“You’re Black? Girl, I Guess…”

White Woman Pretends to be a Black Woman

Last evening, my Twitter timeline erupted with the story of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who has claimed to be a black woman. There will be several thinkpieces written about this lady. Some will be good. Most will be terrible. There’ll be stories on passing, what is blackness and why are people (black women) being so mean to her. None of that is important. I want to talk about what actual black women have to deal with in regards to white/white-passing women.

I was chatting with 4 other black women about this story and we’ve all had the same experience several times: That moment the one lady who looks white sidles up to you and starts with the AAVE, “Girl, you know, I’m black, right?”

What is Masculinity?

Everyday we are bombarded with ads, TV shows and comments from friends and strangers about how women should present themselves. I checked out of that conversation when I was 11 as it was tiresome and offensive. Thirty some years later, I’m still disgusted that people think they have the right to decide how women should look. I’m often told that I should wear make up and dresses, with the exhortation to “be more feminine”. Personally, femininity takes time and money I don’t want to spend. I can’t justify doing my nails when I’m going to spend my time digging in the dirt or building something. Some women can do both and more power to them.

However, somewhere along the way we neglected to mention that policing men’s bodies is also wrong. Just as there’s not one kind of woman, there is not one kind of man. We all have our styles and preferences. I find beards, hairy backs, and ill-fitting clothes on men to be highly unattractive. But if you’re a bearded dude in saggy pants and a stretched out t-shirt, I’m not going to run up on a dude and say, “Be more sexy!”

Institutional Racism: Why LACMA is Losing My Family

Over the past 20 years, in some capacity, I’ve been an employee, visitor or member of LACMA. After my last visit, it may all end. The way I’m treated every single time I visit is so annoying that it ruins my entire trip. It doesn’t matter if I’m alone or with my kids; there will be at least one security guard who approaches me while I’m just looking at a piece and acts like I’ve never been to a museum before.

LACMA’s lip service

On the left are 2 DMs I received from LACMA over this ongoing issue. As you can see, the first was sent nearly five years ago in 2010. The 2nd one was from March of 2014.  The DM responses are rare. If there is any response at all on Twitter, they usually just apologize. Nothing has every gotten fixed. We visit LACMA at least 6 times a year (usually more often) and for the past SIX years, someone has decided to approach me to yell at me, tell me I can’t do something I wasn’t doing or to alert me to basic rules.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Environmental Groups

Standing room only here in #SierraMadre for the “meet the authors” event featuring local mountain history. #mydayinla pic.twitter.com/b6vhGg4VAa

Posted by @LAHistory

— LAhistory (@LAhistory) January 24, 2015

Yesterday, the above tweet was posted. I looked at all the white grey-hairs and sighed. We have a problem in SoCal and no one seems to want to notice or address it. The people who get paid to write about the history and environment of Southern California are almost always white men, with a few white women who “found” themselves while appropriating a culture or were former teachers. To be sure, there are a lot of Latino and Asian authors out there who also get paid to write on SoCal, but many of them are also (former) journalists or teachers. I almost never see them invited to panels outside of Asian or Latino venues and events.

Los Angeles, as a city, has a great history and LA County has an even wider one. There are so many little niches to fill, that I find it impossible to believe that only white men can tell the tales. But we look at that table of authors in the photo above and it’s evident that only white men are allowed to tell the tales. That table, that audience is fairly typical of these types of events.

Frustration

Okay…it’s more like anger.

The running thing.

GRRRRRR.

The man sucks.

It’s nearly impossible to get out of the house because of him.  Why?  Because there are two toddlers here and he’s only awake between 1pm and 4am and most of that time he’s eating, working or dicking around.  And dicking around and eating are very important to getting the working part done.

This morning, I got up to go running.  The little boy felt a bit hot, so I was going to leave him here.  Asked the Mr. if he’d stay up so that I can do this, I’d take the little girl with me.  8:30 rolls around and the man is on the sofa sleeping with baby boy cuddled up.  Great.  Only problem is that he was really and truly sleeping.  I wasn’t going to leave baby boy with sleeping dad, so I got the kid ready and we left.

Got to the park and started walking, so far so good…started running, oh wait…the kids want to look at the swimming pool.  Then they wanted to look at the baseball kids, the playground, the ducks, they lake…baby boy started picking friggin’ flowers.  Not to mention the entire time Miss Diva whined and begged for stuff.  45 minutes later, I had run a total of 57 seconds.  57 seconds?    We spent another 20 minutes at one of the playgrounds and then we came home.

I told him,”Dude, this is not going to work.”

Mumble-grumble, “What? I told you you could leave the boy with me.”

Pfffft.  I asked him to get up so that I can go back to the park.  “No.”

No.

He won’t even get up for 20 minutes.

Now…remember back when I say I’m surrounded by non-encouraging people?  He’s their ringleader.  I know this about him.  I’ve always known this about him.  I’m not asking for a “Good job, honey!” or even daily inquiries on what’s going on.  I don’t need, nor want that–in fact, it would probably bug the crap out of me.  What I need is for him to be helpful.  What I need is for him to get out of my way.

About 6 or 7 years ago, unless it affected him directly, I pretty much stopped telling him my plans because of this, what I dramatically call, sabotage.   He’s a perennial roadblock.  You’d be amazed at how stuff he had been talking about for years all of a sudden gets Really Important To Get Done NOW when I’m in the middle of something.   Actually, you probably have someone in your life like that.  I’m lucky in that I can count 9 people I know in my life like that.  It sucks when it’s a friend, it’s hard when it’s a relative, it super blows when you’re married to that person.
Well, I’m off to run the “track” I didn’t want in my tiny backyard.  I love the part where I try to avoid poking my eye out on the lemon tree, running into the fence, and stepping my plants.  I figured that 16 times around equals ~1/4 mile.  Hey, he wanted the track for his cars and has used it maybe 9 times in the past year.  It’s about time it gets some use.