Falling in love with Peter Kavinsky—right along with Lara Jean—shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. And not just because of his swoon-inducing smile, his ability to make a back-pocket spin in the middle of a cafeteria look downright sinful, or even his impressive emotional depth, either. Rather, I love him—as so many other grown-ass women now do—because I have spent my life falling in and out of love with Peter Kavinskys, just as I was trained to.

I should begin by saying that my now, maybe not-so-former infatuation with a seemingly never-ending list of white boys is my hidden shame. As a young black woman who came of age at a flashpoint in our nation’s relationship to and dialogue about race, it’s the dirty little secret I aimed to bury once I reached adulthood. I’d promised myself it would go the way of my heinous Aeropostale tee collection and my hot pink Samsung SEEK: matured past, grown out of.

My maybe not-so-former infatuation with a seemingly never-ending list of white boys is my hidden shame.
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While I was never the type of girl to pour her feelings out onto the page like Lara Jean—for fear of making them tangible would make them too real, perhaps—I was the type of girl who daydreamed. Who imagined herself tangled in all sorts of intricate, decidedly un-Indiana romances with the kinds of boys that populated all of my favorite stories: the sensitive nerdy musician type a la Nick O’Leary (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), the bad boy with a troubled past in John Bender (The Breakfast Club) and especially the, “It’s your dream dad, not mine!” star jock and secret poet of Austin Ames (A Cinderella Story). These characters, or what I thought these characters embodied, helped me formulate what would become The Perfect Boy.

The “White” following “Perfect” kind of just went without saying. (The “Boy” and not “Girl” or “Nonbinary Person,” on the other hand, was reiterated strongly and often.)

You should know that I’ve only ever dated people of color. Even in high school, my not-so-spectacular track record with almost-boyfriends is exclusively black. Somewhere deep, somewhere beyond the formula of book-and-movie boyfriends I’d concocted, I was still much more interested in finding kinship and solace and—I can’t believe I’m gonna say this about my high school “ex”, but here we go—passion with other people who looked like me than I was with finding my Kavinsky.

But the white boy thing was more than an embarrassing blip on the radar of my adolescence—my longing for these boys was the product of a sound indoctrination from years of white media consumption.

To All the Boys I Loved Before (both the book and the movie) subverted narratives in which the quirky white girl is the one deemed worthy enough to get the get The Perfect Boy—girls like the one I was relegated to background roles and left romance-less by the end of the story—in so many of the right ways. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before created, for me, a rich world of beautiful, smart young women that neither relied on men to uplift them not validate them. But, you know, it was sort of a perfect bonus when that happened too.

Even now, weeks after its release, my inbox still occasionally pings with messages from friends watching it for the first time. Today, for instance, one of my closest friends couldn’t even wait for the credits to roll before she texted me. She said she’d tried to get away from her love of romances, but this managed to draw her right back in. There were moments throughout where she worried she’d have to turn it off, abandon it once it followed the same trajectory of so many of its predecessors.

“I just knew [Peter Kavinsky] had to do something to ruin things. I just knew there was no way they could end up together,” she said. “The happy ending just felt impossible.”

So many of us were waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the catch. The first time I watched it, I just knew that the inevitable breakdown seen was right around the corner. The part of the story where the young bookish girl, or so often the woman of color, has what seems like a light at the end of the tunnel, extinguished. Where she encounters some sort of embarrassment, some unearthed trauma that precludes her from a happy ending without also enduring great suffering.

The perceived impossibility of To All the Boys, I realize, is at the heart of why I loved it—why I found myself clicking replay before we’d even reached the brief mid-credits scene. The image of a young, smart, bookish woman of color falling in love without grief (related to the relationship) or shame on screen felt too big to assign a name. Felt too close to a dream not to hold tight to it, to close my eyes and will myself back to a world in which those things still seemed attainable.

Half of the story is the fact I didn’t grow up with images of young girls of color falling in love on screen at all, let alone with a heartthrob like Kavinsky. But the other half—perhaps the half that’s even more harrowing—is that I certainly didn’t see us falling in love separate from trauma, or rarer still, with another person of color.

I watched and read hundreds of stories in which the luckiest girls fell in love and rode off into the sunset—often in a cool Jeep!—with their Prince Charming. And that Prince Charming always looked like Peter Kavinsky. Peter Kavinsky—and by extension, Peter and Lara Jean’s fauxlationship—was everything, but it was also precisely what I’ve been implicitly taught to desire. In this way, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before did what so many of its genre forebears had done before it.

And the thing is, I’m not asking this movie to be some wild break from the genre. I don’t even really want that of this particular film. What I do want, though, is thousands of different narratives about what it looks like for girls from all backgrounds to fall in love. We deserve every iteration of story in which young women of color get to fall in love with a sweet, emotionally-adept, whatever-trope-suits-your-fancy partner.

So much of what makes To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before an unbelievably awe-inspiring, tweet-worthy movie, particularly for adults like me, is the element of unconscious wish fulfillment. Like, of course I’m not a teenage girl in a hyper white space, yearning for a story about a bookworm woman of color who falls in love—period, let alone with the “it” guy—anymore. And of course I’m no longer relying on these images to help me feel worthy of love and affection in the way I once was. But I’ve been sitting with that same yearning since then. That girl, the me who needed those things so desperately when she was a kid, never went away, she just evolved.

But even in that evolution, there are moments of deeply troubling considerations about what my love of Peter Kavinsky and this story might mean. Is it him, this particular character and this particular actor, or does my desire speak to something greater?

I’m 24 years old and settled into a community of black folks—friends and found family alike—that not only affirm, but uplift me. Everyday I am reminded of the beauty and brilliance of our people. And I am reminded of my own beauty and brilliance, by extension. This is a far cry from my hometown in suburban Indiana, from an upbringing that was largely populated by people and spaces that could do neither of those things. But that juxtaposition only serves to ground me more firmly in what I know to be true: one of my greatest gifts is that I was born to this black body, and can love other people who share it.

Yet, knowing those things doesn’t automatically undo the years of isolation and forced assimilation I endured to get here. Knowing those things doesn’t automatically help me unlearn the lies I internalized about myself and any potential partners who looked like me.

One of my greatest gifts is that I was born to this black body, and can love other people who share it.
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What I’m saying is shaking this doesn’t happen for all of us overnight. I’m saying that the mechanisms of white supremacy are complex and, oftentimes, hidden in plain sight. If I spent a lifetime both abhorring and simultaneously craving the white male gaze, then it’s going to take some time—ruminating on my understandings of desire and shame and identity—to walk back the decades of deeply entrenched ideologies which taught me to aspire to finding my happy ever after in the arms of a white man.

Nobody goes to Tokyo without a dream. Tokyo—complex, multifaceted, and unforgiving—is a city of opportunity. A tempestuous, dynamic vessel for the pleasures, pains, and aspirations of increasingly disillusioned generations. An economic hub powered by throbbing, vibrating, neon circuits of global industry and commerce. From all over Japan and the world, people pour into the city to craft visions of their futures into reality and to build their lives anew.

I went to Tokyo with my own ambitions. When I traveled there for a semester abroad in March 2017, I wanted to investigate what it means to be a brown Indian woman in Japan, and to negotiate the personal and political stakes of power, desire, and sex in its troublingly notorious homogenous and xenophobic national space.

As a small but potent example, a Justice Ministry survey taken in anticipation for Japan to host the 2020 Olympics found that about 40% of foreign residents who sought housing in Japan had applications turned down and almost 25% were denied jobs in the past five years.

I had begun learning Japanese in New Delhi, India, where I was born and raised, in high school; at college in the U.S., I declared majors in International Studies and Japanese. Through my classes, I gained fluency in Japanese, and became invested in understanding the discourses of race that influence contemporary debates on migration, labor, and nationhood in Japan. So the opportunity to experience Tokyo as a South Asian woman—not as a transient expat, but as a full-time student and resident—both terrified and excited me.

Brimming with vending machines and Kanji-scrawled billboards, Tokyo’s urban orchestra is deafening and inescapable. Areas like Shinjuku and Shibuya—positioned in the global cultural imagination as metonyms for the entire nation—tend to evoke lurid fantasies. Heavily inked yakuza lurking in cigarette-littered alleyways. Minuscule ramen joints awash with hungry beer-blossomed salarymen returning from work. Host and hostess clubs oozing sequins and sex, recalling in florid technicolor the libidinal economy of the floating world.

The opportunity to experience Tokyo as a South Asian woman—not as a transient expat, but as a full-time student and resident—both terrified and excited me.
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But contrary to how it is portrayed, the fever dreamscape is finite. As glorious and mesmeric as the urban sprawl is, beyond its main areas, Tokyo transforms into tightly packed bed-towns where the truths of deflation, labor shortage, and Japan’s aging society are all too evident. The steady hum of the train, though still audible, seems faint. The youth, color, and rabid cross-culturalism of the center feel, somehow, distant.

Although the classical image of Tokyo is that of the multicultural, cosmopolitan, and fully globalized city, Japan has the lowest number of resident foreigners among the world’s advanced economies. As of 2017, there are 2,561,848 foreigners—less than 2% of the entire population.

In Tokyo, there are approximately three foreign residents for every 100 people—compared to 35–40 in megalopolises like New York and London. Migrants from Brazil, China, Nepal, the Philippines, and Vietnam, amongst other countries, sustain Japan’s labor-starved industries. Since there is, to this day, no comprehensive immigration policy, these migrants often fall victim to abuse and discrimination—without any legal recourse.

In addition, minority groups like the Hisabestu Buraku, Ainu, Ryukyuans, and resident or zainichi Koreans, Chinese, and Taiwanese have been waging movements for equity for decades. Knowing this, I was interested to see what it would be like to be me—Other in the arguable extreme—and attempt to experience relationships and romance while inhabiting a contentious body.

Japanese Cartoon Porn Helped Me Understand My Trans Identity

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Whether in the center, where tourists and migrants abound, or in the periphery, where strangers openly confessed their lack of exposure, I experienced an unprecedented loneliness. Being brown and Indian, I did not embody an appealing brand of foreignness. At restaurants, crowds of Japanese would swarm around my white American friends from New York and ask to shake their hands. My white peers were applauded for the tiniest displays of Japanese proficiency, fawned over and adored. But towards the brown girl from Delhi, there was little to no positive curiosity; the ubiquity of whiteness as a proxy for power, prestige, and privilege was just as potent as is in America. Maybe worse.

There was, however, negative curiosity. My host family resided on the farthest eastern edge of the city, and walking to and from the train station constituted my first encounters with fetishism and exotification in Japan. I was frequently harassed by Japanese men, each admitting that I was the first person they had seen in the flesh who looked like me—their excuse for why they could not resist trying to engage with me. Some even followed me to my apartment, or emerged from bushes and street corners, wordlessly, to take photos of me.

Japanese men are frequently stereotyped as shy, gentle, “herbivorous men,” but in truth, I did not bear witness to this myth of meekness. Instead, I felt like a specimen they’d placed in a glass pickling jar where I waited to be inevitably prodded and poked.

I quickly grew weary—would I spend my time in Tokyo as an exotic but spurned brown face amidst a menagerie of more attractive white creatures? Would I experience only the reckless curiosity of the unacquainted, or would I gain allowance to desire, and be desired in earnest?

With that dream in mind, I became compelled to try my hand at Tokyo Tinder. Having already spent three years in the States, many a white boy had accused me of being racist when I expressed my disinterest. Many, too, had relished the prospect of securing an Indian trophy. I was familiar with the various images of Indians spilling from the Pandora’s box of American history and popular culture. I understood that my body is simultaneously fetishized and desexualized, admired and despised–the object of ethnic fantasies, of hatred, and of violence.

Would I experience only the reckless curiosity of the unacquainted, or would I gain allowance to desire, and be desired in earnest?
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But in Japan, where there are few people who look like me, come from where I do, and also speak Japanese, how would the politics of desirability slight or reward me?

To begin with, I found that Tokyo Tinder is full of Japanese men hoping not to find dates, but English-speaking foreigners to help them practice their English. I was not interested in this type of relationship, and since most aspired to sound American, British or Australian, my Indian English was not on their radars; most were shocked to find that I spoke English at all.

Shokuminchika, I would remind them lightly—“colonialism.”

Both on and off Tinder, most claimed they had never spoken to someone who is chairo (literally “tea-coloured” or brown) and indojin (Indian)—even though there is a substantial and growing presence of South Asians in the city. 

Because the word tends to connote white Western expats, I was not afforded the label of gaikokujin or, simply, foreigner. Rather, I was identified by and named according to the colors of my skin and passport. I fielded questions about curry and the caste system, and comments about the absurdity of Bollywood films overflowing with dance and song, my “wild” hair, too-many piercings, and too-large earrings.

Many asked if I am arabikkujin or “Arabic,” insisting that I resemble Jasmine from Disney’s Aladdin. When I asserted that one of my favorite Japanese foods is tonkatsu or breaded pork, they were aghast, having mistakenly assumed that I am Muslim because I am brown. Coupled with patriarchal and misogynistic ideas, I felt tethered to boundless misrecognition and inaccurate profiling.

The Dangers of Dating Faux-Feminist Men

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My first Tinder date was with a Japanese man from a town just outside of Tokyo–let’s call him Tetsu. Tetsu was a Japanese-English bilingual and self-proclaimed feminist with a sense of humor. Over yakitori and whiskey highballs, we discussed Japanese vs. American romantic expectations, films, and music. We agreed to keep our arrangement casual.

Yet, one night, a few weeks into seeing him, Tetsu uttered a dreaded phrase: aishiteimasu. “I love you.” The next morning, he confessed that he had developed intense feelings for me. When I reminded him that we had agreed to keep our relationship casual, he yelled at me, exclaiming that he could not stand to see me if I was seeing other people.

“You can’t call yourself a feminist and go around opening your legs to every guy you meet,” he shouted. He would never trust women again, he clamored, and especially not Indian women. I left, afraid of his wrath, resolving never to meet him again. Hours later, I found my DMs flooded with unsavory messages and unsolicited pictures from random men. Tetsu had snuck into an online sex chatroom and broadcasted my Instagram handle to the world—then blocked me on all social media.

Whether in India, Japan, or the U.S., toxic masculinity comes as no surprise. I was not daunted, but I did feel exquisitely deceived. I thought, perhaps, that I had failed to explain in my imperfect Japanese that I had wanted to keep our relationship casual. I dwelled on the words I had used; I promised myself that I would formulate my sentences more carefully next time.

I thought, perhaps, that I had failed to explain in my imperfect Japanese that I had wanted to keep our relationship casual.
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Despite my heightened attention to the vocabulary and grammar of my sentiments, what I experienced with Tetsu was only the first of many such occurrences. I fancied myself as a foreign version of Tanizaki Junichiro’s moga or “modern girl”–an urban, independent young woman who watches movies, visits cafes, chooses her own suitors and has casual relationships. A waruiko– a “bad girl” for the ages.

As I continued to meet men off Tinder–a handful every couple of weeks–my ability to narrate myself in Japanese improved vastly. I grew confident in my capacity to avoid misunderstandings based in matters of language. Yet, I still found myself ensnared by stereotypes and relentless exoticization.

This was until I chanced upon Hiro, also on Tinder.

Until I met Hiro–a Tokyo transplant originally from Hiroshima who spoke sparing English–I believed that I would only ever be a brown token, an ethnic fantasy. By that point, I was well-rehearsed and exhausted, rendered frank and naked by erosive men, and their preconceived notions of me. I spoke with candor about how I had been reduced to my phenotype, and the discriminatory and offensive behavior and comments I had received during my sojourn in Tokyo. Initially, Hiro did not believe me. “But Tokyo is full of foreigners,” he protested, defensive.

One afternoon, Hiro and I stumbled into an unadorned coffeeshop. As soon as we sat down, the elderly Japanese lady who owned the establishment bounded to our table and asked where I’m from– a common occurrence. “India,” I offered, tentatively. She was delighted, “You must be very good at math and computers.” I sighed internally. Though an affirmative comment, her statement drew on damaging stereotypes, neatly boxing me into limited imaginings of what I am and could be.

“She is intelligent,” Hiro piped up, “but that has nothing to do with her nationality.” He immediately grasped what was transpiring and stood up for me in a way no one had thus far. Surprised and grateful, I felt truly seen and heard; I felt, in that moment, wanted and cherished for me, not the expansive and totalising (mis)conceptions of people of my race and nationality.

Thereafter, Hiro became more sensitive to the particular conditions under which I navigated Tokyo, and became a vital source of comfort and companionship even as our relationship remained casual. He noticed how people in the train would stare at me and whisper, conjecturing about my nationality, and how police officers would unavoidably stop me to demand that I show them my ID–how he too became tainted by strangeness, viewed with suspicion, just by being near me. Together, we (re)discovered Tokyo–museums, galleries, monuments, and public spaces alike–with our eyes and ears wide open.

I felt, in that moment, wanted and cherished for me, not the expansive and totalising (mis)conceptions of people of my race and nationality.
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Hiro did often ask me questions about India, but they referenced my personal history and experience; instead of sounding like half-hearted Google searches, they were genuine and specific. Between us, we cultivated an intimacy wherein cultural, racial, and national differences were not effaced, but deeply felt and explored. Here was a vivid image of solidarity and allyship–and of desire negotiated with honesty, compassion, and humility. Moving away from my experiences alone, even now, as we stay in touch as friends, we have lengthy back and forths about policies towards minoritized populations, popular media and its portrayals of Others, and the immense value of intercultural dialogue, particularly in the context of Japan.

Looking back on my experiences with romance and desire in Tokyo, I am astonished by the extents of both the cruelty and kindness that people showed me. Being a brown Indian woman in Tokyo, I faced particular oppressions unfathomable to my white American and European peers—I moved through the city’s pageant of humanity feeling isolated much of the time, cocooned in my blatant Otherness, swinging wildly between hypervisibility and invisibility.

But there were also moments of unfettered joy and appreciation. I saw how my perceived gender, race, and nationality structured my experience, and sought to make room for delight in spite of discomfort. In my romantic endeavors, I fought to stay soft and vulnerable even as I grew jaded. I learned to wear my difference with quiet confidence, stand up for myself, and let others in–even when I was certain they could not wholly empathize with me.

Between being seen and unseen, coveted and reviled, misinterpreted and duly deciphered, my Tokyo ambitions, one way or another, found fulfillment. Although I still have many unresolved questions, my time in Tokyo showed me that I can thrive–find mirth and wonder–even in spaces that deny my presence. Whether it was about travel, identity, or the untold shapes of desire, Tokyo taught me a lot.

Somewhere, I hope, I left the people I met with their own lessons to ponder.

Growing up a white girl in small-town Tennessee, each week I watched Bo and Luke Duke’s General Lee racing down country roads on The Dukes of Hazzard. The Confederate flag on its hood was as familiar to me as Daisy’s bare midriff.

In high school, I worked as a waitress at a trucker joint off Interstate 24 between Chattanooga and Nashville, and the restaurant owner kept a large Confederate flag standing on a six-foot pole in the corner of the dining room. One morning a group of girls, just a bit older than me, came in off the Interstate—loud, unruly, and rude—and snarled at my ignorance when they asked for “iced coffee” and I brought them iced tea instead.

Cleaning their table after they left, I realized they’d taken down that big Confederate flag, wrapped it around its pole and shoved the whole contraption way up under the heavy oak table. It was perhaps the first time I realized what the Confederate flag meant—bigotry, hatred, slavery—in the world outside Hazzard County. As I watched my manager tug that huge flag from under the table and set it upright, she assured me that the flag had nothing to do with racism. “It’s about pride in our heritage,” she said, “Southern culture”—which I understood to mean that we ate a lot of fried okra and went to church on Wednesdays.

Later, to me, Southern culture came to mean additional things, like the Klan marching in nearby Pulaski, religious discrimination against my gay friends, or societal control of women’s bodily autonomy. I decided to escape if I could, maybe to a paradise that I’d heard tell of‚ a godless place where the gays had busted out of their closets and women refused to wear panty hose and men helped with the housework! California, they called it, and I couldn’t wait to go there and live happily ever after in harmony with all humanity.

But I got here to Southern California and realized that even in my left-coast fantasyland, police killed young Black women, white boys asked if I’d ever worn shoes before leaving the South, and an Asian-American grad student told me she “couldn’t hear” my argument in a professional setting because my twang was coming out.

I heard of a place called Huntington Beach in Orange County, supposedly a hotbed of white supremacists, and soon enough, I decided the Californians might be just as screwed up as us Tennesseans.

A year or so ago, I was in a bar in Newport Beach (which is a very rare occurrence, Mama, if you’re reading this) and began talking to another woman, a stranger I had just met. I mentioned something about being from the South, and she got all excited. She pulled a Confederate flag keychain from her bag and showed it to me, assuming I would share her enthusiasm for it.

“…why do you have that?” I asked. “Are you from the South?”

No, she said, she was from California. I gave her a sideways glance. Did she believe all Southerners held a deep love of the Confederacy? In my experience, it was as hard to say something about “all Southerners” as it was to say something about “all Americans.” Even if you ask two Southern women about their favorite potato salad recipe, you’ll get five answers.

When the girl didn’t get the desired reaction from me, she muttered familiar words: “It’s not racist. I just think that if you have a culture, you should keep that culture.” What culture…? I wondered. Was she talking about my culture, or at least, my experience of the South —my hilly dirt roads and my hotwater cornbread and my endless weeknight Bible studies? No. This girl had likely never passed a piece of fried okra through her botoxed lips in the entirety of her life.

“But the South is not your culture,” I said. My heritage, contradictory and confused as it was, did not belong to her. What “culture” was she talking about that she was somehow identifying with? Was she saying that white racist people should stick together and preserve their…white racist culture?

I wondered the same thing last year as I realized that most of the Nazis and wannabe Confederates marching in Charlottesville were not, it seemed, from Charlottesville. Aside from a few, like organizer Jason Kessler, the ones who were identified in the press were from places like California, New York, Nevada, Washington state, North Dakota, and of course, Maumee, Ohio. These non-Southerners had driven all the way across the country in their quest to “preserve Southern history,” only to ride roughshod over the actual, real-life Southern people of Charlottesville, who had voted to remove a Confederate statue in their own public park.

This past Sunday, as Kessler organized his anniversary “Unite the Right Rally 2,” one of his invited speakers (who, like the rest of the alt-right, it seems, simply didn’t show up, there were only about 24 people there) was Patrick Little, a California Senate candidate originally from Maine who in his own words wants to “raise Jews as livestock.”

Aside from being a disgusting anti-Semite, Little is a member of the League of the South, which as far as I can tell is an organization of a couple dozen old white guys from Alabama who want to re-establish the Confederacy and rule it by fiat. Now, why does a Maine-bred Californian like Patrick Little join the League of the South?

What exactly, does he think “the South” is?

By culture, was she saying that white racist people should stick together and preserve their...white racist culture?
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My youthful misconceptions of California as a liberal paradise have given way to a realization that too many non-Southerners, like Little and the Newport girl, have crafted a competing fantasy of my home—of the South as a white nationalist paradise, where all the white men are strong, and all the white women are good-looking, a white-celebrating world where you can tell yourself you are the master race without being laughed out of the Super Wal-Mart. A land where people of color can be shipped “back” on a boat or burned in an oven. A white supremacist culture.

I’m darkly amused by the entitlement of the non-Southerner’s racist belief that he has any right to define the South (which is much too big and diverse to be defined anyway)—like somehow he’s entitled to identify with the South and claim it as his own and define what it is, simply because he’s a racist. But I am also troubled by the way these folks, in places like California, associate their own white supremacy with my home, and of course, by default, with me.

Now, some will say if the South didn’t want to be stereotyped as a racist paradise it should have behaved better historically, and I can’t argue with that. But the South has always been more than just its long history of racism. The South has always included a heritage of resistance to white supremacist violence. After all, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks were Southerners, too, weren’t they? At the same time, there are Southerners right now in places like Charlottesville and all over the South who are redefining it as a diverse, multicultural place.

Today, people of color make up about 38% of the state of Virginia, which in 2016 went for Hillary overall by a 5% margin. 80% of Charlottesville voters chose Hillary. Even in deep-South Georgia, people of color make up about 47% of the population (defining “people of color” as everybody but “non-Hispanic whites”), and although Trump won the state, Hillary garnered 45% of the vote, improving on Obama’s 2012 performance there.

A red-painted map camouflages all the purple that today is the reality of the old Confederacy, and the Californian waving a Confederate flag wants to render all these real Southerners invisible.

The only way I know to counter this is to refuse to disappear. To say, no, if you are a racist from New York or Maine or Nevada or California, the South is not your culture—you don’t get to define it, you don’t get to define me. To make sure that any time a Confederate flag flies over a racist hate rally, whether it be in Charlottesville or the deceptively liberal bastion of Portland, there are the voices of actual Southerners (like Charlottesville’s first female Black mayor). To make sure they rise up to prove that white supremacists’ fantasy of a world devoid of people of color, LGBTQ folks, Jews, white liberals, and women who expect you to do your half of the house cleaning, is as futile as it is ugly, pathetic, and dangerous.

You might not know Sarah Baartman’s face, but you know her body.

Sarah Baartman — also known as Saartjie or the “Hottentot Venus” — was born in the late 18th century in the Eastern Cape (part of modern-day South Africa). She was brought to the UK with a ship surgeon who profited from exhibiting Sarah for the entertainment of the British public because of her steatopygia. This meant that she had excess fatty tissue around her hip and bottom area, spectacular enough to warrant her, well — a spectacle. She subsequently spent most of her adult life being exhibited as a caged freak-show attraction both in London and Paris, where she died and was displayed even in death up until the late ‘70s.

There are many details about the life of Sarah Baartman that are still either unknown or unconfirmed. This includes her birth name, her cause of death, and the extent of any agency she may or may not have had in the events of her adult life. A lot of us won’t even have even heard of her, yet her story bears a troubling resemblance to the experiences of generations of black women down the line. Sarah Baartman’s reality as an attraction to behold, gawk at, and prod at manifests itself today in every hyper-sexualized fetishist remark veiled as a compliment, and every depiction of my big black ass as either comedic fodder or the accessory of the moment.

You might not know Sarah Baartman’s face, but you know her body.
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Sarah’s story has always resonated with me as a young black woman with a pretty shapely behind. As a teenager especially, I was no Sarah Baartman, but I still turned heads. My developing body was the pink elephant in the room, creating tension that was exacerbated by my being both the youngest and the only girl in my family. Lewd comments from men on the street old enough to be my father went hand in hand with warnings and admonishments from relatives to not wear that skirt, or sit like that, or dance too provocatively. This seems to be a shared experience among black women growing up, and this hyper-sexualized lens from which the black female body is viewed is a major factor in how we are treated.

Sarah Baartman was one of many Khoi women who were visited by European scientists and coerced into undressing and displaying themselves to satisfy Europeans’ perverse curiosities. These scientists carried back with them the image of these women as primitive and sexually insatiable. This misconception has managed to trickle right down to the mouth-breathing creep at the bar who leers at us with suggestive confessions of “never having been with a black girl before,’’ then adopts this picture of our sexuality as primal, serving to further dehumanize and assign us the role of entertainer.

Charles Matthews, a comedian who lived in London at the time of Sarah’s station there, recorded his observations of visitors who came to view her. “One pinched her; one gentleman poked her with his cane; one lady employed her parasol to ascertain that all was, as she called it, ‘nattral,” he wrote. Documented interactions like these further justify the fury we feel when white people tug at our hair and paint their faces black on Halloween.

The white gaze of the black body, regardless of gender, has always been and is still very much entrenched in the idea of entertainment. What were minstrel shows without the large drawn-on lips and charcoal black skin? How much funnier is it when the loud and gobby black female character we’re encouraged to poke fun at in any comedic TV show is fat and often dark-skinned? This sense of awe over the black form reduces us to being spectacles rather than human beings, something you’d see in a museum, a freak show in Sarah Baartman’s case. When black people set boundaries on our bodies, asking white people not to touch our hair or ask about our skin color, what we’re trying to get across to people is that our bodies were not made for white entertainment.

If black bodies were seen as inherently sexual, then emulating blackness has been a way white women have played with their sexuality while remaining safe in their whiteness. We keep seeing white women in the public eye monopolizing the black female body to gain them cool points (see Miley Cyrus circa 2013 and Rachel “Transracial” Dolezal who, after being outed for pretending to be black for most of her adult life, has written a book, and is now the topic of a Netflix documentary, which can only serve to give her even more publicity.) White women in the public eye who go so far as to surgically enhance their bodies to adopt typical black features like large lips and big butts tend to become the poster girls for the “body of the moment.” Everyone wants “Kim Kardashian ass” because her body is an amalgam of the erogenous features of the black woman, but without all that “black.”

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This is especially interesting considering the infamous #BreakTheInternet Paper photoshoot where, in an Inception-like multi-layered recreation, Kim Kardashian stood in as the subject of a series of images that originally cast black women in a highly fetishized light (one that photographer Jean-Paul Goude has reinforced with previous works and comments.) Long before Kim’s time, the images in question have often been likened to our very own Sarah Baartman. We can’t ignore Kim’s role as the modern Sarah, this time using her body to exploit modern society as opposed to society doing the reverse. But 10 points to whoever can guess the main difference between Kim and Sarah. Her privilege in being able to cherry pick the aspects of the black female form that enable her to commandeer her universal appeal so successfully (the butt, the lips, the racial ambiguity) puts her at an advantage that no black women are welcome to.

For those without Kim’s figure, there was the bustle, which was all the rage in 19th-century women’s fashion. These huge structures (often accompanied with padding) were worn as a way of accentuating the female figure and enhancing the posterior. This means that during Sarah Baartman’s time as a freak-show attraction, the very women gawking at the natural curves on her body would likely have been enhancing their own bodies to look like hers. The difference is that while these women were seen as fashionable for their manipulated forms, black women like Sarah were being treated like freaks. It seems like a black woman’s body is only desirable (not to be confused with fetishized) when a white woman is wearing it.

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One of the saddest things about Sarah Baartman’s existence, besides her enslavement and objectification, is the absence of her voice in her own narrative. Everything we know about her has been recounted by the scientists, captors, and audience members who benefited from her circumstances. Her duty was to be seen and not heard. That’s still the expectation for black women today — think about how quickly white audiences rejected the political turn Beyonce’s music took. The booty-shaking, female empowering Beyonce with her universal themes of overcoming heartbreak was actually black all of a sudden, and this made people uncomfortable.

It is this attempt to silence black women that concerns me most. As troubling as Sarah’s story is, there are plenty of black women out there who enjoy being exhibited, whether they are models, dancers, or any other type of performer. The freedom we’re asking for involves being able to express ourselves and control our bodies without attracting harassment and ridicule.

Sarah Baartman was only returned home to be buried in 2002 — more than 80 years after her death. If there’s one thing we can take from her story, it should be the reminder that every inch of the black female body — her skin, her butt, her voice — belongs to the black woman herself. It is not your costume nor your plaything. It is her being.

Since last week I’ve been wondering one thing: Can Black people stop giving out Skinfolk Passes to people who behave horrifically? And in particular, to predatory men?

Within the African-American community, “skinfolk” refers to other Black people — those who share your racial background. Ostensibly we share a bittersweet bond that comes from having common experiences as marginalized people.

But in the wake of the Cosby verdict and the movement to #MuteRKelly, some people have used racial solidarity to justify giving these men an absolute pardon for their actions — excusing them based on little more than the fact that they’re Black.

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Recently, a stunning verdict was announced: Bill Cosby was found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, an unfortunately rare conviction. Apart from a few news clips, I didn’t pay any attention to people’s reactions. Yet through the magic of social media, I found a video about the case from author and speaker Dr. Boyce Watkins: “Bill Cosby is being publicly lynched, but this Black woman is who you all will be afraid to hear.”

The first part of the title stopped me cold.

Some people have used racial solidarity to justify giving these men an absolute pardon for their actions.
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In his video, Dr. Watkins featured a YouTuber who expressed a point of view that he supported: Because of racism and inequities in the justice system, Black people are disproportionately charged for crimes and given harsher sentences than their white counterparts. It’s an argument multiple studies have supported. However, he used this evidence to draw the conclusion that, because of this imbalance, Mr. Cosby doesn’t deserve the punishment that he received.

Bill Cosby isn’t the only person people like Dr. Watkins are defending. Last Monday, the Time’s Up movement declared its support of women of color and #MuteRKelly — a campaign calling for the end of the music industry’s support of Robert “R” Kelly, an artist who has faced multiple allegations of predatory behavior throughout his career, particularly against underage Black girls.

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In light of Time’s Up’s stance, Kelly shared a statement which included the following words:

“We will vigorously resist this attempted public lynching of a black man who has made extraordinary contributions to [African-American] culture.”

Overall, I’m disgusted. But I’m also confused. Why are these men and their supporters so committed to saying that they’re being “lynched” or otherwise persecuted?

In his video, Dr. Watkins made a point of recalling that lynching victims were unjustly executed for imaginary crimes, while their white attackers literally got away with murder. Therefore, according to him, as it was then, so it must be now — the Black men in question are always innocent victims of a white conspiracy.

That would make sense, if it weren’t for the fact that Mr. Cosby was held accountable according to the law. He was tried via due process — not malicious rumors. And although many of Mr. Cosby’s victims were white, Mr. Kelly’s are not. What’s the reason behind claiming “lynching” in his defense? In both cases, the evidence is there, and to compare the actions of a man (or one’s own actions), to innocent men and women being brutally murdered? That’s nothing more than a farce and a sign of how delusional you’ve become.

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I’m at a loss when it comes to understanding why these men think it’s appropriate to use this language. I can only assume that they’re panicking — it’s probably jarring for them be dethroned after years of protected status as cultural demigods, and for their fans to see that happen to men they once idolized. In an attempt to throw their supporters a last lifeline, they’ve turned to an image that will win them as much sympathy as possible. They’ve decided to lean on the most triggering idea that they can think of — the image of a Black man being lynched. And who, in their right mind, would want to see their heroes meet such a horrible fate?

It’s true that these men are not exempt from being oppressed. However it is important to note that they are still men, susceptible to misogynistic thinking and habits.

Too often, the media overlooks positive Black role models. Therefore, it’s easy to want to get behind a gifted comedian or musician. Especially ones as widely-loved as Kelly and Cosby were. As recently as this weekend, in stories about his conviction, Bill Cosby was referred to as “America’s Dad.” Fans will likely remember that R. Kelly was the “Pied Piper of R&B” — a moniker that seems especially sinister in light of his reputation.

And I know the type of world we live in. The justice system is corrupt. The school-to-prison pipeline shows no signs of slowing down, and victims of police violence become hashtags on an almost weekly basis. Yet a person’s status as a victim of oppression shouldn’t grant them immunity from suffering the consequences of their actions. It can’t and shouldn’t absolve someone from being punished for committing acts of evil. After years of being persecuted through racism and its manifestations, we, Black people, deserve a reprieve from being endangered. But Bill and Robert aren’t it.

Jessica Huang’s friendship with a white neighbor centers the Asian-American experience in a way I’d never seen before on TV.

flickr/Alpha

The season 1 finale of Fresh Off the Boat solidified Jessica Huang as one of my favorite characters on the air today. At the start of the episode, Jessica holds a dish of macaroni and cheese with bacon bits and panics that she and her immigrant family have assimilated too much and too quickly to the United States. The rest of the episode centers on this dilemma and what it means for the Chinese culture she treasures so dearly. This sort of crisis was one I had never seen before on mainstream television, particularly from an Asian American character. Now wrapping up season four, Jessica still challenges the Asian narratives I’d seen before, particularly the Asian BFF trope.

Growing up, when I saw any Asian woman or girl on TV, even as an extra, my head would snap to attention. Even if I didn’t consciously think about representation at the time, the lack of Asian characters was obvious, and made me internalize our invisibility even more. As a Korean adopted into a white family, the characters I saw on TV were some of the most intimate looks I had at Asian American family life. Living in a mostly white neighborhood, my friendships mirrored those I saw on TV — friendships like Rory Gilmore and Lane Kim’s on Gilmore Girls or, later, Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang’s on Grey’s Anatomy; I, too, was the only Asian friend among a group of white peers. However, it wasn’t until recently that I realized all these friendships were of a kind. They enforced the Asian BFF trope — and warped my perceptions of my own racial identity.

Similar to the trope of the “sassy black friend,” the Asian BFF is an often-tokenized attempt to include a person of color on screen. The Asian BFF rejects her Asian heritage, and the character’s identity revolves around attempts to emulate whiteness. Lane Kim was in a band, dated white men, and was even kicked out of her home by her tough Korean mother who tried to keep her steady on the Christian path towards a nice Korean husband. Similarly, Cristina Yang’s surgical career is in defiance of her own Korean mother’s traditional wishes. Yang is a confident, rounded character but her ethnicity is rarely mentioned — her character wasn’t even supposed to be Asian in the first place.

The Asian BFF rejects her Asian heritage, and the character’s identity revolves around attempts to emulate whiteness.

In attempts to perhaps avoid stereotypes, the Asian BFF trend creates new ones about the assimilated, rebellious Asian-American woman and her persistent efforts to gain access to white culture and spaces. There is nothing inherently wrong with these character’s quests for identities separate from the ones in which they grew up. It’s downright expected for coming-of-age stories. I saw much of my own artistic drive reflected in Lane Kim, and I saw the unwavering support my friends have for my ambitions reflected in Meredith Grey. But when encouragement to break away from one’s culture and join the “American” (read: white) culture is all we see, inadvertently or not, it pushes the narrative that Asian-ness is “less than” or undesirable. According to a recent study, even on shows with Asian-Americans and Pacific-Islanders (AAPIs) as regulars, these characters rarely get storylines that explore AAPI-related issues.

Fresh Off the Boat is different. Jessica Huang, played with sharp-edged heart by Constance Wu, is unapologetically both Chinese and an immigrant, packing noodles in her children’s lunches, dressing up as Chinese Santa, and taking the family to Taiwan for the summer. Jessica’s comfort and pride in her Asian identity alienates her from her white, cliquish neighbors (who today would definitely be part of the 53% of white women who voted for Trump). At one neighborhood gathering, Jessica passes around a plate of “stinky tofu” only to have the plate return to her fuller than it started. She starts to succumb to the pressures to fit in, pretending to be interested in what these women are interested in without reciprocity. Finally, she does find a best friend in next-door neighbor Honey, who is also alienated from the neighborhood clique due to her status as trophy wife. This friendship flips the Asian BFF trope on its head in more than one way.

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First, despite Honey’s fulfillment of Western leading lady beauty standards, it’s Jessica who is the confident leader in their friendship, while Honey is often passive and meek. In one episode, Jessica serenades Honey with a rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” and when a touched Honey tries to join in, Jessica pushes her away, reminding her that “this is not a duet.” Honey stumbles away passively as Jessica continues to bask, centerstage. Jessica is not only no white woman’s backup singer, she’s also a strict soloist.

Beyond this dynamic, Honey values the parts of Jessica that she loves most about herself, including her culture. In fact, it’s this that makes Jessica realize how much Honey’s friendship means to her. At one point, worried what being friends with the neighborhood outcast will do for their floundering restaurant business, Jessica’s husband tells her she can be friends with anyone else. “Swing a cat, hit a white woman,” he says. And yet this proves harder than it sounds as the women of the neighborhood whisper that Jessica’s brownies are sliced so evenly because of communism — she will always be the perpetual foreigner to them.

Meanwhile, Honey eats Jessica’s stinky tofu with gusto, a small but symbolic act. While I’ve seen strong interracial female friendships before, witnessing a white woman take an interest in and support Asian culture without it becoming a spectacle or exoticized felt special. Instead of the familiar assimilation narrative, I watched Honey willingly enter Jessica’s space and find room for herself in the life of a Chinese woman who loves who she is and where she’s from. Yes, I certainly identified with Jessica in this moment, but I also saw myself reflected in the neighborhood women and Honey. For so long I had shunned a part of myself because I thought it was less important. But thanks to new narratives like this one, the voices of the neighborhood women have faded into Honey’s, affirming that the tofu is delicious — that the entirety of me matters.

With this foundation in place, the question becomes: Where will their friendship go and how deeply will it tackle their differences? The season four premiere centered on Jessica and Honey as they took on Best Friends Week on Wheel of Fortune. Different expectations about how long Jessica and her family will stay at Honey’s home while Jessica negotiates their lease cause conflict that comes to a head in front of the wheel. Honey explains that she told Jessica to stay as long as she wanted only because of her southern politeness, while Jessica reveals that, where she’s from, you don’t have to thank family. The episode ends on an emphatically cheesy note as the women make up, yet Honey’s unblinking acceptance of Jessica’s reasoning never diminishes Jessica’s upbringing or invalidates her explanation.

This moment illustrates the show’s potential to explore the challenges of interracial female friendship while maintaining its mainstream appeal (which gives it the power to reach a broad, white audience). It can stay lighthearted while still challenging the assumption that Honey will be an unwavering white ally to Jessica. I’m glad to see Honey eat the tofu and accept Jessica’s cultural norms, but I also want to see what she does when she’s the accidental perpetuator of casual racism, or when a rich client implies they would rather work with Honey than Jessica. At a time when white female allyship with women of color is under scrutiny, the show has a chance to participate in the conversation through the unique dynamic it has created between these two women.

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The development of my racial identity is still something I grapple with as an adult. Everything I saw for so long in books, TV, and movies showed being Asian as something to rebel against or ignore, but if friendships like Jessica and Honey’s existed back then, maybe I would have seen that part of myself differently instead of falling in line with the single story. Maybe I would have bristled when my friends told me I was “pretty much white.” Maybe they would have known better than to say that in the first place.

The existence of the Jessica-Honey friendship still means something to me today. It means there’s space that can be cleared for us at center stage. It shows how our white friends can and should support the sometimes challenging efforts to stay true to ourselves. Simply, it’s refreshing to see the lives of nice white women take a backseat to our own lives — and that they might even be off screen somewhere, forgotten for an entire episode, as we live and grow and love ourselves all on our own.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/the-racist-undertones-of-the-urban-contemporary-grammys-category-e2559aeefe60/ Mon, 29 Jan 2018 23:45:30 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=3103 Read more]]>

Creating a here’s-your-space-and-here’s-mine kind of atmosphere isn’t a good look no matter how you dress it.

Modified from Wikimedia

Back in 2013, Kelly Rowland and Nas presented the first Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album, designed to honor “artists whose music includes the more contemporary elements of R&B and may incorporate production elements found in urban pop, urban Euro-pop, urban rock, and urban alternative” and “albums containing at least 51 percent playing time of newly recorded contemporary vocal tracks derivative of R&B.”

Of all the nominees — Chris Brown’s Fortune, Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, and Miguel’s Kaleidoscope Dream — California rapper and singer Ocean’s debut solo project nabbed the newly announced award.

There is something peculiar about the category’s nominees that year: Each candidate is black. Since then, this racial demographic has stayed largely the same, all the way up through last night, when The Weeknd took home the award by beating out a roster of entirely non-white nominees.

Some might say this is a good thing — a boon for much-needed inclusivity. But it’s also problematic that the word “urban” has such an undeniable racial implication. Moreover, the category is seemingly designed to compartmentalize black artists, undermining the culture’s contributions to and influences on music even as it tries to celebrate it.

To understand the issues with this Grammys category, we can start by diving in to etymology.

The word “urban” is a derivative of the Latin word “urbanus,” which comes from a Latin amalgam of “urbs” (“a walled town” or “city”) and -ānus (a suffix for “of or pertaining to”). In Ancient Rome — we’re talking between 8th century BC and 5th century AD, some 2000 or so years ago — it wasn’t uncommon to hear folks follow the word “‘urbs” with a proper noun, like “urbs Romana” for Roma (or Rome, as we know it).

From its multiple borrowings and irregularities, “urbanus” found its way to France, there meaning “city” and “courteous, elegant, or polite.” There is a huge time gap here as “urbānus” continued to transform — “urbánus,” “urbani,” and a few others are all variations of “urbanus,” each meaning “city” in some way. Between the 1500s and 1600s, though, the French began to use “urbanus” (or “urbain/urbane” in Middle French) as an adjective, to say someone was “having the manners of townspeople.” At that time, saying someone was “urbain” simply meant they were courteous, generous, polite, stately — essentially, a cool person.

Up until about the late 19th century.

During the Industrial Revolution, immigrants began migrating to “urban” (city) areas in the United States, hoping to secure James Truslow Adams’ American Dream. However, because of abysmal pay and atrocious working conditions — not to mention an increase in pollution, population, and production — these immigrants were forced to migrate from one congested area to another, more congested area.

Pretty soon, because of the lack of income coming into these displaced families, these heavily congested areas began eroding into rundown, increasingly dangerous neighborhoods. And since these immigrants consisted of largely poor, black, or Hispanic citizens, “urban” as an adjective of endearment malformed into an adjective of resentment.

Due to the separation between the poor and the rich, the clean and the unkempt, American society dubbed such unsavory neighborhoods as “ghettos,” a word originating from the Jewish corner of Venice, used to segregate the Jews from the rest of the population. It’s around this time—the late 19th to the late 20th century—that “urban” grew to be synonymous with “ghetto,” which in turn, meant African-American or black.

Thrusting this complex, shocking history into a new category was likely not The Recording Academy’s intention. In fact, Ivan Barias, a Philadelphian producer and the former president of the Philadelphian Chapter of The Recording Academy, told the Fader the category is:

“indicative of a certain musical energy that encompasses all of the diverse genres of urban music…When you look at the whole picture, it shows how diverse the musical tastes really are amongst our generation — and this category exemplifies that.”

But why, then, is it that the nominees are almost always black? In case you forgot: In 2014, the nominees were Mack Wilds, Tamar Braxton, Fantasia, Rihanna, and Salaam Remi; in 2015, they were Beyoncé, Chris Brown, Jhené Aiko, Mali Music, and Pharrell Williams; in 2016, they were Lianne Le Havas, Miguel, Kehlani, The Internet, and The Weeknd; and in 2017, they were Anderson .Paak, Beyoncé, Gallant, KING, and Rihanna.

This year, the nominees were 6lack (pronounced “black”), Childish Gambino (Donald Glover), Khalid, SZA, and The Weeknd. Every nominee (and, by default, every winner) of this category is non-white, with a large majority being of African-American/black descent. This is incredibly telling, as it reinforces the idea that the Best Urban Contemporary Album category is reserved almost exclusively for black people.

Barias’ Fader comments insisting the category is about “inclusivity” in the urban music genre—whatever that is—feels like a feigned excuse for the Grammy’s to “include” more black artists, while still ensuring a separation between us and them. (A lot of the same could be said about Black History Month.)

American singer Sufjan Stevens and Spin magazine believe the creation (and current, continued wording) of the Best Urban Contemporary Album is problematic. Sufjan posted a picture to his Tumblr page almost a year ago responding to the category itself and Beyoncé’s loss to Adele in both the Album of the Year and Record of the Year categories.

The photo read:

“Q: WTF is ‘Urban Contemporary’?

A: It’s where the white man puts his incomparable pregnant black woman because he is so threatened by her talent, power persuasion and potential.”

This was followed by the caption, “Friendly reminder: don’t be racist.”

Spin magazine addressed the same concern, writing:

“Let’s not confuse this with inclusivity, though…the problem is ultimately is a structural one: in attempting to create a black space on a predominantly white tableau, othering is a natural part of this construct.”

It’s hard to conclude that there’s inherent racism within the creation of the Best Urban Contemporary Album, but continuing to compartmentalize and segregate black and non-white artists from the main ceremony, creating a here’s-your-space-and-here’s-mine kind of atmosphere, isn’t a good look no matter how you dress it.

Diversity itself is obviously crucial. But the Grammys and The Recording Academy really only have two options: 1. either rename the category and remove the word “urban” from the renaming, or 2. close the category entirely and better integrate black and non-white artists into the ceremony. (The second option is better, and it’s the only one I’ll accept.)

As Solange tweeted in February 2017, “There have only been two black winners in the last 20 years for Album of the Year.” In total, only 10 black artists had won Album of the Year since the Grammy Awards were first held back in May 1959. For an award ceremony suddenly so concerned with inclusivity, you’d think that six decades of music would produce more than 10 black winners for Albums of the Year. (Last night’s winner for the honor, Bruno Mars, is non-white; he beat out three black artists — Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and Childish Gambino — and their hip-hop albums.)

Unfortunately, if this category remains intact, I don’t see more black/non-white artists winning the much-coveted Album of the Year. While the etymology of “urban” may evolve—again—in the next few years or so, the onus is on The Recording Academy to fundamentally shift America’s perception of black and non-white artists.

By perpetuating this glorified segregation—which further instills an us-vs-them mentality—The Record Academy merely reinforces dangerous stereotypes. If the Grammys and The Recording Academy really want to “celebrate all of these other artists who tend to pull from different genres,” they need to stop othering marginalized genres and voices, and eradicate the category altogether.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/how-our-conversation-around-breastfeeding-hurts-black-infants-ee1ed1c318c/ Mon, 21 Aug 2017 20:40:57 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=4592 Read more]]> For too long, the dialogue around breastfeeding has been a deeply privileged one that erases and ignores Black women.

Racial inequality in the U.S. is so entrenched, so debilitating, that even Black babies—even, sometimes, within their first hours of life—are impacted by it.

Consider, for a moment, these chilling facts:

The infant mortality rate for Black babies is 2.4 times higher than it is for white babies in the U.S.

Black infants are two times more likely to die from SIDS and SUID than white infants.

Black infants experience nearly four times as many deaths related to short gestation and low birth weight.

Black preterm infants, compared with white infants, are three times more likely to suffer from necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), and twice as likely to die from the condition.

Not surprisingly, bigotry plays a critical role in this disparity; research shows that racism-induced stress can have adverse effects on the health of Black women and, subsequently, on their babies. Lack of access to quality care also contributes to the mortality gap.

But there’s still another factor at play here, and it’s one that often goes overlooked, perhaps because it taps into a controversial debate: breastfeeding.

For too long, the dialogue around breastfeeding has been a deeply privileged one that erases and ignores Black women. And until we confront this fact, we can never fully address what amounts to an alarming health crisis for Black mothers in America.

It’s not a coincidence that Black mothers, while facing high rates of infant mortality, also have the lowest breastfeeding rates in the nation. There is a direct link between breastfeeding and infant health — studies show that breastfeeding helps lower incidences of SIDS, a leading cause of infant death, and reduces the occurrence of NEC, a condition that causes bowel tissues to die and is the leading cause of death in low-birthweight infants. So why do so few Black mothers breastfeed their children?

Part of it may have to do with the legacy of slavery: Some Black women have been reluctant to breastfeed, experts note, because slaves were often forced to nurse their slave masters’ children. Further, the advent of formula in the 1920s through ’40s brought with it “aggressive marketing” to Black communities; formula companies pushed the notion of their products being “the substance for sophisticates” and the choice of the elite.

Moreover, the health-care system has turned its back on women of color. Put simply, Black mothers often lack the community resources they need to successfully learn about and initiate breastfeeding. (Many of these forces, it’s worth noting, have also impacted American Indian/Alaska Native women, who breastfeed at higher rates than Black women, but lower rates than white women.

As a Center for Social Inclusion report put it:

“Many mothers want to choose to breastfeed because of the significant, inarguable benefits it offers both the mother and child, but without the right support, the choice is made for them.”

One of the most significant barriers to support exists in the very first place many infants see: the hospital.

Because hospital practices in the first hours and days after birth are essential to the success of breastfeeding, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have requirements in place for what they call “Baby-Friendly” hospitals. Facilities with this designation must, for example, initiate breastfeeding within the first hour of birth and train all staff to implement breastfeeding protocols. Some of the policies of the Baby-Friendly initiative — like a requirement that there be skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her baby immediately after birth — have been criticized by doctors and mothers for being ineffective and unsafe. Still, research shows that breastfeeding rates are higher in these hospitals. Moreover, Black breastfeeding rates in particular are significantly better in these hospitals. In a 10-year study of an inner-city neonatal intensive care unit, breastfeeding initiation rates for Black infants increased by 28% (compared to 10% overall) since the hospital’s designation as Baby-Friendly.

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The health-care system has turned its back on women of color.
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The problem? In areas where more than 12% of the population is Black, most hospitals do not follow recommended breastfeeding practices, and Baby-Friendly hospitals are nowhere to be found. This lack of initial support, combined with the implicit bias in health care that women of color already face, set Black women up for failure from the literal beginning.

As a result of these institutional barriers “in that first 28 days of life, a good chunk of our Black babies are not making it to that first year,” Andrea Serano, certified lactation counselor and program manager at ROSE (Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere), a breastfeeding support organization, tells me. “What we’re finding in our community is that there is this limited access to breastfeeding resources across the spectrum.”

ROSE is one of many organizations fighting to fix this resource gap; in addition to supporting Black breastfeeding through interventions, its members sit at the table with policymakers who can influence breastfeeding support efforts nationally — crucial in a landscape where racial disparities in breastfeeding are proven to decrease when the law supports breastfeeding. Black Mothers’ Breastfeeding Association is another organization working diligently on this front. Through advocating for legally mandated pumping breaks and private spaces for working mothers, championing to require insurance companies to provide no-cost lactation services, prohibiting child care facilities from discriminating against breastfed infants, and pushing for national legislation protecting a wider group of working moms, these organizations use policy and the law to help close the breastfeeding class and race gap.

But the solution to this troubling gap in infant mortality will take more than organizations like ROSE and USBC pushing for change. It will also take re-framing the debate around breastfeeding altogether.

While there is ample research supporting the benefits of breastfeeding, there has been a movement in recent years to challenge its hegemony. Movements like “Fed Is Best” are predicated on the idea that, quite simply, mothers should be supported in choosing whatever clinically safe feeding option is best for them, be it breastfeeding, formula, or a combination of both.

In many ways, pushback against the “breastfeeding only” approach is understandable: In a society that sadly insists on cultivating “mommy wars,” it’s important to respect the autonomy of all mothers.

But at the same time, this debate is a problematically privileged one. Black women not only face immense barriers to breastfeeding, but according to the CDC, are sold formula in hospitals at higher rates. As previously mentioned, there’s historical precedence to this resource disparity as well: The emergence of formula in the 1920s and ’30s led to lower breastfeeding rates across the U.S. — but when evidence began showing the health benefits of breast milk, white mothers gained greater access to that information, and began nursing again at higher rates.

When there’s such historic, disproportionate access to education and resources, what’s presented as a choice is really no choice at all.

“The reality is that we have to talk about race, and that is a very uncomfortable topic, and many have issues with coming to terms with it,” said Serano. So instead, we dismiss the benefits of breastfeeding as overstated, citing the weak correlations between breastfeeding and lower food allergies. We talk about the struggles of women who initiated breastfeeding with support and could not continue. These discussions are important — but while Black infants are dying and evidence tells us that initiating breastfeeding could turn that around, they should not be centered as the most important discussions.

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The reality is that we have to talk about race
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Instead, we must focus on the disparities that need to be addressed in order to ensure women of color have access to breastfeeding resources and are empowered enough to make the choice to initiate breastfeeding. We must stop dismissing the maternal health inequities that Black women face as purely socioeconomic, when evidence shows that this is not the case — cultural factors, including attitudes toward breastfeeding influenced by slavery, and stress and depression caused by racial disempowerment and systemic discrimination, have played a key role in the infant mortality gap.

What’s happening in this country with Black infants is nothing short of a public-health crisis. If there’s a national discussion to be had about breastfeeding, let it be that one.

The clippers jolted to life, buzzing like a swarm of bees, waiting to shred through my short afro. “Hey, P, it’s time to cut them naps,” my brother yelled from the bathroom. Crying profusely, I sauntered to the bathroom, staggering, reluctant to get my hair cut. I plopped onto the chair and peered through salty rivulets of tears as black sheep wool fell from my head. “Why do I always have to get my hair cut?” I asked my brother. “Grandma said,” he replied militantly.

“Because you don’t take care of your hair,” my grandmother interjected, fully aware of her condescending tone. “You just let it grow and do nothin’ with it. It looks terrible, like a bird’s nest.”

“But I want long hair,” I said to her, unable to clear the tears from my eyes or the crack in my voice.

“You ain’t supposed to have long hair,” she coolly replied. “You’re a boy, Jeremy, boys ain’t never had long hair.”

For years, this was the common refrain from my family and from society: Boys — Black boys especially — aren’t supposed to have long hair, because long hair is for girls.

‘You’re a boy, Jeremy, boys ain’t never had long hair.’
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Part of this messaging is rooted in rigid, and damaging, assumptions surrounding gender in general. But White Supremacist culture also plays a significant role, with the White majority dictating what is and is not appropriate for Blacks to do, say, and wear. As a part of this culture, Black men are typically categorized as hyper-masculine and overly aggressive, with media depictions focusing on athleticism, criminality, and little else. As a Black man, you are to be physically adroit, rugged, tall, thuggish, and stoic; anything outside these strict parameters makes you less Black. Because society continues to insist on associating long hair with femininity, this leads to a crude calculation: the longer the hair, the less acceptably Black the man.

Years after my brother and grandma first insisted I get my hair cut, I now wear my hair freely — but it took years to get to that point. And the reason is rooted in some ugly truths about White supremacist culture.

Genetically, most Blacks — men and women alike — have nappy (or kinky) hair that, for the most part, grows upward instead of downward. Because of the “women equal long hair” equation, it’s more acceptable and conventional for Black women to modify their hair in ways that defy genetics, by way of flat irons, perms, weaves, and the like. At the same time, there are significant societal pressures wrapped up in this; under the auspices of White beauty standards, it is considered ugly or unprofessional for a Black woman to wear her natural hair. As such, Black women, while having more options than Black men, typically choose to adopt more White-approved hairstyles — bouncy curls, straight locks, wavy hair, etc. — in order to avoid disparaging and hurtful descriptors.

I Was Supposed To Have Good Hair

In August 2016, the Perception Institute did a study on “good hair” and bias toward hair textures. The study showed that “white women show explicit bias toward black women’s textured hair” and that “[white women] rate it less beautiful, less sexy/attractive, and less professional than smooth hair.” If you walk into any beauty supply store, ethnic hair products — hair products geared toward non-White hair types — are sectioned off, exacerbating the idea that non-White hair is “other” and should be treated as such by being segregated.

As for Black men, if they want to grow their hair long, they only have the option of an afro, with any other alteration or modification either deemed distasteful or looked down upon by both the Black population and the White majority. Because the White majority has an almost Darwinistic approach to what is and is not acceptable in popular culture, Black men, similar to Black women, adhere to the common adage of majority rules.

A Perception Institute study found that ‘white women show explicit bias toward black women’s textured hair.’
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Many expectations surrounding hair and masculinity can be traced back to Black cultural icons. Though disco brought about a style of dress unseen in Black culture, the hairstyles for Black men remained the same: large, neatly picked-out, and very circular afros. The evolution of hip-hop from the Bronx, New York to Los Angeles, California (East Coast vs. West Coast), and the introduction of Gangsta Rap in the mid-1980s, brought about new styles — but these styles were mostly short.

Lesane Parish Crooks (Tupac Shakur) is iconically known for a shaved head. Christopher George Latore Wallace (Biggie Smalls) is iconically known for a low afro. Todd Anthony Shaw (Too Short) is iconically known for a Caesar cut. And so, if you were at all associated with hip-hop and/or were Black during the ’80s and ’90s, you would primarily see afros, low cuts, or shaved heads.

In the late-’80s and through much of the ’90s, the perm became the mainstream hairstyle for Blacks, with the Jheri curl inspiring a shift in styles. The perm was around during the early ’80s as well — sported by Edmund Theodore Sylvers (known for being the lead vocalist in the disco/soul band, The Sylvers) on his 1980 solo record, Have You Heard, and by Michael Jackson on his 1982 record, Thriller — but it took a few years for it to really catch on. By the late ’80s, Black artists from all genres had begun chemically modifying their hair, from DJ Quik and Ice Cube to Ice-T and Snoop Dogg.

The late Eazy-E, former member of N.W.A. who died in 1995 from complications of AIDS, is iconically known for his Compton hat and Jheri curls. And Prince Rogers Nelson (simply Prince) mixed his permed hair styles with an innovative fashion sense that injected a more effeminate taste into the pulse of Black culture.

The hi-top fade — very short hair on the sides and very long hair on top — also became popular in the late ’80s and early ’90s, sported by the likes of Bobby Brown, Vanilla Ice, and Will Smith (any Fresh Prince of Bel Air fans?). This look, though long, played into the “up, not down” parameters of acceptable Black hair. And as Gangsta rap began to fade into obscurity during the late-’90s and early ’00s, so, too, did fluffy, blown-out, chemically modified hair, reverting back to a lot of afros, Cesar cuts, and shaved heads.

As a ’90s baby and a ’00s adolescent incessantly harassed by the short hair propaganda put forth by hair companies like Just For Men and Shea Moisture, I did not accept any of this. Most of the commercials these companies propagated consisted of muscular Black men grinning at the camera, running their hands through their just-washed low cut — something I fervently detested and never coveted. And so, after years of getting my hair cut every two to three weeks, I went behind my Grandmother’s back, like the defiant 13-year-old I was, and asked my sister what I had to do to get her hair. “I have a perm,” she replied, disappointed in my decision.

Just two years earlier, while on a Christmas trip to San Diego to visit family, I was introduced to rock music. While sitting on my uncle’s coffee brown couch, watching hip-hop/rap and R&B music videos on MTV (when MTV, you know, actually played music), my cousin changed the channel to MTV2; blaring, distorted guitar cut through the TV’s speaker and I became enveloped in the noise of Switchfoot’s “Meant To Live.”

That song, those lyrics, penetrated my very soul and rebirthed me, connecting me to emotions I always knew I had but never felt I could display because of the pressures put forth by White supremacist culture. Watching these guys rock out as their hair wisped through the air, I longed for that sense of freedom from cultural and societal pressures. It was at this moment I felt comfortable expressing myself in my most natural way — and the first step to true authenticity was to get long hair.

After appealing to my sister, she ended up putting a relaxer in my hair. It burned after a while, but once the solution was rinsed out, my naps straightened, providing me the luscious locks I always longed for.

My joy, though, was short-lived.

When the upkeep of this hair became too burdensome, I gave up, resigning myself to hair I could barely care about, let alone love. I grew my hair out and deliberately ignored it, refusing to brush it, pick it out, or shape it in any way. (Don’t worry, I still washed and conditioned it.) Dejected and miserable, I chose to hide my mini afro under beanies and hats, begrudgingly accepting my style destiny.

There was, however, another option available to get the long hair I coveted.

Though Jamaica-born reggae artist Bob Marley popularized dreadlocks — or, as they’re sometimes known, “locs” — in the ’70s, the hairstyle has been around for hundreds of years. According to Chimere Faulk, an Atlanta-based natural hair stylist and owner of Dr. Locs in Roswell, Georgia, “Dreadlocks can be traced to just about every civilization in history. No matter the race, you will find a connection to having dreadlocks for spiritual reasons.”

In Judges 16:13 of The Old Testament, Samson, the last of the judges of ancient Israelites, said to Delilah, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and fasten it tight with the pin, then I shall become weak and be like any other man,” evidently purporting that the seven locks he has grants him strength and by stripping these locks, his strength would be stripped, too.

Dreadlocks have a deep association with the Rastafari movement, but it was Marley who brought the hairstyle over to the United States and made swinging locs look alluring. Into the ’80s and ’90s, cultural icons like Alice Walker, Lauryn Hill, Lenny Kravitz, Toni Morrison, and Whoopi Goldberg helped bring the iconically Black hairstyle to the mainstream.

The hyphy movement has since further assisted in cementing the style in pop culture (“shake them dreads,” the E-40 hit “Tell Me When To Go” directs), with many artists in recent years adopting the look. These include Earl Stevens (E-40 himself), Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. (Lil Wayne), Faheem Rashad Najim (T-Pain), and Olubowale Victor Akintimehin (Wale).

Still, like so many aspects of Black culture, the hairstyle has also faced appropriation, derision, and stigmatization over the years. For a long time, I personally couldn’t understand the appeal of having “black worms” grow out of someone’s head. (That’s what I thought they were. I was 12 or 13 years old, leave me alone.) But in my senior year of high school, circa 2011, I did more research into dreadlocks as a way to give me the long hair I’ve always wanted — and, lingering stigma be damned, I realized this was the look for me.

I’ve had dreads ever since, and six years later, they’re frequently worn in a bun because they too often obscure my vision. (Dreadlocks and glasses is a terrible combination, in case you didn’t know.)

Embracing the hair I’ve always wanted has forced me to confront our society’s rigid gender roles. Because of the length of my hair (and my style of dress, consisting of button-ups, polos, skinny jeans, and Vans), I’m often confused for a woman, and I’ve been taunted for daring to defy gender and heteronormative standards. From “f*****” to “gay” to “queer” and everything in between, I’ve been harassed incessantly because of my decision for longer hair.

Embracing the hair I’ve always wanted has forced me to confront our society’s rigid gender roles.
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But more and more, I feel a part of something bigger: a push to challenge the roles that have limited Black people for too long. Out of Los Angeles in 2009, Jerkin’ became a dance craze that helped challenge stereotypical Black dress: Associated artists such as Audio Push, the New Boyz, and The Rej3ctz all sported tight-fitting shirts and even tighter-fitting pants. And into the current mainstream, artists continue to confront gender roles by wearing typically effeminate accoutrements: leggings, nail polish, skirts, and the like.

You needn’t look far to see Black people slowly tearing down restrictive gender roles: Jeffery Lamar Williams (Young Thing), on his 2016 mixtape, Jeffery (originally titled No, My Name Is Jeffery), is seen in a light blue faux-dress replete with ruffles and a sun hat. In 2011, Kanye West was seen on stage in a black silk blouse at Coachella. In 2010, Sean John Combs (Diddy) was seen in a black and white kilt while on stage in Glasgow.

In an interview with Nylon magazine back in July 2016, Jaden Smith said, “So, you know, in five years when a kid goes to school wearing a skirt, he won’t get beat up and kids won’t get mad at him. It just doesn’t matter. I’m taking the brunt of it so that later on, my kids and the next generations of kids will all think that certain things are normal that weren’t expected before my time.” And if you remember The Boondocks, the episode titled “The Story of Gangstalicious Part 2,” which aired in 2008, has Riley sporting a skirt to promote his favorite rapper’s new clothing line.

Over time, I’ve learned not to give a damn about gender roles or the insults. There is no doctor dictating that all Black men must keep their hair short. Michael Jackson and Prince and others more newly on the scene are shining examples of challenging the status quo, the accepted normal; they have helped pave the way for Black men to tap into their feminine side. It’s because of them that Black men are more willing to wear their hair as they damn well please — a sentiment I’m happy to embrace.

What’s that saying again? Oh, yeah: long hair, don’t care.

Data indicate law enforcement officials have killed nearly 500 civilians this year alone.

Pixabay

By Celisa Calacal

The number of fatal shootings by police officers in the first half of 2017 is nearly identical to the number of shootings recorded during the same time period in 2016 and 2015, according to the Washington Post’s police shootings database.

Police have shot and killed 492 people in the first six months of the year, and authors John Sullivan, Reis Thebault, Julie Tate, and Jennifer Jenkins write that police killings are set to reach 1,000 for the third year in a row. According to the Post’s database, which began in 2015 following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 992 people were killed by law enforcement officers in 2015 and 963 were killed in 2016.

“These numbers show us that officer-involved shootings are constant over time,” Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina, told the Post. “Some places go up, some go down, but it’s averaging out. This is our society in the 21st century.”

Data from 2017 show that armed white males are the category of people killed the most by police officers, a continuing trend over the past two years. However, black males are killed at disproportionately higher rates. While black men account for only 6% of the U.S. population, they make up about a quarter of police shooting victims. According to Mapping Police Violence, a database that tracks the number of black people killed by police officers, blacks are three times more likely to be fatally shot by officers than white people. The Post’s police shooting database shows that the number of black men killed by police has been declining — 50 were killed in the first half of 2015, 34 in the same period in 2016 and 27 so far this year.

While black men account for only 6% of the U.S. population, they make up about a quarter of police shooting victims.

Of the 492 people killed by police, 27 were reported unarmed. One such victim was 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, who was slain in April leaving a party in a Texas neighborhood when an officer fired several shots into a moving vehicle.

Equally alarming is the number of mentally ill people law enforcement officials have shot and killed — 121 so far this year. In June, Seattle police shot and killed 30-year-old Charleena Lyles, a mentally ill black woman who was pregnant at the time. She had called 911 to report an attempted burglary at her home, and officers allege she pulled a knife on the two officers. Reports from The Seattle Times revealed that one of the officers was not carrying a Taser at the time of the shooting, a violation of department policy.

Equally alarming is the number of mentally ill people law enforcement officials have shot and killed — 121 so far this year.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of Police Executive Research Forum, said the shootings of mentally ill individuals can be avoided. “We know we can make a difference in cases where the person is mentally ill and in cases where someone is not armed with a gun,” Wexler told the Post.

An estimated 8% of police departments across the country have had an officer fatally shoot a civilian since 2015. LAPD officers have killed 47 people since 2015, the highest number of any police department in the country. Phoenix police have killed the most people in 2017, fatally shooting eight.

Holding Hands With The Police May Kill Us

While the FBI technically tracks fatal police shootings, its database relies on voluntary reports from police departments and only covers cases of officers shooting alleged felons. Data from the Washington Post suggest the agency’s figures are significantly lower than the actual number. Former FBI director James Comey called the FBI’s system of tracking fatal police shootings “embarrassing and ridiculous” last October. On Saturday, the agency said it would move forward with a data collection program to gather information on police shootings in 50 local and federal law enforcement agencies, with the intention of forging a nationwide system in 2018.

While the FBI technically tracks fatal police shootings, its database relies on voluntary reports from police departments and only covers cases of officers shooting alleged felons.

In October 2016, the Department of Justice said it planned to collect more comprehensive data about police shootings. But under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump appointee who has called consent decrees a hindrance to law enforcement efforts, it is unclear if the agency will follow through on its promise.

Not only has the number of people fatally shot by police remained about the same as in previous years, so has the number of officers indicted for fatal shootings. Previous reporting from the Post reveals that from 2005 to 2015, just 54 officers had been charged, though police killed thousands during that period. More often than not, law enforcement officers were acquitted of all charges.

How We Learn To Love ‘Good’ White Men With Guns

In the past month, several officers have been cleared of charges after fatally shooting civilians. Officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of all charges for killing Philando Castile during a traffic stop last July, though Castile was complying with Yanez’s orders. A week later, Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown was acquitted in the shooting death of Syville Smith. In the case of former University of Cincinnati officer Raymond Tensing, who fatally shot Samuel DuBose in 2015, a mistrial was declared after the jury couldn’t come to a verdict. A separate trial for Tensing last fall also ended in a hung jury.

This story originally appeared on Alternet. Republished here with permission.

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