Posted on 08/02/2013 9:12:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A photo of the author
On the day of college graduation, I told my friends and family the news: I was leaving the country I had lived in since childhood.
“I just need a change,” I told them, but they knew there was more. Was it some romance gone awry, they wondered? Some impulsive response to a broken heart? And I was running from heartbreak. My relationship with the United States of America is the most tumultuous relationship I have ever had, and it ended with the heart-rending realization that a country I loved and believed in did not love me back.
Back in the ’90s, my mother brought me from our home in the Caribbean islands to the U.S., along with my brother and sister. I was 4 years old. She worked as a live-in nanny for two years, playing mommy for white kids whose parents had better things to do. She took trips to the Hamptons and even flew on a private jet to California as “the help.” My mom didn’t believe that nanny meant maid, but she did whatever was asked of her, because she was thirsty. She had a thirst that could only be quenched by the American dream. One day, she thought, her children would be educated. One day, they might have nannies of their own.
That was our path. Get a “good education.” When the neighborhoods with quality schools became too expensive for my mom to afford as a single parent with three kids, we traversed the United States with GreatSchools.net as our compass. New Jersey, elementary school: decent, mostly Hispanic school, even though my gifted and talented program was predominantly Indian. Texas, middle school: “Found a great school for you guys,” my mom said while rain poured into our car through the open windows where the straps of our mattresses were tied down. It had an “A” grade and was 70 percent white. Florida, high school: “Hey, Tiffanie, you should have this egg. It’s the only brown one like you!” my classmate told me during AP biology. Philadelphia, Hawaii, North, South, East, West. Car, U-Haul, Greyhound, plane, train. New York City, private university: “I really want to write an essay on being the gentrifier,” one courageous young man pitched in a journalism class. I was one of only two people who were disturbed.
For a long time I survived by covering myself in the labels I’d accumulated over the years. I plastered each one to my body with super glue as if they were Post-It note reminders that I was someone. Sports fanatic (hot pink). Feminist, beautiful, writer, comedian, fashionista, friend (fuchsia, yellow, blue, purple, red, green). I hid behind them; they were my only shields.
Green covered my eyes when a childhood friend’s family banged down my front door and demanded their daughter get out of the house full of blacks. Blue protected my heart when my black peers ostracized my enjoyment of complete, complex sentences. Yellow blocked my ears when whispers floated through the air at my ex-white-American boyfriend’s home like haunted ghosts: I can’t believe he is dating a black girl. The words passed like a gentle breeze barely creating flutter.
I existed right there on the fringe of ugly, ignorant and uncultured. Black but not black enough for my positive attributes to be justified. “Where are you from?” potential dates asked when they met me. “I am from Trinidad and Tobago,” I said. “Oh, that’s why you are so beautiful and exotic — I knew you couldn’t be all black.”
“Black people don’t really know how to swim,” my co-worker once told me when I worked as a swim instructor at my neighborhood’s pool. “What about me?” I asked. “Oh, you aren’t black. You’re from Trinidad,” she said.
“The black children don’t like to read very much,” I overheard one librarian discussing with another while I sat down reading a book a couple feet away. They passed right by me with smiles.
I was the model minority — absent, yet present. The yardstick to which other minorities were measured. If I could finish high school and college, why couldn’t so many African-American people find their way out of their hoods and pull themselves up by their bootstraps? If I could speak English without using a single ebonic slang, why do others call themselves “niggas”? If I managed to make it through 23 years without contracting an STD or getting pregnant, why do black women have the highest statistical risk of disease and teenage motherhood? Daddy America looked to me to prove that he did something right. After all, one of his children turned out all right. The others must simply be problem kids.
I survived because I was never able to make America my home. I never watched my childhood neighborhood become whitened by helicopter lights in search of criminals or hipsters in search of apartments. No state, city or town has been a mother to me, cradling generations of my family near her bosom, to then be destroyed by unemployment or poverty. No school system had the time or opportunity to relegate me to “remedial,” “rejected” or “unteachable.” I never accepted the misogynistic, drug-infested, stripper-glamorizing, hip-hop culture that is force-fed to black youths through square tubes. I am not a product of a state of greatness but a byproduct of emptiness.
In that empty, dark space I found my blackness. I stripped myself of the labels, painfully peeling them off one by one. Beneath them there is a wounded, disfigured colored woman who refuses to be faceless anymore, remain hidden any longer. My face may be repulsive to some since it bears proof that race continues to be a problem.
Still, I count myself lucky. Where my open cuts remain, eventually scars will take their place and those scars will fade with time. For many, their wounds will never heal. Gunshots bore coin-size holes into their chests that will never close. Their chained wrists and ankles will continue to bruise. Their minds have collapsed under the weight of a failed education system.
I was already back in Trinidad and Tobago when the Trayvon Martin verdict came down last week. I wasn’t surprised, but I was speechless. My hope is that it will force Americans to reexamine their “post-racial” beliefs. A friend of mine posted on my Facebook page, “You made the right choice.” I think I did, too.
I have found freedom by leaving the land of the free.
I give her chops for not just saying she was leaving, but actually following through.
IMO her story has some merit. One of my college roommates was an African-American girl from the suburbs. She also experienced some of these kind of thoughtless comments that hurt her.
So did I. We sat with each other at lunch one day and her other friends, all black, filled up the rest of the table. I sure got some stink-eye until I finished my meal and got up to leave, which was a weird feeling. I didn’t even know these people, never talked to them before, and they hated me instantly. (Unless she had told them previously that her roommate, me, was a complete jerk. That IS a possibility.)
Anyway, I’m glad life is working out for the the author.
Maybe someday we will all wake up and wonder why we made such a big deal about stuff.
Amen.....
if they think they can get a better deal in their “Mother Africa” then have at it.
The problem is that black Africans wont want these lazy POS in their country. And the Urban blacks will find out their EBT cards don’t work there
I find it interesting she graduated from "The New School University", the very bastion of liberal progressiveness.
You are correct - almost all Americans would give her a fair chance, but she likely met only AINOs traveling in those circles.
Yes. She feels discriminated against or that America won’t treat her fairly. And whAts her frame of reference at her young age? Just one of the most avowedly leftist schools in the country. Some would say she’s drawn the correct conclusion given what she’s probably seen in her life on campus where so much of life and society is filtered or slanted by racist lenses
Tiffanie Drayton was raised to notice and nurture grievances... it's part of the American black culture. When she told her mother about overhearing the comment about 'blacks not being able to read' her mother should have told her that many black kids don't value education like she does... and when valuing education becomes part of the black culture, people won't say things like that...
She is stupid and you can’t fix stupid.
Interesting how little Tiff appreciates her mother, who had to “work” (gasp!...only in America!) to give Tiff a better life, and move all over the place to get the best free education the cheapskate taxpayers in this evil country could bestow. She appears to have suffered a cruel, deprived existence.
Some of her comments about the emptiness of American “culture” ring true (at least for the “fake media culture”, which is probably the limit of her experience), and Americans of all races are undeniably obsessed with race. Tiff probably doesn’t quite get it that the huge surplus of non-productive AA’s already here reduces enthusiasm for additional imports. She does seem to have internalized negative perceptions of American blacks and feels the unfair burden of association. Dissed by whites, and an outsider to blacks. No wonder she wasn’t feelin’ the love. I hope she finds a useful niche in Trinidad, where she can exploit what her mother and America gave her. Something without expectations of demeaning actual “work” of course (America taught her that in a hurry). She’ll likely be back with new resentments to share.
Since the beginning of the civil rights era, there has NEVER ever been a nation that has attempted to right the wrongs of the past and provided an unprecedented opportunity to advance, educate and lead for a once oppressed people than the United States of America. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars spent to open doors and provide assistance for black communities over decades have for the most part been turned into a new slavery.
Now, start cringing cause here is the naked truth. Blacks have stereotyped themselves. The black community has no one else to blame but themselves. The whole thug mentality has been celebrated, embraced and has led to a downward spiral of the American black. Americans of all color watch and witness a segment of our nation absolutely self destruct.
Black men suckin on the pipe, tucked away on a tattered mattress in an abandoned house in the hood. Crack ho’s given themselves for a $5 dollar rock, becoming impregnated with another child they cannot afford if not for gubbamint sistance.
Gangs of blacks vying for a couple of blocks of turf, poppin caps at one another from their 9. An astounding disregard for human life exist within the black community as they take one another out, then wildly wale at funerals as they lament as to why Trayvon be dead.
Sorry, no sympathy exist here. This cracka just damn tired of being blamed for the failings of a people that have little desire to rise above. They'd rather play the blame game, shuckin and jivin in an attempt to shift responsibility toward those who produce and contribute.
I see it all over the place. Out here in the country, there are pockets of black folks that congregate on a small parcel of land, sometimes three, four houses within a couple of acres. Just as trashy and dumpy as it can be. Literally trash strewn everywhere. Almost as if they open the door and throw out the trash into the front and back yards.
It's like they have no goals, no desires or motivation...just succumbing to their poverty and hopelessness.
The overwhelming majority of white people could care less about the plight of the American black. White people just want to work, raise their kids and go on an occasional vacation. Oh, and your damn right...when a white person sees a thuggy looking black guy walking toward them with their pants hanging off their butt, hoodie concealing their face, gold grill gleaming and hands in their pocket...we alert and for good reason.
The largest percentage of crimes committed in the U.S. per captia by race is committed by blacks and illegal Mexican gangs and drug cartels. So, what's a person to do? Keep pretending this is not so?
Night after night on the evening news, reports of stabbings, shootings, carjackings, flash mobs, kick burglars, robberies. The great majority of the time there is one thing in common, their skin color. You just can't make this stuff up. I guess we could all keep on with the charade and ignore the facts, but it ain't gonna change reality one Ioda.
Whites are faulted for creating suburban communities, abandoning the inner city. White folks wore out by crime, they flee the cities for safety and are accused of being racist and bigots for protecting their families.
Productive society begrudgingly hand over thousands of tax dollars to provide free food, free education, free phones, free housing....free free free. How much more can we do? All the while our generosity is turn against us as if we continue to keep the American black chained in the slave quarters of the plantation.
When will this nightmare end? For all that is holy, we now have a half black president. There are so many prestigious blacks throughout our society such as Condolleza Rice, Colin Powell, J.C. Watts, Thomas Sowell and the like with one thing in common...they are conservative to moderate.
The liberal establishment I submit to all is the new American slave owners. Just the term, “African Americans” lend credence to the notion that the black is not fully American. They've sapped all hope from the black community with endless race baiting, gubbamint handouts. Quick to jump on tragedy, whipping the ignorant into a race hating frenzy against the white people.
Force fed, eh? Uh huh. I notice that although she's aware that black American culture is trashy, she always phrases it as though this, too, is white people's fault. Destroyed by unemployment, shunted into remedial classes.... sweetheart, blaming whitey for EVERYTHING is why you can't handle America. You're not looking at it honestly. So go on back to Trinidad, and peace be upon you.
Yep. The Trayvon affair is another example. If you lock your car door cause there's a black man out there, you're a racist, but if you get out of the car, you are provoking them to beat the tar out of you. Can't win either way.
I am sure there is a spare room in the White House.
Or maybe it was Barbados?
This sounds like a reasonable theory. I don't usually try to analyze strangers, but if they write about their feelings and their lives long enough, one can't help but pick up clues. And I was about her age when I went to Ireland thinking I was going to the home of my ancestors... it was eye-opening, and the beginning of my understanding that I was American. Maybe it'll open her eyes too.
That's the best summary I've seen in years. I hope you don't mind if I make it my new tagline.
She really did keep a careful tab of all the times someone muttered something that hurt her feelings. The times they were kind to her seem to have slid right down the memory hole.
I also was impressed with how well and extensively she expressed her attitude and beliefs albeit I couldn’t get myself to buy a ticket on her train of experiences and criticisms. Perhaps if she had a father in her life,I took she only had a mother growing up, there might have been a different outlook on life as to work and rewards. I do think that different cultures have different outlooks and expectations as to human life and living.
I am SO tired of immigrants complaining that their mommies had to do domestic work. Uneducated immigrants have done this forever. My Italian immigrant grandmothers worked as seamstresses in literal "sweatshops." They hand-washed and ironed wealthy people 's snotty handkerchiefs and smelly underwear. They cleaned houses on hands and knees. There was no welfare. There was no bi-lingual education. It would be three generations before their children's children went to college. And without Affirmative Action.
The myth that every white person was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is nust that, a myth. Hell, when Irish and Italian immigrants arrived, they were not even CONSIDERED white. Yet we, and other children of 20th century immigrants, are supposed to feel guilt over slavery we had NOTHING to do with and did not benefit from and which had been abolished before our people stepped foot on Ellis Island. We were discriminated against, too. But we assimilated and proved ourselves worthy to be Americans.
Cry me a river, you spoiled ingrate.
I doubt she even realizes what a malcontent she sounds like with this statement. People die every day trying to obtain the education and opportunity the bad ol' USA has given her. But if she must ... we bid her adieu.
Buh-bye.
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