68. The Unlearning – Defne Egbo
As the Black Lives Matter movement gains widespread traction, I’ve been reflecting upon my own journey of accepting and loving my blackness unconditionally.
Growing up as a mixed-race black person in predominantly white institutions and communities meant I had a complicated relationship with race from a very young age. As children do, I absorbed and tried to emulate my surroundings. In middle school, I agonized over my tight, poofy curls, my thighs that were by traditional beauty standards a bit too thick, and my skin, which quickly bronzed in the warm summer months. I believed that by relating to white, mainstream American culture, I could ‘blend in’ and avoid seeming like a threatening oddball.
Essentially, I was trying to make an impossible peace with the process of assimilation. I had always nodded along to mispronunciations of my name because I thought it best to preserve someone else’s comfort over my own. But by my teenage years, I grew tired of that. When people made racist remarks, I had always responded with a strained smile.
But that became unbearable too. Then in high school, I took the long-overdue liberty of reading literature about diverse and enriching characters, from Ifemelu in Americanah to Gogol in The Namesake. In short, I launched myself into unlearning the subconscious and internalized biases that had underpinned my efforts to assimilate.
As the Black Lives Matter movement gains widespread traction, I’ve been reflecting upon my own journey of accepting and loving my blackness unconditionally. I’ve also been questioning how our personal timelines of becoming aware of race, then grappling with it, inform our actions—both towards ourselves and others.
– Defne Egbo
Prompt:
Reflect on the first time you became aware of race—either yours or someone else’s. What meaning did you make of it then? How has that meaning evolved?
Dylan Brooks
Location: North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
About: I'm a 27 y/o Canadian in practice; orbiting the planet of free form poetry/prose. What was once love letters is now a full-time creative writing passion, inspired mostly by self-reflection and an outward connection to the world around us. I have written nine poems prompted by The Isolation Journals project, and it's honestly THE closest I've felt to a community of artists. This has been a journey and the train won't stop here, so until it jumps the tracks, I'm grateful to Suleika and the Team for such a wonderful ride. Thank you!
Age: 27
it’s late tuesday evening my elbows are rooted to the kitchen table. i rambled again – of society its oppression and finding humanity lost without stable direction. head in hand these words won’t stand. my education is outside with the homeless man – screaming ‘the system’s broke!’ a campaign backed by beer cans. frustrated i cannot understand – though i stop to listen; of the machine and its political partitions – systemic issues no longer hidden. we need act now as a coalition – why should anyone have to fight for civil rights as a citizen? stop. think. band together if not for yourself but for the children. take a chance on the world view. i mean why wouldn’t you? challenge the people’s politician; everything we thought we knew. because we need to hear the truth.
- privileged and uneducated
Flynn
Location: Stuart, Florida
Age: 58
Be Not Confused
It was confusing.
Before I was born, I knew that there was no such thing as race.
And then I was born.
I was a child, 6-years old, when I found out that other people thought there was such a thing as "race," and that somehow race made a difference.
It was an assault on my sensibility.
I felt assaulted.
I was hurt.
I was confused by their confusion.
It was confusing to me, because I knew that they were wrong, but I couldn't explain that to them.
I didn't know how to explain it to them.
I was only 6-years old.
And it hurt.
My senses are alive.
I am not color blind.
I see.
I do not judge anyone by the shade of their skin.
I smell. I taste. I touch. I hear.
I feel.
I feel people.
I feel soul.
I hear you.
I want you to know that I hear you.
I want you to know that I hear you, and that I feel what you're saying.
I feel you.
I will die knowing that people are people, and soul is soul.
Hopefully, I will come back.
Hopefully, the next time, should I come back, there will be no more confusion.
Hopefully, they will not be confused.
Hopefully we will all feel each other's soul.
All of us.
And that's that.
Kristine Munoz
Location: Iowa City, IA
About: The many protest marches going on after the murder of George Floyd, the anger and sadness and hope that finally something could change, made my Midwestern college town question everything we thought we knew about race. Racial profiling and violence were not some out-there, "big-city" problem; they were right here in our town that we thought was so open-minded. All of us white people had some serious rethinking to do.
Age: 62
The first time I became aware of race, and how that has evolved
I have a visual image of talking to Laura Bell, listening to her talk to my dad. I don’t know whether I was in school yet or not. She was the first Black person I knew, and I thought she was wonderful: she did magical things to my disastrous bedroom, left it perfect every week, OH I loved walking into that lovely order. She also kept one of the biggest secrets of my childhood: I came home soaked to the skin one day, after I got pushed into the bayou by a dog running by on the narrow path. I came in sobbing in fear that she would tell my dad and I’d be in huge trouble, because we weren’t supposed to be that close to the bayou, ever. But she calmly said, just take your clothes off and I’ll put them through the dryer and no one will ever know, and that was that.
She was pregnant and had a child while she worked for us and my dad teased her about naming it Ding-dong (Bell), or maybe Jingle, and my brother and I laughed like that was fine humor. I think later Dad taught one or more of her children, after the schools in our suburb of Houston integrated when I was in fifth grade. He said Laura’s kids were very well-behaved.
After awhile Laura got a better job than cleaning houses and recommended a large woman named Bessie Mae to replace her. Unlike Laura, Bessie Mae wore white polyester uniforms to clean, like my mom wore to work in a lab at the hospital. She wasn’t open and friendly like Laura, or maybe we were older and not around as much, but the only thing I remember about her was that on her last day working for us she asked if she could take a bath at our house so she could leave straight from there to where she was headed next, She described Brookshire like it was A LONG WAY off, and after she was gone Dad said with a laugh, “it’s the other side of Houston.” She left the bathroom scrubbed so clean you could smell the Clorox down the hall and the bathtub was still warm to the touch, but Dad still asked:
“Would you please clean out the bathtub for me Tina?”
I said “Dad, Bessie Mae cleaned it out really well before she left.” “I know,” he said, not making eye contact, “but would you please just do it.” And I did. Not only did I know we were white then, I knew I came from a family of racists.
Then there was Scotty. We worked together at Jack in the Box when we were seniors in high school. Scotty, tall and lean and funny and sexy and Black, and I crushed on him something fierce. He called me White Girl, his dad worked with my mom at Amoco and she thought his dad was just a real fine fella. We flirted, and I flirted with the idea of asking him to prom, both because he was really cute - and I imagined a better
dancer than just about anybody - and because it would shock the hell out of everybody in my high school, which at 18 was my life’s highest aspiration. My mom said, very calmly, “I know you’d love to shock people, but how much fun do you think Scotty would have at your prom, knowing no one?” She didn’t have to add: And being part of the most taboo interpersonal arrangement in the social world of south Texas in 1976, possibly in physical danger in a way I would not be. For once in my life I listened to reason, and asked someone else.
Scotty and I did walk briefly into a different Jack in the Box than the one we worked at, holding hands, to soak in the stares. I believe he enjoyed the moment as much as I did, and I know we enjoyed each other’s company. I think we each wished there was room for a real romance, or at least a deeper friendship, to develop. Once we both stopped working at the same place, though, we lost touch and that was that.
The same year I was friends with Scotty I was almost-friends with a Black sophomore who sat next to me in typing class, named Wanda. We chatted a lot all year long, and she went to prom with a senior and looked stunning in a black and silver form-fitting dress while all us white girls wore flowing pastels with capes.
The seniors got to leave “wills:” something we wanted to leave behind to an individual or a group as we graduated. We submitted these through our homeroom teachers and they were published, to great fanfare, in the final issue of the school newspaper. First, however, they were vetted by the principal. He and I were on very close, friendly terms, because of various leadership roles I’d had during high school, including editor of the newspaper. I was shocked when the teacher who advised the paper told me awkwardly that he had vetoed my will.
Senior wills were always full of double entendres and inside jokes, seniors trying to skate as close to the edge of propriety as they could get away with, but mine was straightforward: “To Wanda Merritt, deep appreciation for your friendship and hopes that we’ve shown how much Black and white people can learn from each other. I’ll miss you next year!” This was unacceptable for the school newspaper, but all references of “bananas in his pocket” “sucking doorknobs” “smoking jenny before World History” were left untouched?
This was not a world where students asked why, especially since the deadline to go to press was the same day as the ultimatum. I could change my will or I could have none at all. I wanted to tell Wanda when I saw her in class what I had tried to leave her, but it was just too awkward; the whole point was to celebrate our friendship in something other than a face to face way.
The principal who vetoed my will was white, of course. Just like the day I washed out the bathtub, I noticed: I am white, and I live in a racist world.
Where I am today is Iowa City, a place that was absolutely lily-white when I moved here 25 years ago, mother to a brown child and a white one. It used to be remarkable to see people of color on the streets or in the supermarket; blessedly, it has gotten less so. Now we have a Black mayor who has joined the marches this past week, who apologized to the marchers after the police sprayed them with tear gas during one of the protests to keep them from going onto the freeway. When I went to the march that over 1000 people attended, there were A LOT of Black people. Two of those who spoke were Black teachers in the local school district. I remembered doing a workshop for a Martin Luther King Day in-service for school district about 15 years ago, looking around at a room full of teachers, and having to bite my tongue not to say, wow, you folks really ARE all white.)
Where I am now is that every time I see a Black teacher in Iowa City schools, or two or more Black people at once on Iowa City streets, I notice. I can’t not-notice, even though I think: Maybe I shouldn’t notice. But I notice, and I think: Thank goodness. And God be with you, every step of your way.