Posted on 01/20/2015 10:02:13 AM PST by Second Amendment First
I met my new roommates on Craigslist. Two white, one Chinese. Together we represented Portland, Florida, China and (with me) D.C., and as we moved into our apartment in Bed-Stuy last fall, I was excited for the potential of cross-cultural exchange.
We had a get-to-know you powwow on the rooftop. We talked about ourselves, what brought us to New York. It was a warm evening in September, a couple of weeks after Michael Brown was shot, and somewhere in the mix I brought up Ferguson, hoping to spark a “conscious conversation.” Then it happened. The nightmarish response.
“What’s happening in Ferguson?” one of my white roommates asked. “I heard some kid got shot or something like that.”
The words clamored in my ears. How could he not know? Weren’t his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds flooded with opinions and hashtags? I’m sure he meant nothing by his statement. We’re all ill-informed from time to time. But as I stood there, awkwardly not saying a word — while hundreds of words ran through my head — it was a reminder of how much I would have to suppress in order to get along with my white male roommates in our tiny four-bedroom apartment. This place I would call my home for a year.
It hasn’t always been like this for me. I’m a girl with a fro, raised in the place once known as “Chocolate City.” I grew up part of a black nuclear family, was home-schooled, then became part of of the mini-Historic Black College Experience at Temple University. After arriving in New York, I became an intern at Essence, a magazine so safe I likened my boss to an aunt. Those settings were as comfortable as my grandma’s cooking on any given Sunday.
I longed to crawl back to my tiny black universe. A place where I could create a sense of peace, identity and acceptance, a place where I could sit there, trying to untangle my fro and make sense of what it means to be an African-American woman in this country, rehashing our history while facing present pain. But life happens, and most of us can’t stay in our own utopias forever.
Now I faced a new reality. The brief conversation on the roof that hot September night lasted much longer in my head. I sent myself into a 200-year-old tizzy, reckoning with outdated ideas on race, tampering with prejudice and stereotypes. I became enslaved by my emotions.
I started to worry about all the other things I might have to explain: My hair, the food I eat, why I like Miles Davis, Nina Simone and Marvin Gaye. Maybe I should have considered it a teaching opportunity. But I wasn’t feeling generous. I was all twisted up inside, ablaze over racial dynamics and anxious what other minefields my roommate might stumble upon. I hoped he wouldn’t say something really ignorant, causing me to just snap and go off on an angry rant. Then I’d have to make my living situation salvageable by pocketing my black rage, putting on my best smile and telling him, it’s all love.
I wanted my home to be a refuge, a place where I could be wretched when I wanted, walk around in my bonnet, fry chicken and sing real loud to Aretha Franklin’s R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Suppressing my blackness every day is exhausting. Back at Essence, we used “sister girl language,” but since then, I’d faced tougher environments. I briefly worked at a (now-defunct) women’s fashion website, where I was one of the only black people. I would pitch ideas that mattered to me, like how to do natural hair, only to see them ignored, shuffled to the side or diluted like apple juice in order to be made palatable to mainstream “whiteness.”
I was tired of catering to everyone else’s comforts. How much of my day-to-day experiences as a black woman do I have to filter? I replace “hey girl” with boring hellos. I eat my leftover fried chicken outside the office. In order to have some common point of identifiable communication, I pretend to care about Taylor Swift, or white movie stars on their I’ve-lost-count remarriages and those other white pop stars I could not care less about. “Oh yeah, she’s cute,” I tell them. “Yeah, that’s cool.”
As summer turned to fall and then winter, I continued to be dumbfounded at the way, for some white people, the killing of Michael Brown just didn’t resonate. They didn’t feel the need to pay attention. I guess some white people do act “real vanilla” and only understand the realities of their own universe. Like running around drunk in Santa costumes in the name of SantaCon while “The Millions March NYC” launches in response to the non-indictment verdicts. That’s real.
In December, when the Eric Garner verdict came out, I became loaded down with more emotional baggage than I could conceal. I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t care if I wasn’t mixing with others. I found my little black planet at work. I went over to my black boss and talked real low and real brief about how disturbing this all was. I grabbed one of my home girls I work with. We took to the streets to protest right outside my job. I hoped no one would see me and think something misguided.
Walking home that night, I unleashed all my tears. I wanted to reach out and hug a black man. Before I arrived at my apartment, I dried off my face as though nothing happened. My white male roommate asked me about the protest; I gave him a non-detailed response. I said something like, “I’m really upset, but it was a good way for me to get those feelings out.” I couldn’t handle revealing too much; I wanted to avoid a loaded conversation. I took a deep breath and exhaled, closed my bedroom door, picked up the phone, and spoke in whispers about how racist these non-indictments were to my parents, and to my socially conscious white and black friends.
These non-indictments reiterated what I’m up against every single day: the unintentional ignorance of white people. But I was also aware of my willingness to put away my justified “black rage” in order to ensure that my interactions with white people remain comfortable. And the more I hid it, the more crazed I became. By the time my birthday rolled around, in December, I was cooped up in my bed, without an appetite, my fro needing a good deep conditioner. I was making myself sick.
I know this needs to change. I understand that for my own growth, and in order to forge honest relationships with white people I meet — whether it’s my roommates, or my co-workers, or anyone else — I need to reveal myself more. I need to start sharing about my history and my culture and how it plays out in my everyday life as an African American woman. I don’t want this rage to fester into bitterness, or infect the very close white friendships I already have. I don’t want to ignore my rage, but I don’t want to be controlled by it either. Concealing my emotions has made me feel like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off.
Things are calm right now at the apartment. I don’t bring up these sorts of conversations. I don’t talk about what happens every 28 hours — a black person is killed. My white male roommate and I, we just don’t go there. It makes things easier. Instead, our conversations shuffle between our day-to-day experiences at work, dating and the nuances of the city. I keep those “forbidden” conversations behind closed doors, and even when I’m alone I speak in code. I don’t say “white.” I use “they” instead.
But I want to stop tiptoeing around race. My blackness is not a secret I have to keep. I want to be able to publicly express my honest admiration for being black, outside of my little black planet. I don’t want to feel marginalized, like I can’t speak hard truths about myself. Having honest and challenging conversations with people of another race will hopefully disrupt other people’s ignorance. But it will also help me. I need to stop with my mental temper tantrums. I want to get free.
Priscilla Ward is a writer whose work has been featured on Health.com, AfroPunk.com, Youngist.org, as well as in Essence and Ammo magazine. She's obsessed with natural hair, bell hooks, sandwiches and really cool art shows.You can find her tweeting about running one moment and being black the next @Macaronifro.
Not the blackness itself, which is thoroughly neutral or even advantageous in some objective contexts (athletics anyone?), but a disgusting imago built around the blackness.
It’s telling that rap is not just tolerated but venerated in that milieu (there is white rap, with due deference to Eminem, but it is much less common).
If you roll in garbage, do not expect to be told you smell like a rose by those who don’t.
As if others don’t have to surpress opinions about things. Its called part of getting along with other people, and not injecting, in her case, liberal hot button racial issues into all of her interactions.
Maybe she needs to go back to the ghetto and stay there where she can eat her stereotypical fried chicken and share outrage about the latest racial.incident with people who have been programmed to think as she does.
Crawl away there, honey.
No one is fixated 100 percent 24/7 on your phony-baloney made up crises anyway.
No, Africa doesn’t beckon... they are smarter over there!!
Some individuals will never grow up. It is difficult to deal with children. That is why racism continues day after day and year after year.
Suppress yourself some more, horseteeth. And try out some new material. The “woe-is-me poor-victim” schtick is getting threadbare.
Yes, because white people NEVER have to put on faces to get along in society and social settings ever... What foolish nonsense.
Maybe the simple fact is, when a violent thug gets shot by a cop because said thug is charging him, its not noteworthy, except when you want to filter the world by race, which is a fools errand anyway.
Ferguson was what happens when a bunch of ignorant folks are incited to anger by manipulative bastards who are promoting themselves. Keep your anger sister, it will do you so much good in life, really.
I think her problem is she feels persecution that isn’t there.
After the Age Of Obama, one would hope race relations in this country would get better.
No dice. The one thing I’m sure of is the grievances will never end.
She’s just Al Sharpton with some refined language.
My Lord. Such navel gazing.
Hey, Brainwashed Dumb***
Michael Brown brought it ALL on himself
Take your own racism and shove it
“I was excited for the potential of cross-cultural exchange.”
So this is what was she was excited about? Not moving out and being her own person or anything else. Just the potential for cross-cultural exchange. There lies the problem.
LOL!
How does she stand upright with those 500 pound chips on her shoulders.
Whatta whiner.
Though blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2007 (FBI) numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.
Maybe that's because Brown got killed as a direct result of his trying to get the cop's gun... most likely to kill the cop with.
Making up your own "facts" about the case isn't really a great way to go about understanding the situation.
“I guess some white people do act “real vanilla” and only understand the realities of their own universe”
Classic projection.
Oh, and only, if only, were any other black people in Brooklyn, she wouldn’t have to feel so all alone.
or, the metaphorical Frito Lay factory!
“... as we moved into our apartment in Bed-Stuy last fall, I was excited for the potential of cross-cultural exchange.”
Translation: I was glad to get out of that hell hole D.C. and into a nice, hip, mostly white neighborhood, but I wasn’t about to set aside my racial resentment and hostility.
“...somewhere in the mix I brought up Ferguson, hoping to spark a “conscious conversation.””
Translation: I intentionally sprung a trap on the whiteys during a simple “get to know you” conversation, hoping to trigger white guilt and set the tone for our relationship going forward.
“How could he not know? Weren’t his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds flooded with opinions and hashtags?”
Translation: I live in a bubble and think the entire world revolves around whatever I deem to be important at the moment.
“But as I stood there, awkwardly not saying a word — while hundreds of words ran through my head — it was a reminder of how much I would have to suppress in order to get along with my white male roommates in our tiny four-bedroom apartment.”
Translation: I was not expecting my race card to fail so soon, and I had no other plan for gaining the advantage over my roommates in a power struggle which I was determined to initiate, so I decided to bide my time until I could think of another strategy. Like, maybe writing an article about them on Salon, where they would have no opportunity to tell their side, and making them out to be the villains.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.