groups

I am the only white person at the table. The other girls are Jamaican and Ugandan and Liberian and Cambodian and African-American, and we are shouting above the music to talk about turning thirty and the pluses and minuses of various types of grad school. When we go down to the dance floor, I am, stereotypically, the worst dancer, but I happily dance anyway, until we slowly all stop dancing and stare at one another and wonder aloud, "Who thought this song was a good idea? You can't dance to it at all!"

Someone comments that she is tired of holding her purse, and I drop mine into the circle of dancers. Everyone follows, and we laugh at the way we dance around our stack of purses. "Does anyone have a camera?" someone asks, but no one does, except for phone cameras without flash. A guy pushing past laughs, "Look at that pile of purses!"

It is awkward, sometimes, to be the only white person in a group here in this country. I am much more accustomed to being the only white person in a group in Africa, but in this white city, it is less familiar. It's a good awkward, though. It is only fair, in a place where my friend often has to be the only non-white one at a party, that I should take my turn. It is not and cannot be the same, but it's fair that I should be uncomfortable sometimes, being the only one, as some people must be the only one much of the time. I'm not even bearing my share of the discomfort, not in my occasional evenings.