if finally i don't suffocate..
i'm realizing right now that i'm not an actually thoughtful person. i don't just sit and think things up; i reflect on things. this morning i got a comment from sandersyager, hinting at something i've been trying to articulate for years now, about hair and how it relates to blackness and being a black womyn and being a womyn, really. and i was talking to daniel shortly thereafter about how excited caitlyn was to see that i had cut my hair off, and he said something about no one ever being excited when he gets his hair cut, which sparked a whole mess of thoughts i have stacked away [the image that comes to mind is when someone pulls away the last brick in Jenga and the whole thing topples over], and to save time/sanity, i shortened it to: "obviously you don't have cool enough friends. butt then again, mine is really a huge statement about sexuality and race and gender and society... it's long. i could write a paper about it. i could write a thesis on it." and daniel's response was, "you should!" and after relaying the whole conversation to claudia later, she said that i totally should.
the only reason the idea of a thesis is on my mind is because a bunch of people around me are turning in theirs right now. and mo keeps posting bulletins saying things like, "if you're considering a major that requires you to write a thesis... reconsider." and i can't even write my 6-8 page research paper for my composition class. but if it's something i care about, something i'm passionate about, maybe it will be different? never know until you try? some other optimistic shit? but the truth is that there's nothing else out there for me. i can't find anything else that catches me like gender and womyn... if i don't do this, i don't know if i will stay in school.
i don't know what i'm aiming at. i'm tired.
i received a text from genne last night, asking if we could talk, since she thought i never wanted to hear from her again. i don't know what i want to do about it. i told her i didn't think i was ready to talk to her. and that's the truth, but i keep wondering if maybe talking to her would help me move on. if maybe i could just deal with this... shit.
last night i confronted louis about what he said to me months ago regarding the genne thing. it was months overdue, and didn't actually make me feel better, but at least i can now deal with this without itching to either discount myself and my feelings, or get rid of louis because he made me feel like this. the itch is gone, but the hurt isn't.
and i know i shouldn't be so dependent on him, i shouldn't need anyone to validate my experiences and tell me that it's ok to be upset, that it's ok to not be over it. and i should know better than to look to him for that. i'm working on it. i just... i have a headache, now.
there's a huge gap between my mother and i right now. we don't talk every day anymore. we don't talk for as long anymore. i'm not over how she treated me when i was last in long beach. i didn't like how she kept trying to make me feel ugly for having my hair natural. i don't like the way she's always tried to do that to me. people these days [usually not black people, but god knows there are exceptions] seem to think that ethnocentrism is an ugly thing, that we're all just people after all, and why should we separate ourselves? or some shit like that. having been taught my whole life that it's not ok to be black, that our hair is ugly, nappy, wild. having been told my whole life not to act black [and later being told i'm not black enough] fucked with my head, ok? it's great to go somewhere and be smiled at by another black person and them telling me they love my fro. it's great to be encouraged, instead of always being put down by people who refuse to acknowledge just whose ideals of beauty they were employing. but it's like Richard Dyer said in White: "white power secures its dominance by seeming to not be anything in particular."
well i grew up thinking we were all just people, and that when a bunch of black people hang out together, it's because they don't like white people, because they think they're better than white people. and as a result, i grew up thinking that the nasty stereotypes and racially discriminating comments and jokes my white friends made [and tacked on a 'no offense' at the end just for me] were ok. because no only did other black people employ those stereotypes, a lot of them were true. plus, if i got angry, i'd be a stereotypically angry black girl who's oversensitive about race. after that i learned to listen to the things white people said about black people, about my people. and i heard the same quite ignorant shit from the mouths of dark people. and the whole "we can say it; you can't" thing never quite sat well with me. it wasn't until i got to college that i was finally able to articulate that when a black person says something that would be racist from the mouth of a nonblack person, it's still very offensive to me. still very racially discriminating. excerpt from Assata Shakur's autobiography [which is a great fucking read]:
Most of our fights started over petty disputes like stepped-on shoes, flying spitballs, and the contested ownership of pens and pencils. But behind our fights, self-hatred was clearly visible.
"Nappy head, nappy head, I catch your ass, you goin' be dead."
"You think you Black and ugly now; I'm gonna beat you till you purple."
"You just another nigga to me. Ima show you what i do with niggas like you."
"You just shut your big blubber lips."
We would call each other "jungle bunnies" and "bush boogies." We would talk about each other's ugly, big lips and flat noses. We would call each other pickaninnies and nappy-haired so-and-so's.
"Act your age, not your color," we would tell each other.
"You gon thank me when I'm through with you, Ima beat you so bad, Ima beat the black right offa you."
Black made any insult worse. When you called somebody a "bastard," that was bad. But when you called somebody a "Black bastard," now that was terrible. In fact when i was growing up, being called "Black," period, was grounds for fighting.
"Who you callin' black?" we would say. We had never heard the words "Black is beautiful" and the idea have never occurred to most of us.
I hated for my grandmother to comb my hair. And she hated to comb it. My hair has always been thick and long and nappy and it would give my grandmother hell. She has straight hair, so she was impatient with mine. When she combed my hair she always remembered something i had done wrong the day before or earlier that day and popped me in the head with the comb. She would always tell me during these sessions, "Now, when you grow up, I want you to marry some man with 'good hair' so your children will have good hair. You hear me?" "Yes, Grandmother." ... My grandmother just said what everybody knew was a common fact: good hair was better than bad hair, meaning that straight hair was better than nappy hair.
...
And, of course, we went to the beauty parlor and got our hair straightened, I couldn't wait to go to the beauty parlor and get my hair all fried up. I wanted Shirley Temple curls just like Shirley Temple. I hated the smell of fried hair and having my ears burned, but we were taught that women had to make great sacrifices to be beautiful. And everybody knew you had to be crazy to walk the streets with nappy hair sticking out. And of course long hair was better than short hair. We all knew that.
We had been completely brainwashed and we didn't even know it. We accepted white value systems and white standards of beauty and, at times, we accepted the white man's view of ourselves. We had never been exposed to any point of view or any other standard of beauty. From when i was a tot, i can remember Black people saying, "Niggas ain't shit." "You know how lazy niggas are." "Give a nigga an inch and he'll take a mile." Everybody knew what "niggas" like to do after they eat: sleep. Everybody knew that "niggas" couldn't be on time; that's why there was c.p.t. (colored people time). "Niggas don't take care of nothin'." "Niggas don't stick together." The list could go on and on. To varying degrees we accepted these statements as true. And, to varying degrees, we each made them true within ourselves because we believed them.
and no, i couldn't shorten that excerpt, because all these things were important. spelling, grammar and capitalization "errors" all hers. [in quotes because she did that on purpose]
and obviously things aren't exactly like that anymore. things aren't as loud and upfront anymore, but most of those things are still very much alive. "Don't act so Black," and "good hair," for example, are things that have followed me around for much of my life. and hair, well i think it goes without saying that i've been grappling with that topic for a long, long time now.
i'm happy with what i did. if you like it, that's great. if you don't, well that's fine too because i didn't do it for you. i did it for me and my history and my self-love and my quite muddled thoughts on the matter. i'm well-aware this entry made little to no sense. my analysis always runs short on really personal matters. maybe i'll get better with time. we'll see, because i'm certainly going to keep trying. until then, have a good weekend, friends.