"Dark Girls" - A Documentary

I just finished watching a documentary entitled “Dark Girls” by Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry.  Following the presentation, I feel emotionally drained.  I know that I have been affected from childhood by the colorism that permeates brown-skinned people (like the little girl in the program, I hate the word ‘black’ because I am not black; my skin is brown.  I will not use the term ‘African American’ because I am not a naturalized citizen, I was born her and therefore I am just American), but I did not realize just how deeply these attitudes still affect me.

The program consists of a series of interviews with women of varying skin shades and backgrounds.  I was also surprised (pleasantly so), that a Korean-American woman was also included to show that this destructive attitude toward skin shade permeates cultures across the world, not just in the United States.  The interviews with men were also quite interesting.

The participants in the documentary spoke candidly about their experiences, how those experiences affected their lives, and how they have overcome the negative effects of colorism. 

While watching this program, I was forced to really think about how I feel about the issue.  If I am honest with myself, then I will have to admit that I hate the color of my skin and if scientist developed a way for people to change their ethnicity (I mean really change it, down to the DNA), I would probably be first in line to sign up for the human trials. 

I suppose I should be ashamed to feel this way, but I don’t.  Why should I feel bad about wanting to have the advantage of being seen as good, smart, industrious, righteous, deserving, clean, and everything else positive that is attributed to Caucasians?  Life would be so much better if the burden of being a person of color were gone.

Unfortunately there is no escaping my burden to birth.  Learning to live with it however, is proving difficult.  Not learning to live with it on the other hand, makes life more difficult to live than it should be.

Wrestling with this on a daily basis, is so emotionally and mentally tiring.

Watching this documentary did give me a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe I can work past this.  I don’t know if I can do it on my own, but knowing there is hope that I may have a chance at beating this does make the burden feel a little lighter.

"Dark Girls": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1966396

Just sharing,

Mourning What Could Have Been

I woke up this morning thinking about someone who could have been an important part of my life.  (I will call him “Raul” as I have not enlisted his permission to write about him.)  I don’t know why he crossed my mind.  Maybe it is because I have been obsessing again about everything I have missed out on in life by being raised in a mind controlling cult.  Reading my friends updated online and seeing their family photos just rub salt in the wound that reminds me that I will never have a family of my own.  No one will ever call me Mommy.  There will never be anyone waiting at home for me when I get home from work.

Not that there was opportunity for me when I was “in the truth”.  I can’t speak for other areas of the world but in the area I grew up in black sisters did not stand much of a chance and the darker you were the worse your chances to ever be in a relationship.  So I had pretty much resigned myself to a life of singlehood and expected to die alone in a rundown apartment, my body discovered a few weeks after its expiration.

“Raul” was my chance to at a different path.  I met him when I lived down south and worked at the college.  I was taking some graphics and art classes and he was in several of the same classes.  We got along really well and had a lot in common, but I just chalked it up to the fact that we both really like movies and special effects.  Then the day came for a class field trip to the Dali Museum down in Saint Petersburg.  We would be taking several cars and “Raul” decided he would drive and said I could ride with him.  However, unlike the other cars, it was just the two of us riding together (which I found out later he maneuvered it that way).  All I kept thinking about was what if someone from the kingdom hall sees me in the car with this worldly guy! 

Well, no witnesses saw my transgression that day, “Raul” and I hung out together at the museum (along with our assigned group) all day, and on the way back to Clearwater, stopped at a restaurant for dinner. 

Thus started my brief stint into what would be considered bad behavior for a Jehovah’s Witnesses.  “Raul” and I would talk on the phone for hours at a time (which witnesses considered phone dating), hang out, talked about starting a business together, and generally spent a lot of time together outside of our regular class time. 

I never understood why this young man who was 10 years my junior, and could have had any of the Barbie doll blondes that were in our classes showed attention towards me.  It made absolutely no sense to me at all.  After all, he was “worldly”, the only thing he was interested in was looks and sex right?  Why did he find me worthy of attention when none of the better, spiritual men at the kingdom thought I was worth a thought?

The relationship with “Raul” could have progressed in a positive direction if I did not let fear of the organization overtake me.  Once it did I started pulling away from “Raul”.  We remained friends for a time, but with time we lost touch. 

I still think about him from time to time and wonder “what if”.  I hate myself for being so afraid of the organization and the consequences of defying it to the point of robbing myself of personal happiness.  Not that a relationship with “Raul” would have necessarily been perfect, but it would have been nice to have had the chance to find out.

Stepford Escapee