I guess to really get a grasp on what these two categories that women are supposed to be fitting into in order to avoid being a stupid, lame, mainstream loserface, I'll break them down for you:
The other night, I was having trouble falling asleep due to a mix of allergies, weird late-night energy bursts, and a mind that would not just slow down for two seconds to let me relax enough to get some rest. I kept thinking about something I'd seen on Facebook earlier that day, a picture that someone had (thankfully) edited to take away the very negative message the original was sending. The beautifully altered image rejected the polarizing and, quite frankly, stupid aims of the original post. See, what really gets me angry are these posts that very clearly aim to separate women into two groups--mainstream women and "the others." It is not cool to be a mainstream woman. It is cool to be one of "the others." I've seen so many women my age sharing stupid pictures on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or whatever claiming that they aren't "like other girls," and celebrating that, while also demonizing the "other girls" that they are so happy to separate themselves from.
I guess to really get a grasp on what these two categories that women are supposed to be fitting into in order to avoid being a stupid, lame, mainstream loserface, I'll break them down for you:
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Over the course of 2016, I've learned a lot about the transformational power of going through new transitions in life. I've really come to understand the vast number of possibilities I'm faced with after something changes, whether that something is big or small--I really feel like I've changed/transformed/evolved since I graduated from college...but I guess that's to be expected. What's really getting to me is the idea that it hasn't just been one singular evolution--it's constant.
Hello, everybody! As I finished up my shower earlier today, I was suddenly struck by a giant wave of thoughts, fears, and ideas about the upcoming general election. Most of us are very much aware of what's going on in the election cycle this year, unless you've been living in a cave without any access to Wifi, cell phone reception, or the presence of other non-cave people. To summarize what's happened over the past year for any cave people reading this (which, if there are...how? You're in a cave.), here are three main things you need to know:
Young people, like myself, were enthused in a way that rivals previous generations by this primary election season, and many of us now find ourselves in tough situations: who do we vote for in November, if we don't want to abstain from voting or vote third party? Hillary Clinton, or actual moldy carrot shaving Donald Trump? Now, let me make something clear: I do not have a problem with people who want to vote third party. That is your right as an American citizen, and honestly? More power to you for continuing to challenge the flawed two-party system that controls our democracy. I, however, will not be voting third party, nor will I be staying home (because why would I give up my right to vote when there are so many people around the world who would literally die to be able to have a say in their country's governmental processes?). I'm going to be voting for Hillary Clinton, and I respect anybody who disagrees with me, and I understand why you disagree with me too. This is just my opinion, and my choice, and I'm entitled to that. Agree to disagree, okay? The people I have a problem with are the Bernie Sanders supporters who claim that they will vote for actual orange diarrhea stain Donald Trump before they'll vote for Hillary Clinton. ....what? Say what you will about Hillary Clinton (no, seriously. Say it. Voice your opinions. I'm just a grad student with a blog, and we don't have to agree with each other), but she is no Donald Trump. If you honestly believe that Clinton would ban all Muslims from entering our country because of an extremist terrorist organization that MOST MUSLIMS ABHOR AND DENOUNCE, then you are regrettably misinformed. If you believe that Clinton would take away the rights of women and POC, in the ways that the crumbling Cheez It that is the Republican nominee would, then you are still regrettably misinformed. I understand that there is a sea of controversy surrounding Ms. Clinton, but she is NOT worse than Donald Trump. Vote for a third party candidate, write in someone's name, but god, good freaking god, do not vote for that mini-fingered Oompaloompa. I've heard people say that it doesn't matter if Trump wins, because a revolution would start the minute he took office, and you know what? That's probably true. But please think about this one little thing before you go spouting off about the violent revolution that will take place if/when the Great Pumpkin is elected President: It's a really obvious sign of privilege if you say that you'd rather have Trump be president because it'd run the country into the ground and would force change, because there are countries all over the world who have been run into the ground by men and women like Trump, and I'm sure that the citizens of those countries who fought, who lost their rights, who saw their families torn apart, or their loved ones violently discriminated against...I'm sure that those people do not, and would not, share that same blasé attitude with you. And if Donald Trump is elected President, you can be damn sure that things will go up in flames, and those same people who so willingly welcome a violent revolt against an ugly orange highlighter of an demagogue will most likely not be so welcoming when they start to see the ramifications of their wishes. Please remind yourself that you are automatically granted some form of privilege by living in the United States. Yes, some of us have more or less privilege than others, and the system is egregiously flawed and needs fixing, but that repair cannot and will not happen over night. The mere existence of a politician like Sen. Bernie Sanders and his amazing successes during the primaries is evidence enough that change is coming. Yes, he lost, but that is not a loss for those of us who were on his side if we continue to fight the good fight, and that fight will not be won if we do not stay politically aware and active. Just because someone like Sanders nearly won the nomination does not automatically mean that the two-party system will be abolished and we'll become a Democratic Socialist nation--there is still so much more work to do, and by abstaining from voting, or by voting for a racist Cheeto, you will be doing nothing in the name of progress. To fight the system, you have to understand the system; you have to work the system, you have to infiltrate it and dismantle it brick by brick. Continue to vote third party if you want, or don't! Vote for your state senators and representatives so there isn't a disgusting disparagement between the parties in Congress. Don't just sit back, ready to give up, because your candidate didn't get the nomination. Keep fighting, cave peo--oh right, I'm not talking to the cave people anymore. Sorry. I don't know, guys...I'm just scared. I don't want to live in an America where a crybaby millionaire who's concern for the wellbeing of its citizens starts and stops with grossly wealthy men like himself. I don't want to live in an America where my LGBTQ, Muslim, Black, and/or Latin@ brothers and sisters will be discriminated against even more than they already are today. I don't want to live in an America where my rights to lay claim to my own body will be contested, and I don't want to live in an America where people, like me, from low-income households do not have access to free or affordable health care. That is the America we can all look forward to if actual melted orange Skittle Donald Trump is our next POTUS. Isn't that terrifying? The system is broken, it's been broken for a very long time, but it's going to take all of our power to put it back together again. Keep on fighting and keep on believing. Change will come. I haven't posted on here for a while now, and I feel kind of guilty about that. As someone whose ultimate plans are to write and blog for a living, I'm not doing so great at the whole "consistent posting" thing. I guess I should explain myself, and then I can get to what I really want to talk about today.
For the past few months, I've been going through something very difficult. I've dealt with depression and anxiety in the past, but everything really hit its peak at the beginning of April. I'd never felt quite so low before, and it really threw me off. Every day was a constant battle with myself to keep going, to keep breathing, to keep helping myself. I started therapy (not for the first time) and doing yoga every day at the local Sivananda Ashram, and that changed everything. I finally started to see myself as myself, not just the distorted carbon copy I had been looking at for 21 years prior. To use a metaphor that my therapist gave me towards the beginning of our talks, I decided to dive through the wave in the ocean that is/was my anxiety/depression/tension, instead of letting it overtake me completely. You see, whether you dive through or get swept away doesn't matter, because either way, you will eventually get out of the wave--but it's a lot more pleasant if you just take the plunge to begin with. Anyways, a culmination of stress about grad school (btw...I got into grad school!), a fear of grad school and starting a new chapter in my life with my boyfriend (we're moving in together!), nostalgia about moving away from my childhood home for good, and a whole mess of baggage from my youth all led to a very low point in my life thus far. It affected me physically, mentally, and emotionally, and I was exhausted. I'm finally starting to feel like myself again, or rather, I'm finally starting to feel like the new me, the me that's emerging from this experience. I'm okay now, but I'm not expecting to never feel low like that again--however, I know now how to handle it, and how to use it as a tool for growth, rather than as a weapon for destruction. Obviously, I'm still terrified and stressed out about starting this new and exciting part of my life, but the feelings aren't negative, nor are they unexpected or unwarranted. So, things are good. But here's what's really eating at me right now---despite the expected nerves I'm feeling about grad school (i.e. Will I like it? Will I make friends? Is it going to be too difficult? What if, at the end of everything, I realize I don't want to be a journalist/writer? Am I going insane???), there's another fear that's holding me back: What if nobody believes me when I tell them that I'm mixed, and that I identify with my blackness very, very much? What if, like in elementary to high school, or in undergrad, people choose to ignore, or deny my race? After everything that I learned about myself and my family last semester during the independent study that started this blog, will I be knocked back down, turned back into that self-loathing, white-looking Black girl that I was in high school? I'd like to think that I won't, but it's a hell of a blow when your peers reject an integral piece of your identity because of their own personal biases or ignorance. Leaving the town I grew up in for good is stirring up so many memories of elementary through high school: being called an Uh-Oh Oreo, having my best friends tell me I "wasn't Black," witnessing racism firsthand...and I am wishing, praying even, that graduate school will be different, that people will be more open-minded, that they won't reject me at face value. The cynic inside of me is gently reminding me that wherever I go, there will be people who will be unwilling to open their minds to unfamiliar circumstances, people that will reject you no matter how eloquently you may write about your racial background and experiences. People are always going to hate, that's just a sad, sad truth. The optimist inside of me, on the other hand, is reminding me that by pursuing a Master's degree in journalism, even by occasionally writing on this blog, I'm putting my experiences out there for people to read and judge and experience for themselves, which may open a couple minds, maybe even changing one or two of them along the way. I think I'm just struggling to find the balance between the cynic and the optimist right now. I don't know. One thing I do know is this--I missed writing like this. It was time to come back, and though I'm making no promises right now, I'm going to try to keep this little thing updated as grad school progresses. When I woke up this morning, I was met with some...disturbing posts on Facebook. There were a bunch of articles/statuses being shared by different people, all with the same idea--that Beyonce's new video for Formation, along with her performance of it at the Super Bowl, was racist, hypocritical, and disgusting. Hm. Okay, first of all, if you haven't already watched the music video, here it is. Okay, done watching it? Wasn't it beautiful? Wasn't it a perfect blend of Beyonce's proud sexual energy and of her proud Black identity? Didn't you love the seamless weaving together of the past, present, and future New Orleans, and on a broader level, of the Southern Black identity? Did you notice all of the allusions to different kinds of spirituality, her continued support of female empowerment, her condemnation of police brutality? Yeah, I noticed it too. So why, you may be asking yourself, why are people up in arms about this song, this video, and the subsequent Super Bowl performance this past Sunday? Well, it's difficult to give a simple answer to that question, because there isn't just one simple answer as to why our society is still finding reasons to demonize and condemn a powerful WOC who has (justifiably) decided to speak her mind through her art. There are a lot of layers to this problem, and all of these people continuing to give into their internalized racism, under the guise of being more morally sound than Beyonce, or whatever their reasons are for getting down on her, are just adding to the problem. There is no doubt that Formation is paying homage to Black history, but it's not the white-washed version of our history that has been shoved down our throats since we first stepped into elementary school. The video shows images of a post-Katrina New Orleans, devastated by floods and poverty; it shows the New Orleans of the past, with a preacher in a Baptist church as well as people practicing Santeria and other non-Christian religions; and finally, we see the group of black-clad dancers, whose outfits harken back to the regalia of the Black Panthers (also: did you notice that all of the dancers were Black? And that they weren't being used as props for White performers? Isn't that refreshing??). Not to mention the powerful moment towards the end of the video where the young Black boy in the dark hoodie is dancing in front of a line of White police officers in SWAT gear, and as he finishes, the policemen raise their hands up in in the all-too-familiar "Hands up, don't shoot" position. All in all, I love this video, I love this song, and I love Beyonce. But I still have a bitter taste in my mouth, and it has nothing to do with Beyonce. It has to do with the droves of people in the Internet who are so pissed off that a WOC performer has decided to stray from the path of just entertaining for entertainment's sake, rejecting the notion that she must cater to the beliefs and ideals of her White "fans," instead coming out with something that has significant meaning not only to her, but to her community. It's so infuriating, because these people that are calling Beyonce a hypocrite for calling out the issues with police brutality against Black people in this country are the same people who were praising her for the feminist anthem on her self-titled 2013 album, "Flawless." Everyone was soooo happy that Beyonce had "come out," so to speak, as a feminist. Her music suddenly changed from being the typical pop/R&B stuff it was in the 2000s into something more meaningful, more political, more empowering (not to say that her earlier work wasn't empowering, because it was, but you know what I'm talking about). But as soon as Formation came out, Beyonce stopped being so powerful in the eyes of those who secretly (or not so secretly) want to keep POC down. Suddenly, she's become a cop-hater, a racist (????), and any other terrible thing people can come up with when insulting her latest work. People are comparing Formation to the Confederate Flag. They're saying that if you think the Confederate Flag is terrible, then you should automatically think that Beyonce's proud exhibition of Black history and heritage is also terrible...because that makes perfect sense. Yes, Beyonce and her dancers dressed up like the Black Panthers at the Super Bowl and raised their fists up, a move that is very much about Black power. But what I think people fail to see is that this is incomparable to what the Confederate Flag represents--that flag represents hundreds of years of Black oppression, of slavery, of racism. It is a symbol of the terrible plight African slaves, my god damn ancestors, had to endure. So when I see that people are comparing the outrage over the Confederate Flag to the empowering performance Beyonce and her dancers gave at the Super Bowl, I get angry. Really damn angry. For once, check your damn white privilege and stop trying to stifle the voices of people who have been fighting for years to be heard. Oh, and when people bring up the fact that Beyonce is a hypocrite for being escorted by police to wherever she goes... 1) She's Beyonce, and there are plenty of people who want to get a piece of her (violently or not) 2) Just because she is protesting police brutality does not mean that she hates the police. In fact, the police force in this country are a wonderful group of men and women who work tirelessly every day to make sure that we are all safe, and I'm sure Beyonce knows and respects that. That does not mean that there are not bad police out there, because obviously, THERE ARE. 3) Stop trying to mask your closeted racism with these poor excuses. It's incredibly transparent, and it doesn't make you look any less bigoted. 4) Do you also think that President Obama is a hypocrite for having a constant police escort, when he too has spoken out against the problems with police brutality in this country? No? Okay. This turned into a wild rant, and for that, I do not apologize. But I just can't stay quiet about this. Stop trying to bring powerful Black people down because they aren't conforming to your narrow-minded ideas about what Black people are supposed to do. Beyonce is in a very powerful position--she is arguably one of the most influential female performers in the world. It is admirable that she is using her position to spread the truth and stand up for what she believes in. Honor that. Respect that. Stop being assholes. Last night, I was angry. So angry, in fact, that I proceeded to go off on a Twitter rant for about 15 minutes, which is something I don't really do, because nobody really pays attention to me on Twitter. But for once, I had good reason to be Twanting (Twitter ranting? I don't know, I'm trying to be clever). It came to my attention earlier in the evening that former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, had said some...annoying...things at a rally for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Let me preface the rest of this blog post by saying that I have nothing personally against Clinton's campaign--I honestly believe that she is a strong candidate who would do a good job as POTUS...that being said, #FeelTheBern. Ms. Albright, someone who I've never heard anything negative about since she was Bill Clinton's SoS, said the following to conclude her endorsement of Mrs. Clinton, which included a criticism of young women who are choosing to not support Hillary Clinton: "Just remember...there's a special place in Hell for women who don't help each other." Okay. Here's the thing, Ms. Albright--there is also a "special place in Hell," to borrow your phrase, for women who tear each other down for not sharing the same beliefs as you and your constituents. There is a "special place in Hell" for people who underestimate the intelligence and integrity of young millennial women, simply because of their age and because of the (largely exaggerated and false) stereotypes that have arisen over the past few years as people in my generation have come of age. Albright's quip about us young, female Sanders supporters is essentially an insinuation that we are somehow lesser than our counterparts who are backing Clinton. Her whole argument is entirely contradictory, because by saying such a negative thing about women who "don't help each other," Albright is doing the very thing she claims would send a woman to Hell!!! The entire point of the "democracy" we live in is that we are allowed to share different views than our friends, families, and neighbors. We may not like it, but that's how it works--that's how having agency as a human being works! And to Hillary Clinton--telling women that they are going to go to Hell if they don't vote for you is a hella twisted way to get them to vote for you in the upcoming primary elections. MOVING ON TO GLORIA STEINEM. As I'm sure plenty of you have heard, Gloria Steinem, who has openly endorsed Hillary Clinton, recently said in an interview with Bill Maher that young women are only supporting Bernie Sanders to "meet guys." “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’ ” This was so disappointing (and infuriating) for me to hear last night. Gloria Steinem, one of the strongest and most influential feminist icons in history, is reducing her arguments against Senator Sanders' candidacy to ones that are misogynist and, quite frankly, sexist. Assuming that women in their 20s are only supporting Bernie Sanders because they think they'll meet guys is destructive and not conducive to creating a productive dialogue about the role feminism plays in the upcoming election! Not to mention the fact that Steinem's declaration completely discounts all queer young women who are supporting Sen. Sanders, hiding behind heteronormative assumptions that are just plain wrong. Now, I completely understand the importance of feminists like Steinem and Albright, but we need to move past this First Wave Feminist crap that is reductive in that it takes away from the strides feminism has taken since our foremothers brought our fight to the front of the line! There was a time when radical feminists believed that trans women were not "real" women, and that they were simply men trying to invade their feminine space in a different way. WE. ARE. PAST. THAT. POINT. As feminists and politically aware young men and women, we deserve to have our right to choose whomever we want to vote for in the upcoming election. It's as simple as this: You cannot claim to be a champion of women or to be a progressive feminist if you are going to shit on other women because you don't agree with them. You cannot say that women should be voting for Hillary Clinton simply because she is also a woman, because the entire point of everything we've been fighting for is the equality of the sexes, and with that equality comes the freedom for women to vote for ANYBODY THEY WANT TO, be it Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, or god damn Big Bird. Do not bring us back another thirty years, Mss. Albright, Steinem, and Clinton. Millennial feminists, First through Third Wave feminists...we have all worked too hard for our identities to be reduced to nothing more than young women who are obsessed with finding a man, willing to throw each other under the bus in order to get our way. And guess what? I may be #FeelingTheBern, but that does not mean that I will demonize you for supporting Hillary Clinton, or any other candidates for that matter (though it will be hard for me to look you in the eyes if you support Donald Trump or Ted Cruz...let's be real). UPDATE: Gloria Steinem posted a clarification about her comments on Bill Maher on her Facebook page: "In a case of talk-show Interruptus, I misspoke on the Bill Maher show recently, and apologize for what's been misinterpreted as implying young women aren't serious in their politics. What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what's happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back. Whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before." I'm happy to see that Ms. Steinem reacted so well to the backlash that must've taken her by storm this morning. Be that as it may, my opinions remain unchanged about what she originally said (misspoken or not) and about Madeleine Albright's comments. I've been thinking a lot about the future lately...graduate school, my career, my relationships...you get the point. I'm fairly sure about what I want my future to look like. I'll try to paint a little picture for you:
In five to ten years, I see myself married with a couple pets (teeny dog, snarky cat, maybe a fish?). I'll have a Master's Degree in Journalism, and I'll be working at a cool online magazine or newspaper like Mic or HuffPost...something chic and intellectual (like me, ha!). I'll be writing about my experiences as a mixed woman, and people will accept my heritage and maybe I'll have inspired other people to talk about their experiences. It'll be great! I'll be a quick-witted, hard-hitting reporter, standing on the front lines of protests, telling the world what's happening in terms of feminism, racial justice, and LGBTQ* issues. Maybe I'll be working on a book of prose, and I'll definitely still be a size 6 (please God...let me still be a size 6 when I'm 30). Bernie Sanders will be finishing up his second term as POTUS, and ISIL will have been eradicated. Things won't be perfect, but I won't be so scared of what's happening around the world. That's my ideal. Maybe it's unrealistic, but I like to think that it's plausible. But... I guess I've just been worrying about whether or not I can actually make a difference, you know? Like...will my "unique" perspective on the issues of people of color really have an impact on things? Will it all actually mean something in the end? I think I'm stressing out too much about things that haven't even happened yet, but I just want to believe that my voice is a voice that matters, one that people want to hear. I don't want to fling myself into the world of journalism and activism, only to be shut down by people who think that my voice isn't necessary. I mean, seriously--the literature that is based off of the complexities of "passing" in the Black community is kind of limited, and occasionally, it is not positive. Sure, there was an upswing of Black characters in literature who passed/could pass during the Harlem Renaissance, and there are modern authors like Mat Johnson who are letting the world know that the Black community is a rainbow community, but there are also plenty of people in this world who only want to see things in black and white, both figuratively and literally. I could absolutely just be wallowing in an "I'm about to finish off my last semester of college and I don't know if I'll get into grad school and I don't want to leave my friends" kind of funk, but I think that my worries are meritorious. Yes, I am an anxious person who likes to overthink and stress about things (honestly, who isn't like that these days, though?), and the feedback I've gotten about this blog has been widely positive, but I can't help that worry that one day, the feedback I'll receive will be largely negative. If I end up working at a liberal news outlet after grad school, there are going to be lots of people who will intentionally try to tear me down--that's just the reality of it all. Whether you're liberal or conservative, if you're a journalist or notable blogger or whatever, people are going to disagree with you, and they won't always disagree in a polite way. It's a part of the job, I suppose, but I wish that it wasn't. (I might be going off on a tangent at this point, but I think I'm just going to keep going...) I want there to be a voice in the media for men and women like me. I want to see more positive representations of light-skinned people of color in the media. It's insane that, in 2015, people are STILL shaming members of their own God damn community for not being "enough" because their DNA happened to splice together in such a way that their skin didn't come out dark. Along those lines, I want to see more positive representations of dark-skinned people of color in the media. I want to see EQUALLY positive representations of ALL PEOPLE OF COLOR, regardless of the amount of pigment in their skin, in the media. Why does it have to be such a fucking struggle?? Why do we pit ourselves against each other? Why do we let the oppressors create these economies of attractiveness (credit to Junot Diaz for that phrase) that make us feel that we aren't enough, regardless of where we stand on the pigment spectrum? As I've said in the past, I have always wished that I had darker skin, while there are plenty of people in this world who wish they were lighter. All of this internalized and externalized shame is tearing us apart, man. I have been toying with so many different perspectives since I started this blog at the end of the summer. In the beginning, I was a girl who wasn't quite sure where she stood in the Black community, the community that is outside of my family, the one that I fear/feared would reject me because of my light skin and blonde hair. I'm still figuring it out, but I'm definitely in a better place now, identity-wise. I guess I'm still just inherently confused about why there is so much hatred in a community/culture that has been marginalized and abused for CENTURIES--shouldn't we all just stick the fuck together? As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of something my mom said to me recently about terrorism; I called her a few weeks ago, a few days after the attacks on Paris and Beirut and Baghdad...I was so afraid, I was crying, I was worried for my siblings who live/work in NYC...and you know what she told me? That the fear that I was feeling, the fear that is being fueled and encouraged by so many mainstream media outlets and by my PEERS (PSA: chill with the paranoid Facebook posts, please), that fear is exactly what the terrorists want to spread. They are accomplishing their goals if they are scaring their victims. I think this ties in with the whole internalized hatred within the communities of people of color (esp. Black communities) because it's like we're unconsciously afraid of moving past the hatred of White people, you know? It's like we would rather give into the fear the oppressors are instilling in us by killing our brothers and sisters or locking us up in messed up prisons, instead of acknowledging that fear and moving past it. We hate because we're afraid. I think that's a summation of it all, to be honest. We hate because we were conditioned to hate ourselves by those who hope to frighten us. Enough of these pigment wars (again, credit to Junot Diaz...obsessed with him right now)--maybe we should focus our aggression on things that are actually worth it, you know? I'm not saying "LET'S GET VIOLENT AND AGGRESSIVE, GRRRR!!!"; I'm saying that we need to take all of that negative energy that has been shoved into our blood from the second Europeans colonized the Americas, from the second the first slave was taken from Africa...and we need to transform that energy into something positive, something that encourages HOPE and CHANGE. I'm getting a little excited now, and I'm also running on a lot of caffeine from a mocha blast (10/10 would recommend), so forgive me. I've learned so much about myself in such a short span of time, so it's hard to really categorize my thoughts in a coherent manner, so I apologize if none of this made sense. But despite my potentially incoherent ramblings, I think I'm coming to some kind of conclusion. I need to let my thoughts steep a bit longer, like a good loose leaf tea (I'm the worst), and then I'll come back to it all. For now, I'm going to eat some pasta, drink some tea, and read for my classes while I've still got undergrad classes to read for...oh, and probably weep uncontrollably because everything is ending and beginning and changing and I can only hope that the future I painted for you at the beginning of this disjointed post will come to fruition and everything will be okay!! Woo! P.S. Please feel free to comment on anything I've said! I would love to get a dialogue going on here at some point, especially when I'll have even more time to post after graduation. I think the best word to describe my family is rainbow. Not only do we come in all different shades (of skin color, ha!), but we also come in all different shades of personalities. We've got my mom, the powerhouse single mother who made a living out of saving people's lives as an OR nurse, lived in a variety of cool yoga ranches and ashrams, and raised three awesome children. There's my big sister Kumari, the surgeon, the fiesty, the loving, the intelligent, my sissle. Then there's Adrien, the subject of this installment of the interview series I'm doing on my immediate family--My Rainbow Family.
Kumari and Adrien recently agreed to do separate interviews with me via FaceTime to discuss their experiences growing up mixed, and growing up light-skinned. Kumari's interview can be found here.My brother has always been the calm one in the family. Sure, he can get riled up just like anybody else, but when compared to me, my sister, and my mother, he's 100% chill. He's a voice of reason in our family, and I'm grateful for the times he's calmed me down after a fight, or pushed me to go further in life. Adrien's taught me how to brush people's ignorance off with a smile, how to walk away from things when there is no reason to get yourself involved, and how to love the creative parts of our DNA by chasing careers that will encourage us to thrive. I've seen him grow a lot over the course of our lives, and I can say with complete honesty that I'm so, so proud to call him my brother. Through all the different hair styles, hair colors, jobs, and dreams, Adrien has never changed who he is at the core--my brother, my bubba. Adrien's interview, unlike Kumari's, happened one night after I'd gotten home from one of my late night classes. We'd had some trouble with scheduling a time for an interview because of our conflicting busy schedules, but finally...we'd picked a day and time. I got home from class, set myself up, and we FaceTimed. Of course, there were some technical difficulties that we had to deal with (all on my end, obviously), but once those were sorted out, we got down to business. I asked Adrien a lot of the same questions that I asked Kumari, and, as you could expect, the answers varied in may different ways. A lot of their thoughts on being mixed are the same, but a lot of them are also different. I started out by asking him how our experiences as mixed people had differed, and how they were the same. His response coalesced with his classic chill Adrien demeanor. "I think that, I don't know...I don't really surround myself with people who really care about that kind of thing. So, since I was...at least out of high school, I haven't really had a lot of issues. Even when I was in high school I didn't have many issues." His response lined up with some of the things Kumari had said, but I pointed out one of the major differences. "Kumari had more issues in high school, but as soon as she got out of Neversink, it was a lot different. There was way less discrimination, not saying that there wasn't any, but she didn't feel like she was as different as she was at our school." "Yeah," Adrien said. "I guess I would agree with that. And I would say that you probably had a different experience, since you don't really look mixed. So, you might have had the reverse." "What do you mean?" I asked, curious to see where this was going. "You didn't experience anything in high school, and maybe you're experiencing more in college? I don't know." "Well, I think I did experience things in high school, but it was from a different kind of perspective, because I can pass, and I pass every day as white, so people are more likely to be racist around me, even if they know. I remember there was a guy who made a joke about AIDS and black people, saying that AIDS happened because a black guy fucked a monkey in Africa." This prompted some laughter from both of us at the stupidity of the joke. I mean, really? That's the best you've got? I continued. "And he knew, like people knew that I was black, but they didn't care. You know? Like something Kumari and I talked about was how one of my best friends throughout high school constantly told me I wasn't black, which was honestly rude and mean of her to do. She would be like, 'You're white. Look at you, look at your skin. It's light.' And it's just like, 'You know who my mom is, you know...you've known this since we were in kindergarten.' I don't know why is has to be an issue." Next, I asked Adrien if he'd ever unintentionally passed, for white, for something other than black, etc. "I think most people have no idea what I am," he said honestly. "I don't think anybody literally has a clue. That's why when somebody usually starts to feel more comfortable around me, one of the first questions they ask is, 'So...what are you?'" "Do they play the guessing game?" I asked, thinking back to the end of my conversation with Kumari. "Not really, I usually just tell them," he laughed. "With me, it's kind of like the guessing game but switched around," I said. "Like, as soon as they find out it's like, 'Oh yeah, I can see it. You've got the flat nose, you've got the facial structure, you've got the big butt.'" "Some black people notice that, like they'll know right off the bat! It was funny, the other day, I was walking down the street at like 8:00pm, and...I love when this happens, it makes me feel so funny...but some 40 year old black woman's walking down the street towards me and she looks at me and she goes, "MmmmmhhhHHHMMM, hey good lookin'!" and just gives me the up and down. And she knew that I've got a little bit of the brother in me." "That's funny!" I said. "I think people tend to...if they're more open, racially...they can pick you out." Writing this story now reminds me of a conversation I had with a classmate just a week ago about my race. He told me that from the second he met me during our freshman year of college, he knew that I couldn't just be white. He could just tell that there was something else going on in my genes. And honestly? That made me feel amazing, that recognition. "So, do you, or have you ever struggled with your racial identity?" I asked, not quite sure what kind of answer I would get. "You know that I've had some issues with how I identify or how people try to identify me." "I can't say that I ever have!" Adrien said confidently. "Maybe a little in high school, but I wouldn't say struggle. More like being annoyed that people are idiots. I'm pretty comfortable." "That's good! That's a good thing. You and Kumari are similar in that way. So, what are some of the stupidest things people have said to you about race, or about your race?" "Hmmm..." Adrien thought for a moment. "Stupid things, huh?" "Or racist things." "Well, one kid used to love to call me the n-word. Other than that, not much." "I'll find him and I'll punch him in the face," I joked, even though most of me was pretty serious. "Some douchebag kid. He would do it in a pretending kind of way. But he was a douche. Other than that...I'm sure Mom's told you the story about me not being allowed in the Cub Scouts?" "Yeah, but I've only ever heard it from her." "I don't really know the story that well, I was like four or five years old. I just remember something about walking into a Cub Scout meeting...or her not feeling comfortable to let me stay...you'll have to ask her the exact story." Here's the exact story: Adrien wanted to join the Cub Scouts. So, he and my mother went to the school to sign up. They were waiting on line, and my mother noticed that the den mother was only calling white people that were behind her in line to register their children. My mother told Adrien that they were leaving, and he asked, "Why?" My mother said, "If the pack leader (who was one of Adrien's best friend's father) is allowing these sorts of things to go on, you're not going to be a part of this." The funny part is, my mother ended up having to take care of the den mother in the hospital, and she (the den mother) was ashamed of how she had treated my mother and my brother. My mom, when I asked her about it, said that people really can change, despite their initial bigotry. BACK TO THE INTERVIEW! Next, I asked Adrien the question that had both me and Kumari stumped: Do you think that it’s almost harder to be a mixed woman because of white people’s obsession with white people’s obsession with the “exotic” like you aren’t quite white, you aren’t quite black? Do you think that mixed women/women of color have it harder than mixed men/men of color? I assured him that I knew that it was a tough question. His response was honest. "Let's come back to it. I'll think about it." Happy with the thought that we would spend a good deal of time at the end of the conversation talking about this heavy question, I continued with the interview. "So, how do you deal with the assumptions that people make about you because of your race before they get to know who you are, or how you identify racially? Like, if people assume that you're Hispanic or Latino or something (cue laughter from Adrien). Do you think people assume things about you when they first meet you?" "Yeah, definitely," Adrien said. "But their assumptions are always wrong, so I kind of enjoy hearing what those assumptions are." "What are some of the assumptions that you've heard?" "I mean, you name it! Italian, definitely Hispanic, mixed anything...I guess that's it. A lot of Hispanic." "Mom gets mistaken for being Hispanic or Latina all the time," I said, remembering the time my mom went into a bakery and the Latino man behind the counter started to speak very rapid Spanish to her, complaining about a Hasidic woman who had wasted his time a few seconds beforehand. My mom's response? "No habla!" "People start speaking Spanish to you because of how you look, and I'm just like, 'Sorry bud!'" We laughed. "Kumari and I talked a lot about the guessing game, like how people need to know what you are." "Yeah," he said, "it's not generally in an entirely negative way." "People are just curious," I said. "But it's negative in that they feel they have to know what you are, because it's still so important to people." "They just wanna know why I'm so damn good lookin'!" Oh, Adrien. Ever the jokester. "They want to know where they can get that complexion! They're like, 'What ethnic blend created this???'" We laughed again. Adrien said he wasn't about to give anybody the secret recipe, because our DNA worked hard to create such a plethora of racial features. Next, I asked him if he'd ever felt like he had to prove himself because of the color of his skin, or if he'd ever felt like he had to prove he wasn't a stereotype. His answer was quick. "No." "That's good!" I said, happy with his response, because it's always good to see that we're starting to move past some of these negative things. "These are good things." "What did Kumari say?" "She said that it was mainly in high school, in our hometown, where she felt those things more often." "Yeah," he said. "Maybe I did feel that in high school, but if I did, it was such a small thing that it didn't stick with me." "I had a feeling that Kumari experienced high school differently than you did." I told him the story about Kumari's friend's brother and grandfather who treated her very poorly because of the color of her skin. "She definitely experienced things a lot differently than both you or I did. And I don't know why! I mean, I know why she experienced things differently than me, because I'm light, but I don't know why it was any different from you." "Yeah, I don't know," he said. "We'll have to talk about it!" "I think a lot of it may have to do with--" "--Gender?" Adrien finished my sentence for me. "Yeah," I said. "And I don't know what it is, specifically, that makes people more likely to hate mixed women over mixed men, but it definitely seems like it's a kind of trend." "Kumari's had a lot more black friends than me too. And she's, I mean, dated black men. So, she should have a much more broad experience than me." "She really got more involved in it than you or I did, I guess," I said. "Which is a good thing! But we also talked about how both of you, especially her, were immersed into the black side of the family when you were younger. Like there was never any problem. Our aunt and cousins were never like, "Oh, you guys are lighter," you know? I never felt like I was any different than Tarik or Tahir when we would play and stuff, because like...they're my cousins! So, I never really understood why people, you know, wanted us to be different, because we're family. And I know that you two experienced even more of that side of our family than I did." "Yeah, definitely. I mean, we were young." "It still shapes your identity, I guess," I said. "And when you live in the middle of nowhere and you're like the only black person in town and you're as light as everybody else, it's kind of confusing." "Yeah..." Adrien said. "I don't even know if there were any other black people in my class. What else ya got?" "Have you ever felt like you've been discriminated against?" I asked. "Hmm...discriminated...I don't think so. Except maybe that Cub Scouts situation, which, you know, I was so young that the answer is really no, because I didn't feel it back then." "Did you ever feel like people made assumptions about Mom, like when she'd pick us up from school or something? Or do you think your class was pretty much okay with it?" "Yeah. Plus, everybody in high school...everybody got used to it. Maybe they did have a problem or they thought it was weird for a minute, but you know, for the next ten years, it was just like, 'Oh, look! There's Adrien's mom.'" "I always thought it was interesting that for some people, because I'm light--" "That it was more of a surprise to them?" Adrien asked. "Yeah," I said. "Even though they'd known me for like seventeen years, or whatever, they would still stare at Mom. Some people asked me, people still ask me, if I'm adopted." "Really?!!" "Yeah, like 'That can't be your mom,' and I'm just like, "Yeah. It is my mom.'" "Have they seen your dad??" "You know, that's something people always ask me. They assume that Mom is white and that my dad has to be black. Have you gotten that before?" "Not really, but I do look a lot more like Mom!" We laughed. "You do! But people seem to assume automatically that it has to be my dad that's black." "To me," Adrien said, "Mom doesn't even really look 'that black,' you know? I mean, she's got curly hair, but she doesn't really have real dark skin." "It goes to show how diverse the black community is," I said. "Like, you don't have to be black as the night sky to be a black person. You can be that dark or you can be like this (points to self), and it doesn't make you any less black. So, have you heard of colorism?" I asked. "I have, now that you've enlightened me," said Adrien. "Okay," I said. "So, do you think that there's a problem with colorism in the black community today?" "I would have to say that I have no idea. I'm completely uneducated." "It's tough. Kumari, when I asked her, said that she thinks it's probably still there, but it's better than it was when Mom was young." Adrien agreed. "I've experienced both kinds of things--both being accepted by black people when I tell them I'm black, and being denied a little bit, or being questioned." "That makes sense," Adrien said. We talked about the blog post I wrote in response to mary whitehead lee's poem "On Not Bein," and the subsequent SWAPA reading I did in my Race, Gender, Class, & Culture class. There were many tears shed that day, but it was a very cleansing experience for me. I told him that after that class, one of my classmates (who happened to be black), asked me, "Which one of your parents is black?" and I told him that it was my mother, and then he asked if he could see a picture. I showed him a picture because, at this point, I'm just so used to it, showing a picture of my mom so people will stop questioning me. "I'm always afraid that people will think I'm lying to them," I told Adrien. His response was golden. "If they think that, fuck 'em!" Next, I asked him if he'd ever felt like he wasn't "black enough" in the company of other black people. "No," he said. "I think that because I don't necessarily look 'black,' there's not an expectation for me to be black. Maybe if I were a little darker, perhaps, but since I'm so neutral, I think it's to the point where people don't expect it, but if I tell them, they're like, "Oh, yeah...okay!" I kind of feel like I have an easy in, since it's not like, "Oh yeah, he's black"--it's like, "Ohhhh, he's black." It's an easy way to kind of get a conversation started. Whereas for a white person, talking to a black person, it might be, you know, twenty minutes or so of conversation, for me it's maybe ten, you know? So, I mean..maybe that's colorism in a sense. "Having to explain it or talk about it?" I asked, curious to see what he'd say. "No, not even that," he said. "Just the fact that since I look like I could be black, in certain situations it might allow me to have more of a report with a black person, you know? Like I could jump in and be like, "Yeah, I'm half black," and they'd be like, "Oh yeah, that's cool bro." So it might be more of an ice breaker instead of a big shocker." "Instead of a bomb," I suggested. "Instead of the, 'What???? Bullshit!' reaction." I told Adrien about the book I read at the beginning of this semester, Loving Day by Mat Johnson. I quickly summarized the main points of the plot, saying, "The protagonist talks about how he can switch it on and off, like being black and being white." "And it's still okay," Adrien added. "Yeah," I said. "When he's around black people, at first they don't really trust him, but then they're okay with him as soon as he 'proves' himself. Whereas when he's with white people, they feel safe, because he looks white enough. They don't want to see that he's black." "That's a good point. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the street and I like bump into a black guy or something, and I feel like I can say, 'Oh, that's all right brother,' whereas somebody else might not. And I don't feel like I'm going to have any repercussions for saying it." "I guess it's like a mixed privilege," I joked. "I even feel like I can get away with it sometimes, like if the people I'm with know that I'm black. When I hang out with my black friends, my voice changes, more tot he way I talk when I'm home with mom, you know, and everything kind of changes. I even find it happening sometimes when I'm with my white friends. When I get really passionate, I start talking like mom." "Yeah," he agreed. "It's a kind of privilege." "Also, something that I've been talking about a lot with my advisor is how it's important to recognize the white privilege that comes with being a light-skinned black person. Like if you have the privilege of being able to pass for white in certain situations, you have to be able to acknowledge it." "I mean, I have that privilege 100% of the time," Adrien said. "It's unintentional," I said, "and sometimes I wish I didn't have it, but I know it's a good thing to have it because it...it keeps you safe in a lot of ways, you know? And it sucks that you have a privilege that puts so many other people down, but it also helps in some ways." "It helps in a lot of ways! I mean, either you're white or you're black. If you're white, then you have 100% of the privilege around white people, and if you're black, you have 100% of the privilege around black people. You've got the best of both worlds!" "Exactly, it's great!" I said. "It's great to be mixed. So, going along these lines, why do you think people are so quick to make judgements about people's race before they get to know them? Do you think we're ever going to get away from a society that's obsessed with analyzing someone's racial identity based on their skin color?" Adrien thought for a moment before answering. "I think it obviously has a lot to do with how you're raised, it has a lot to do with the media, and it has a lot to do with stereotypes that are so ingrained into our heads that it's just second nature. Even for me. I mean, I'm white, I'm black, I'm mixed, whatever...but I still have stereotypes. And I don't mean to, but at the snap of my fingers I might make a judgement about somebody because of the way they look, or their skin color. It's just...it's natural. It's how people, you know, place themselves in society, by judging themselves on how other people look, and the most evident thing is skin color. So, I don't think it's every going to change. I mean, it might become less negative, I don't know. Or maybe it might not be less negative, because I mean...it is less negative than it used to be. But there's always going to be stereotypes, no matter what. And I think a big part of the issue is how people, you know, don't necessarily...a lot of the stereotypes are based on truth. You might not actually live the life of a gangster, as a black guy, but you may dress the part of a gangster, and that's all you need to do to further prove to people that don't spend the time to get to know you that that is what your people are like. And if that's what you look like, then people don't want to spend the time to get to know you, because they're scared of you!" "It's all just a cycle of negativity," I said. "And sometimes positivity, I guess, because there are positive stereotypes, but most are negative, or they lead to negative things." "It's never going to change." "I mean, maybe one day, when we're super dead, maybe the world will be so racially ambiguous because we're all, you know, mixing with each other because that's how we survive, maybe it won't be such a big deal." "Yeah," he agreed. "That'd be the only way it'd change, if we became so mixed that there was no difference because we'd all look...the same! We're so different that we're the same!" I decided it was time to go back to that heavy question about being a mixed man vs. being a mixed woman. We had kind of talked about it bit by bit throughout the conversation, but I wanted to see what his final thoughts were. "I don't know." Adrien said honestly. "I have to think about it more. The first thought that comes to my mind is that...I feel like I know more situations where mixed girls date a black man, rather than the other way around. Which might make mixed women feel the need to...fit in more, because they're in the community, in the culture...does that make sense? Maybe black men are more attracted to mixed women than black women are attracted to mixed men?" I thought about it for a second, since it is such a heavy topic. "I think it may have something to do with just the base instinct, that if you're with someone who's 'white,' it'll just have to do. Like, they're black, but they are white, so it's okay...and maybe men are more okay with that than women are, because they [men] don't have to deal with the multiple kinds of oppression. They're oppressed, but they're only oppressed because they're black. Whereas women are oppressed because they're black and because they're women. Having a mixed identity is kind of like having a confused identity, for some, because you don't know which side you're supposed to be with, you know? So, maybe they're more likely to be with someone who's with the side they think they should be more connected with, you know?" "Yeah, I don't know," he said. "It'd be interesting to do studies to see if there's a certain gender of mixed people that find black individuals more attractive...like if a mixed woman is more likely to marry a black man and a black woman is less likely to marry a mixed man." "That would be a very interesting study." "You should do it." "One day, when I'm old and wise." I'm very grateful that Adrien and Kumari agreed to have these discussions with me. I've been exploring a lot, in terms of racial identity, and it was so helpful to get the opinions of two people who mean so much to me already. I'm glad that they both have different opinions, and that they experienced things differently, because it showed me that there isn't just ONE WAY to be mixed--there are an infinite amount of ways that we can experience this life, and that's okay! As for the future of My Rainbow Family, keep an eye out for some other interviews with other members of my family as this semester comes to a close. Like I said at the end of Kumari's interview, this series is going to help me on my journey towards even more self-discovery...I just know it. I think the best word to describe my family is rainbow. Not only do we come in all different shades (of skin color, ha!), but we also come in all different shades of personalities. We've got my mom, the powerhouse single mother who made a living out of saving people's lives as an OR nurse, lived in a variety of cool yoga ranches and ashrams, and raised three awesome children. There's my big brother Adrien, the musician, the artist, the intellect, the goofball, my bubba. We'll get to him later. Then there's Kumari, the subject of this installment of a little interview series I'm doing on my immediate family--My Rainbow Family.
"Okay, here's the secret. It's not really a secret, but I'll frame it to you as one. The same people who despise you for identifying as mixed? Those are the same people who, when you do identify as black, despise you for not being black enough. And there's nothing you can actually do to be black enough, for them. Because it's not really how you act that they despise. It's you. Your very existence." Loving Day, p. 123
When I finished Loving Day a week or two ago, I was left feeling a little confused about my feelings for the novel. So, I decided to let it settle...and settle...and settle. And now, I think I've spent enough time away from it to really be able to reflect on it. Mat Johnson wrote a beautiful, satirical criticism of colorism in the Black community. It was eloquent and honest, and I really connected to it in a lot of ways that I hadn't initially expected to. But god, it also really pissed me off. Maybe it was Johnson's honesty and satirization of Black colorism, two of the things that really stuck with me in a positive way, that pissed me off. Sometimes it's very hard to have the truth shoved in your face when you've been spending most of your life trying to ignore it, because that's almost how you have to learn to survive as a white as snow woman of color in this racist society. Maybe I identified with Warren's self-deprecation as a light-skinned Black man who wanted to fit in with his darker brothers and sisters, and that's why I was pissed off while I was reading. I guess that makes sense, because it's not the best feeling in the world when you're forced to hold a mirror up to the things you hate about yourself and say, "Hey. It's pretty stupid that you feel that way...it's pretty stupid that anyone feels that way." I suppose that, in a way, Warren's journey of self discovery through the novel reflected my own journey, in a different (more heightened) way. I, for example, have never planned to set anything my white father owned on fire as a way to really erase who he was (and to get a boat load of insurance money), and hopefully, I never will. The quote at the beginning of this post is, to me, one of the most important things said in this novel. Sunita Habersham, the woman who whirls into Warren Duffy's life at a comic book convention and changes the way he understands his racial identity, says this when Warren asks her what the "big secret" is about her being okay with being mixed, and identifying as a mixed person. Sun sets him straight, saying that there is no "secret" to being mixed--that it's all just the shit Black-identified people project onto people who embrace every part of their identity, not just the Black part. This is so relevant to the colorism that, in my opinion, is still as prevalent in the 21st century African-American community as it was in the 19th and 20th centuries. As I've said in my previous posts, there tends to be this fear of not being "enough" when you're biracial/mixed; you're afraid that you're not black enough, not white enough, not anything enough. And it's not just Black people who can pass for white, like Warren, Tal, and Sun--there are people that reside at the Melange Center who are dark-skinned, and yet they struggle just as hard with their racial identity as a light-skinned member would. Warren refers to the M.C. inhabitants as being the "mis-matched socks" of the world, people who don't quite know where they measure up in terms of their racial/ethnic identity. Like Warren says, there are light-skinned Black people who identity as Black, and light-skinned Black people who identify as white...but then there's the rest of them, who don't really know where they fit in. I think one of the main points Johnson was trying (and succeeding) to make in writing this novel is that it's stupid for there to be a huge discrepancy between mixed people and everybody else. There isn't a huge secret to being okay with your racial identity, because all you need to do is have the strength to say, "Hey! Fuck anybody who doesn't like how I identify! They don't define me!" and then you're going to be fine. This is, of course, easier said than done, but nonetheless...it is possible. Even though Roslyn, the M.C. founder and director, is a quasi-cult leader in some respects, she helmed a whole community that was based upon the acceptance of differences, and she did everything she could (as a quasi-cult leader...) to teach her community members that it was okay to be unsure of your racial identity, because for Christ's sake...race isn't even a real thing!!! Of course, a lot of the things Roslyn believed were as problematic as Warren's the things old crush Tosha believed. While Tosha discouraged Warren from hanging out with his "Oreo" friends (I kind of hate Tosha, by the way), Roslyn seemed very happy with creating a separate community of mixed people, one that excluded anyone else, which, to me, seemed pretty silly, since you honestly will not find a Black American who isn't mixed in some way, so why exclude anyone?? I think I may be asking the kinds of questions that Johnson was hoping his readers would ask... Loving Day was truly an amazing read, and I'm very glad I read it. I think it helped me reexamine a lot of my own beliefs about Blackness and Whiteness and Anythingness, through humor, drama, romance, and satire. I've always thought about my race, and how I identify, and how other people want me to identify, but it wasn't until I started this blog, and this independent study, that I really started to think about it, you know? Like, think about it in terms of how I can grow as a Black woman who passes for white every. damn. day. I have a lot of gratitude for writers and artists like Mat Johnson, because they show me that there is a space in the academic and literary worlds for people like me, and that gives me a lot of hope. I'm going to end this reflection with a quote from the very end of the novel. Here's a little context: Throughout the entire novel, Warren, Tal, Sun, and the members of the M.C. have been seeing these ghosts at Warren's father's house. Initially, Warren thinks they are two crackheads loitering on his property, but it isn't until he, Tal, and Sun see them having sex mid air outside the second floor bathroom window that it becomes clear they're supernatural forces of some kind. It's made clear that these two ghosts are male and female...but there's a twist: the male ghost is black, and the female ghost is white. Tal names them "The First Interracial Couple," and it really starts to catch on with the Melange folks. Warren is skeptical, but at the end of everything, he finally opens his mind a little more. "I see, even from here. One is a man. One is a woman. He, black. She, white. Standing together. Staring, across the ghetto grass. But I'm not scared. I hold on to Tal, who breathes in more life and future. I have everything but nothing that can be taken from me. I'm not scared. I see them. I see what they are, or what they were. Just lovers. Just people." p. 287 And that's the thing, I guess. We're just people. |
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September 2016
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