WWII 1945, Columbia River in Oregon, out of 50 officers, there was one black lieutenant, who couldn’t go ashore with his crew. He wasn’t allowed to sit at certain tables. My papa, a cook, and his food crew said “he sits where he wants or we serve no one.” The lieutenant took a seat of his choosing. The white crew didn’t want the blacks near their quarter as they may see them in a “state of undress”. The chef on this ship was from Pennsylvania, a white man, former coal miner, an all around good guy. He once told my Papa “I’m going to make a chef out of you.” His name was Raymond Norwood. He was in charge of the food crew and again aserted the food crew’s power saying “if they’re too good for my boys to look at, they’re too good to get served.” The white crew posted Military Police at the entrance to the passageways in defiance. They missed a few meals.

There was a ship named the Booker T. Washington that had a black crew of dishwashers, engineers, radio engineers, officers and even the captain of merchant marine ship. I did some research online and found out that the United States Merchant Marine Liberty Ship named “S.S. Booker T. Washington”  was launched in 1942 and christened by famous soprano singer Marian Anderson. The unveiling of a bronze bust of Dr. Washington took place in 1946.

My Papa went with white shipmates to a restaurant after arriving at port in the US. They all ordered some food. The whites were served. My papa was not. It would seem from my Papa’s stories that there was usually at least “one good white guy.” This time it was a white guy from Kentucky who points to my Papa and asks the restaurant owner “what about him?” Well, they didn’t serve his kind. My Papa had to leave the establishment, he was directed to the home of black family who would gladly serve him a meal.

After the phone call, my parents explained the kids situation. It was likely a short term thing. There was some sort of trial taking place I think. The mother was being evaluated. It seemed the boy was experiencing more difficulty than his sister. Family services decided it was best to take them both out. The girl was my age. The boy was four years older, my two brothers’ age. I was never pleased when we took in girls. Nothing personal to them of course, it’s just that I was the only girl in our family, and I liked it that way. My mother was good at getting me to put my preference aside and see that we were doing something good. It was always a family decision. It was understood that it wasn’t just our parents who did foster care. We all did. We all had to agree. This time, there was a small catch. The children were White.

Now we weren’t the Cosby’s or anything, but we were an African American family living in the suburbs. We attended a predominantly Black Methodist church. My brothers went to a private Catholic school, which was predominantly White. At the time, I went a public elementary school. Our lives were quite heterogeneous. Part of our doing foster care was being a good example of a strong Black family. Making sure people knew homes like ours existed. Homes with a great income and a father at home.

That very night, the children arrived. They stood at our door, suitcases beside them, social worker between them. The girl, ”K,” had long unkempt hair. The boy, “M,” had a mop top cut. The boy had freckles. This seemed to add to his whiteness. No one in my family had freckles. Fast forward a couple a weeks.

We learned they had lice. We were told not to share combs and brushes. Being that my brothers and I had “black hair,” it was easy to keep such items separate. I remember my mother applying some smelly anti-lice solution to their haire and using a really thin tooth comb. The lice were little tiny bugs, this freaked me out a bit. Young, and naive about lice, I assumed it was “a white thing.” After all, I didn’t know anyone who had lice until I met these kids. It happens just that easy you know. Assumptions. Attributing some “fact” to an entire race of people. It was a form of childish math. To over simplify it, imagine my unconscious thought process of “I’m black. I don’t have lice. My brothers and cousins are black. They’ve never had lice. These kids have lice. They’re white. This equals White kids get lice.”

The differences added up. My mother hadn’t done white girls hair. She had to learn. My father often cut my brothers’ hair with electric clippers. That wouldn’t work for “M.” Luckily white salons take both male and female so that was two birds with one stone. They used different products for their hair. All completely different. Different combs, brushes, shampoos, conditioners, gels, sprays. I remember their hair being everywhere. Now I’m sure we shed just as much, but the mere difference in hair length made it seem like they were constantly loosing their hair. I was pulling long brown hairs from my sweaters. Their hair clogged the sink. To me, as a child, it was a white things of theirs. I know now that had their haire been as short as ours, it would have been an equal playing field.

Within the first weeks I also learned that the boy thought we had tails. In hindsight, his belief was quite strange. I don’t know who told him that Black people have tails, but somehow, that’s what he thought. Then he learned we didn’t. Oddly enough, it was just information to him. I don’t remember there being anything malicious about it. It was just “Oh you don’t have tails.” We moved on. The boy, “M,” liked to hang out with my father. Typical kids that my brothers and I were, we knew there was nothing cool about my father and we acted accordingly. “M” would go with to Home Depot. He would go with him to the post office. At the time, I had no idea how much it must of meant to him to have a healthy male father figure.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving. By this time, the children have attended church with us, and we’re getting used to each other. It’s our first holiday. We had the preacher and his wife over. This was a big deal. All the food was out. Turkey. Stuffing. Ham. Yams (Sweet Potatoes). Collard greens. Pie and cobbler and more. All of us filled our plates and sat down. Prayer was said to bless the meal. We began to eat, then it happened. A mistake. A White mistake. ”M” asked for ketchup. There was none out on the table. He got some from the kitchen. He proceeded to put ketchup on the stuffing. The preacher’s wife’s stuffing! Ketchup! He had no idea what he had done. No idea the insult he had just committed against this woman’s cooking. Don’t worry. We all forgave him. It was funny. Just one of those things. He grew up putting ketchup on his eggs. Weird. Of course it’s weird to me because I grew up watching people put Tabasco on theirs.

I hope to write more about these children later. The girl went back to her mother. The brother ended up emancipating himself. He never returned to her home. I later learned that his babysitter was suspected of abusing him. It is rumored that he fathered a child of hers. I can’t imagine the impact. We grew to enjoy having them in our house. Our annual family Christmas photo sums it all up. All smiles. Two Black parents, three Black children and two White, and our family dog wearing antlers.

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

As a child, I remember the complexion of skin, and it’s importance, being some mysterious thing that I did not understand. I was raised by two loving parents. I was taught by them that I was beautiful. My mother referred to me as her “perfect chocolate chip.” I was jaundice as a baby and I loved my parents stories about how the hospital had to bake me until I was a perfect chocolate chip, hence my mother’s sweet name for me. I also remember a great-aunt of mine, an older black woman, that wore make-up foundation that quite obviously did not match her skin tone. She was darker than I and her make-up had this reddish tint and was lighter than her natural tone. The color on the back of her hands did not match her face and there was a distinct line formed at her chin. It was this aunt who said things like “don’t stay out in the sun all day, it’ll make you black.” Strange,… afterall, I was black. The tone in her voice, let me know that this increasing of blackness was not a positive in her mind.

I talked to my mother about it one day. I was young but I could perceive there was something different about the way my great-aunt viewed things versus my mother’s mindset. It was then I learned about the concept of “self-hating black folks.” Now I’m 25, so imagine that my mother is of the generation that professed “black is beautiful.” She believed it and she passed it on. For that I’m greatful. To understand my great-aunt, you must also know that part of my family is from Lousianna. A great mixture of cultures, ethnicities, languages, and complexions. There were many blacks who “passed.” They chose to pretend they were white. Now I don’t make any judgments here. It’s not my place. It’s clear that by passing, they were choosing an easier, softer way to live. Why endure the hardships that could result by the mere fact of being born “black.” It’s that being born black that caused the rift though. It’s common that there are number of shades and complexions within one family. So it’s probable that if one was light enough to pass, they had to cut ties with those who were too dark to make it through the narrow door of that racial passageway to a “better” life. I believe that part of “our” collective history lends itself to the prejudice that still exists among some black people regarding skin tone.

It boils down to this, the lighter a black person is, they were perceived to be closer to white. The assumption is that they have some white blood there somewhere (of course truth is there are few people that are “pure” anything). I remember rhymes about this. “White, you’re all right, black, step back, brown, stick around,” check out this, for detailed info, I don’t want to delve into it too much here, or at least now, http://books.google.com/books?id=VO99SPnt-kEC&pg=PA249&lpg=PA249&dq=light+alright,+black+step+back&source=web&ots=ycAYkNad3t&sig=nwMiwrCzhRBDaQqHlWGBwUyi2IA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPT1,M1

Back to me being a kid…

Because of the love and involvement of my parents, I was given the ability to not internalize the negative views of my skin as a young child. This is a gift that not all are given. It is also a gift that proved difficult to keep. As I aged, complexion would again play a part in my self image. Children can be cruel and complexion was just another thing to make fun of or add to some yo mamma joke. I’ll by pass the years of questioning just what was beautiful, of looking at lighter black women with “better” hair on magazines, commercials, tv shows, and music videos. I’m going to skip the insecurity of dating in high school and realizing that by the mere fact of my skin tone I may not be someone’s type. That’s something all people deal with. Hey some guys prefer blondes and if that’s the case, I’m automatically out. I’m okay with that. I want to fast forward to the good part.

After lots of geographical moves growing up and graduating high school in the midwest (I did get a few boyfriends), I decided to go to college out east. So at 18 I arrived on the East Coast. I was near New York, and I visited the city often. It was the first time I lived in a large urban area and I was an adult. I was walking down the street with a girl friend of mine and car slowed to a crawl. A guy rolled down the window and said “my sister, looking good.” Now trust me, I had no intention of giving out my number or asking for his. After all I was in a big city, I was young, and I wasn’t trusting some stranger in a car. Still, this guy changed it all. I had never been called “my sister” as part of being hit on. It was great. I worked in midtown for a while and beautiful black men with dreads in business suits paid me attention. There were plenty men of all races that were paying me attention. Now of course part of it was just me coming into my own. But still a good part of it has to do with the fact that I was now hearing “I love your skin,” “I love your hair” (it was in dreads by this point). 

Summer time in the city, I loved it. Bring on the sun. Bring on the tan. Because for the first time in my life, people were saying, to me “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”

Well, my cousins and I pretty much all had straight, or very loose curls when we born. The curls tightened as we got older. There were a few who came out of the womb with a full afro and when looking at the baby photos we joked they should have been given a pick (black comb, learn more here http://kakakiki.blogspot.com/2007/11/who-invented-hair-pick.html, and see a picture here http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/bapmega2/pick.jpg,) as an infant. When the texture of hair is so curly and coarse, a pick or similar wide tooth comb is a must. I can’t imagine the tears that would be caused from a narror tooth comb.

From what I know in my own family, it’s common that there is more coarseness in the back, than in the front. We call that back area “the kitchen”. I never found out why we call it that. I just remember my mother, aunts and grandmothers doing my hair saying things like “we got to straighten out that kitchen” when going through my hair with hot combs.

That brings me to “pressing hair.” So basically hair oil/grease was applied along the hairline and to the scalp. Thick metal combs were placed on the open gas flame in the kitchen. Sometimes the handles were loose from so much grease and use. Granny grabs the comb by the wooden handle and tells me to hold down my ears. This is difficult because I’m sweating, my head is greasy, and my ears are now slippery. So the object of Granny’s game is to get the crazy hot comb as close to my scalp as possible, without burning me. This is all to straighten my hair. The smell is awful. What does it smell like? Burnt hair and grease. Go figure. Oh the grease popping. The holding down of my ears so they wouldn’t get burned. I do not miss those days and I am so happy to have my hair natural and in dreads. Oh and to top it off, that whole pressing, burning, straightening process of the hot comb took at least 45 minutes. That’s if I was perfectly still. For extra coarse hair, you have to use a blow dryer with a comb first, before you can even think about using the hotcomb with narrow teeth. Now to make it worse, I was a child who loved to run and play. I’m Black, and straight is just not the natural state of my hair. So if I sweated too much, if I got my hair wet in any way, it would start to “kink” or curl back up. It’d go back to its natural state and negate all the stress and fuss I just went through to get it straight. Trust me, I’m glad those days are over.

I’ve found many studies that confirm this, but none that answer the question “why?” Of course, they suggest it might be access to medical care, but one article mentioned “intensity of treatment.” Reading between the lines, it was hard for me not to think that “intensity of treatment” could mean “level of patient involvement.”

How many times have you seen a friend or relative with a condition like diabetes start eating something and at the same time say “I really shouldn’t be eating this” or “I’ll pay for this later.” Well the sad thing is that they will pay for it. Blindness. Amputations.  Heart Disease. Kidney Failure. Nerve Problems. Death.

On the subject of eating as it relates to diabetes, I found the following (from an old article at http://www.blackhealthcare.com/BHC/Diabetes/Description.asp) to be interesting;

Some recent evidence shows that the degree to which obesity is a risk factor for diabetes may depend on the location of the excess weight. Truncal, or upper body obesity, is a greater risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, compared to excess weight carried below the waist. One study showed that African Americans have a greater tendency to develop upper-body obesity, which increases their risk of Type 2.

Although African Americans have higher rates of obesity, researchers do not believe that obesity alone accounts for their higher prevalence of diabetes. Even when compared to white Americans with the same levels of obesity, age, and socioeconomic status, African Americans still have higher rates of diabetes. Other factors, yet to be understood, appear to be at work.

I have no idea if I have a typical family. I do know that I can name three relatives, off the top of my head, who received kidney transplants. I can name one that underwent poor circulation related amputation, two that have “the scar” from heart surgery and the list goes on. What kind of legacy is this? Not one I want to continue.

Let me know your thoughts…

The article I referenced is http://diabetes.webmd.com/news/20060825/controlling-diabetes-black-white-gap

The great benefit, and detriment, of the traditional food is noted here:

The popular term for African-American cooking is “soul food.” Many of these foods are rich in nutrients, as found in collard greens and other leafy green and yellow vegetables, legumes, beans, rice, and potatoes. Other parts of the diet, however, are low in fiber, calcium, potassium, and high in fat. With high incidence of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and obesity, some African-Americans have paid a high price for this lifestyle. Economically disadvantaged families may have no other choice but to eat what is available at low cost. Fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meat, and seafood are not as readily available at low cost.

For dietary information and suggestions about things to cut out of the food to make it healthier, visit:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5250.html
For a brief history, visit:
http://www.sallys-place.com/food/cuisines/african_american.htm

Turnip greens – It seems with all “greens” it boils down to the fact that as slaves, we got the scraps, we couldn’t eat the actual turnip, but we got the greens.

Pigs feet, frog legs, chitlins (or chiterlings), tongue – I mean really. I can’t eat this stuff. Maybe some chitlins, but I can’t be around when they’re being cooked. If you’ve been there for it, you know that smell is something that sticks with you.

I must admit, I LOVE oxtails, hammocks, whether in a stew or done dry with rice

I was just wondering how many young African American people are still eating what our ancestors were forced to eat. I think that’s a valid part of the discussion regarding eating habits. There was a time when we didn’t have the option to eat well and we only got the leftovers. Also, I know I have some relatives that are still cooking with lard. Heart disease and diabetes affecting our community the way it is, something needs to change.

I don’t want him to feel like the poster child of adoption. I’m glad this happened today, though, because it opened my eyes to needing to be more prepared to how to respond to people like this in the future. Has anyone encountered anything similar? How did you respond?

I responded:

I’m not sure if it’s “healthy” but when people start to get on my nerves. I use humor. There are days I just don’t feel like educating the world. You know? So when someone asks me why my daughter is so “light” (she’s biracial, and my birth child), I say something stupid like “she doesn’t get much sun” or “really, I hadn’t noticed.” Now I’m sure I come off like a jerk sometimes, but really, I just can’t handle those types of questions everyday. Her father, who’s white, and I joked that we should give her a spanish sounding name and everyone would just assume she was Puerto Rican and then she wouldn’t have to deal with questions.

I think it’s wonderful that we all want the best for our children and sometimes we just want things to be easy for them. Unfortunately it’s just never easy. I’m AA and I remember being annoyed at a very young age because white kids would ask tons of questions about my hair. Looking back, I realize a few things. First, I often lived in predominantly white neighborhoods and I was likely the first black kid they could ask. Second, sometimes kids aren’t cruel, they’re just curious. Third, there were times kids were actually envious of my hair! Go figure, some little CC girls wish they could have cornrows and there were little CC boys that wanted to be able to shave designs in their hair (that was big back in the day).

Today, I try to embrace and appreciate the differences. Your son will likely react the way you do. Though I tend to be cynical and sarcastic, I’ve tried to tone it down. I want my daughter to respond with grace, dignity, and calm. Still I love to poke fun at stereotypes. When my daughter was born, she was very pale, she looked “white.” I joked that in my neighborhood (a lot of commuters and well to do people), I would look like the nanny. I’m sure you’ll find the way that works for you. Best of luck.

I know as an AA, African American, woman my older relatives had some concern, it seemed the newer generations were getting lighter. I think it’s just a testament to the great job the older relatives did in raising us. They raised us to believe we could interact with all people, living and working where we please. As a result, the dating pool got a lot larger and the new children reflect that.