And the parade of documentaries that make my brain hurt continues...
Dark Girls on the OWN network was like group therapy. I have no philosophies or politics about it, just stories.
When I was little girl, my the color of my face didn't bother me. It was my knees and elbows. They looked dirty, like I had been crawling around in mud all day. So during my Saturday/Sunday baths I would scrub
hard. It never came off.
I REALLY wanted to know how Michael Jackson did it.
There was a boy at our rival elementary school, Richards Elementary. His name was (coincidentally) Richard. He was very dark skinned. Maybe even "blue-black". I didn't even know the kid but his darkness preceded him. He was a "gorilla" "purple" "African booty scratcher (really?! wtf)". He was really an awful child, but I wonder if that was because everyone was making fun of his skin, even in a school 3 miles away.
When I was about ten, my mother once referred to my "black behind", as in "girl if you don't take your black behind into your room....." I wigged out. I flipped over my dresser drawers and hurled myself onto the bed. It was the biggest insult I thought I had ever heard, aside from that I had my daddy's nose (that's a whole 'nother blog)
I had a "frenemy" from 3rd grade all the way through high school: Natalie. If you've ever seen the Spike Lee movie Crooklyn, think of Troy's cousin Viola, with all the white dolls and frilly nightgowns. Natalie was (and judging by her Facebook page, still is) a southern belle, prim and proper, drawl and all. And she was LIGHT. With pretty silky hair (that she always wore in the same ponytail). In her pink high backed chair house, there was a 11x16 gold framed picture of a grandmother that looked like one of the Golden Girls. She always acted like she was better than me. I can't think of any specific examples, but that feeling permeates every memory I have of her. Most of the most damaging memories of her are don't even involve her doing anything purposely:
In middle school, we had these black and white collages for each grade in the yearbook. Just pictures of all the kids having fun over the year. They tried to get every kid from the grade in the collage. When I got the yearbook that year--I think it was in 6th grade--there was a picture of me and Natalie cheek to cheek at the year's ice skating field trip. There she was; almost batting her eyelashes in the picture. You can tell her cheeks were rosy, her head was turned perfectly and her smile seemed to say "who me?" What did I look like? A solid black oval with two white eyes and bucked white teeth and a Blossom hat on top. For a solid week, I rubbed talcum powder on my face until my mom found out.
In high school, I was sitting at a table at Pizza Hut with my best friend, her boyfriend and his friend (this may be a good time to sneak into this narrative that I was a bused kid in a predominately white upper middle class school). They were talking like regular pigs; which girl they'd like to bend over what and do this and that to. Natalie's name came up. "Oh", I thought. "They're talking about black girls. Yay!" Not trying to fish for compliments and having had my own secret tryst with the friend, I quipped "what am I, chopped liver?"
The boyfriend laughed out loud and said "sorry, we don't eat dark meat". I think I took the bus home that day.
As you can see from my pictures, I have a Mexican husband and as a result, a light skinned little boy. I remember standing on the corner of Halsted and Garfield with my damn near transparent 6 month old in his stroller and and old black lady was just falling over herself staring at him. I took it as just regular old lady stuff until she said that he was such a lucky little boy for being so light. I found it creepy, to say the least.
I'm sure I have more but the documentary's over and that's enough wound-opening for one night.
