Last week on my way home I had a craving for blue crab, so I went out of my way on the way home and went to main street to get some,
I was literally salivating thinking about ‘em,
Cooked with sausage, potatoes, garlic and other spices, ummm…
Walking in, I could see that the place was packed,
It was about four pm and they sell prepared food as well as raw seafood,
And there were lines of Black folks…
The proprietors were Arabic,
An ethnic stew, cool...
One young lady looked at me,
Then at her friend,
Then back at me,
Finally she asked,
‘That yo hair…’
If I had a dime for the number of times I had been asked that!
And I thought it was a moot question because it was less than an inch long,
But, I said,
‘Yes ma’am…’
She then asked where I was from,
I told her, Ocala, Florida,
There was a bit of laughter,
And she said,
‘You look like them…’
Pointing to the Arabic guy,
He looked at me, then at the other Arabic guy and nodded as though agreeing,
Curious, I asked,
Is it because of my hair?
She said,
‘Naw, not really, skin too, dark but different…’
Then she asked what part of town I lived in,
I told her, she looked at her friend, saying,
‘Figures…’
Hmmm…we all went on with our transactions,
On the way home,
I pondered what it all meant,
And was stunned that in 2009,
Hair still meant so much,
And how much Black folks still differentiate,
Between themselves and each other,
And how tightly we define Blackness,
It reminded me of years ago,
There was this boy who liked me,
I was about fifteen,
He was about eighteen,
And he told me I wasn’t really Black,
I asked him to explain,
Because I knew I was the Black as the ACE OF SPADES,
In my consciousness,
And as dark in complexion as he was...
In no uncertain terms he told me,
You got hair like Indians, you talk and act like white folks and you just,
‘Ain’t Black’…
I thought Negro…please…
And knew that he and I were so done at that moment,
It was so exhausting to find myself in the same place,
Almost forty years later…
LOVE PEACE and BLESSINGS,
Angelia
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2 comments:
Angelia... My grandmother is part Indian (her father was from India) and African American and she has long straight black hair. My mom's hair is very fine. I remember someone telling me as a child that I must have been adopted because I had nappy hair.
I ever wonder if those old stigmas will ever go away?
Great Food for Thought!!! :-)
'Cilla,
I seriously doubt it, because those young women talking to me was in their early twenties, if that and they are going to pass it on to their children...nothing changes as long as we think a thing is so...
Blessings!
angelia
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