Trending Participation
I chatted with my friend K. during the week of the Floyd incident. Like everyone else was doing, we discussed the ongoing systemic issues of race in America.
Her words were moving and powerful.
She was gracious enough to allow me sharing them here.
Pretty for a dark-skinned girl.
Oreo.
Whitewashed.
Sell out.
Those are all labels I’ve heard throughout my life. I learned to tolerate it. I knew it would be the only way to truly thrive in this country.
I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, one of the most covertly racist states in the U.S. My color was always made a point of awareness.
My first run in with white privilege was in 4th grade. I was assigned to a student group project with an Asian girl and a white girl. We spent two weeks on the project, ours ended up being the winner, the other girls got an A+ and I received a B. I was crushed. My mother confronted the teacher, who happened to be white.
Her response? ‘I gave her a B because I thought you people would be happy with a B. Sometimes children like her aren’t used to getting good grades so I didn’t want to give her high expectations she might not live up to in the future.’
After attending the University of Washington, I moved to California to pursue my dream of being an actress. In Hollywood, it became clear I was going to be constantly reminded of what color of skin I was bearing.
Having West Indian, Jamaican, and Brazilian heritage often gave me an advantage over being straight up African American. It pains me to admit that there’s a hierarchy of social tiers in the Black community, but when it comes to the closed mindedness of white folks, it helps to be ‘something else.’
Finding jobs to pay the rent proved that long before I started auditioning. Elusive bottle service positions, waitressing and bartending at premiere Hollywood hot spots where actual money might be made, were only attainable to those with very little to no melanin.
While waiting for interviews in workplace lobbies, if you saw one Black girl working there, you already knew your chances of employment were drastically diminished. You can look exotic, but you can’t look ‘ethnic.’
Eventually I got a major audition, for a role in a movie helmed by one of my favorite directors. When I arrived to try out, the director told me I didn’t need to start reading my lines, that I had ‘the look,’ and told me to meet him at a different address the following day.
I knew about sketchy callbacks, but so far, I’d only landed one commercial and a few modeling gigs, I thought this was my chance for a big break, so I showed up the next day. He was there and asked if I was hungry and wanted to go grab some food. I thought it was strange of course, but I figured he was legitimate, this guy had worked with some of the most successful Black female performers in the business. We got in his car and he immediately jumped me.
I pushed him off and asked what he thought he was doing, and he said, “You’re a young Black chick, do you think you’re ever going to make it in this industry without giving it up?”
He then went on to explain his version of the dichotomy of Hollywood, in embracing lighter skinned female actresses and how the general under table policy of most studios was to support one up-and-coming, dark skinned, Black female at a time.
Then he matter-of-factly shrugged and admitted he’d slept with other women of color and made their careers, that I would have to earn it, and he proceeded to unzip his pants.
I ran.
Needless to say, I never got the part.
Wage disparities between white and Black actresses in Hollywood pretty much tell you all you need to know.
During my pregnancy, I would get asked a lot of rather offensive questions, but none was ever so offensive as my husband, a Caucasian, being asked if he knew for certain it was his child…even while I was standing right next to him.
One white woman complemented me on having a child with a white man, because the baby would be prettier. ‘Mixed babies are the prettiest Black babies,’ she said.
Even childbirth was something we feared, as one in four Black infants die during childbirth and a newborn Black child being taken care of by white doctors are four times more likely to die. We purposefully switched to a Black OBGYN because the treatment I was receiving from her white counterparts left me feeling mishandled and unwanted.
A part of me is very hopeful the George Floyd incident was a catalyst for a world to come. Seeing so many allies making BLM posts makes me feel like peoples of color are finally being heard. I got phone calls, texts, and letters from people I had long forgotten, people just wanting to know if I was okay, to share that they had my back, and that my life matters. It was absolutely beautiful.
But there is the other voice in my head that says Black people have literally been crying out for over 400 hundred years and most whites didn’t give a damn before this. Now that it’s trending and gaining national campaign momentum, it may be that so-called allies want to appear “woke” more than they actually want to help.
Kaepernick kneeling in the football stadiums was another gesture for protesting injustice, and it largely fell on deaf ears, quickly dismissed and gaslit by the very people elected to protect their fellow citizens. I scrolled through social media posts of those I called friends, colleagues, even family, to note their silences on BLM protests, or in some cases, willful ignorance of BLM.
It’s that kind of passive mentality that makes me feel like this too, this white participation, shall pass. The momentum will falter and the trendiness of protest will wear off. My skepticism is heightened, but I charge on and go out into the world every day, ready to be empowered or be empowering, the same as I always have.
Hopefully by the time my newborn daughter becomes socially conscious, this won’t be a battle she has to continue fighting.
Unfortunately, K.’s predictions turned out to be accurate, in terms of the momentum of support. Anti-racism is a lifelong commitment. Not an excuse to get out of the house.
*Compiled from May 27, 2020