Wow, You Admitted You Just See Me As a Black Blob

It’s almost funny how racist people see and hear me.

I recently watched Yance Ford’s documentary Strong Island (2017) about his brother William Ford shot to death at age 24 by a white young man, Mark Reilly. In one scene, the screen is completely black and William’s face slowly takes shape from the darkness. Ford narrates,

“What are the contours of fear? What do your eyes tell you? Do you see my brother? Dredge the river and you will find him. So you tell me, whose fear is reasonable?”

I wonder about this sometimes. How do white people see and hear me? Do my words and my face slowly emerge from a dark fog? As a black woman, I sense that they don’t look at me with fear. They look at me with profound indifference. I experienced this when I was the president of an almost all-white social club for US women in a South American country.

You think I’m a “party girl”

Soon after I was elected president, I sat down to breakfast with a senior member of the institution. Before I could even open my menu, she said, “I am going to say something you won’t like.” I braced myself. “You were seen at the fundraising event where a man was drinking in the circle you were talking in. As you are going to be the president, I hope you’re not a party girl.”

I replied, “No, I don’t like what you said. I actually don’t drink. And, everyone was drinking. I also don’t even know that man, and he has nothing to do with me.” She just shrugged and ordered her eggs benedict.

A few weeks later, I asked the current president, who is white, if anyone had ever admonished her for drinking (she loved to drink and club events and was known for this). Not surprisingly, she said no.

You see me as 40 years older

As a member of a nearly all-white social club, I started to think that either I had a twin I didn’t know about. People forgot that we’d met several times before. They also mistook me for the only other black member 40 years older than me. This older member told me that people came up to her, congratulating her for being elected president.

You think I am two different people

Maybe the club was so excited to have me join (the only black person at the time), so they introduced me to the general assembly on two separate occasions. They made me sign their official book of patrons twice, breaking the nearly hundred-year tradition. I guess I should be flattered, they bestowed on me the ability to vote twice in club affairs. I also received two welcome roses!

But the strangest moment was an experience after being a member for 2 years. A woman ushered me hurriedly to the side of the room where there was a poster board of photos on top of a table. She pointed to a picture of me in the corner and asked, “Is this you?” Bewildered, I replied that, yes, it was me.

Then she pointed to another picture on the same poster board and asked again, “Is this you, too?” I realized she was serious. She couldn’t match my black face with my same black face on a poster, even after I had just identified myself as me!

A candid member, a white woman of Mexican heritage, admitted this to me over a nice meal of huevos rancheros and tortillas in her colorful Lima apartment. She said, “I used to not see black faces. I would just see color. Then slowly I began to realize black people are beautiful” (and have features, I hope).” I guess that’s not as bad as claiming to be colorblind (guffaw). I dug into my breakfast, ignoring the knot in my throat.

Later she told me her son and daughter-in-law adopted “beautiful” children from Italy rather than adopt from Peru.

You hear me say, “Give me your firstborn child,” when I only proposed Secret Elf

I fell into the role of president of the nearly all-white, 100-year-old club after 4 years of being a member. Yes, I can hear the virtual groans of, “I told you so.” I also told myself the same, nevertheless, I energetically gave my brain space and emotional storage to the task. That energy slowly met the tail end of its life cycle.

At board meetings, if I made a suggestion from whether we should do Secret Elf to whether we should change the guest payment policy, people often responded with a “Why?” followed by, “No” or another less direct refusal. It got so bad that sometimes other board members would argue with me over a policy they had forgotten they had already voted to approve. I started to employ the white echo after months of the knee-jerk “no” response to all my proposals.

After receiving skeptical looks, and balks, sometimes I would say, “Ok, Marjory [name of white person], maybe you can explain what I said?” And Marjory would repeat my words, and then the response turned into, “Oh, that’s a good idea” from the former naysayers. This happened numerous times.

I started to think my voice was also morphing. When I said what I thought were reasonable, well-formed suggestions and opinions, they heard, “Can I cut your nails with a chainsaw?” And if I stood behind my ideas, or called out unfair treatment, like clockwork, the Robin Diangelo effect swooped in to protect the newly injured party.

White people’s words morph into gold

But here is the thing. White people’s words are also morphed. Often they take the form of credibility, truth, and objectivity even when all evidence points to the contrary. Like Isabel Wilkerson (2020) mentions in her book “Caste,” our inability to properly address the issues in front of us because of our allegiance to race norms clouds our rational minds and makes us open to danger.

This makes everyone unsafe. Think of a serial killer or terrorist running free because people assume he is “a nice guy” because he is white (Wilkerson, 2020).

Don’t look to someone’s identity to confirm an idea’s validity

Like James Baldwin said,

“ If any white man in the world says give me liberty or give me death, the entire white world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one” (Gross, 2017).

So look for reasonable arguments and compelling evidence, and don’t allow your mind to morph the words and humanity of other people. Don’t keep chasing a myth.

Thank you for reading!

~MJ

References

Ford, Y. (Director). 2017. Strong Island. [Film]. Yanceville Films and Louverture Films.

Gross, T. (2017, February 14). Director Raoul Peck: James Baldwin Was ‘Speaking Directly To Me’. NPR. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/515196224

Wilkerson, I. (2020). Cast: The origins of our discontent. New York: Random House.