Okay, I'm going to start this entry with a disclaimer: what I'm about to talk about is not something that I believe is exhaustive or in any way comprehensive, but a reflection on personal experiences over my short time of being on this planet and identifying as a Black American woman.
With that out of the way...
I have a hard time reconciling my feelings on the idea of interracial. This is influenced in a lot of ways, with the strongest influence being the nation I was raised in. America's decree of the "One Drop Rule" was introduced to me at a young age by my grandmother who was born in 1918. She told me that if a person has any bit of Black in them, they were Black. This includes people who may "pass" as white. Someone can be 1/32 Black, but there are still people in Black America who will label that person as Black. I understand why someone who is biracial or multiracial would want to avoid using this rule: it necessarily negates some part of their genetic makeup and part of their heritage. As I grew up, I have met a lot of people with mixed ancestry, and a lot of people who would be considered Black under America, and my grandmother's, definition, but would prefer to play up their "blackness" or "whiteness" when convenient.
For example, in high school, I received an award based on a standardized test that was given to people who denoted "Black" as their race when filling out the Scantron sheet. (sidenote: I also received an award from the same test when the entire pool of test-takers was considered, so we can throw out the affirmative action debate in this scenario.) My name, along with all the other Black women who received similar scores, were read of the PA system the morning that the school got the information. In my AP Government class, an "ambiguously raced" young woman said, within my earshot, "If I had put Black on the test, I would have gotten that award. It's not even that hard."
Gee...thanks? But, why would you want to label yourself for accolades only? You want to be Black when you can get a scholarship offer, but not when the affirmative action debate comes up? You want to be Black so you can ask for hair tips, but not when your White friends walk into the room? As I've been known to say: Everyone wants to be Black until the cops show up. However, Black is not a transient state...
See, it's "not even that hard" to mark "Black" when it's on a piece of paper, but to live "Black" every day isn't really a walk in the park for most people.
I don't want this to sound like a "woe-is-me" Black tirade about how being Black is always so difficult, because it's not always so difficult. Yet, by no means should anyone ever say that it is never hard. Especially when we turn to my other handicap: sex.
Uh-oh, I think I just heard some mouse clicks going to that "X" in the upper corner with that sentence. But don't run away, dearest reader, it's not going to be one of those entries either. You know the ones I'm talking about. No? You don't? Hmmm...how do I explain this?
It's not one of those "Black men ain't s***" or "Black men are all trifling" or "Black men are all dogs" posts. It's not one of those "White women are stealing all our men" or "why did he pick her" or "he's only with her because she's White" posts. It's definitely not one of those "successful Black women will never find husbands" posts. All that negativity is ugly and unhelpful. Besides, I have seen enough Black love to know that it's not the epidemic that the American media has made it out to be. I'm not downplaying the fact that successful Black women outnumber their male counterparts, but that's not the message I'm discussing today. No, reader, today I want to talk about the numbers game of interracial couples from the other side. What's going on with the representation of Black woman/White man couples?
I can only think of two movies where a Black woman/White man couple was central (Something New, Guess Who), and a handful of scenarios where it has come up (The Losers, Death at a Funeral, Storm and Wolverine in that alternate universe in X-Men, Halle Berry and her baby's daddy, well, Halle Berry and most of her movie roles (Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Swordfish, and, lest we forget the Oscar winner, Monster's Ball), Naomi Campbell and her Russian lover who happens to still be married...). Now let's flip the script, and look at the Black man/White woman scenarios...actually, I'm not even going to type them all out, because I know that you've already surpassed the number of named occurrences above. I'm personally tired of seeing the majority of interracial relationships being represented in one way.
But, historically speaking, why am I surprised? In the older, uglier, years of the good ol' USA, White men were constantly talking about protecting the sanctity of White women while raping Black women. They felt that Black men would corrupt their women, and claimed that Black women were so sexual that engaging in sex acts with them was just satiating their ravenous nature. So for Black men, having a White woman can be seen as finally getting their hands in the cookie jar, while Black women are trying to recover from the negative images of ourselves being strewn around all across different media. Black men may have been dangerous, but Black women were little more than objects of sexual gratification. Add to this the fact that Black women were given the task to "keep the Black family together" while Black men were out fighting "the Man". We as Black women seem to be more infatuated with the idea of "Black love" than our Black brothers, even after the image of Black men choosing everything but us is repeatedly thrown in our faces.
Personally, I think love is love and is beautiful when shared between two people, regardless of color, but can we have some diversity in the presentations of interracial love. So, to all you rappers who want their Black women with big behinds, light skin, and long weaves; you casting agents who love pairing Black men with non-Black women without showing Black women the same consideration; and you White media outlets who fetishize Black women: stop. Because all you're doing is turning a word that could be one of the most inclusive into one of the most restrictive by normalizing one type of interracial relationship.
For all my interracial/multiracial people out there: when you say that you're not Black, remember that you aren't White/Asian/Hispanic/Latina either. I don't mean that bitterly, or want to insinuate that you must adhere to the one drop rule. On the contrary, I want you to wear all your cultures proudly and represent your uniqueness. I know that one culture may be the dominant one in the house, or that you may feel that you identify with one more than the other, and that's understandable; but it does not erase the other parts.
In the words of Shakespeare: "This above all, to thine own self be true".
All facets of thyself.
18 July 2010
16 July 2010
On Africa, Part II: Being a Foreign Black Person...
In the States, being Black is multi-faceted and the experience differs from person to person with the most common denominator being the fact that you know that you are oftentimes thought of as "the" minority when people talk about affirmative action and that you probably have been the only person of your race in the room at a given moment. So, to be honest with everyone reading, and myself, I will admit that when I thought about coming to Ghana, where W.E.B. Du Bois is laid to rest and Pan-Africanism was nursed in its infancy, I thought that there would be more acceptance of my "Blackness". I was not deluded enough to believe that I would look like everyone else or that people wouldn't think I was American/rich/a potential walking green card, but I did not expect the experience that I have had. I will use two examples to illustrate what I mean.
While traveling to see the beautiful waterfalls from an earlier post, we had to find a driver to take us to the park where the waterfalls are located. After standing in a crowd of taxi drivers all trying to pull us in different directions, we finally decide on a car. As I got into the car, and was about to close the door, a man looked directly in my eye and said, "You're too white." I'm sure my face was nothing less than shocked, because he started laughing at me. Too white? Me?
So let me get this straight... I'm too Black in the States, and too white in Ghana. Perfect. My initial thought is that we should take reparations from the US government, every European country involved in the US slave trade, and every African country with any number of slave castles or who had known ties to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. No? Yeah, I didn't think it was all that feasible either, but it made me feel better for about 3.95 seconds...
Then I thought about it from another angle. I remember once talking to my African-American Studies adviser and telling him that I believe that African-Americans often feel like that hyphen between the two words; caught between two worlds. We are tied to Africa by the resonating pigmentation of our flesh and the kinks in our hair, but we are not African. We also have, and still do, struggle to achieve equality in America. We have had one of the most traumatic experiences as a group of people in the United States. I am in no way saying that our experience is more intense, demoralizing, or painful than any other minority group that has been discriminated against, experienced "ethnic cleansing", or been targeted for genocide around the world. Right now I'm not trying to compare the experiences of other groups, but think about the experience that is closest to my heart.
See, when I bargain with a vendor here, they laugh at me if I say I am not rich or that I'm running low on money. At home, when I walk into certain types of stores, they assume I am too poor to afford any of their merchandise. Here, if I wear my hair out and curly, people assume it's a weave or ask me what I did to it. In an interview with a law firm, I would be considered militant or my hair would be called unprofessional. And on top of it all, the White tourists in Ghana receive the same preferential treatment here as in America for the most part. Meaning, while I am assumed to be rich, my skin denotes the fact that I will never be as rich as a White person. Which leads me to my next story...
For lunch, I often frequent a chop bar, which is like a street vendor in DC/NY except it's not movable. The women who work there are all Ghanaian and Black. The group I often venture to this chop bar with is mixed: Black, White, male, female. One day in particular, I'm the first of the group to arrive, and I order for myself and my roommate, who is also a Black woman from America. Behind us, three White men order similar dishes. We all sit down and as we sit down, I say to one of the White men, "Watch, you're going to get your food first, and I'm going to be pissed." Guess what happened...
Not only did the three of them receive their food first, when I pointed out who was eating and who was waiting, they all paused and looked around. My White male colleague quietly said, "This food tastes like guilt..."
The realization sank in that racism not only comes from people in the "dominant" race when you're a minority, but in nations that are predominantly of the same "race". I don't expect to be welcomed with open arms into your family's home and given preferential treatment, but I do expect to be treated fairly. But then again, why should my expectations of fairness be any different in a nation that was "founded" by the same people that established the country of my birth? Europe has really done a number of the brown populations of the world...and the effects seem to be everlasting.
And at the same time, I cannot sit back and expect for Pan-Africanism to be accepted by everyone and that all Africans and descendants of the diaspora will join hands in unity. There are a lot of differences and variations between all of us that may keep that from happening.
However, I do have hope. I have hope that, at some point in the future of this world, all of us will love our Blackness, in whatever way it manifests itself. I hope that Black people will get over this issue of color and not question others' pedigree or doubt their experience. I hope that our beauty will stop being ignored or fetishized. I hope that, someday, when I hear someone say they are color blind, I don't have to be afraid that they believe that, with Barack Obama's election, all of the racism in America was erased. I hope that, eventually, being articulate won't make me an exception, having a graduate degree won't make me an anomaly, and having natural hair won't make me different.
I hope.
While traveling to see the beautiful waterfalls from an earlier post, we had to find a driver to take us to the park where the waterfalls are located. After standing in a crowd of taxi drivers all trying to pull us in different directions, we finally decide on a car. As I got into the car, and was about to close the door, a man looked directly in my eye and said, "You're too white." I'm sure my face was nothing less than shocked, because he started laughing at me. Too white? Me?
So let me get this straight... I'm too Black in the States, and too white in Ghana. Perfect. My initial thought is that we should take reparations from the US government, every European country involved in the US slave trade, and every African country with any number of slave castles or who had known ties to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. No? Yeah, I didn't think it was all that feasible either, but it made me feel better for about 3.95 seconds...
Then I thought about it from another angle. I remember once talking to my African-American Studies adviser and telling him that I believe that African-Americans often feel like that hyphen between the two words; caught between two worlds. We are tied to Africa by the resonating pigmentation of our flesh and the kinks in our hair, but we are not African. We also have, and still do, struggle to achieve equality in America. We have had one of the most traumatic experiences as a group of people in the United States. I am in no way saying that our experience is more intense, demoralizing, or painful than any other minority group that has been discriminated against, experienced "ethnic cleansing", or been targeted for genocide around the world. Right now I'm not trying to compare the experiences of other groups, but think about the experience that is closest to my heart.
See, when I bargain with a vendor here, they laugh at me if I say I am not rich or that I'm running low on money. At home, when I walk into certain types of stores, they assume I am too poor to afford any of their merchandise. Here, if I wear my hair out and curly, people assume it's a weave or ask me what I did to it. In an interview with a law firm, I would be considered militant or my hair would be called unprofessional. And on top of it all, the White tourists in Ghana receive the same preferential treatment here as in America for the most part. Meaning, while I am assumed to be rich, my skin denotes the fact that I will never be as rich as a White person. Which leads me to my next story...
For lunch, I often frequent a chop bar, which is like a street vendor in DC/NY except it's not movable. The women who work there are all Ghanaian and Black. The group I often venture to this chop bar with is mixed: Black, White, male, female. One day in particular, I'm the first of the group to arrive, and I order for myself and my roommate, who is also a Black woman from America. Behind us, three White men order similar dishes. We all sit down and as we sit down, I say to one of the White men, "Watch, you're going to get your food first, and I'm going to be pissed." Guess what happened...
Not only did the three of them receive their food first, when I pointed out who was eating and who was waiting, they all paused and looked around. My White male colleague quietly said, "This food tastes like guilt..."
The realization sank in that racism not only comes from people in the "dominant" race when you're a minority, but in nations that are predominantly of the same "race". I don't expect to be welcomed with open arms into your family's home and given preferential treatment, but I do expect to be treated fairly. But then again, why should my expectations of fairness be any different in a nation that was "founded" by the same people that established the country of my birth? Europe has really done a number of the brown populations of the world...and the effects seem to be everlasting.
And at the same time, I cannot sit back and expect for Pan-Africanism to be accepted by everyone and that all Africans and descendants of the diaspora will join hands in unity. There are a lot of differences and variations between all of us that may keep that from happening.
However, I do have hope. I have hope that, at some point in the future of this world, all of us will love our Blackness, in whatever way it manifests itself. I hope that Black people will get over this issue of color and not question others' pedigree or doubt their experience. I hope that our beauty will stop being ignored or fetishized. I hope that, someday, when I hear someone say they are color blind, I don't have to be afraid that they believe that, with Barack Obama's election, all of the racism in America was erased. I hope that, eventually, being articulate won't make me an exception, having a graduate degree won't make me an anomaly, and having natural hair won't make me different.
I hope.
15 July 2010
On Africa, Part I...
Change in plans. Instead of posting the old emails I sent out to the family and friends, I've decided to write entirely new posts here. this may or may not have been influenced by the fact that I'm avoiding a certain assignment...but no matter.
Let's play a visualization game. Think about the word "Africa". What do you see? I'm going to guess that one of these four things popped into your head:
- Lions, gazelles, elephants, zebras, crocodiles, cheetahs, etc. You just went all safari on me in 0.2 seconds, didn't you? You thought about the savanna and all wonderful wildlife and how The Lion King was your favorite movie growing up, right? You were excited about the danger and beauty of nature, "mother earth", "The Circle of Life", and all that jazz, hm? Yeah, you just keep your hands and feet in the RV as we move along...
- Maybe you went all National Geographic on me. You know, topless women, Masai warriors, "tribal experiences" with faces painted and minimal clothing involving a language that sounds little more to you than grunts and/or clicks. You, my friend, have been watching too much Discovery TV, so let's change the channel...
- You may have forgotten all about the nature and history of Africa, and gone straight to the violence, chaos, and fraud. You just thought of a black Superman bent on crime who is an ex-child soldier, has experience as a Somali pirate, was one of the "bad guys" in Hotel Rwanda, and is asking you for your bank account information so you can retrieve some lottery prize. Shame on you.
- Perhaps you ventured elsewhere and landed in a "Feed the Children" ad. You're thinking about a child with flies near their eyes and mouth, drinking water from what looks like a puddle to you, being held by a mother who has a mixture of desperation, sadness, and anger in her eyes from the life experiences she has faced. You just wrote out a check for the Red Cross, didn't you? Well, before you tear that perforated sheet, let me talk to you a little...
Repeat after me: "I will not believe everything the media tells me about Africa." Feel better already, don't we? But seriously, Africa is a part of the world, and as such has come into the 21st century along with all of the other continents. In addition, it is a CONTINENT. This means that there are different places all around with different languages, food, music, clothing, wildlife, etc. Do poverty and crime exist? Yes, just like the rest of the world. Is there wildlife and are there still some villages? Of course, but the same can be said about every other continent. And don't think that these types of assumptions don't creep into the minds of Black people in the "westernized" world... Black folk, you aren't fooling me. You grew up with the same biased media, so I'm looking at you, too.
The biggest difference here? Most of the people are Black. Shocker, I know. But just because the complexions may fall along a similar area of the spectrum does not mean everyone feels the same way about race, color, or identity. This is not the place to arrive as a Black American wearing a dashiki and expect everyone to throw their arms around you and accept you as their own. While this does happen occasionally, you may not find what you thought you would. For example, you may think that because you landed in the first independent African nation, where two of the greatest minds of Pan-Africanism converged and conversed, that you would feel an overwhelming sense of Black pride. You will have your dreams deflated and possibly suffer a small mental crisis if this is what you assume. I'll have tissues and a hug waiting for you when you get back...
So before I begin to discuss my experiences in detail, I just wanted to start everyone at the same place and with a clean slate.
Let's play a visualization game. Think about the word "Africa". What do you see? I'm going to guess that one of these four things popped into your head:
- Lions, gazelles, elephants, zebras, crocodiles, cheetahs, etc. You just went all safari on me in 0.2 seconds, didn't you? You thought about the savanna and all wonderful wildlife and how The Lion King was your favorite movie growing up, right? You were excited about the danger and beauty of nature, "mother earth", "The Circle of Life", and all that jazz, hm? Yeah, you just keep your hands and feet in the RV as we move along...
- Maybe you went all National Geographic on me. You know, topless women, Masai warriors, "tribal experiences" with faces painted and minimal clothing involving a language that sounds little more to you than grunts and/or clicks. You, my friend, have been watching too much Discovery TV, so let's change the channel...
- You may have forgotten all about the nature and history of Africa, and gone straight to the violence, chaos, and fraud. You just thought of a black Superman bent on crime who is an ex-child soldier, has experience as a Somali pirate, was one of the "bad guys" in Hotel Rwanda, and is asking you for your bank account information so you can retrieve some lottery prize. Shame on you.
- Perhaps you ventured elsewhere and landed in a "Feed the Children" ad. You're thinking about a child with flies near their eyes and mouth, drinking water from what looks like a puddle to you, being held by a mother who has a mixture of desperation, sadness, and anger in her eyes from the life experiences she has faced. You just wrote out a check for the Red Cross, didn't you? Well, before you tear that perforated sheet, let me talk to you a little...
Repeat after me: "I will not believe everything the media tells me about Africa." Feel better already, don't we? But seriously, Africa is a part of the world, and as such has come into the 21st century along with all of the other continents. In addition, it is a CONTINENT. This means that there are different places all around with different languages, food, music, clothing, wildlife, etc. Do poverty and crime exist? Yes, just like the rest of the world. Is there wildlife and are there still some villages? Of course, but the same can be said about every other continent. And don't think that these types of assumptions don't creep into the minds of Black people in the "westernized" world... Black folk, you aren't fooling me. You grew up with the same biased media, so I'm looking at you, too.
The biggest difference here? Most of the people are Black. Shocker, I know. But just because the complexions may fall along a similar area of the spectrum does not mean everyone feels the same way about race, color, or identity. This is not the place to arrive as a Black American wearing a dashiki and expect everyone to throw their arms around you and accept you as their own. While this does happen occasionally, you may not find what you thought you would. For example, you may think that because you landed in the first independent African nation, where two of the greatest minds of Pan-Africanism converged and conversed, that you would feel an overwhelming sense of Black pride. You will have your dreams deflated and possibly suffer a small mental crisis if this is what you assume. I'll have tissues and a hug waiting for you when you get back...
So before I begin to discuss my experiences in detail, I just wanted to start everyone at the same place and with a clean slate.
14 July 2010
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