US Open (?)

Today I went to the US Open Tennis Tournament(s) with the Husband and Kiddies. It was great, great fun under the hot, hot sun. Among other matches, we saw Agassi (number 7 in the world) beat Xavier Malisse who is so so so so cute and played so so so well, and got so so sweaty he had to change his shirt halfway through the match, it was hard not to cheer him on) and a doubles tournament featuring Martina Navratilova, who is the queen of reinvention and who just completely ROCKS.

But my personal favorite was a completely ROWDY, highly emotional, totally NOT-starchy-white match between Guillermo Coria and Nicolas Massu. These two put on quite the show, cussing at each other, grunting, and screaming "Si!!!" and pumping their arms for the crowd whenever they won a particularly difficult point. Although Coria won, Massu fought HARD, and again, it was hard to not want to see an upset (Coria is ranked 8th in the world; Massu is way way down, or unranked...not sure which). Both are adorable (why is it that so many male tennis players are so good-looking?)

We left in the middle of a match between NYC hometown favorite, James Blake (a Yonkers boy, and one of a very few - if not the ONLY - men of color in the tournament this year) and Tommy Robredo. Blake is unranked, but so far at the Open, he has been methodically cutting more highly ranked players off at the pass, including Number 2-seeded player, Nadal (who is not so good-looking, actually...so maybe there is something to this good-looking male tennis player thing). And today's match was no exception: Robredo is ranked 19th in the world, and Blake beat him in four sets. I wish we had been there to see that victory...but it was a loooooong day, and certain people under five feet tall were getting very unruly.

But the idea of the US Open and how it presents itself (FANCY: tickets that START at $45 per person, fancy little cafes with thirty dollar entrees and a gourmet food court, Ralph Lauren and Lacoste boutiques, professional tennis photography for sale in a neat little gallery...need I go on?), along with what the US Open represents (the fruits of hard work AND the investment of truckloads of money in order to achieve a level of success - sure you can play tennis on public courts, but you can only get good at it if you work with a private coach, which begins at a young age, often with the encouragement of affluent, country-clubbing, suburban parents) happens to dovetail nicely with a comment I received on my blog today from "Naomi". Naomi was responding to a thread that was active several days back regarding looting in New Orleans in the wake of Hurriane Katrina's destruction. Naomi's friend and I had a brief debate about whether the looters should be (a) lambasted, (b) excused or (c) lauded.

My feeling has been and continues to be that it is one thing to take diapers, medication, water, food and other necessities as needed, but that it is another thing entirely to take 10 pairs of jeans, an Ipod and a large screen t.v. Naomi's friend did not really address the distinction because his view of it transcends need versus want, which is to say that Naomi's friend believes that looting (whether for necessities or luxuries) amounts to scoring a "win" in a system (read: capitalism) that consistently beats down the disenfranchised (read: those whose economic and other circumstances leave them struggling outside the system).

I don't remember exactly how I responded to that, but I will say now that I still maintain that the "system", for better or for worse, is the system within which we are expected to work if we are to have order in our society. I don't think that cheating that system is ever justified. To put it another way: two wrongs don't make a right.

Truth be told, as things have unfolded down in New Orleans, I have been feeling horribly sad for those who didn't leave town when ordered to evacuate...and guilty and anxious, as well, wondering...what if it were me? What would I have done? Would I have left? And if so, why me, but not them? I keep wondering - what was the thought process for the people who didn't leave? I guess a part of me wants to believe that they just didn't listen - you know, a blame the victim thing. But the more I go through it in my mind, the more I realize that most of them probably COULDN'T leave...had nowhere to go...had no one to stay with...had no money with which to travel...

In a college course on Adolescent Psychology, I remember studying "learned helplessness" and "conditioned hopelessness" and how such states of mind become ingrained in children who are raised in economically disadvantaged families. Naomi's comment to me brought that all back to me. She explained how where she grew up, the billboards advertised booze (and cigarettes, I am sure), and drug dealers were on every street corner. Instead of yoga studios, there were crack houses, apparently. Instead of rolling lawns and river views, poverty and crime was the background tableu. And what role models were there? Parents, hopefully. But sometimes parents weren't around, or sometimes they didn't present the sort of role models that white upper-middle class parents could.

Naomi went to college, but I am sure that many of her peers did not. Perhaps this was a direct result of lack of funds. But more likely this was an indirect result of many unfortunate factors - including those mentioned above, and also inadequate schooling at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

If Naomi and her friend wish for me to feel compassion for the looters because their circumstances rendered them truly disenfranchised, which is to say, entirely excluded from the system, then I can wholeheartedly say that I feel it. I am furiously angry at George W. Bush for how long it took him to get aid down to these people. I am furiously angry at everyone else in Homeland Security and it's FEMA arm who didn't do anything to shake this sorry excuse for a representative of "the people" out of his moneyed, partisan-prioritized haze.

But where was I going with this?

Oh yeah...tennis...but first, yoga. Naomi and her friend maintain staunchly that yoga is NOT available to those who are outside the system - to the poor, to the isolated, to those who see team sports as the only possibly hope of scholarshipping it to college. My initial comment to Naomi's friend was that I don't see it that way at all - since yoga is so widely available in gyms, on videos, and in many, many public schools (especially those in poor neigborhoods) thanks to the efforts of groups like Anne Desmond and Jennifer Ford's Bent on Learning. But I am giving thought to whether this is indeed the case, or whether it's simply nice for me to think so.

Naomi asked me to consider how many women and men of color I have seen in the yoga studios where I practice and teach. My experience on the Upper East Side has been limited pretty much to New York Yoga and Some Like It Hot. At New York Yoga, I can think of maybe one or two students of color. This could be merely a reflection of the demographics of the Upper East Side, which tends toward the white and the affluent (even the public school where I send my kids has precious little ethnic diversity, although there is some degree of economic diversity, and by some, I mean very little). Or it could be a reflection of the fact that New York Yoga is owned by a lilly-white Barbie Doll and her lawyer husband, who send their children to private school and who employ hardly any ethnically diverse teachers. "Some Like It Hot" is actually owned by a woman of color, but I can think of very few students there who were not white.

Downtown, I tend to see considerably more ethnic diversity. However, this may be entirely the result of the demographics of the neigborhoods. Downtown, there is far more diversity than on the Upper East Side, both economic and racial. So, I can't say that the diversity scale in the yoga studios here in Manhattan reflects anything other than the diversity scale within our neighborhoods.

I guess what I am left with is how Naomi and her friend FEEL about yoga as a pasttime for suburban housewives and affluent others. If that is how it looks to them, then I guess I am going to have to take their word for it. Somehow, it seems much easier to say this about tennis (and skiing). But that doesn't mean that it isn't true for yoga. All I can really say with any confidence is: I don't know, so I will have to take your word for it.

Interestingly though, I think that Naomi and her friend do not see me as belonging to a minority when, in fact, I do. I am Jewish. Sure, Jews tend not to be amongst those who suffer through poverty, poor medical care, and a lack of good schooling and good role models. But how many thousands of Jews were killed less than 100 years ago in Eastern Europe by those who saw us as less than human? And who is to say that that could never happen again? As a Jew, I believe that many doors are not open to me simply by virtue of my being Jewish. It is just that the discrimination is WAY more subtle, WAY harder to pinpoint and WAY harder to prove.

Cry me a river, right? As I sit here in my comfortable, quiet Upper East Side co-op, poor poor Jewish girl, life is tough, right? Well, maybe I didn't grow up with drug dealers to tempt me, but I did grow up with boys who threw pennies at me and my girlfriends, calling us "sinners". And I did walk into a shoe store with my kids the other day and get completely and totally ignored by the sales clerk (I won't say what his ethnicity was - I am not even sure what it was - but I do know that he wasn't Jewish, and I do know that he DID know that I was because I signed in when I walked in, and my married name is BLATANTLY Jewish). When I asked the clerk whether he thought he might help me and my kids anytime soon, he told me that I might have to wait "an hour or two".

We left. And we bought shoes elsewhere. Obviously, not a major deal. But it made us angry, especially my children, who didn't see it as a slight on our Jewishness at all, but rather, as an obstacle to buying the shoes they really wanted, when they wanted them. And that is just the sort of thing that really hurts when you're six or eight years old. That is WAY more visceral, and yet at the same time, disturbingly and confusingly subtle......dontcha think?

YC