea in the drawing room? Of course! I always talk with myself, I think I’m the only person in America who saw “Get Out” and literally had an argument with himself as he drove home, alone.
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A #writer prepares An #actor prepares
