I wrote this a couple of months ago and never got around to posting it, so, here tis:

Never before have I been so interested in being black. Seriously. It’s weird.

I grew up in a small, mostly white, town. My parents had friends who were white, but also many who were black. So I knew other kids growing up who’s skin would get ashy and who knew why I freaked out about getting my hair wet.

The first place I lived that wasn’t my small town was LA. Very different. Lots more Spanish everywhere. Where I was, there were far more latinos than black people. But I never felt out of place. I was just another freshman from the east coast.  (But I should also note that the campus I was on was mostly white, so maybe that says something about me too.)

Then I moved to NYC. Famously a melting pot, though it’s not quite as melty as NYC would want you to believe. I read an editorial in the Guardian (I think) the other day that made a good point – NYC has shared spaces (i.e. the trains, certain parks), but there are places that are less shared (look around the McDonalds and then look around a random East Village Thai place). I learned that I could more easily blend in certain neighborhoods (Washington Heights – Dominican; Bed-Sty – Black) than some of my friends; that I could blend as easily in other neighborhoods (the Village, Midtown) and that I had to work a bit and rely on learned behavior in others (uber fancy restaurants, Upper East Side). But I rarely felt out of place because of my skin color. When I did, more often it was because of my bank balance.

I’ve been to London, Hanoi, Saigon, Rio, Salvador da Bahia, Vienna, Athens, Prague, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam. I’ve lived in Providence, RI. I’ve spent long periods deep in Trenton and Atlantic City as well. I’ve traveled to the American South – visited plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana. But I’ve never felt blacker in my life than I do in Ashland.

Now, this is not the kind of black that I feel when I visit family in the South, or see fields where people who looked like me spent thousands of hours in the hot summer sun.  Not the kind that says, “My soul is grown deep like the rivers.”  This is the Other kind.

My mother told me stories of when she first came to my home town. Children would come up to her in stores and rub her hand to see if the brown would come off. Many people there had never seen anyone who was black live and in person. I don’t think I really understood what that meant until I came here. The simple fact that I can’t buy stockings,
or hair products – things that I’ve always been able to get everywhere I’ve been – is a revelation. Thank goodness for the internet. How my mother did this before she could just order hair products from Amazon, I do not know.