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I'm defensive of my blackness because I had to find it myself I'm protective of my blackness because I had to find it myself
(about 3 hours later)
I spent the first 20 years of my life internalizing white beauty standards, intellectual values and cultural sensibilities. By the time I was a freshman in high school I had, like many of my white female peers, embarked upon an ongoing war with my body. I was never diagnosed as anorexic or bulimic, but I intermittently starved myself and took laxatives in an effort to be skinny and hipless without any sense whatsoever that my curves might be considered a thing of beauty in black culture.I spent the first 20 years of my life internalizing white beauty standards, intellectual values and cultural sensibilities. By the time I was a freshman in high school I had, like many of my white female peers, embarked upon an ongoing war with my body. I was never diagnosed as anorexic or bulimic, but I intermittently starved myself and took laxatives in an effort to be skinny and hipless without any sense whatsoever that my curves might be considered a thing of beauty in black culture.
I abandoned my 11-year-old crush on Michael Jackson (with whom I became almost preternaturally smitten after seeing him in The Wiz) in favor of the young white male stars that adorned the covers of Tiger Beat – Rick Springfield, Lief Garrett, Rob Lowe. I was guided by college counselors to consider New England state schools and maybe long-shot universities – historically black colleges and universities were not on anyone’s radar.I abandoned my 11-year-old crush on Michael Jackson (with whom I became almost preternaturally smitten after seeing him in The Wiz) in favor of the young white male stars that adorned the covers of Tiger Beat – Rick Springfield, Lief Garrett, Rob Lowe. I was guided by college counselors to consider New England state schools and maybe long-shot universities – historically black colleges and universities were not on anyone’s radar.
Most of the time in my white environment I felt a fierce and instinctive pull to find my place among black people. Even if I wasn’t always ready or prepared to embrace what that meant – interest from the son of a black dance teacher unsettled me, while another black adoptee who moved to town mid-high school didn’t seem legitimately “black” enough to me to pursue as an ally – I was dogged in my determination to evolve outside the narrow margins of the small white world of my beginning and into another more racially familiar one.Most of the time in my white environment I felt a fierce and instinctive pull to find my place among black people. Even if I wasn’t always ready or prepared to embrace what that meant – interest from the son of a black dance teacher unsettled me, while another black adoptee who moved to town mid-high school didn’t seem legitimately “black” enough to me to pursue as an ally – I was dogged in my determination to evolve outside the narrow margins of the small white world of my beginning and into another more racially familiar one.
It took a long time to find my blackness, find my people and my relationship to black culture, despite my own (albeit limited) self-awareness regarding race at a very young age. “I am a black child” reads the first sentence of a short personal essay I wrote when I was eight or nine years old.It took a long time to find my blackness, find my people and my relationship to black culture, despite my own (albeit limited) self-awareness regarding race at a very young age. “I am a black child” reads the first sentence of a short personal essay I wrote when I was eight or nine years old.
There were many times that I tried to ignore that girl, times that I would fantasize in great sweeping delusion what kind of white girl I might be – how I would wear my hair parted to the side with one silky swath hanging coyly over my eye and that I would occasionally run my fingers through to casually push it off my face. Sometimes I would even come to school with it wet absent of concern as to how it would look as it dried throughout the day. My crisp J Crew chinos would fit easy and right on my body, a straight shot from waist to ankle with no shapely hurdles to contend with. I would attend Dartmouth or Middlebury, and the boys would all want to date me.There were many times that I tried to ignore that girl, times that I would fantasize in great sweeping delusion what kind of white girl I might be – how I would wear my hair parted to the side with one silky swath hanging coyly over my eye and that I would occasionally run my fingers through to casually push it off my face. Sometimes I would even come to school with it wet absent of concern as to how it would look as it dried throughout the day. My crisp J Crew chinos would fit easy and right on my body, a straight shot from waist to ankle with no shapely hurdles to contend with. I would attend Dartmouth or Middlebury, and the boys would all want to date me.
There were years of straddling groups of white friends and black friends; some from the former openly derided me when I used “black” words or dialect, while some among the latter questioned my black authenticity, my loyalty to white friends and family. Dating and staying with black men who either treated me badly or were just plain wrong for me because I wanted to make a black family. Feeling like a fraud when I was held up in both cultures to represent or speak for all black people everywhere. Still, no matter what I endured, I have always known that I am black. I concede to having perhaps romanticized the meaning of this certainty in the past in the same way an adult romanticizes a parent she lost as a young child. Intellectually I understand that “race” is a social construct – history bears this out – but I know, too, that I am a part of the blackness that Ta-Nehisi Coates describes in his book Between the World and Me: “bound by all the beautiful things, all the language and mannerisms, all the food and music, all the literature and philosophy, all the common language that they fashioned like diamonds under the weight of the Dream.” I also understand that there is a difference between an affinity to blackness (see: Rachel Dolezal) and being black. Over a decade ago when I was working on my book Saving the Race, I read chapters in progress to a small group at a library in upstate New York. There were years of straddling groups of white friends and black friends; some from the former openly derided me when I used “black” words or dialect, while some among the latter questioned my black authenticity, my loyalty to white friends and family. Dating and staying with black men who either treated me badly or were just plain wrong for me because I wanted to make a black family. Feeling like a fraud when I was held up in both cultures to represent or speak for all black people everywhere.
Still, no matter what I endured, I have always known that I am black. I concede to having perhaps romanticized the meaning of this certainty in the past in the same way an adult romanticizes a parent she lost as a young child. Intellectually I understand that “race” is a social construct – history bears this out – but I know, too, that I am a part of the blackness that Ta-Nehisi Coates describes in his book Between the World and Me: “bound by all the beautiful things, all the language and mannerisms, all the food and music, all the literature and philosophy, all the common language that they fashioned like diamonds under the weight of the Dream.”
I also understand that there is a difference between an affinity to blackness (see: Rachel Dolezal) and being black. Over a decade ago when I was working on my book Saving the Race, I read chapters in progress to a small group at a library in upstate New York.
After the reading, a white man raised his hand and asked me why, if I had been raised in a white family, didn’t I just call myself white. I shut him down rather hastily with the answer: “Because I live in contemporary American culture.” It is not the answer I would give today. Today I would simply say: “Because I was born black.”After the reading, a white man raised his hand and asked me why, if I had been raised in a white family, didn’t I just call myself white. I shut him down rather hastily with the answer: “Because I live in contemporary American culture.” It is not the answer I would give today. Today I would simply say: “Because I was born black.”