The Face Of Race

No Race Mixing Allowed...unless...

2011-01-10T18:49:00.000-08:00

My boss at the Afrocentric clothing store where I worked constantly berated me for dating a white guy, even going as far as making references to the size of his “anatomy” saying that I wanted a white boy because he couldn’t hurt me.

One afternoon I helped a young, Caucasian customer wrap his long dreadlocks in the head wrap that he bought. As soon as he left my boss teased me, “I know you loved that,” he said.

A month later, I overheard my boss discussing the modeling agency he planning on opening with his business partner. “I want the exotic ones. The sisters with the green eyes.” is what he said.

Exotic. I could fill in the blanks. Green eyes, “good hair”, light skin tone. Apparently race mixing was ok with him when it produced exotic-looking Black women.

Karate Man

2011-01-10T18:42:00.000-08:00

I was sitting on the bus and a little black girl, who looked to be about four or five years old, was looking around and admiring everything and everyone on the bus. She then looked at the man in the seat next to her then looked back at her Mommy and said, “I see a face that looks like a Karate man!” The Chinese gentleman just looked at her and smiled.

Are you Spanish?

2010-11-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

It was a slow day in the cafe where I was working and a little boy, who looked to be about 11, stood there talking to me after he bought his candy. Somewhere in the conversation, he asked me if I was "Spanish", and I said, "No, I'm black." He said, "You don't look black." I said, "Well, I am." He then looked at my curly hair for a few seconds. "Do you have a weave in your hair?" He asked.

Apparently "Spanish" people could have curly hair, but black people couldn't.

Is It Real?

2009-06-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

I was working in a chocolate shop and I went to another location to do some training. At some point, a coworker (a middle-aged Pakistani gentleman) asked me how much it cost to get my hair done.

"Excuse me?" I said. It's not that I hadn't heard him, it's just that I was surprised.
He repeated himself and I shrugged. "I don't get my hair done."
"Oh, it's your real hair!"

My hair is curly and down to my shoulders and people are always assuming that it's fake just because I'm Black.

The same thing happened with another new coworker(He was African-American with hair that was the texture of Barbie doll hair!)
"Is that your real hair?" He asked after knowing me for about 15 minutes. What nerve!

Bronzed

2009-06-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

I opened a new bottle of coconut syrup one day as I was working at a local coffee shop and the sweet smell wafted through the air.

My coworker, Laurie, smiled. “Umm! That smells just like that suntan lotion…um…what’s the name of it?”

I was clueless and I just looked at her waiting for it to come to her.
“You know that kind. Remember when you were a little kid and your mom put that suntan lotion on you, everybody used it…”

I just looked at her and I wasn’t going to say anything. She looked back at me for a few seconds.

“Oh!”

It had just dawned on her that Black folks didn’t use suntan lotion.

Mixed World

2009-06-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

Funniest thing I ever saw. I was on a date one afternoon and the Chinese restaurant, Yummy House, was still pretty empty. Anthony and I took a seat and after few minutes, we placed our orders. We talked as we waited for our food, and as we talked, I glanced around and noticed that there were only two other couples in the restaurant.

“Do you notice anything unusual?” I asked him.

He then looked around. “What the…!”

By the right wall, there was a Black girl and a White guy. Near the window, there was a Black girl and a Latino guy. Then there was us, I, of course am Black and Anthony was Chinese.

It was one of the rare moments in life where I felt that the proverbial melting pot truly existed.

Chinky Eyes

2008-10-24T21:42:00.002-07:00

I overheard my boss, Natalie talking about her newborn baby with a patron at the coffee shop where I worked. I believe she was referring to another customer when she said “She asked if the baby had chinky eyes.”

Natalie’s husband, Nguyen, my other boss, was Vietnamese.

I butted in. “She really said that?” I asked, in shock.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe it!”

“Me neither. Nguyen said he wasn’t offended.”

Chinese Take-out

2008-10-24T21:42:00.001-07:00

I was in line waiting for my food at a Chinese restaurant in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. A lady who had previously placed her order went up to the counter and asked to add something to her order. The restaurant owner spoke back to her, but she didn’t understand what she said because of her accent.

“I don’t speak Hong Kong,” the black patron said.

The owner tried to repeat herself, but the patron interrupted her. “I don’t speak Hong Kong," she said as she waved her hand.

After struggling to communicate, the owner was finally able to make the patron understand what she said. After the patron received her food, she somehow managed to be polite enough to say “thank you” to the restaurant worker—twice.

House of Nubian

2008-10-24T21:39:00.002-07:00

At the Afrocentric clothing store where I worked, I overheard my coworker talking to a customer about the racial injustices suffered by Black people.

“They’re all a bunch of devils!” He said, and then looked at me, “No offense.”

He then turned back to the customer, “She’s half white,” he said, snidely, referring to the white guy that I happened to be dating at the time.

Brown Tribe

2008-10-24T21:39:00.001-07:00

I was having lunch at McDonald’s with my coworkers and I was momentarily distracted. I marveled at the five of us. There was Dali, a pretty Dominicana, who thought it was cute when I sang along to the Spanish songs that we played over the loud speaker at out store.

There was the Colombian kid, John, who liked to write poetry. I had a blast with him when he took me to the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, where I read poetry on my 28^th birthday.

Next to him, there was Adane, who was part Italian and part English, a cool guy who I could check out the hot boys with and trade lip gloss secrets. And last, but not least, there was Angelique, a black girl from England, whose voice sounded like she should be on a Broadway stage.

I wondered how we were perceived by those around us. We were all the same shade of brown with curly hair.

Crouching Tigers

2008-10-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

I was on a double date. My boyfriend and I sat with our friends in the theater anticipating the start of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, which we had been planning to see for a long time.

A group of young Black kids sat in the row in front of us. They made a couple of Chinese jokes, despite the fact that there were a bunch of Chinese kids in the row behind us. (And the fact that they were there to see Couching Tiger.)

The movie started and the punks wouldn’t shut up. They were shushed by the other audience members and they were quiet for a minute, but Chow Yun Fat wasn’t on the screen long before one of the Black kids yelled “Chinese guys ain’t shit!”

The five Chinese guys behind us jumped up. “What did you say?” One of them said, angrily

The Black guy and his boys jumped up too. “I said Chinese guys ain’t shit!”

The Chinese guys then started threatening to kick the Black guys’ asses and we were stuck in the row between them. Just as we were plotting our escape, the ushers then came in and told them that they either had to sit back down or take it outside. Eventually, they chose all to sit down and we enjoyed the rest of the movie.

The A-rab Store

2008-10-24T21:29:00.000-07:00

In Cleveland in the mid 80’s, a lot of the neighborhood grocery stores that had been owned by Blacks were sold to Arab merchants. In my neighborhood, there remained one Black-owned store, ran by Mr. Bell, whose business I had frequented since before I was even old enough to go to the store by myself.

Mr. Bell’s had sold his original store too, but he had opened up a smaller one on the adjacent corner. Both the old and new stores were open for business simultaneously with the old one being run by its new Arab owners.

Long before political correctness, we distinguished the two stores by referring to the old store as the Arab store, actually, The A-rab store. This is what we kids had learned to call it from those much older than us.

Fast forward to 1988, I was in 8^th grade. I sat in the cafeteria with my friends, discussing boys, makeup, and the usual things Jr. High School girls talked about. I then pulled out a pack of candy to pass around. I don’t remember what kind it was, but it was new to my friend Jenna, who lived in my neighborhood.

“Where did you get this?” She asked.

“From the A-rab store,” I said, and then my heart stopped.

Our Lebanese friend, Manal was sitting across the table. I cringed inside. I was finally old enough to realize how offensive it was to refer to the store by that name. We had all been talking amongst ourselves and I prayed that Manal hadn’t heard or understood what I said.

Papa Was a Rolling Stone

2008-10-24T21:28:00.001-07:00

I was in Starbucks with my boyfriend, Milton, who had seemed to be becoming more and more pro-Black over the past few months. “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” by The Temptations was playing on the loudspeaker and we both sang along.

“I love this song,” I said.

He agreed that it was definitely a classic.

We sang some more of it.

“George Michael did a version of this song too,” I said.

“You would like the white man’s version better,” he scoffed, in a nasty tone.

“I didn’t say I liked it better, I just stated that he recorder a version as well!”

My feelings were hurt and I turned away from him, and replayed his nasty remark in my head.

“You would like the white man’s version better.”

This coming from a guy who had been walking down the street singing Hall & Oats’s songs with me a couple months earlier.

Latina?

2008-10-24T21:27:00.001-07:00

I was sitting in my college Spanish class one afternoon. I had been learning Spanish on and off since I was four and my accent was barely indistinguishable from the native speakers. As I sat with my friend, Xiomara, another classmate, Ricardo came over to us and gave us flyers for a Hispanic scholarship program. I gave it back and said it wasn’t for me.

I forgot about the incident until the next class when Ricardo asked me why I didn’t take the scholarship form. I told him that I wasn’t Hispanic, but African-American. He laughed and said that he had thought I was ashamed of being Hispanic.

American Black

2008-10-24T21:25:00.000-07:00

I worked at Starbucks and I often went to the drugstore across the atrium in the large office building where the coffee shop was. The Indian couple who owned the shop was always friendly. One day, the husband asked me where I was from. I said from here, which was Cleveland. He insisted that there was something different. He asked if both my parents were American and then I told him that my father was from Sierra Leone. He seemed pleased and said he knew I was different. I was somehow validated because I wasn’t just an “American Black”. I was though, because I born and raised in the States and my father was deported when I was two. The gentleman asked me if I wanted a part-time job, but I had to turn him down because I was already working about 35 hours a week at Starbucks.

I had forgotten about this incident until almost ten years later. An Italian gentleman who came in the coffee shop where I had recently started working, referred to people by nationality. It was “Hi, Filipina!” to one of my coworkers and “Hey, Français” to another coworker. They referred to him as “Italiano”.

When I first started working there, I got the nationality questions. My mother is American, my father is from Sierra Leone. He only heard Sierra Leone and he started to refer to me as “Africa”.

One afternoon, we chatted for a few minutes as I waited in line for the hot dog vendor. Italiano proceeded to tell me how I was different and how American Blacks were stupid. I corrected him and said that I was American and it was only my father was from Sierra Leone and he had been there since I was a toddler. He then changed things and said that he didn’t like most Americans, but again I was different, I looked different, sounded different. (I didn’t fit his stereotype of a Black person.) From then on, he referred to me by my name or just as “Beautiful”, but not Africa.

Colored

2008-10-24T21:24:00.000-07:00

My best friend, Dorothy, in 3^rd grade complained that the teacher only called on colored people. (yes, she used the word “colored” in 1983.) For the little red-headed girl, it had failed to register that I was “one of them”.

Rainbow Coalition

2008-10-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Funniest thing I ever saw. One afternoon, my boyfriend and I went to one of our favorite Chinese restaurants, Yummy House. The place was practically empty so we took out seats right away and placed our usual orders. Anthony and I talked as we waited for our food, and as we talked, I glanced around and noticed that there were only two other couples in the restaurant.

“Do you notice anything unusual?” I asked him.

He then looked around. "What?"

"Look at the couples."

He looked at them. “What the…!”

By the right wall, there was a Black girl and a White guy. Near the window, there was a Black girl and a Latino guy. Then there was us. I am Black and Anthony was Chinese.

It was one of the rare moments in life where I felt that the proverbial melting pot truly existed.

Rude Lady

2008-10-24T21:19:00.001-07:00

2005, getting on the train with my man to head to his house. There were two seats left and one was occupied by a newspaper. Before I attempted to sit, I asked the lady by the seat with newspaper if it belonged to her.

She looked up at me then at my boyfriend. She gave us dirty look and huffed and puffed before moving her paper out of the way. She then glared some more at my boyfriend, Rich who was Indian just like she was. I doubt that she would have been rude if I had been an Indian girl.

Break-In

2008-10-24T21:18:00.001-07:00

In 2003, my boyfriend’s car was broken into during the middle of the night. They took the radio. It was surprising because I had lived there two year already and nothing like that had ever happened. There’s a first time for everything, sure, but his car was the only one touched. A piece-of-shit car whose make and model I don’t even remember. There were several cars parked in close proximity that were ten times nicer than his. Did it happen because someone saw a Brazilian guy get out of a car with a Black girl in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn? I have no proof that this was the reason, but I suspect it was. I lived there two more years and there was never another break-in.

CD's For Sale

2008-10-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

Walking through Times Square, my friend and I saw the street vendor hawking bootleg CD’s and yelling at every passerby in earshot. “We got The White Stripes, Beck…the list went on and on. As my friend and I passed, he changed it up, “We got Jay Z, Nas…”

“Who?” My friend asked him, pretending to be ignorant of these rappers because of the assumption the vendor made about the music we listened to just because we were Black. It wasn't really the music we were into. My friend wasn’t even American, he was British.

Ganja Man

2008-10-24T21:14:00.001-07:00

My next door neighbor’s nephew chatted me up as he saw me in the hall one evening. He gave the usual spiel and tried to pick me up. He was kinda cute with his long dreadlocks and Caribbean accent and after seeing him in the building a few more times, I invited him in to my place to hang out.

We talked about random things as we smoked bidis and sometime during the conversation, he noticed my messenger bag that had Rock and Roll buttons pinned down the length of the strap. He admired them, Bob Marley, The Cure, Poison, etc. and exclaimed “Ooh, you have those buttons on your bag just like those white girls!”

The Tattoo Parlor

2008-10-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

In Cleveland, Oh, where tattooing was still illegal in 1997, I trucked out to the suburbs, where some drunk guy at a shady tattoo parlor put a crappy ankh on my arm.

Ten years later in NYC, I wanted to cover up this tattoo and I explained the situation to Shaky Mike, in a tattoo parlor in The Village that I wandered into at the spur of the moment.

He drew a new ankh over the old one and awhile later, I was in the chair ready to do the do. I was jammin’ to Led Zeppelin on radio as Shaky Mike prepared his supplies. But, before he started, he went to the radio and turned to a Hip Hop station in order to make me feel more comfortable, I presumed.

I cringed inside at the thought of having to listen to the vulgar and misogynistic lyrics of modern Hip Hop. For a split second, I thought of grinning and bearing it. Then I spoke up.

“I actually liked the Classic Rock station better,” I said.

Shaky Mike looked at me for a second, surprised.

“That’s right, you’re from Ohio!” He said then changed it back.