Declining the Pass

When I applied for the job that I currently have,  I remember asking my friend Ameer if he thought that I would get it.  "Of course you will," he replied, "You went to Princeton, and you're light-skinned." I ignored his comment as a bit of shade dressed up in "what? it's true!" finery.

Ameer,  does not endorse any of the opinions in this blog.  In fact, we pretty much disagree on everything.

The other day I went back to the Storefront and a staff member asked me how things were at my new school.  I replied that they were ok.  "Do they treat you like you're special?" she asked.  "Not really" I replied, "it's just different being the only black person in the middle school." "Yeah," she said" but imagine if you were dark-skinned."

 I have never really thought that whites saw a difference in complexion between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned blacks.  I think that this perception is based on a single event that happened in 7th or 8th grade.  One day, Kristina Kennedy and I were standing on the lunch line and someone asked us if we were twins.  Kristina and I both have almond shaped eyes, broad noses, and full lips- but we are two different totally different skin colors. My middle-school self figured that if this woman could not see the obvious difference between us, then white people clearly didn't see the gradations of brownness between black people.

Twinning!

However, I was wrong and I have discovered what I should have known all along.  White people see what they want to see.

I have been told several times by my students that I'm "tan" or "just a little bit black."  Last week, I was teaching Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How it Feels to be Colored Me."  All students in grades 6-11 have to write a personal narrative each year and I used this as an example of good narrative writing.

"I do not weep at the world; I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."

A third of the way through the essay one of my students began that complaining that "all we talk about is race", and "all we ever do is read things by black people".  This was also a common outcry at The Storefront so I do not take such complaints personally.  Students of all colors see blacks playing basketball, rapping, or dancing every time they turn on the television or log onto their computers-but try to teach something written by a black person other than Langston Hughes and it is all too much!

Obviously I relate to one of the characters in this metaphor project.

Anyway, I pulled out a list of everything that I taught this year (written up in anticipation of such a moment):  Greek Myths, Shakespeare, Jackson, Tan, Hughes, Seslar, O'Flaherty, Poe, Vonnegut, Le Guin, Dahl, Connell- definitely not an Afrocentric curriculum.  The calmer I got, the angrier she became.  One of the other 6th graders, either seeking to end the conflict or stand up for me, blurted out "but Ms. Cardwell is hardly even black.  Look at her.  She's like my complexion."

Ancestry.com disagrees! But that is a topic for a different post!

I have come to the conclusion that skin color does matter.  That if you are light-skinned or ambiguously ethnic looking some whites are willing to give you a "pass" if they like you.  They will agree to ignore your race if you agree not to bring it up.  I recognize that my life would be oh so much easier if I could agree to the second part of the bargain.

 If I was just a silent example of a happy productive person of color for my students, and a token of diversity for the administration things would be different. If I could dismiss ignorant comments about poor people, blacks, and immigrants as "kids just being kids," I could really fit in here.  But as Ralph Ellison says in Invisible Man, "It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. "  I could not be here and not talk about race or teach works by people of color and not be bored out of my mind.

Ralph Ellison is right behind me

And that brings me to Zendaya Coleman.  Chloe is her biggest fan; she made a name for herself playing ethnically ambiguous roles on on the Disney channel such as Rocky on "Shake it Up."  She too had been given a "pass;" white people had agreed that she was "tan" and left it at that.

Zendayah and her Daddy

But she wouldn't leave well enough alone.  She appeared on LA Hair with her black (dreadlocked) daddy getting her weave done.  She wanted to play Aaliyah.  She's currently playing Kadeem Hardison's daughter on K.C. Undercover.

And  then she went and put her blackness on front street by wearing dreadlocks to the Oscars of all places!  And for refusing to passively pass she was told that she looked like she stunk on national television.  I guess that sometimes people get mad when they invite you to a party and you show up and have fun, but refuse to join their club.