Polite Society

We are taught from a young age how to behave in polite society. We create a dual image that allows us to present our "respectable" face to the world, and come home and relate to our family, friends, and community in a way that is natural and without pretense.

We code-switch for your comfort and for our survival, because we are taught that our colloquialisms are not ok for polite society.

In polite society there is no room for self-expression. Behave outside the norms of polite society and you are called hood, ghetto, ratchet, undesirable, uneducated, ignorant, worthless, violent, aggressive. That is, until polite society graciously decides that your "fringe behavior" is mainstream, and even then, it's still unacceptable for you to engage: Your blue hair is ratchet, but it is trendy on Katy Perry. You have a "ghetto booty," but Kim Kardashian's booty is the holy grail. Your speech pattern is "hood," but Reese Witherspoon's grammar mishaps are just a part of her southern charm. Your dark complexion is unacceptable if you were born with it, but totally acceptable if you tanned to get it. There are 10-minute beauty tutorials on how to achieve the perfect, messy, bed-head look like Karlie Kloss; but we are told to tame our nappy heads.

There are no proper nouns used to describe angry, white women; there are women who emote anger from time to time, and there are Angry Black Women who must own their occasional outbursts of anger as their whole identity. Young, Black boys in hoodies scare people, but a white boy in hooded sweatshirt (it's not a "hoodie" when he wears it) goes unnoticed. Black boys are taught how to speak to, look at, and respond to law enforcement in order to stay alive. They are taught how to dumb down their confident demeanor, so as to appear unassuming enough to not scare polite society. They are beaten into submission as boys by terrified parents who don't want them to experience the vicious beating that polite society delivers so well, but it doesn't matter.

None of it matters.

We do what we can to fit in, survive, and thrive as "minorities" in polite society, and even then it is not good enough. And God help those who care not to even try to placate polite society; they may as well put a target on their backs.

What do you do when you do all that you can for the comfort of polite society and polite society still spits in your face and calls you names and disregards your life?

Depending on who you are, you may get angry, you may resort to violence; or maybe you keep trying to fit in, or if you're really brave you try to change what are considered the norms of polite society, knowing that your efforts may or may not be vindicated in your lifetime. Maybe the confines of polite society are so far removed from the poverty, violence, and oppression that is your every day life that you can't even fathom being a part of it.

And maybe you just can't trust polite society because polite society doesn't trust you, but of course you are told that that relationship isn't supposed to be reciprocal.

I reflect on this duality and it brings me to tears. What is the effect on a young life that begins with crippled wings? What of the young one born with beautiful wings, only to have them clipped before ever having the opportunity to fly with them? What will become of that beautiful creature that no one will ever fully appreciate, because he's hidden his beautiful wings in order to fit in? And what do we do with the young one that's thrashing his wings with all of his might, but just can't escape the prison of his birdcage?

Polite society doesn't seek to understand, it only wants to be understood; and on a day to day basis, many of us have learned to be ok with that. But in times like these we have to make them understand in the best way that we know how and I stand in solidarity with those who are doing just that.

My prayers go out to the families that are burying their sons and daughters, and I pray that justice, understanding, progress and change will come about through these protest. The time is now; the time has always been right now.

Who will cry for the little, dark boy?

A cry for Mike Brown

One day I hope to bring into this world a little dark boy: dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes; a little chocolate thing that I can love and teach, discipline and play with, fight for and care for; a little dark boy who will one day become a full grown, dark man, with the same, beautiful dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes.

A dark boy; dark like my daddy, and my uncles, and my grandfathers, and my male cousins, and my beautiful nephew, Marc Anthony.

I worry for my little, dark boy who is yet to be. What will the world see when they look upon his darkness? Will his dark skin intimidate them? Will his dark hair upset them? Will his dark eyes scare them?

Will the world appreciate my little dark boy? Will the world allow my full grown, dark man to live and thrive, without having to consider what others think of his dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes?

Don't come at me with talk of the dark boys murdering other dark boys in Chicago. This is not about that. This is about understanding the value of human life. White boys kill other white boys too. But this is not about that.

Don't come at me with talk of looters: that does not change that another unarmed, dark boy has been shot by police officers. The looting happened after the killing, so any discussion about his death need not include a discussion about looters.

Don’t come at me with stories of Black folks killing white babies, asking me why I’m only outraged when a white person kills a Black person. In all of those cases that folks circulated during the time of Trayvon’s death, the Black murderer had been promptly arrested, tried and convicted. Not sheltered and excused. Additionally, this is a case of the establishment using undue deadly force and misusing its power in a systematic way. I care about all the dead and murdered children, no matter their or their murderer’s color, but this is not that.

This is about the dark boys, the brown boys, the mocha and vanilla latte-colored Black boys who are feared and misunderstood for no other reason than the color of their skin, the kink of their hair, or their choice of clothing. Boys who grow into men with a profound distrust of those who are supposed to serve and protect, because the law has never been and is still not on their side.

I listened to the tearful plea of a white mother in Ferguson saying: “We just want life to get back to normal.”- Well, lady, I’d venture to say that people are protesting so that things will not get back to normal. Your normal is safe, and thank God for your safe, normal life. But their normal is what’s the problem. It’s time out for normal, for status quo. We need an abnormal situation, because normal is just not going to cut it for 100 more years. There’s more than one way to lynch, and we cannot continue with the lynchings, perpetrated and protected by the establishment.

A personal thought about modesty and the heart

As I was contemplating what I should wear this morning, my mind went back to something that happened about 3 years ago. On that day I was shuffling through my closet looking for something cute to wear and my eyes landed on a cute designer dress that I'd purchased (at a huge markdown) a few months ago but had not yet worn. The dress was chocolate brown, sleeveless, form fitting, and shorter than what I'd normally wear, but I'd just purchased an amazing pair of brown, peep-toed, four-inch pumps and shoes that fabulous required such a dress as the one I was eyeing in my closet. 

Now, normally I have this thing about balance-- if the dress is short, it can't be worn with too high a heel; if it's strapless, then it can't be too form-fitting; if it's form-fitting, then it can't be too short, and so on and so forth. Mind you, my idea of short is longer than the mainstream idea of short, but it was still a daring choice for me, and on this day I decided to forego my "modesty benchmarks," if you will, and go with the riskier fashion choice.

So I put on my dress, my pumps, kept the hair and makeup simple and to a minimum (I didn't want to look like I was meeting Eliot Spitzer for "coffee"), and with a confident stride descended down the steps of my apartment complex, as "She's a Bad Mama-Jama" played softly in the distance... I kid, I kid, but seriously, I thought I was cute that day ;-)

As soon as I got to the bottom step I saw a family of three tossing a football in the parking lot. I'd never seen this family before (or since then); a man, his wife and their young son. They were obviously Muslim, as the wife was wearing full hijab.

As I headed to my car the man took one look at me and quickly averted his eyes, discretely diverting the attention of his young son as well. It wasn't a rude gesture, or obvious, or judgmental. I don't even believe that he wanted me to notice his reaction...

But I could tell that he had seen me and had immediately wanted to UN-see me, and I instantly felt ashamed; not because my attire was inherently inappropriate, but because I had put this religious man in an uncomfortable situation. I didn't care what he thought about me, but I cared that I made him uncomfortable, and was a bit mortified at the implication- that I was something to be avoided, a vice or temptation that one must shield his eyes from...

Although, I didn't share this man's Muslim faith and certainly not his views on modesty (I'm not about to be head-to-toe covered in the summertime), he served as a reminder of my own faith and standards concerning modesty. You see, I don't believe there's a universal standard for modesty. But I do believe that modesty is an expression of what is in one's heart and that the manifestations of what is in the heart should be outward, not just buried in the heart.

It's simply not good enough for me to say "God knows my heart" when it comes to how I present myself to the world around me, because what sense does it make for me to allow the truths of my HEART to be a mystery to man, then readily reveal the secrets of my BODY to all of mankind? Am I to be coy about the expression of my heart, but unabashed in the expression of my sexuality? Surely not. It's an oversimplification of who I am, which is not just body, but heart, mind, and soul... all of which have something to say, and should speak louder than my clothes.

So dress however you want, but as for me, I want people to recognize me for my heart, not just for something as superficial and fleeting as my looks or even my intellect because those things can fade away.

But the heart is enduring, and I'd rather not disguise my heart or silence it with a provocative exterior.

Just a thought...