Lazarre, Jane

Whiteness of Whiteness

As recounted in Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness (1991), Lazarre's sons reject the biracial label as meaningless. They are black; she is white. She describes her personal journey to a full awareness of racism in American life; the phrase “whiteness of whiteness” refers to the fact that white people can afford to be oblivious to racism, while nonwhite persons must daily struggle against it.

Lazarre writes from a unique vantage point—not quite an outsider, as she is more intimately involved in the experience and culture of blackness than most whites, she is nevertheless reminded by her black family that she will always be white, and that because of this she can never completely understand [Page 641]the African American experience. That lack of complete understanding isn't a source of friction or resentment; it is simply a presence, not only in her dealings with her in-laws, but also more importantly in her experience as a mother. It is likely true that all parents are unable to completely understand their children, but Lazarre's lacuna is tangible, nameable, and personal, not some ambient generation gap.

While blended families and biracialism have become less novel in the years since, at the time Lazarre's position was still unusual enough that bystanders often didn't realize her relationship to her sons, resulting in misunderstandings with the world around her. Her life as the mother as well as the white woman in this family led her to shed misconceptions held since childhood, while at the same time challenging her notions of motherhood. “My life,” she writes in the prologue, “has been dramatically altered by being the mother of black sons over the course of more than 25 years. I record this story, I hope, in the best tone of a mother's voice, both reasoned and emotional, but always full of intensity….”

In her story of change in a white person's vision through self-discovery, Lazarre also writes of the struggle between the demands of motherhood and the need for a life beyond it, in memoirs like The Mother Knot (1976). She explicitly denied the limits implicitly placed upon her and other women in similar situations to remain only “somebody's mother or somebody's wife,” as well as the notion of mothering as a full-time job that left no room for other pursuits.

In Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness, Lazarre describes the focus of her life's written work as “the experience of motherhood and the many ways in which that experience reveals, sustains, and constantly recreates my sense of connection to and responsibility toward a wider world.” Motherhood provided a way to connect to the outside world, opening doors and windows, rather than shuttering them against the inward, domestic sphere. At the same time, the demands of motherhood provided focus and discipline; Lazarre writes of being frustrated with only being able to work on her writing from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on weekdays (while her children were in school), but also of how those constraints taught her self-discipline and forced a divorce from the romantic notion of “the artist” as someone who waits on inspiration. Similarly, she writes of being frustrated that being a mother distanced her from other feminists, and in many cases led to others' assumptions that motherhood and feminism were opposed to one another.

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