Foster children – white kids in a black home, pt.1

It was about 15 years ago. Still, I remember the day we received the phone call. There were two children that needed a home. A brother and a sister. I was too young for my mother to share any details of their problems with me. I assumed their family life was bad. That always seemed to be the case. We had done foster care three times before. There were common themes. Physical abuse at home. Not getting enough to eat. Strange mental abuse. Then there are the unspeakable crimes. Back to the phone call… my parents said “yes. we’ll take them.”

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.

Reflection on my dark skin

Blue black. Jet black. Red bone. Chocolate. Mocha. Honey. High yellow. These aren’t flavors of ice cream or candy. These are names I’ve heard for the complexion of African American skin. I’m sure there are many I’m missing. I, myself, am a dark skinned woman. I’m not the darkest. I suppose I would label myself chocolate. I’m pretty sure I’m about the shade of your typical Hershey bar.

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.”