Black Bahamian Beauty

If you’ve seen a photo of me, other than the one posted here every week on this column, you’re thinking “where is this vanilla-skinned woman going talking about black Bahamian beauty?”

Hold that thought.

There was a time in history, not even so long ago, when I would have been considered too black to be white in some countries.

And, yes, in some other countries, I would have been too white to be black.

This need to identify racial differences was driven by ignorance. Today, it still is.

People were then, as some still are now, unfamiliar with others who looked nothing like them, and they built their prejudices and judgments, and eventually hatreds, on their differences, fueled further by the human need to be right or to be best, and by the many intolerances of their parents and others before them who perpetuated this kind of thinking.

Now, after decades, centuries of racial mixing, when greater knowledge and less ignorance should exist because of greater exposure between countries and cultures, the separations continue.

The need to see and keep people in color blocks stems from an individual’s need to feel more comfortable about her or his position with respect to that other person.   People long to fit in, be understood and loved.   And if there are any perceived threats to them fitting in, being understood, or being loved, or the chance they might be considered unworthy of these things they long for, then they immediately begin an internal campaign to challenge the things and people they regard as threats to their comfort.   From the comforts of racism to the comforts of relationships, this applies across the human experience.

The mere fact that everything always comes down to black and white, black or white, black versus white, is a lingering disturbance, but I have heard the question asked recently, “is The Bahamas racially divided?”   “Do black Bahamians hate white Bahamians and vice versa?”

Maybe I’m not the one to answer this, because no one ever knows what I am.   (Insert laughter here.) But when you hear Bahamians make serious racial slurs, in either direction, they’re just being one of two things: ignorant or hateful.   And when you have a conversation with them, you find that the story goes a bit deeper, usually back to some personal experience that left them with emotional or mental discomfort, or something more psychologically invasive like a full-fledged mental (re)conditioning inflicted by 1) their own people, or, 2) an outsider.

A while back, I met a little girl at a private school sports meet.   I should say, more accurately, she met me.   She was about five years old.   And I guess she gravitated towards me because she wanted to have a conversation about something that made her uncomfortable, and she was looking for some resolution.

She told me that she wished she was white.   I told her that she should never say that or feel that way because she was beautiful… and she really was.   But, of course, being who I am, I had to find out more about why this child, at five years of age, was already on this road to self-hate.

Every reason she gave me for wanting to be white was superficial, or mostly aesthetic, and in the end I concluded that her dilemma stemmed from the fact that she didn’t want to look the way she did because someone had, along the way, told her or shown her that her skin color made her inadequate.

Now, because I grew up in The Bahamas, my own experience reminded me that it was likely that the other little kids who looked just like her could have had a lot to do with this little girl’s interpretation of herself and the low self-esteem that would arise later on because of it, affecting, quite possibly, every part of her life and her outlook on life.

Yes, there are always some other influences in these circumstances, and with a little more time in this little girl’s company I might have discovered more.   But, drawing on my own encounters, I was willing to bet that there was something going on closer to home.   Someone was reinforcing for her that her brown skin was not as good as lighter skin. I would also be willing to bet that, at present, there is still at least one generation of brown-skinned people who don’t know or love themselves as they are, which is mind-blowing to me in a predominantly black country.   And the perpetrators?   Often ourselves… in the way we have subconsciously adapted the concepts of beauty over many years of being subjected to what we believed to be superior to us.

Sit and listen to the children playing in the streets or on a playground.   Children can be so cruel and heartless, and Bahamian children have a special type and method of ‘cruelty’ when they grab on to the use of certain hurtful words.   It is not uncommon to hear them taunt each other about their skin color: “come from here with your black self”, “well mudda sick, you look black, boy”, or “you so black and ugly.”

Where are these children hearing these things and why do they relive them every day?   This special kind of thinking comes from a special kind of environment, with a special kind of parent or parents or adults who perpetuate it.

And it makes me wonder, where is the mother’s love in this equation?    What about my little friend? What would her mother say if she heard her child telling me these things about her skin color preference?    Or, maybe, she’d say nothing, because she herself says these things to the child or around the child.   And maybe, just maybe, she, the mother, feels the same way about herself.

And I reflect on my own mother.

I was a mixed child who grew up with a predominantly black family.    Unless they knew my maternal relatives, the assumption of most people I encountered was that I was white.    But my mom never gave me any reason to believe I was different.  We never had a need to have a conversation about race… not until I was almost a teenager, and she told me about the idiot (my word) who worked with her who, whenever he saw me, would call me ‘Imitation of Life.’

As a child, and at that time, I had absolutely no idea what that meant, but, when I grew a little older and watched the movie by the same name, it broke my heart.   The movie itself was sad, but it was even sadder and more heartbreaking to me that someone could label me with such a burdensome title and know nothing about me.   And from that moment on I became more aware of racial differences and intolerances, but most specifically the black Bahamian’s dislike for self and need for constant comparison, evaluation, and approval.

It never dawned on me that my skin color could make so many people perplexed, and that ranged from shock and speechlessness, to excitement at the novelty, to disgust and jealousy.

As I got older, the comments and questions got more ridiculous.  While at COB, I recall another student walking up to me and asking “are you black or white?”   And even though I had come to expect it by then, it still always caught me off guard.   It never stopped being strange that someone had such a need for an answer to this question that had nothing to do with them.

I started to have a little fun with my responses, just to entertain myself, because surely this was a joke.  Sometimes I would say ‘both’. Sometimes I would say ‘neither’.   Sometimes I would ask, “Which makes you feel better?” Of course, on those latter occasions, I would get dead air.   I still do this.   And if today someone says ‘hey white girl’, I say ‘hey black boy/ girl’ and watch their silent, jaw-dropped reactions to the absurdity of the way that sounds.

From the insane comments about my good hair (which, by the way, still happens), to the more foolish comment that I was white and I thought I was better than they were, over the years the racial feedback grew in intensity.

And I remember feeling afire inside, finally deciding that no, I don’t think I’m white, I know what I am, but you apparently think I’m white, and are obsessed with labeling me to make yourself more comfortable with your interpretation of me.

In spite of the many mixed babies being born the world over and in The Bahamas, this assumption still holds strong to this day.   I think this idea that I and others like me (perceived white) automatically have thoughts of superiority is based more on the fact that those who believe this automatically have thoughts of inferiority about themselves.   Clearly, they were then and still are ignorant of my parentage, and it is has never been my concern to explain it to them.   But it does starkly reveal the deficiencies in their own parentage which has caused them to see themselves in such a negative light, deficiencies perfected by years of practice being something other than they are.

Through the simple cultural routine of hair relaxing, pressing, and now weaving, to the skin bleaching, I realize that it is ingrained in our black Bahamian women (and men) to deny their true selves and their true beauty.
Could this be what happened to my little friend who wanted to be white?

The (Bahamian) black woman is taught, subconsciously, that her hair must be straighter.   Some black women are taught that their skin must be lighter.

And in my years of observing my own culture, I’ve never known anyone to perpetuate these stereotypes more than the black woman herself, save for a few random exceptions, to fit the norm of societal expectation.

My mum has, since I was a child, worn her natural hair in a low afro. My grammy did, too.   It was my norm to see this, and for black women to be this way.   They were just being themselves.   It was the standard of self-love and self-approval.   It was a sincere lack of interest in conforming to those haunting and depleting social norms, something I held on to and have never, ever let go of.   If you know me, you know I am a nonconformist in every possible way, and I care nothing about people’s opinions of me.   And I think that, next to immeasurable love, is the greatest gift my mother and grandmother have given me.

When I look at Mummy, I see a woman of color with natural hair breaking barriers in an enslaved concept of black beauty.   And when I see other black women who have done or are doing the same, intentionally or otherwise, I sing a little victory song inside, because there’s nothing more empowering for little girls, who one day become mothers of entire nations, to see their own mothers love themselves so completely.

It tells me that they know who they are and they love who they are.   It tells me that if they can love themselves this way, their children will be more likely to love themselves in the same way.   And if this could happen all around the country, there would be fewer little Bahamian girls telling me and other random strangers that they wish they were white. And they can stop looking at their differences from the perspective of needing to conform or change themselves on the basis of an arbitrary standard of beauty, and more from the perspective of celebrating themselves as they naturally are.   And if they can celebrate their many differences even in beauty, then the differences, one day, perhaps won’t matter as much.

• Nicole Burrows is an academically-trained economist.   She can be contacted via Facebook at Facebook.com/NicoleBurrows.

June 16, 2014

thenassauguardian

Did Marcus Garvey fail?

Was Marcus Garvey Preaching to The Wrong People?

BY MICHAEL A DINGWALL:

WHEN Marcus Garvey was urging us black people to take charge of our own destiny and become great, almost a century ago, some admired him, while others thought he was some sort of quack.  In this season of Emancipation and Independence, one has to ask: Was Garvey preaching to the wrong people?

At the time when he was preaching, my race, the black race, was the most insignificant on the planet.  Africa was under the control of Europe.

We blacks in the West were totally dependent on the great white powers for our very existence.  Garvey didn't think that black people should be at the bottom of the barrel — being so insignificant and dependent.  In this respect, he was one very unusual black man indeed.

I strongly suspect, though, that Garvey would have still felt the need to preach the same message today, almost a century later.  Though we blacks have made some progress, we still have a very long way to go.  While some of that progress has been had through the efforts of other peoples, other things haven't changed at all.

Take black Africa today.  While preaching, and even before, Africa was controlled by the Western powers.  Her natural resources were being maximised to the fullest to the glory of these powers.  Africans on the continent were either powerless to alter the then situation or willingly gave away these resources.

The same is true today.  These days, it is China that is maximising the resources of Africa to create a Chinese superstate.

Just as it was in the days of slavery, when we gave away our own for trinkets, we are still doing the same today.  The trinkets then were used kitchen utensils, old clothes and even cats; while today, they are cellphones, laptops and shiny new cars.  Garvey would have buried his head in shame at the way his message has been ignored.

We in the West also really didn't give two cents about his message either.  Our island nation-states in the Caribbean are too insignificant to influence any global issue, except entertainment.

Maybe Garvey meant we should be great entertainers; as that is the only area in which we seem good.  Nothing great in governance, science and technology can be truly attributed to us black people -- as we keep our exploits to ourselves, or sell them still for trinkets. Garvey would be very disappointed indeed.

We demonstrate how contrary we have been to his message by our actions.  We think our own universities are worthless.

As such, we crave for the Oxfords, Cambridges, Harvards, and MITs.  We think our music is good only when it is validated with an American Grammy.  We see our societies as totally hopeless — which explains why we fight so hard to get visas to live in the white paradise of North America and Europe.  What was that "Africa for Africans" message again?

I said before that Garvey would have been disappointed, but I sometimes wonder.  In the end, it seems, even he became a realist and realised that he may have been preaching to the wrong people after all.  When the time came for him to retire, he didn't choose his Jamaican homeland or his African would-be homeland.  No, looking at things realistically, he decided that the best place for him after all was Britain.

Maybe the reason he failed to convince us black people that we can be a great people is not only because we think he was nuts — maybe he never really believed his own message either.

July 30, 2013

Jamaica Observer

There is still a desperate need for the black world to coalesce around an affirmative ideology of blackness... Not a political concept of black power, but a soulful concept of blackness that is rooted in its source of power... Africa

What does it mean to you to be black?

By KHALILA NICOLLS
Khalilanicolls@gmail.com

Nassau, The Bahamas



THE other day I stumped a politician by asking him a simple question: What is Africa?  The question emerged because he responded to another question I posed, are you African, by saying, "No, I am a Bahamian with African heritage."

So naturally, I pressed, and asked, well what does it mean to have Africa heritage?

He fumbled for a response, claiming that regrettably, he had not done the research to know which tribe in Africa he came from.

He said if he were asked the same question by one of his children, he would say, let us go and research it together.

Being perturbed by my unbridled dissatisfaction, he gave it another go.

This time, he responded with the politically correct answer, speaking to Africa's wealth, in terms of her beautiful and bountiful natural resources and the many venerable world leaders she has given birth to.

The reason I was perturbed by his response was not because I felt he gave a poor answer initially, which he did, or that I was unsatisfied with his answer in the second instance, which I was not.

It was because he seemed not to have understood the question.

What does Africa mean in the context of your identity?

The question completely went over his head.

I was not totally surprised, because when it comes to questions of identity and the study of meaning, many Bahamians seem to be uninterested or simply clueless.

As a street scholar with a professed love for questions of identity, I am often starved for engagement on these questions.

It is a challenge arriving at a common understanding of Majority Rule, because without an interrogation of meaning it is difficult to arrive at a full understanding of one's identity or a consensus of worth.

As a Bahamian, I feel personally slighted, not having had the opportunity within the framework of my state-mandated educational career to interrogate the meaning of Majority Rule or any number of other concepts that are central to my identity.

Needless to say, engaging in the process of inquiry is part of the reason for creating my own platform, and of great interest to me is the idea of blackness and its relationship to the concept of Majority Rule.

The last time I wrote about Majority Rule, I argued that its assumed meaning, a symbol of black liberation in The Bahamas, failed to stand up in the face of scrutiny.

That Majority Rule represented an expansion of our democratic system; the shattering of a glass ceiling for black Bahamians seeking political office; a milestone in political progress, but not a transformation in black consciousness or an ideological awakening of black people.

Evidence suggests that at the time of its coining, our nation's leaders were conflicted in the concept of their own blackness, and the real worth of that identity.

Certainly, our leaders recognised the political power of the black association, but they also accepted that blackness was a political liability.

It was something they were willing to bargain with.

All in all, I suggested, our collective vision of a black nation was ideologically tame, and so too was the impact of the black majority government on the progress of black Bahamians as a collective body.

So what is left to be said?

Lots, because when it comes to understanding our own blackness in a country that celebrates Majority Rule and recognises itself as a majority black nation, I feel our nation's leaders, when they led us into the era of self-governance, failed to set the record straight on a number of important race issues.

First, racial solidarity is not a form of discrimination against white people or some kind of reverse-racism.

Second, blackness does not have meaning only where racial discrimination exists.

Third, to speak about white racial prejudice and how it was used to justify genocide, to disfranchise and dehumanise indigenous people across the globe, and to enrich white people and their generations yet to come is not an act of denigrating white people; it is basic world history.

On the first issue, I need to reflect on another interview I recently conducted.

When I asked the person the meaning of being black, his first instinct was to say, let me see how to answer this without sounding like a racist. He then fumbled on to answer the question in line with the politically correct things to feel and say.

I had a similar encounter when listening to Freddy Munnings Jr on the radio programme Matters of the Heart. He recounted a time when he asked the Minister of Education (he did not specify which one) why Bahamians do not learn African history in school.

The minister replied by saying he did not want to teach racism. Mr Munnings rightly asked what is racist about teaching our children that their ancestors brought the world astrology, astronomy, mathematics and medicine, among other great contributions to world history.

I am with Mr Munnings on this one: what is racist about African pride? What is racist about affirming a black identity?

Why have we chosen to accept the view that racial solidarity is somehow a destructive and divisive concept; that affirming a connection to one's blackness is somehow racist?

It is an apologetic view of being black that black people would be better served to reject.

In January, the Arizona State legislature won its battle to outlaw the Tuscon Unified School District's Mexican American Studies (MAS) programme, on the grounds that it "promotes activism against white people, promotes racial resentment and advocates ethnic solidarity".

Best-selling classics like Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire, and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, by Bill Bigelow, were banned from the curriculum.

It seems white people still fear that blacks and other subjects of white oppression might one day turn the tables and exact bitter revenge.

In a school district where 60 per cent of the students are Latino, the fears must run high.

But quite frankly, I find this fear to be arrogant, delusional, self-absorbed and downright ignorant, but completely unsurprising.

It is on the same basis of Arizona's objection that a black man would find it uncomfortable to give meaning to his own blackness.

Not wanting to sound racist is a euphemism for not wanting to make white people uncomfortable; not wanting to evoke their misplaced fears.

Whether a black man's racial resentment is real or perceived, warranted or not, he should have the right and the space to feel as he may, and process his own experience, without having to be politically correct about it.

Denying him his right to feel does more to promote racial resentment than allowing him his space to heal.

I think that is worth repeating (and I hope people at Arizona State are reading):

Denying him his right to feel (which includes inquiring into and processing his own experience) does more to promote racial resentment than allowing him his space to heal.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire states: "Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence," and a "violation of their humanity".

When I spoke earlier about feeling personally slighted, it was this violation I alluded to.

For all of our accomplishments, blacks are still negotiating the right to think, speak and feel for ourselves about our experience of being black.

As a society, we do not have a humanising pedagogy in which students of the former oppressed and oppressor classes can deepen their consciousness of their situation and be responsible for their own liberating process.

The failure of inquiry is one of the primary racial dilemmas of the 21st century, and our blind longing for a post-racial world only exacerbates the problem.

Race is an important means by which people in a post-1492 world are able to recognise, understand and celebrate their collective identity (an identity I must note that predates 1492 by millennia); race has been a great source of pain and is now the basis on which there is need for great healing; race was the mode in which white people established their position of superiority and wealth, and it is the basis on which the former oppressor class must now humble itself.

For all of the post-racial idealism of the Obama age, race is far from being an irrelevant concept.

This leads me to my second contention: The suggestion that blackness only has meaning as a means of political organisation or as an object of someone's oppression, whether in a state of subjugation or resistance.

Basically, the argument goes like this: because we do not believe there is any longer racial discrimination, or because we no longer believe we have to fight for our rights, we no longer need to hold on to a black identity.

It is the "we are one" argument.

The problem is, black people are not mere objects of someone's oppression, and seeing blackness solely as such is a shallow way to conceive of one's identity. Sadly, this is how we have been taught: to identify with each other based on struggle.

That is why, typically, those who feel the struggle is over, celebrate the good fight, but feel little to no need for race association.

They see no fallacy in the concept of One Bahamas. On the other hand, those who feel the struggle continues, see the world more pronouncedly through a racial lens, and experience dissonance in the concept that we are one.

The black identity does not exist only because white people once were the authors of our oppression.

The experience of the Maafa (a term used to collectively describe the history, effects and legacy of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and the various atrocities on African people as a collective) has no doubt shaped how we understand race, but prior to the perverted introduction of the post-Maafa racial construct, there was still a black identity to which black people are inextricably linked.

The reason I say the black consciousness of our leaders, and our nation as a whole, in the era of Majority Rule was skin deep is because it was not an affirmative ideology that defined our blackness; it was a concept of our biological likeness, otherwise known as skin colour, combined with a common experience of oppression under white control and a common political objective.

It was around that identity that black political leaders were able to carve out a black constituency and mobilise the masses.

Many black Bahamians to this day still find it difficult to answer the question, "What does it mean to be black?"

Many black Bahamians still cannot reconcile the concept of being Bahamian and African.

It pains them to assume that identity unless it is qualified, as in Bahamian with African heritage or Bahamian who is a descendant of Africa.

The black experience of the Maafa created in black people such a hatred of Africa and all things African, but to this day, blacks who claim to be liberated have yet to reclaim their mother.

I am no Bible scholar, and usually I avoid Bible quotes, but I make an exception to cite Exodus 20:12, a verse Bahamians are well familiar with: "Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the lord thy God giveth thee."

What about restoring the love for our earth mother?

Despite our discomfort with claiming a "one (Bahamian or African)" identity, there is no conflict of identity or need for a dichotomous relationship.

Think, after all, about our mothers who marry - they take on a new legal name (Bahamian), but they never lose their maiden name of birth (African).

My birth mother, for example, has every right to claim her Gage identity as she does to her Nicolls identity. Her being a Nicolls does not negate her being a Gage. Her being a Gage does not deny her being a Nicolls.

The main point in all of this is how we understand our blackness as black people. I maintain that Chinese people do not hold a concept of being Chinese because they have been caricatured as having slanted-eyes.

An Indian's concept of being Indian is not because of an accent. The recognition of their Chinese or Indian identity is based on a shared understanding of heritage, language, food, culture, history, geography, legacy and the likes.

Black people do not have a consensus of identity, not because no commonality exists, but because we have chosen to deny our very existence.

To this day, we identify with a very shallow concept of self that goes only skin deep.

It is a very lose concept that can be easily manipulated to serve political objectives, which is what happens most often when politicians play “the race card”.

Given the complex legacy of slavery and colonialism, it is apparent that skin colour is highly problematic as a mode of identity.

As inter-racial realties continue to shape our world, skin colour will be more and more an irreconcilable mode of identity.

But none of this negates race.

There is still a desperate need for the black world to coalesce around an affirmative ideology of blackness.

Not a political concept of black power, but a soulful concept of blackness that is rooted in its source of power, Africa.

Any concept of blackness that lacks a consciousness of Africa lacks its primal essence and true source of power.

In the Bahamas and across the globe, black people as a collective community are in a dire state.

We need to piece ourselves back together and heal our wounds in order to secure the progress we wish to see.

Paulo Freire once asked the question: “How can the oppressed, as divided unauthentic beings, participate in the pedagogy of their liberation?"

Real progress of the mind, body, spirit (and pocket book) must entail growth in an understanding of our very blackness.

It must entail inquiry into understanding who we are. In African tradition, to know thyself is one of the most noblest callings.

In 1967 our leaders, already enculturated into the new world order, were unable to champion this calling.

In 2012 our leaders are in no better position.

Humbly, I issue the call.

* Pan-African writer and cultural scholar Noelle Khalila Nicolls is a practising journalist in the Bahamas.

Her column Talkin Sense explores issues of race, culture and politricks.

February 09, 2012

tribune242