Five Reasons Why I Love Black Women
Trigger Warning: racial slurs, racism
I haven’t always loved black women. The reason why is simple - I haven't always loved myself. I grew up in a diverse suburb right outside of Washington DC. I myself am first generation American, having been born in Turkey to a white Turkish mother, and a black American father. We moved to America when I was 4 months old, and my father left when I was two, so I was raised by a foreign, white, single mother. I was lucky enough to have black teachers in elementary school, and even have black classmates - one, actually. A boy named Quentin. He was my boyfriend - meaning, we’d squeeze together under one desk on Friday afternoons getting ready to watch Reading Rainbow with our class - we were 7. We’d giggle together and I’d secretly wish that Levar Burton was my dad. Quentin left after that year, and even though I had friends, there was no one else like him. Nearly 30 years later, I still fondly remember those moments of kinship.
When I was ten, my brother and I went to visit our cousins in Atlanta for half of our summer break. They were mixed, Turkish & Black too. We spent an entire month there and I have some great memories, but I have impactful memories too. That summer was the first time I heard the word n*gger. I wasn’t really upset by the word at the time - probably because I didn’t really understand what it meant. But I was upset by the little white boys who chased us. Most of my friends white, and my best friend was a white boy, so it had never occurred to me that there were white boys that wouldn’t like me. It wasn’t until my brother & cousins, who were all 12-14 at the time, explained what had really happened, what that word meant. I felt ashamed. Yes, you read that right - I felt ashamed by what they had said. I didn’t know what else to feel. At the end of the summer, my mom drove down and picked us up, and we never spoke about what happened. I thought, she’s white. She wouldn’t understand, and worse, what if she agrees?
When I was 12, my mom sent me to a weeklong camp with a friend. This was the first time I was directly called a n*gger. This time, I knew what the word meant, this time I was angry. He was a boy, a couple years younger than me, and slower - it took me no time to chase him down, drag him to the ground and start wailing on him. The other kids ran to grab the nearest counselor, who happened to be a black man. I was lucky. He knew what was going on before I’d even begun to explain myself. At the time, I didn’t really understand how he knew - that he’d probably seen the same look on his own younger sibling’s faces, or a cousin’s - that he’d most definitely been through the same thing, had the same feelings - that my anger reflected back his own experiences. He sat me down and asked me “do you know the origin of that word? Not where it started, but what it means?” I told him I didn’t. He said “it’s from a word that means ‘ignorant’ - you and I both know that that boy is clearly the ignorant one, so who’s the real n*gger in this situation? Don’t let his ignorant words lead you to violence.” He made the boy apologize, it wasn’t sincere, and I never forgot it. Afterwards I again felt ashamed. This boy was ignorant and I beat him up for that. I was lucky - I went to a good school, I had good teachers - this kid was probably just from some poor Virginia town and came from nothing. I should’ve been kinder to this kid, right? The shame grew.
Throughout High school, I heard the word, thrown around by white kids, because it was a “joke” and it wasn’t serious. It wasn’t the kids I didn’t know, it was my friends, my classmates, sometimes even my white boyfriends. They never said it in front of the other black kids - just me, because you know, you’re not REALLY black, only kind of. I never corrected them - the shame grew. We went to a diverse school, they called it a melting pot - so many of the students were 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, and we all had friends across all color lines. I’d dated asian guys, black guys, hispanic guys, but mostly white guys. None of us could be racist, certainly not my friends, because they liked me right? The shame continued to grow. I didn’t want to see what was really going on, because speaking out meant losing a majority of my friends, so I stayed silent. I told myself that they were just jokes, that I was just being too uptight, that it didn’t really mean me anyway, bc I’m not ignorant, so why should I let a word bother me that didn’t describe me? The shame continued to grow.
When I was 18, I lived abroad in Australia for 4 months. In Sydney, I met some amazing people, I drank too much, ate too much, laughed too much and all but forgot about my friends back home for the moment. I was surrounded by people from all over Europe, and not one of them ever commented on my skin, not a single one of them told a racist joke in my presence. One of them though, a man from New Zealand, told me to be careful when I was out alone. Not because I was a woman - but because I might be confused for an aboriginal woman - racism existed in Australia too. I was grateful for the warning, but now, instead of shame, I was feeling irritation. I thought I was shielded here.
I made my way up the coast and in Rainbow Beach, I met an Aboriginal man in the food tent. He sat down next to me, and the conversation was friendly enough. Then he started talking about aboriginal culture, about how the white Australians had treated them, and I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I was growing more and more uncomfortable - not because his demeanor changed, but because he had singled me out to sit next to and confide in. I looked like him, I stood out amongst the white faces in the tent, and it made me face my own complicity, my own shame. I’d buried it during my time there, hadn’t I? I was here to drink and eat and dance and have fun, not confront my own demons, my own reality. But there it was. More prevalent than it had ever been, that I had been complicit in my own self hate. That realization was a hard pill to swallow and one that still took me many more years to reconcile. I was so determined to fit in, that I’d pushed myself out of my own history. My irritation turned into unwanted understanding.
I blamed my father for leaving, for not being there to teach me what it meant to be a black woman in America. I blamed my mother for being ignorant to the struggles of Black Americans. For bringing black children into the world without the understanding of what that would mean for our futures, or what we would face. She came in here in the 80s, so she didn’t know about the civil rights movement that had occurred less that 20 years prior. In Turkey, in the 80s, black men were held in high esteem, she assumed it was the same in America. No matter my excuses though, the truth remained that it was up to me to know myself and my own truth. My understanding grew into realization.
So, what are five reasons I love black women?
Mildred Jeter Loving - for standing up for love in the face of racial injustice
Rosa Parks - for standing up for her rights in the face of racial inequality
Harriet Tubman - for standing up for the right to be free in the face of slavery
Ruby Bridges - for standing up for equal education despite being only a child herself
Melissa L - for finally learning to love herself enough to continue the fight and turn realization into actualization.
It has taken me the majority of my adult life to face down my own demons, to call friends out for saying racist things. I still struggle with making excuses for people that I shouldn't make excuses for. But I stopped hiding from my own truth. I started to learn to love my hair, my skin, my big hips. I’ve had to learn that it is ok to be black AND white at the same time - that I don’t have to choose a side. That loving “white” things doesn’t make me any less black, that loving “black” things doesn’t make me any less white, that loving “American” things doesn’t make me any less Turkish. On the contrary, I think all of those things have made me appreciate the complexities of human nature even more.
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