"She’s one of the Good Dark Ones": Daily racialized experiences

After my flight had arrived safely, I found myself waiting in baggage claim for the driver who was to transport me to the hotel. We got there early, so I really didn’t mind waiting. Finally, I spot a gentleman approaching me with my name neatly written on the white placard. I met him halfway, he took my luggage and we walked to his car.

I’m settled in and as we start to leave the garage he said, “So you are a professor. So what do you profess?” I am a little tired and truth be told not exactly looking for an hour of conversation. Not wanting to be rude I replied, “I’m a professor of political science and Black Studies.” He looks in the rear view mirror and declares “Black Studies. Betcha I could teach you a thing or two about Black Studies!” I sigh and smile politely. To which he replies “What me to tell ya?” I’m thinking do I have a choice? So once again, I smile, settle in and wait for his tale. By the way most folk who hear what I do tend not to pounce on conversing with me about Black Studies. So I was a bit intrigued to hear what he had to say.

Let’s just say this man is a storyteller. He told me his story starting with his first girlfriend at the age of 15. I won’t retell his story, in an attempt to protect his privacy. I learned about his various friendships and even got a story on the changing dynamics of the community he lived in as a child and the one he currently lives in. It was interesting, but like I said, I’m not necessarily feeling like engaging in a conversation. So occasionally I murmur “really. That’s interesting.”

As we approach my final destination he starts to talk about his wife. Again, the story meanders to his earlier exploits that involved multiple lovers at the same time. He chuckled at the end of one thread of this discussion and said, “I’m no longer like that. I love my wife”. This if followed by a deep chuckle. I smiled. Then he declares “Shoot, she’ll cut me if I don’t behave. So I’d better behave.” I never know how to respond to such statements, so I remained quiet with a slight smile on my face. I thought he was done. But he needed me to know that she was a good woman and that he was only kidding. After all, according to him, “she’s one of the good dark ones. Not like those other dark ghetto ones. Those rough ones that would really cut you.” My eyebrows are raised. But he’s not done yet. What makes her one of the “good dark ones” according to him is that she’s educated.

At this point, I could not mask my horror. You see I’m a Black woman and my driver is a White man. He is a white man who professes his love for Black women, since the age of 15. However his love for Black women seem to be cloaked in an ideology of colorism. There was a part of me that wondered, what makes him think that it was acceptable for him to make such an assertion to me. Did he think that I would find such declarations appropriate because of my skin tone? Regardless, I was not pleased. I have a low tolerance for the ideologies of racism and colorism.

According to Burke (2008, 17) ‘‘Colorism is the allocation of privilege and disadvantage according to the lightness or darkness of one’s skin.’’ The ideology and practice of colorism tends to privilege lighter skin individuals, as a result of their perceived proximity to a white phenotype, over those who are darker. By virtue of her education, which made her among the good dark ones, this man’s wife was brought somewhat closer to “whiteness”, in the sense that she was made safe and morally sound. Thus she was moved closer to white.

The dominant image of the “good” woman is often projected via women of European descent.  The institution of slavery necessitated the construction of Black women as the polar opposite of the “good” woman against which the constructions of Black womanhood become meaningful. Those Black women not perceived as being close to White are often pathologized. There are often viewed as not as morally sound in comparison to women of lighter hue and those who are constructed as white.

Gender relations—both intergroup and intragroup—are rationalized via a hegemonic construction of the “good” woman. And it seems that the dark ones have very little chance to escape others’ construction of them as “bad”. So once again, my ride from the airport reinforced that although some proclaim that we live in a “post-racial” state and often shine the spotlight on inter-racial marriages as an indicator of such, that there is still work to be done at both the micro and macro levels. 

My life in a “Post-Racial” World

It’s been a while since I last posted. It’s not because I haven’t wanted to. So much has happened that I wanted to comment on. However, I was working through my response to a number of racist-sexist emails and tweets I received in response to the Trayvon Martin Social Justice Award I organized.

I will not post the correspondences I received. What I will tell you is that some went so far as to wish death to my family and I. Some felt inclined to tell me that I was racist, ignorant…. I’m at the point where I actually feel sad for these individuals. Sad that they cannot see how what they “condemn” they actually perpetuate.

There were a few issues that I address before I speak to my experiences as a Black woman living in a so-called post-racial world.  My sister-colleague, Professor Janni Aragon, and I will blog about post-racialism around claims such as “We have a Black President” in the near future.

Silence Perpetuates Racism

I was asked why not name the award in honor of Martin Luther King. I smiled; it was clear to me that this individual seemed to have embraced a rather deracialized understanding of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. In the 1960s he was not a “hero” in the eyes of a few. Oh, but in this so-called post-racial society some seem to have forgotten this. In the whitening of Martin Luther King (whitening in the sense that his image is often used to assuage White guilt) some have forgotten that his message involved a form of radical racial justice. 

In deed I decided on Trayvon Martin because his death, in part, embodies the radical racial justice calls of Dr. Martin Luther King—not the sanitized recitation we engage in every January. For many of the young individuals I encounter, Trayvon Martin’s murder resonated with them. But some would never know that because like the White liberals Martin Luther took to task in his “Letter from Brigham Jail” they refuse to listen. They refuse to allow minoritized and marginalized individuals to speak. And when we speak they often work to discredit our claims.

As Martin Luther King Jr. articulated in his letter “I am in [all states and cities] because injustice is here.” Yet, some deny it’s existence because they want to believe that we are existing in a post-racial state, where racism in a thing of the past. Those of us who dare speak of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression are told that we are simply agitators who need to stop engaging in “destructive” and “divisive” efforts. This is part of a muting/silencing project that must be resisted in the same way that Jim Crow laws were resisted.

Everyday I encounter stories of racism from the young people I serve. I see first hand how others go out of their way to tell them that they don’t belong. Black men are stopped and frisked, no not in NY, but on college campuses. They are treated as criminals because of the color of their skin. Students of color are called “nigger” and told to “go home” and that they "don’t belong.” Faculty members of color are treated with suspicion. If this is not racism, then clearly I don’t know what is.

Yet, their and my experiences are met with silence. We are told that while some individuals might be “bias” that life is better for us. I guess that we should be happy that we are no longer working on the plantation. However, I ask, when one is the recipient of such hate, when we are being terrorized on a daily basis, what exactly is better? And who is it better for?

Some are so caught up with defining racism by focusing on specific acts or at individual level behavior that they have lost sight of the fundamentals of racism. Racialized bodies might not be hanging from Southern trees. But that is not an indicator of a post-racial state. Racism may be direct, indirect, individual and/or institutional. Indeed as Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues we don’ need racist actors to have racist outcomes.

Racism is not a simple bias neither is it simply prejudice. Yet, some continue to conflate racism with these concepts. Racism involves the transformation of prejudice and bias, at an individual and/or institutional level, passively or actively, through the exercise of POWER against racialized groups deemed as inferior.

Racism, in the words of, Carmichael and Hamilton is "the predication of decisions and policies on considerations of race for the purpose of SUBORDINATING a racial group and maintaining control over that group." (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, pg. 3)

Many, in an attempt to put the legacy of slavery behind them in hopes of achieving the utopian post-racial state, ignore everyday racialized-gendered practices that terrorize some of us.

As I live through my current experiences with gendered-racism I find myself fighting to have my voice and the voices of those who experience systematic racism on an everyday basis heard. I cannot pretend that these past few weeks have been easy. I’ve had a range of emotions. However at the end of the day I’ve decided to speak—to break the silence that is complicit with notions of post-racialism

Post-racialism is designed to render us silent or to mute our claims. It is because it requires silence that indeed post-racialism perpetuates racism.  Here are just a few examples of how post-racialism perpetuates racism via silence:

• Silence does not allow us to challenge the deracialization of Martin Luther King’s dream. Consequently we accept for example “A Day of Service” often with little thought to issues of equality, justice, and peace.
• Silence allows us to ignore issues of joblessness, HIV/AIDS, food insecurity and their relationship to race. We become silent when we use universal terms for fear of offending.
• Silence harms us when we deploy terms, such as “colored” and “nigger” that are steeped in historical a legacy of racial harm and crime and then claim “innocence” or “ignorance” when we are asked why.
• Silence harms us when we allow racialized actions to take place on a consistent basis and then simply say “sorry” and engage in no actions designed to implement institutional change.

Silence is sometimes the best response. However silence can also be an act of racism. When we claim at an individual and/or institutional level that we are committed to anti-racism and we remain silent in the face of racism our actions beg the question: Who or what does our silence protect?

Audre Lorde poignantly wrote, “Your silence will not protect you.” None of us are protected when we remain silent in the face of racism. So how do we respond to the silences that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us against? Those of us who experience racism, overt and covert, must speak. Yes, we are at times intimidated, but our silence does not promote change. It is only when we consciously work to unmask the often hidden structures of power, of which silence is one, can we begin to challenge power structures. Those in the majority, who benefit at various levels from privilege, directly and indirectly, must also break their silence. The pleas of ignorance or that it’s not my problem, or the claim that I’m not racist, are inadequate and are not enough! The onus of fighting racism must not be placed on the laps of marginalized and minoritized communities. It is a problem that we must all raise our voices against. We cannot lament on how our speech will be responded to and/or interpreted.