Yeah, it’s going to be one of those posts. Don’t want to respond to a rant, it’d be best if you just skip over this post.
Probably won’t be resolved or wrapped with a nice pretty bow. I don’t have one. Just so ya’ll know, I’m probably one of the few people you’ll meet who likes hearing people’s negative comments more than nothing but silence. Please respond even (especially) if you are offended/uncomfortable. Think about how much history would be undone if no-one was ever offended or made uncomfortable. So, on to my rant……
This semester, I am in Urban Ministry. This class is wearing me down so much emotionally. I find myself wishing we had more than just an hour for class each day ‘cause I just want to talk and ask questions and argue and cry and laugh and hug and hug and hug. I find myself learning and relearning things about white people, specifically young, white, conservative, Christian people. I find myself being acutely suspicious and paranoid like its freshman year all over again, and I don’t like this place, and I just want to go Home where I just have to account for Miyah and not 4 million other people.
Forget about teaching these lessons about myself and my background and my life. I just want to be a college student. I just want to go to class and learn to be a teacher and eat in the cafeteria and date my future husband and have late-night conversations with my best friends and we’d braid each other’s hair and tell jokes and go on double dates with our boyfriends and sing really loud with the car windows down. I just want to be. Isn’t that what college is about? Finding who you are? Not knowing exactly who you are and explaining it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that asks stupid questions? All those people who say there’s no such thing as a stupid question have obviously not been in my shoes at Cedarville. You’d be surprised.
I’m thinking more about societal than personal though lately, and I’m desperately trying not to be ignorant or the stereotypical nagging black girl, but society is just…..depressing. I remember my older and younger sisters when I was nine years old, hoping, wishing, praying to be white and being so depressed and melancholy when every day they were just as black as they were the day before. I used to ask them why? It seemed so stupid a thing to pray for; an impossibility. Lately, I understand, and it breaks my heart. It makes it so I can’t breathe. It makes it so I stare off in the distance just waiting for God to come explain this to me. I’ve been prejudged because of race before, but it was always an individual. With individuals, it’s different. Feels like it ain’t quite real; just stupidity breaking out in a person’s spirit like acne on their face. Wasn’t true; they were just delusional.
You mean, people think I’m less than? Not just one, two, ten, 100, but thousands? Millions? People think I’m not as smart, competent, moral, just, pure, good, wise, nice, upright, beautiful in my soul AND my face? I couldn’t place my finger on this feeling I was having. I’m ranting to an older black woman back home though, and she stops me gently. Daaarrling, she says, I get the feeling that you’re feeling inadequate. Why, though? Why must I? She says I don’t have to, and that I can know that I’m just fine the way I am. But in feeling inadequate, you wanna know how else I feel? Sad, restless, angry…….
Wait……angry? Isn’t there a stereotype about angry black women? We’re always angry, complaining, fussing, nagging, and whining about something or someone. I know it’s not true……But this is Cedarville. I CAN’T get angry. What if someone has that stereotype in their head and I don’t help any? I hate when something I do or say or how I act can be found in a popular stereotype of black women. I HATE it. I feel like white people have these assumptions about black women, and I can’t let them be right. I have to show them that it’s not true of us. What if I act like one of their stereotypes? True, I’m not all black women, but if I’m one of the first and/or only black women they meet, they’ll think the stereotype’s true. I CAN’T get angry, and yet I am. I CAN’T be a matriarch, and yet I have such a mothering personality. I CAN’T complain, and yet I want to. I’m somehow not pure enough for marriage, but I want to be married someday. I CAN’T do this, I CAN’T do that. Don’t feel this way; don’t feel that way, what if they take it this way, what if they take it that way?
I just want to be.
What about these white versions of me? The girls who act like me? Think like me? Feel like me? There are quite a few white, quirky, nerdy, poetry-writing, book-reading, thought provoking, Jesus people girls on campus. Some are louder than me; some are quieter than me. Some have different majors, but the same type of personality. Even though I “know” the answer is no, the questions still come, unwanted, unnecessary, at the most inopportune times: Are they better than me? Am I the mistake God made on His way to making the ‘Smart, Competent, Moral, Just, Pure, Good, Wise, Nice, Upright, BEAUTIFUL’ version of me? Are they the updated versions of me? If not, why do they have no problems with certain teachers that think I’m bringing down the academic standards of this great university? If not, why is it that all of the boys I’ve liked here end up liking these white versions of me? If not, why is it that older white ladies turn their noses up as if I stink when I pass them? If not, why is it that the atmosphere itself seems to scream you are not welcome here? Why, why, why? I feel like I’m nine years old again, and there are no answers to my questions all over again.
My dad told me earlier “You are just as good as any other woman on the face of the planet.” A little nagging thought came and threatened to choke the air out of my happiness. Oh, he has to say that because he’s your dad. He’s right, though, isn’t he? I’m just as good; just as deserving; just as human. Why am I treated differently?
I just want to be.
{Miyah Faith}
Friday, October 21
Saturday, October 15
Black! Not White Dipped in Chocolate (a repost)
The Beautiful Black Doll on the Shelf
Posted on June 26, 2011
Black and White Dolls
I remember the time I got what would become my favorite doll. I was about four years old and I went with my maternal grandma to Toys-R-Us. I remember being ecstatic to finally be getting the doll that I had seen so many commercials about on tv. My grandmother and I promptly walked up to the cashier and asked where they kept the dolls that we were looking for. While we were talking, a young black girl heard us asking and said “I know where the dolls are, I’ll show you.” She was probably about 12 or 13. She led my grandmother and I over to the display where I saw the dolls I had been dreaming about for weeks. On one side of the display stood a replica of the doll that had been featured in the tv commericials. She was blond, blue-eyed with a pretty pink dress on. On the other side of the display stood the doll, which I hadn’t even noticed in the commercials. She was chocolate colored, with brown eyes and black curly hair with a ribbon in it. The black girl who had shown us the shelf, handed me the chocolate doll. I held the doll in my hand, looked at her, and promptly put her back.
I picked up the blond, blue-eyed doll, clutched her to my chest and headed to the front of the store. My grandma thanked the little girl and we went over to pay for the doll.
From that point on my doll, “Wishous,” became my bestfriend. We did everything together, we took pictures together, we traveled together and Wishous never left my side. I even brought Wishous to preschool and kindegarten with me. She stayed in my cubby in my backpack, the whole day, but she was always with me. I loved her.
I even took Wishous when we went on vacations. One time we all went on Vacation to Virginia, and we took a tour of a slave plantation. I was about five at the time, so I can’t remember the name of the plantation, but my mother tells me it might have been Monticello. As we left our car to take a tour of the plantation, I remember my mother asking me, “why don’t you leave Wishous in the car? It’s hot, leave her in the car.”
I refused. After going back and forth a few times, my father finally said”just let her bring the doll so we can go.” All I can remember from that day is walking along the dirt path of the slave plantation, with the slave cabins on each side and clutching Wishous, my blond-haired, blue- eyed doll to my chest…it would be years before I truly understood what that moment meant to me.
When I started first grade at a predominately white prep school, Wishous came to represent much more than a doll that I loved. One day, I brought my doll “Wishous,” in for Show and Tell. As I walked to the front of the class and held up Wishous in her new pink, flowered dress, I began to tell my classmates about all of the adventures that we had together. I told them that I had her since I was “little,” and she was my baby. Before I could finish, one of my classmates promptly stated, “but she’s WHITE.”
The teacher shot my classmate a look and the class went silent. I was hurt. That day , when my grandmother came to pick me up from school, I told her that one of my classmates had told me that “Wishous couldn’t be my baby because she was white,” to which my grandmother replied, “well, tell them Wishous is your baby, she’s just light skinned…”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized, Wishous was white…she didn’t look like me at all. In fact she looked more like my blonde classmate who promptly corrected me by telling me that Wishous was NOT my baby because she was white.
Not long after that, I stopped bringing Wishous to school with me and soon after that she went from occupying a special place on my mermaid pillow to a place in the corner of my closet.
When I started middle school , I ‘ finally’ got my first relaxer at 12 years old. I remember loving the silky, flow and how my hair moved in the wind. I loved how ‘cute’ I looked and I loved that I finally had the hair that most of my classmates had, the hair that Wishous had.
Before I knew it, our first mixer had rolled around. I remember dressing up and getting my hair done. I remember giggling with my friends about the girls who slow danced and the boys who asked them. I watched with excitement as my friends danced… waiting anxiously for my turn to come…
But, time after time, I went home sad and disappointed. Even with my “pretty hair,” and my pretty clothes, I never got asked to dance, except maybe at a black awareness dance…once a year.
As a black girl in a predominately white school, I was pretty much condemned to be a wallflower.
No matter how pretty I looked, no matter how straight my hair was, I would always be black first. Every time that I dreamed of dancing the night away, only to be rejected and ignored…every time that I imagined myself with long, flowing hair, only to be confronted with a reality of damaged hair and harsh chemicals, I relived that moment where I was forced to recognize that I would never be like the doll that I had loved and cherished my whole life. The traits that I subconsciously desired and coveted in my doll, were the very same traits that betrayed and condemned me to social invisibility later in life.
I rejected the raven-haired, brown eyed black doll, only to realize years later, that I WAS that black doll. I was the black doll abandoned and invisible on the shelf in the Toy Store.
My doll that had comforted me through so many nights, my doll that had been my security blanket …could never truly reflect who I was. Not in a culture, so steeped in racial animosity. Now, I understood why my mother wanted me to leave Wishous in the car at the slave plantation… my clinging to my white doll, as I walked amongst the slave cabins, was a representation of the emotional and mental scarring that a history of slavery, oppression and racism has left on my mind. Even before the age of five, I had already learned that my blackness relegated me to a place of undesirability and invisibility.
I’ve come to understand that my choosing of the white doll over the black doll was a byproduct of a culture that teaches whiteness as normal and blackness as abnormal. This mindset is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many times people do not even realize how brainwashed we are. Even though culture plays a large role in self perception, I do wish my parents and grandmother would have done somethings differently. I wish that my parents would have asked me why I chose the white doll over the black doll. Even just simply stating that ‘black dolls are pretty too,’ would have meant something to me. But sometimes, the legacy of racism, which comes from a history of slavery and oppression, runs so deeply in our culture, that it almost seems natural. But, it is not natural. It’s not natural that a girl should grow up believing her skin color or hair texture make her inferior. It’s not natural that a girl should feel unwanted just because she’s black.
It’s not that I hated my doll, it’s not that I had to let go of Wishous, it’s that I had to let go of what she represents. How could I reconcile the attachment that I had to my doll with the realization that much of that attachment came from a place of self-loathing and self-deprecation?
Well, I loved Wishous because of the joys we shared; I loved her because my grandmother, who I loved so much, went with me to buy her. But, I could no longer love her because she was white. I could no longer covet the idealized beauty that she represented. I could no longer grant her the sacred place that she occupied in my heart for so long because I had to learn to love MYSELF first. MYSELF.
A journey to acceptance of myself as a black woman means understanding that I do not have to feel shame for being black. My beauty and my self-worth are no longer defined by the constraints of society. I no longer need white validation to know that God has blessed me with my own unique beauty as a black woman and as a person. I’ve come to love the beauty that God has given me as a black woman.
I realized that I don’t need straight hair, pale skin or pale eyes to be beautiful, because I am crafted by the master jeweler and he never makes mistakes. All his creations reflect immense beauty.
I can stay out in the sun for hours and get a beautiful, vibrant shade of chocolate and I LOVE it. The damaged and dulled hair that I once tortured with chemicals now grows freely and beautifully from my head. I can walk out of my house and proudly show off my luscious afro-textured hair, which I KNOW is healthy and BEAUTIFUL, no matter what others think. It was only after kicking the chemicals that I realized it was the harshness of the relaxer that kept my hair from growing, not my hair itself.
Most importantly, I’m learning not to worry about those who don’t love or value me just because of my skin color. What they think of me doesn’t matter…the people who matter are those that have loved me my entire life…My mother, my father, my grandmother, my brothers and all the people who have loved me just as I am. I am a reflection of them, after all, and after all the love they’ve shown me, they couldn’t be anything less than beautiful, as am I.
Who cares what society thinks of me as a black woman, I don’t have to carry the mental bondage of slavery anymore. I’m made in an image of beauty and love , as we all are, and that’s what makes us beautiful.
As for the black doll that was left behind on the shelf…I finally picked her up…now I carry that beautiful black doll with me everywhere. She stays in my heart, in my smile, in my laugh, in my NATURAL beauty and in my love. That black doll is me and I won’t allow her to be left or forgotten on the shelf anymore. I AM LOVED.
*This is a repost from another blog. I haven't had quite the same experiences, but I can relate. I was talking to friends back home about relationships specifically romantic ones, and Arica said she had experienced only two responses from white boys/men. Either they thought she would be an easy f*** because she was black, or they wanted to just "be friends." I told her it was the same for me. I'd be hard-pressed to find a white boy who actually wanted to date a black girl. It makes me wonder, why? I ran across this blog post while we were talking, and decided to repost it.*
Posted on June 26, 2011
Black and White Dolls
I remember the time I got what would become my favorite doll. I was about four years old and I went with my maternal grandma to Toys-R-Us. I remember being ecstatic to finally be getting the doll that I had seen so many commercials about on tv. My grandmother and I promptly walked up to the cashier and asked where they kept the dolls that we were looking for. While we were talking, a young black girl heard us asking and said “I know where the dolls are, I’ll show you.” She was probably about 12 or 13. She led my grandmother and I over to the display where I saw the dolls I had been dreaming about for weeks. On one side of the display stood a replica of the doll that had been featured in the tv commericials. She was blond, blue-eyed with a pretty pink dress on. On the other side of the display stood the doll, which I hadn’t even noticed in the commercials. She was chocolate colored, with brown eyes and black curly hair with a ribbon in it. The black girl who had shown us the shelf, handed me the chocolate doll. I held the doll in my hand, looked at her, and promptly put her back.
I picked up the blond, blue-eyed doll, clutched her to my chest and headed to the front of the store. My grandma thanked the little girl and we went over to pay for the doll.
From that point on my doll, “Wishous,” became my bestfriend. We did everything together, we took pictures together, we traveled together and Wishous never left my side. I even brought Wishous to preschool and kindegarten with me. She stayed in my cubby in my backpack, the whole day, but she was always with me. I loved her.
I even took Wishous when we went on vacations. One time we all went on Vacation to Virginia, and we took a tour of a slave plantation. I was about five at the time, so I can’t remember the name of the plantation, but my mother tells me it might have been Monticello. As we left our car to take a tour of the plantation, I remember my mother asking me, “why don’t you leave Wishous in the car? It’s hot, leave her in the car.”
I refused. After going back and forth a few times, my father finally said”just let her bring the doll so we can go.” All I can remember from that day is walking along the dirt path of the slave plantation, with the slave cabins on each side and clutching Wishous, my blond-haired, blue- eyed doll to my chest…it would be years before I truly understood what that moment meant to me.
When I started first grade at a predominately white prep school, Wishous came to represent much more than a doll that I loved. One day, I brought my doll “Wishous,” in for Show and Tell. As I walked to the front of the class and held up Wishous in her new pink, flowered dress, I began to tell my classmates about all of the adventures that we had together. I told them that I had her since I was “little,” and she was my baby. Before I could finish, one of my classmates promptly stated, “but she’s WHITE.”
The teacher shot my classmate a look and the class went silent. I was hurt. That day , when my grandmother came to pick me up from school, I told her that one of my classmates had told me that “Wishous couldn’t be my baby because she was white,” to which my grandmother replied, “well, tell them Wishous is your baby, she’s just light skinned…”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized, Wishous was white…she didn’t look like me at all. In fact she looked more like my blonde classmate who promptly corrected me by telling me that Wishous was NOT my baby because she was white.
Not long after that, I stopped bringing Wishous to school with me and soon after that she went from occupying a special place on my mermaid pillow to a place in the corner of my closet.
When I started middle school , I ‘ finally’ got my first relaxer at 12 years old. I remember loving the silky, flow and how my hair moved in the wind. I loved how ‘cute’ I looked and I loved that I finally had the hair that most of my classmates had, the hair that Wishous had.
Before I knew it, our first mixer had rolled around. I remember dressing up and getting my hair done. I remember giggling with my friends about the girls who slow danced and the boys who asked them. I watched with excitement as my friends danced… waiting anxiously for my turn to come…
But, time after time, I went home sad and disappointed. Even with my “pretty hair,” and my pretty clothes, I never got asked to dance, except maybe at a black awareness dance…once a year.
As a black girl in a predominately white school, I was pretty much condemned to be a wallflower.
No matter how pretty I looked, no matter how straight my hair was, I would always be black first. Every time that I dreamed of dancing the night away, only to be rejected and ignored…every time that I imagined myself with long, flowing hair, only to be confronted with a reality of damaged hair and harsh chemicals, I relived that moment where I was forced to recognize that I would never be like the doll that I had loved and cherished my whole life. The traits that I subconsciously desired and coveted in my doll, were the very same traits that betrayed and condemned me to social invisibility later in life.
I rejected the raven-haired, brown eyed black doll, only to realize years later, that I WAS that black doll. I was the black doll abandoned and invisible on the shelf in the Toy Store.
My doll that had comforted me through so many nights, my doll that had been my security blanket …could never truly reflect who I was. Not in a culture, so steeped in racial animosity. Now, I understood why my mother wanted me to leave Wishous in the car at the slave plantation… my clinging to my white doll, as I walked amongst the slave cabins, was a representation of the emotional and mental scarring that a history of slavery, oppression and racism has left on my mind. Even before the age of five, I had already learned that my blackness relegated me to a place of undesirability and invisibility.
I’ve come to understand that my choosing of the white doll over the black doll was a byproduct of a culture that teaches whiteness as normal and blackness as abnormal. This mindset is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many times people do not even realize how brainwashed we are. Even though culture plays a large role in self perception, I do wish my parents and grandmother would have done somethings differently. I wish that my parents would have asked me why I chose the white doll over the black doll. Even just simply stating that ‘black dolls are pretty too,’ would have meant something to me. But sometimes, the legacy of racism, which comes from a history of slavery and oppression, runs so deeply in our culture, that it almost seems natural. But, it is not natural. It’s not natural that a girl should grow up believing her skin color or hair texture make her inferior. It’s not natural that a girl should feel unwanted just because she’s black.
It’s not that I hated my doll, it’s not that I had to let go of Wishous, it’s that I had to let go of what she represents. How could I reconcile the attachment that I had to my doll with the realization that much of that attachment came from a place of self-loathing and self-deprecation?
Well, I loved Wishous because of the joys we shared; I loved her because my grandmother, who I loved so much, went with me to buy her. But, I could no longer love her because she was white. I could no longer covet the idealized beauty that she represented. I could no longer grant her the sacred place that she occupied in my heart for so long because I had to learn to love MYSELF first. MYSELF.
A journey to acceptance of myself as a black woman means understanding that I do not have to feel shame for being black. My beauty and my self-worth are no longer defined by the constraints of society. I no longer need white validation to know that God has blessed me with my own unique beauty as a black woman and as a person. I’ve come to love the beauty that God has given me as a black woman.
I realized that I don’t need straight hair, pale skin or pale eyes to be beautiful, because I am crafted by the master jeweler and he never makes mistakes. All his creations reflect immense beauty.
I can stay out in the sun for hours and get a beautiful, vibrant shade of chocolate and I LOVE it. The damaged and dulled hair that I once tortured with chemicals now grows freely and beautifully from my head. I can walk out of my house and proudly show off my luscious afro-textured hair, which I KNOW is healthy and BEAUTIFUL, no matter what others think. It was only after kicking the chemicals that I realized it was the harshness of the relaxer that kept my hair from growing, not my hair itself.
Most importantly, I’m learning not to worry about those who don’t love or value me just because of my skin color. What they think of me doesn’t matter…the people who matter are those that have loved me my entire life…My mother, my father, my grandmother, my brothers and all the people who have loved me just as I am. I am a reflection of them, after all, and after all the love they’ve shown me, they couldn’t be anything less than beautiful, as am I.
Who cares what society thinks of me as a black woman, I don’t have to carry the mental bondage of slavery anymore. I’m made in an image of beauty and love , as we all are, and that’s what makes us beautiful.
As for the black doll that was left behind on the shelf…I finally picked her up…now I carry that beautiful black doll with me everywhere. She stays in my heart, in my smile, in my laugh, in my NATURAL beauty and in my love. That black doll is me and I won’t allow her to be left or forgotten on the shelf anymore. I AM LOVED.
*This is a repost from another blog. I haven't had quite the same experiences, but I can relate. I was talking to friends back home about relationships specifically romantic ones, and Arica said she had experienced only two responses from white boys/men. Either they thought she would be an easy f*** because she was black, or they wanted to just "be friends." I told her it was the same for me. I'd be hard-pressed to find a white boy who actually wanted to date a black girl. It makes me wonder, why? I ran across this blog post while we were talking, and decided to repost it.*
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