Words From a Wicked Woman

I learned of radio personality Don Imus’ filthy remarks (link requires NY Times TimeSelect subscription) about the conference-winning Rutgers University women’s basketball team while laying in a hospital bed three days after they were made on his WFAN-FM morning show simulcast on cable’s MSNBC and the CBS radio network. In calling the Rutgers women “nappy-headed ho’s” he unleashed a firestorm of denunciations that ended in his firing from both broadcast outlets. For once, big media did the right thing. Frankly, I was shocked, though extremely pleased. In one fell swoop, Imus had turned what should have been a celebratory moment into one of hurt, confusion and anger. Not being an athlete on any level, nor particularly being a sports fan, I cannot say whether it was worse for those young women to get to the NCAA women’s basketball championships and lose or to then be denigrated by a sexist bigot with a national audience. I only know that these beautiful, talented young women–someone’s daughters, sisters, girlfriends–did not in any way deserve to be diminished by a man with a malfunctioning brain. In the end, they were not diminished. They were held up as examples of grace and maturity in the face of ugliness, meeting with Imus and his wife at the New Jersey governor’s mansion, respectfully expressing their pain and, ultimately, accepting his apology. Brava, Rutgers women! Brava!

Don Imus is symptomatic of an illness in America. We live in a society that does not value women or people who are not white, no matter their accomplishments. In effect, it is a society that causes people of color to devalue themselves. This is especially true for women of color in general and black women in particular. Young black women are bombarded by images of singers like Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Rihanna–ligher-skinned, long-haired and slender (though, in Beyoncé’s case, with curves), or; actresses like Halle Berry, Gina Torres and Thandi Newton, if there are any black actresses at all. If I am nothing else, I am a black woman. However, I don’t look like any of the above-named celebrities and neither do most black women. Yet, the message we receive from various media is that we are all supposed to have long, luxurious, straight hair and lighter skin. The idea is that the closer one is to being white, the more acceptable one becomes. Anything less and that person is easily discarded. In black society, this takes the form of “colorism,” the idea that lighter-skinned blacks with “good” hair are more valued than their darker, kinkier-haired kin. Colorism was born during the slave era when mulattos were allowed to live and work in the master’s house and not out in hot, often dangerous, fields. It was a way for slave owners to keep their property in line, turning them against each other. The effects were devastating and can be felt even to this day.

The celebrated 2005 documentary short A Girl Like Me from then-16-year-old New York City filmmaker Kiri Davis is a powerful modern introduction into the minds of the black female teens who were interviewed for the film. They speak of being devalued in their communities because they have darker skin and/or kinkier hair when the ideal is lighter skin and chemically-processed or naturally straight hair. In other words, these are the “nappy-headed” young women of Imus’ comments. They don’t stop there, however, the young women touch on what it means to be black in general. One particularly heart-breaking portion comes near the end when Davis reproduces the “doll experiment” originally performed by Dr. Kenneth Clark and used in the historic United State Supreme Court case Brown v. Bd. of Education, argued by future Supreme Court associate justice Thurgood Marshall. Clark’s experiment placed two dolls on a table and asked young children various questions relating to likeability and beauty. The same questions asked more recently resulted in an eye-opening and disheartening look at the deleterious effects of racism on the self-esteem of black children.

I am extremely fortunate to have been raised in an environment that eschewed images of white skin and long hair as the only examples of beauty and intelligence. My mother was an educator and educated. (Believe me, there is a difference.) She taught me to love black American history as well as the history of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. It is a love I carry and feed to this day as it carries and feeds me. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s when black really was beautiful and old practices of bleaching skin and straightening hair were on the wane. It was the days of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcom X and Huey P. Newton. Women young and old were encouraged to wear their hair naturally and the darker skinned the more “authentic” was one’s blackness. Music actually said something to listeners not only about love, but about politics and the wrongs being done in our name. To be a black child in a black neighborhood with supportive and accomplished black adults around to guide young people was to be in an enriching soup. Times do change.

By any sane person’s measure of decency, Imus’s remarks were despicable and he deserved to have his cowboy hat handed to him on the way out. However, no one can doubt that his actions began a conversation in America about the intersection of race and sex that is a long time coming; and so it will be here at Words From A Wicked Woman. For the next six weeks, this blog will focus almost exclusively on race and sex in its varied forms, but I need your help in doing so. I would like to include personal stories of women, especially, who have been adversely effected by discrimination based on sex, gender expression, race, skin color or grade of hair. While I include workplace discrimination, I am particularly interested in discrimination from peers and social groups. Members of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities are specifically encouraged to write. I’d also like to know of the joys of being who and what you are. Do you adore being a woman? Do you like having “nappy” hair and darker skin? Do you feel comfortable in your lighter skin and straight hair? Tell us what you think. Feel free to write to me at thewickedwoman at adelphia dot net. Yours may be the story I tell next.

Technorati Tags: african-american, celebrities, discrimination, documentary, gay, hair, health, homosexuality, lesbian, lgbt

I have been in a lot of pain since last weekend but was dumbfounded to find myself in hospital at the Cleveland Clinic this afternoon, scheduled to remain through this weekend. I got a call from my orthopedist’s office this morning saying that tests I’d taken last Wednesday indicated that I probably had a infection in my knee joint and needed to have emergency surgery to clean it out. This is the same knee that should have been replaced March 21 but wasn’t because I was sick with the remains of a sinus infection while undergoing pre-op testing. It is that same sinus infection that is believed to have traveled to my knee, causing it swell to at least 150% of its normal size and caused enough pain this last week to prevent me from leaving my bed–other than to go to my orthopedist’s office.

I got to the hospital a couple of hours after my doctor’s office phoned me, but the order of the day was “hurry up and wait.” In the meantime, I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since the night before and no pain medication. I finally moved up to a patient room three hours after my arrival. Unfortunately, by the time I got there I was in so much pain, and had had so little sleep, my blood pressure was way over normal. Infection or not, there would be no surgery today because my blood pressure was too high. No amount of explaining why it was so high worked. The up side of that was that I could at least eat.

OK, so the food wasn’t great. (At least it was something one might consider calling “food” if you’re a half-starved, nicotine-deprived crazy woman with blood in your eyes like I was.) Still, I have to say that I’ve seen more attendings on a Friday evening at The Clinic than I’ve ever seen past 6 p.m. any day of the week at other area hospitals–and this isn’t even the hospital attached to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, University Hospitals (where they do have really good food). If I’m going to be sick, and I can choose where I’m going to be sick, I will almost always choose UH. The only reason I’m here is because the one doctor I can honestly say I truly like is here. In fact, this is probably the last time I’ll see him since he’s headed out the door to retirement any minute now and has, technically, passed me on to a colleague. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. But, to prove that Fate’s hand was at work today, the colleague to which my doctor has passed me is the same one who will be deciding, finally, about whether to proceed with surgery Monday because my beloved doctor is going to his swan song conference as president of some professional organization or another in Florida. Yeah, he gets to lay on a beach in the sun while I’m here in his hospital eating crappy food, watching the snow fly and wondering if my leg is going to fall off while I have a nicotine fit. I really should have gone to medical school. I was supposed to see the new doctor for the first time for an office visit on Monday . Well, I’ll see him Monday alright–because I’m in the hospital.

I’m starting to ramble. It’s the drugs. I am bored out of my skull and it will probably only get worse even though there are far too many doctors and nurses walking in and out of my room. They are all very nice, but all very annoying because they want to hear things over and over again. Yet another phlebotomist will be here any minute to take more blood and I am deeply thankful that it isn’t someone else with an aspiration needle to take more yuckiness from the infected joint because that business hurts like you would not believe. I’ve heard that I will be getting high doses of antibiotics and, with any luck, more pain meds.

I will try to post something next week. Until then, I hope that your local Major League Baseball team had a fabulous Opening Day. It snowed on ours and I’m pretty sure this game is going to be called due to weather. Better luck next year!

Technorati Tags: blogging, disability, health