America: a nation still stumbling over race relations

Another week and I'll stop requesting Teena Marie's songs on the Internet radio website Pandora. I hope to give up trying to catch her melodic voice during endless hunts for soul music on the radio — a pursuit that in the Pacific Northwest takes on the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

I'm entering the new year mourning the death of Teena Marie — who died Sunday of apparently natural causes at the uncomfortably young age of 54.

Teena Marie was a renowned singer but I'll hardly find her on a rock station or one that hews toward contemporary music. Just as dismal, the core of people mourning her death are African American or erudite music lovers with an affinity for soul.

In America it seems we still like our identities in neat categories that leave no doubt, in the words of Prince, whether one is "black or white, straight or gay."

Teena Marie didn't like boxes. She was a petite brunette with an outsize voice. In her later years, she was a bespectacled middle-aged woman who could pass for a small-town librarian. Yet, she was also the Ivory Queen of Soul, the first white singing act for black-owned Motown Records, and a specter that so unnerved the record label it opted to grace her first album cover with a seascape rather than show her face and risk offending black audiences.

By the time her second album came out and the public discovered Lady T was white, it didn't matter. As my grandmother would often say about one church choir member or another, "the girl could sang!"

I won't pretend this singer was an example of a country's colorblindness. No one forgot she was white excelling in a black musical genre. It simply failed to matter.

Yet, race still matters. It remains the way we judge each other and our lives.

A Rasmussen poll last fall reported that fewer Americans than ever before believe race relations are improving. Nearly a third of respondents believe black-white relations are deteriorating, a noticeable increase in the percentage who gave similar responses in a poll last summer. Questions about Hispanic-black/white relations showed similar tensions.

The results are surprising to those who just two years ago heralded the dawning of a postracial society ushered in by the election of Barack Obama. But the poll only underscored for me what I've already suspected: Whether the topic is music or politics, race remains the thing Americans stumble over most.

Even as the president carries out policies left over from the previous administration, tax cuts and two wars to name a few, the growing sense is that we need to "take our country back." Teena Marie overcame fears that she was taking soul music from African Americans. One can only hope Obama quells the fears of those who think he's taking America away from them.

Change comes slowly but it does come. White soul singers are not exactly a dime a dozen, but they no longer raise eyebrows. No one tries to hide the race of Joss Stone or Amy Winehouse. Justin Timberlake, Eminem and John Mayer head an industry of performers sampling black genres. Listen to Mia Zapata, the slain frontwoman for the Seattle-based rock band the Gits, sing "A Change is Gonna Come," and try to argue that her world-weary, soulful tones are not up there with the Sam Cooke original.

Teena Marie accomplished many things but she didn't transcend race. Nor should we expect the president to. One was rightly accepted for who she was, a white woman scaling the charts in a black art form; the other will manage this country, until recently a task performed by white men, by being himself.

Despite Rasmussen's evidence of racial strain in America, we ought to know by now that everything from pop culture to politics is strengthened by the multicultural alchemy Americans perform so well. No one has to pretend to be something they are not to be considered authentic or a legitimate heir to a throne.

That was the beauty of Teena Marie and smart advice for 2011.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. E-mail lvarner@seattletimes.com