I think some people really don't understand what "not white" is.
Race really is bullshit but racist perceptions determine your lot in life.
Not White has nothing to do with color. Its perception. Not White sucks if the world wants you to be white.
Race really is bullshit but racist perceptions determine your lot in life.
Not White has nothing to do with color. Its perception. Not White sucks if the world wants you to be white.
Not White for me has been a game of resistance since the beginning. I'm really ashamed of what systemic casual daily passive aggressive and not so passive anti-Blackness and white supremacy has done in my life.
The Bluest Eye by Nobel Laureate Toni Morisson really helped me get a grip. It wasn't just me...it was people across the generations who were infected with this disgusting sense of self defeating inadequacy. I used to think..."why was I created just to be inadequate?"
My parents made a concerted effort. African kings and queens and great Black inventors were on my wall. They were the first things I saw when I woke up. My Grandmother quietly denied the so called "whiteness" of G-d. By 13 I was free of half the curse.
But I didn't feel cute or handsome and looking back I was a good looking and rather svelte teenager and early 20something. I found myself in a very white gay DC scene where at the time I wasn't ok.
People suggested I do drag bc I was not conventionally Eurocentrically attractive. I got the memo. I could only be meaningful to gay existence if I was sartorially emasculated and my humor and intellect shifted from Afrocentricity to camp.
All because Not White. Not pale, not rosy. Not Nordic.Not Celtic.Not WASP. Not straight.Not muscular or Christian. Not thin lipped.Not with hair I could style all day or a need for a tan.Not Brando/Wayne/Flynn or 90210 not iconic.Just black,big,brainy&useless w/o a football.
Reclamation has been expensive. Emotionally cooking on plantations was my way of saying I have nothing to do with the power structure. I vogued and walked runway. I learned about the Ancestors. I became more spiritual to rid myself of the commitment to only knowing my body.
I started to find my own way out but people close to me...even my family didn't get it. Every corrie shell, amulet, Malcolm X speech was a war on Not White. I had to know every day what a lie that was. So all I had was that feeling of tug of war between someone discovering his
Innate natural worth and someone clinging to the idea that he would never be good enough. Not White was limiting. It said I only had a right to my pre assigned box. I knew I had a right to whatever I ever wanted to be. And beyond.
Not White was a prison for me. Until you know that feeling you don't know what Not White really is.
Black self love has... through no fault of own... become an act of war against white supremacy even though in a better world it would lack all reference to it. Forever.
