For the Sonorous
An Unkind Vacancy
I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.
—Zora Neale Hurston, “How it feels to be Colored Me” (1928)
. . .
A mule is one: an animal and two: sterile. If a person had “one-drop” of black blood in them, meaning that they had at least one relative who was black, they were then deemed black. Jim Crow laws were put in place, which enforced segregation. A separation between two races. Dirty blood. Mulatto. Even if someone appeared white, if someone knew that one of their relatives was a slave, they were black.
Mulatto has Spanish origins and translates to the word mule. The tragic mulatto is an archetype. They would suffer an identity crisis. White and black. One-drop rule. They may have been able to pass as a white person and avoid racism and any sort of prejudice. Isolated. They were too dark to be white and too white to be dark.
. . .
My grandmother is a blood-traitor, so every offspring forward is null and void. Mulatto is what they call my kind—out of ignorance or true belief. I'm a mule, which means I'm sterile. Nothing good could come of me. There are myths that surround my kind. I'm a head contender in suicide, depression and overall hopelessness.
. . .
She wished to find out about this hazardous business of “passing,” this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.
—Nella Larsen, “Passing” (1929)
. . .
Passing; that's what many of us do because we can't fathom being isolated. Although, that's quite the gamble. Losing one's identity, but in return, gaining some sense of societal acceptance sounded like a no brainer to me. So, when I was a girl, I decided I was mulatto, but I was white and that was that. I passed on my culture, I passed on my identity because I was hopeless, and there was never any room for me.
. . .
Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? To such extent that you bleach, to get like the white man. Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don't want to be around each other?
—Malcolm X, “Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?” (1962)
. . .
I am somewhat white, because my mother is half white, which means that I'm white too, but I'm black.
I used to be only white because I told myself I was. I had all white friends, but I was black because I was the token. I was white when I would wear Abercrombie and Hollister, but I was black because my curves could barely squeeze into their sizes. I was white because my black father liked to listen to Matchbox 20 and always had Dave Matthews playing in the background, and my half-Latina mother never contested.
I told myself that I was white, but I became black again when my friends were shocked and awed when I could sing along to what they listened to. I was infiltrating a culture, and they knew I was a fraud. That feeling of belonging is maddening.
. . .
Mudblood's a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born — you know, non-magic parents. There are some wizards — like Malfoy's family — who think they're better than everyone else because they're what people call pure-blood… I mean, the rest of us know it doesn't make any difference at all.
—Ron Weasley, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
. . .
Rowling divides blood lines into many different categories. Pureblood, half-blood and muggle-born. Mudblood's a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born. Tainted. I like to equate it to the n-word. If someone knew that one of their relatives was a slave, they were black. Tainted black bodies.
. . .
When J.K. Rowling announced the production of The Cursed Child and that Noma Dumezweni—a black woman—was playing Hermione, not everyone was pleased. Diehard Harry Potter fans and the white majority were insulted. Hermione is one of the many characters in Rowling’s series who isn’t given a race, but merely a phenotypical description. Every character in this play was played by a different person than seen in the film series—so why so much uproar? Why give this black woman so much negative attention? Because race always comes first if you’re not white. If your blood is tainted then that’s what you are first and foremost, not your skill, not your talent. It’s a shame that a person—a race and the intersectionality with gender and a talent—come to a crossroads and the white oppressor suppresses that individual to a social construct.
. . .
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.
—Zora Neale Hurston, “How it feels to be Colored Me” (1928)
. . .
I walked into a crowded bathroom once with a beautiful caramel-colored girl contesting to her white audience that she wasn’t black—or that’s at least how she saw herself growing up in rural Wisconsin. Her friends preached how she was so beautiful and how they, as well as the girl, don’t even see color—how sweet.
How could she not be black? Her one-drop was reinforced by Stacy who ripped out her hair to see if it was real and told her she was so. With tears running down her face and half-genuine gasps from the crowd—I saw myself and my worth being slaughtered once more.
. . .
This burns. MY GOD. This fucking burns, but beauty is pain, right? The longer she leaves this acid on me, the straighter I’ll be—the prettier she’ll be. She’ll look just like Madison. Just a little longer.
This is excruciating. Just an hour here and an hour between 300 degree hot plates and I’ll be normal again. Everyone loves when I’m constrained into being conventional.
Everyone loves when I’m not black, so does she.
She doesn’t want to be ghetto or talk black, so I better learn to tolerate these shackles just a little longer. I’m breaking. I want to be black, so she fights me. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She doesn’t realize that no one looks like her, and she will never look like them, which means she’s the odd one out, which means I make her the outcast. She must straighten me out for my own good.
I’m screaming between these 300 degree hot plates, and I slowly disappear.
. . .
For some reason, Halloween allows for all inhibitions and seemingly common sense to melt away. There’s something about being someone or something for a night that sets fire to one’s creativity that is unmatched on the other 364 days. On this night, I came face-to-face with blackface —Will Smith from Fresh Prince to be exact.
It was smoldering a pit through my soul—my very being. I was nervous. I was told to stay in my place. Don’t get too loud—don’t cause a scene. Don’t be so sensitive. Don’t get angry.
It’s funny, isn’t it? He looks just like Will Smith!
Our encounter arrested me. My alter ego of the angry black girl wishes she was invited to the party. She tells me I should’ve shouted until my lungs bled.
I was the only black person there, so I was the only one who had eyes to bat, eyes to feel. His ignorance is everyone’s bliss until it reaches my presence and erases my significance.
. . .
Some may call it remarkable how one will claim their identity only when it’s convenient. They pass by never checking “yes” on the box that asks if their ancestors were ostracized and abused. When it’s time to join in on the culture—the music, the movies, the slang— they’re the first in line. They never lived the life they are rewriting their history to include, and they’re praising movements they don’t fully understand. Why does she get to pass?
Or do we just ignore that?
Blackness. How does one emulate this? When black bodies are seen differently in your culture than my culture? The idea of rising up from oppression and having a strong African-American man by your side is quite romantic.
Romanticizing without fully realizing all of the implications of what you’re preaching is dangerous.
. . .
Whenever I stroll through the makeup aisle of Walgreens, honey, cocoa and cappuccino are the only names of foundation that look remotely close to my own skin tone. Is it me? Maybe I’m the weird one with the odd skin color that doesn’t seem to match the wide spectrum of ivory.
There are over seven billion people in the world. How can makeup companies possibly think that 20 shades can match that many people’s skin tones? You can’t boil down a race into things you can find in your kitchen.
White beauty is top-shelf, which is why I needed to obtain it. If white beauty is what we all need, why do girls race to tanning beds to reach my skin tone? They must not want all the added benefits of racism that come with it. The thought of someone having their white-privilege cake and eating it too makes me sick.
. . .
The most disrespected woman in America, is the black woman. The most un-protected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America, is the black woman.
—Malcolm X, “Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?” (1962)
. . .
She feels uncomfortable. Maybe even a little disgusted when she tries to picture a future with a black man. She grows up idolizing the only people she can find on TV and in the magazines, and so she agrees to be white-washed. She found out late in the game that it’s all a sham, but it may be too late. Her darker sisters have begun to turn their backs and her other ones were never really there to begin with. Passing was supposed to be foolproof. She was white, but she was mulatto, so what did she really expect?
. . .
I’m not desirable to my own kind—whatever that means. I’m too dark for white men and black men who reject their own kind. I look exotic, and I’m always mixed with something as if that’s the only way that they would give me the time of day. I’m too light for the black men who want my chocolate sister who is so beautiful and so kind and oh how I wish I could be her. Strong and bold and knows who she is.
I wish I could be the white girl. I want to bleach this mud off my skin because then everyone would accept me because I am beautiful. If we go toe-to-toe, there’s no question, but I tried being white, so now I’m black and that is that.
Is picking a side and passing what’s going to give me a clean slate? What about my culture? The culture that brings together my African and Latina heritage? I must focus on my ethnic heritage because the system that’s put in place makes me stare at my skin and my people like filth. I am part of a culture that makes my hair continuously kink and announces to everyone that I’m mixed.
It’s hard to be proud when you still have no place.
. . .
You heard they have big dicks, right? That’s why you and your best friend began dancing with him, my brothers, right? I feel like I’m not alone when I say that I want to not feel fetishized vicariously through the men you’d lock your car doors on. Things are different in the dark, when a dance club feels like a panic room, where even prejudices can’t escape.
. . .
If you sleep with enough white guys, maybe you can change the white perspective on black beauty—your beauty. Hearing “I’m not into black girls.” used to mutilate your heart until you realized that that opinion changes when the Jack hits their bloodstream, and their prejudices dissolve, or rather their historic whiteness reappears. They’re sexual beings and have fanaticized about being with a black girl—their Pornhub search history proves it. You’re a slutty crusader until he finishes and lets out a sigh— “I’ve always wanted to have sex with a black girl.” Your vagina aches because your worth is boiled down to a scratch on a bucket list.
. . .
“To be a negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
—James Baldwin, “The Negro in American Culture” (1961)
. . .
Let’s dispel another common misconception, today. I thought I wouldn’t have to explain this, but here we are. Ebonics is not spoken by every person you deem colored.
Don’t ask your token friend to speak for the population. Don’t ask them why they sound so articulate because you then sound inaccurate.
Don’t ask someone who does speak Ebonics why they sound ghetto. Don’t even think it. This is how not to get slapped 101.
So please teacher, never ask me again to explain the ins and outs of an entire existence.
I’m a mere mortal, and I’m exhausted.
. . .
I was confused about the prompt of a speech assignment, so I did what every lifestyle blogger told me to do, and I went to talk to my professor. A five-minute question and answer turned into a black identity interrogation. My professor asked my feelings about Trayvon Martin, what it was like being a part of the small percentage of black people on campus and what it was like being the only colored person in his class. An old Southern white man challenged me to prove my blackness. I should’ve got up and walked out, but at the time, I had been waterboarded by white culture so much that that froze me. I responded with something that wouldn’t have depicted me as the angry black girl because that’s scary.
. . .
One good thing about being a strong minority is making others uncomfortable—let me explain. You’re sitting in a classroom while discussing the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. If you’re black, you’re intrigued. If you’re white, your skin begins to crawl. The discussion goes deeper and deeper into black history, which tears back the layers white history laid down. I feel joy at their embarrassment. It’s like rubbing a dog’s nose in its own shit.
. . .
My pen is bleeding with the passion of Hurston, Hughes and Baldwin. It wants to keep the discussion going because passing perpetuates being content with banning kinky hair in a corporate world. It bleeds because we say diversity is essential and important and crucial and you say yes, but we need to remember that diversity means more work and we don’t have time or the space to work that in.
. . .
I say “magic” because it’s something that people don’t always understand.
—CaShawn Thompson, Los Angeles Times (2013)
Empowering me today is the phrase black girl magic. Yes, I am magical. I am powerful. I am strong. I am bold. I am beautiful. Kinky curls, full hips, dark eyes. Yes. CaShawn coined this term to uplift and celebrate the resilience, beauty, and strength of black women.
All women are beautiful, right? Media says no. White is beautiful. We don’t need a reminder, but it’s clear they do. They post #whitegirlmagic and #whitegirlsrock and greedily take the attention back to them where it should rightfully be.
I’m not empowered. I’m beaten down. It’s astonishing how the majority of the population behaves only like children whose parents have neglected them for five minutes. How they won’t share their toys and will only acknowledge your presence when it will allow them to redeem their white privilege card.
Mulatto is beautiful in fantasies, dramatizations and your suppressed fetishes. We’re beautiful when we’re not quite dark enough to be threatening to you, so you feel comfortable telling us about your encounter with the black bagger at Costco.
I’m the most disrespected woman in America. I’m enraged all the time. I’m alone. The tragic mulatto has no place.
. . .
My old man’s a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well.
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I'm gonna die,
Being neither white nor black?
Langston Hughes, “The Cross” (1926)
Originally from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Emalydia Flenory is a recent graduate of UW-Platteville and has a degree in English with an emphasis in professional writing and a minor in public relations. She is a recipient of the Thomas Hickey Creative Writing award in creative non-fiction.