As a kid, my whole world was black. My wonderfully fierce mother is black, my stunningly graceful sisters are black, my determined step-father who raised me - took me fishing, taught me how to shoot a basketball, talked with me about what manhood meant - is black. My heroes, whether they be Sammy Sosa, Michael Jordan, Martin Luther King Jr, Thurgood Marshall, or Malcolm X, were all black. I understood at a very young age that even the way we talked, the music we listened too, the food we ate, was black. To me whiteness was something in a fairy tale book (literally all the fairy tale characters in my books were white), a movie, or on the news. It was alien to me. Something far, distant, and (at that time) mysterious. You see, even my grandmother, (who technically was white) identified with black people. She was a social outcast from a rural town, which might be why she felt at home in black communities. Or maybe it was her self proclaimed love of black beauty and culture. She had children with a few different men, my mother's father was black, (though I have never met him), and the rest of my mom's 6 siblings are a kaleidoscope of different browns and tans. I have always struggled with my identity because I am part white. I am not sure "how much" white I have in my ancestry, I just know its there and you can tell its there. The problem is I don't feel white. I don't want to be white. I am NOT white. Yet throughout my life I have found that society has an obsession of ripping me from embracing blackness wholly and fully, instead telling me that I should learn to intersect my blackness with nuance; embrace the "white" part of me. I have one physical trait that gets complimented more than anything else: my eyes. I was born with blue eyes, and while they have started to migrate into a color resembling hazel, they still are greenish-gray, with specks of light brown and greenish blue sprinkled around the edges. They are not the deep rich ebony brown that my sisters, mother, and father possessed. I was taught to love my eyes all my life, after all they were an exciting contrast to the "boring" brown that everybody I knew possessed. I still get told "my what beautiful eyes you have" by people. What they are really telling me is "the white part of you is beautiful." I notice this with black people too. I've been told they are jealous of my eyes, that I was lucky to have such gorgeous eyes, that I should be thankful. This is not the only way in which people praise the whiteness I carry. There are other white things that people congratulate me on. My love for academia, my extensive vocabulary, how articulate I am, how "well-rounded" I am (I seriously get that a lot), how polite I am... These are things that brought me ridicule by my fellow black pupils has a kid. I used to have red hair, so they'd call me carrot top. They'd call me professor because of the white way I spoke, they'd call me confused, nicknamed me question mark, ask me if I enjoyed looking at the world through white boy eyes, call me the nerd, the ass kisser, uncle Tom... I felt that my proximity to whiteness threatened them. I still believe that my proximity to whiteness threatens myself. You see blackness to me is my source of pride. It is beauty. Black is my family, my friends, the people who I love. Black is the music I listen to, the food I eat, the vernacular I speak, the dances I dance. It is central to my identity and my life. So of course my whiteness is a threat to me. It is something I wish I did not have. I wish that I never had to prove to others, and myself, that I was indeed black. This is why it hurts when even today in college I still get remarks like "Shut up nigga you only half [black]" As if only half of my beautiful family were black, as if the music I listen to is anything but the real authentic black art it is, as if I had spent only half of my life navigating through anti-black racism at every step and the other half of my life as an accepted privileged member of white America. This is why I cling onto my hair. My hair is unmistakably black. When grown out it looks as if somebody had accidentally placed a matted nest of the coarsest kind of hair reserved for those with dark chocolaty skin on top of the head of this boy who is obviously lacking in melanin. I love it. When I look in the mirror I see Huey, and Angela, and QuestLove. I see the hair my beautiful mother once wore as a badge of racial pride. I feel strength coursing through each nappy strand as I run my fingers through it. I can channel the stream of consciousness that can only come from embracing your roots. There's something spiritual about growing out my hair. I love that I have to go to black hair stores and buy pink hair lotion (or as I call it, hair crack). I love that I have to use an obnoxiously large metal pick. I love that when I wake up in the morning I find that it has assumed the shape of my pillow. I love it because it is black, it connects me with blackness, and nobody can take it from me unless I say so. It is the only part of my identity which I have never felt was under fire or in danger of being questioned. When times are hard, I need that security. With all of the anxiety young black people are experiencing today, with the #BlackLivesMatter movement in full swing, and with my stream of consciousness flowing more robustly than ever, I'll be damned if I cut my hair. -515 P.S. I'm leaving a slideshow of my favorite afros. Enjoy :)
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October 2018
Matt BruceViva DSM!! |