a black girl grows in princeton.

In case the title of this blog doesn't make this clear, I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey.  I lived there with my mother, father, brother and for a large part of the time, two beagles named Ashleigh and Copper.  To say I had a good childhood is a gross understatement; I had an incredible childhood.  I was loved, and learned to love, in a safe, nurturing, information-rich environment that I have come to realize was an incredible blessing that fills me with a resolve to make and give something equally or more incredible of myself so all I've been given won't have been given in vain.  That said, on some level, everyone's childhood sucks.  Meaning, growing up is hard no matter what you have or don't have.  We all carry our burdens and to some measure our success as adults is predicated on how well we travel above and beyond the not at all accidental accidents of our births.  So here is a story about how an awesome childhood has its moments, and how who I am now wouldn't be here without each and every one.


When I was somewhere around 9 or 10 years old, I went furniture shopping with my mother and one of her best friends.  I remember that I was wearing jean shorts, a t-shirt and one of my brother's old Laker's hats.  I was also wearing my glasses, as I would continue to until my prayers for contacts were finally answered during the summer before 8th grade.  I don't remember how I felt about the shopping; I was somewhere in between those ages when spending time with mom is either at the top or the bottom of your list of things to do.  Knowing the kind of kid I was, I think I was probably happy enough to find a comfortable chair to sit in while they shopped so I could read my book in peace.  


My memory is fuzzy, but one of them must have made a purchase, because on our way out we had enough time at the counter for the saleswoman to make a completely ridiculous and embarrassing comment that I can now only hope she meant as a compliment.  She studied me as I stood in between two full-grown adult women I would soon be taller than, her face quizzically scrunched as if trying to come up with an appropriate remark.  I admit this is hard to do when the subject of your virtually thoughtless comment is a black child caught in that unspeakable quagmire of black childhood -- not quite old enough to be strikingly beautiful and not  quite young enough to be cute.  Finally she lit up and made the common mistake of speaking when the only thing you have to say will reduce you to exactly what you are and not at all in a good way.  She said:


Oh!  He looks just like Spike Lee!


And then she beamed.  


















The three of us were instantly joined in a covenant of severe mortification.  I cannot remember if anyone cared to correct her on her misappropriation of gender.  I can't even remember if anyone came close to touching the Spike Lee part.  All I remember is the sinking feeling, the waves of realization, the numerous failed attempts to peacefully reconcile with any one part of her outburst.  And of course the dismay when upon achieving success at this at any one point, I inevitably arrived at the understanding that even if it wasn't so bad she thought I was a boy, it was definitely bad that she thought I looked like Spike Lee.  No disrespect to Spike, but as a girl soon to enter middle school, the last thing you want to be compared to is a short man with funny glasses, even if on some level I knew he was a genius.  Even if, because of this, a part of me was a little bit proud, as if I now shared some tangible connection with this man whose work was a frequent topic of discussion at the adults table come Thanksgiving.    


I remember that as we walked back to the car my mother's friend chose (after composing herself) to approach my rehabilitation from the "you won't wear glasses forever" school of thought, also known as "you have such a pretty face under there!"  The latter of which, I think, is what she actually said.  This was not consoling to me for two reasons, first because I knew the glasses had at least three years to go before exclusively becoming sleepover wear.  But the second reason brings us back to that oh-so uncomfortable truth that as bad as those "tween" years are, it's even worse for black kids who don't have the privilege (or misfortune, depending on who's looking at it) of growing up surrounded by other kids who look like you.  As a young child, I was blessed to have a stable home life, with immediate and extended family assuming positions in the proverbial village that would raise me.  These people showered me with praise and encouragement, helping me to build a strong foundation within myself as, at the very least, a person worthy of success and admiration.  But children grow, and as they grow they shift their focus on approval from members of their village to peers and classmates.  Eventually those claims of how pretty you're becoming grow faint enough to incorporate a newly acquired sense of skepticism.  I was still young enough emotionally and mentally that I wasn't looking for that kind of praise from kids my own age, at least not actively.  Being the pretty girl was not at all important to me.  But that doesn't mean I didn't know I wasn't that girl.  So Judy's words, coming as they did from a person who became a willing participant in my village as a spirit-sister to my mother, approached me like butterflies and fell to the ground like the leaves I crunched under my feet as I stomped through the parking lot, hoping each resounding crunch would mask the painful throbbing of my bruised ego.


It's strange, but I don't remember what my mother said.  Or perhaps not so strange, given the possibility that as my mother I am sure that the woman's comment threw her even further off of her square than it did mine.  One thing you learn about being a little black girl in America is that your mama was once one, too.  And if your mama came of age at the height of the civil rights movement like mine did, that came with scars us girls growing up during the last years of Michael Jackson's brownness could not even begin to imagine.  


It is important to note that any assault whatsoever on a black girl's appearance in any town in America can and will become an assault on the state of her hair within at least 15 minutes.  Because in America you learn quickly that what makes a woman beautiful before anything else is her long hair that hangs down and responds to every flick of her hand or head.  A woman with a mediocre face, or with skin that (tragically!) is the wrong shade of pale   can be saved by the right head of hair.  But as we all know, or at least should know (this caveat is needed because of the state of media-accepted black women's hair today), black women typically do not have hair like that.  Any happy genetic coincidence notwithstanding, commonly known as "I got indian in my family, gurrrl," (which is usually confused with the never-lauded truth known as "My great-great-great-grandaddy raped my great-great-great-grandmama and then her people systematically selected lighter and whiter mates to keep the line, ahem, pure"), black girls have nappy hair.  Kinky hair.  African hair.  


Wait for it...  


Beautiful hair.  


But that's another blog entirely.  So in this genetic lottery, I came up with light skin and hazel-ish eyes (win-win, so they say), but my hair, much to my dismay for the better part of my life, was better suited for life far closer to the equator than New Jersey.  My mother had a system for dealing with my hair, one that seemed designed to give me the impression that my hair was a problem that had to be fixed.  In important ways, it had the opposite effect, joining other aspects on blackness in the familiar tug-of-war between a welcomed blessing and a curse we shall someday overcome.  As much as I dreaded that stool and that comb, I treasured those moments spent nestled between my mother's knees hearing the sound of skinny brush bristles through soft, thick hair.  That pose spanned generations and I would give anything to have another 30 minutes under my grandmother's hands, lost to us now 21 years.  Sometimes I imagine this line stretches back as far as we do, but this I cannot confirm because the details beyond my grandmother's generation and even some of her own have been lost in the annals of "our history is far too painful to share, even with our descendants."  So yes, mom did my hair in two french braids every single day, and it was complicated.  Pictures occasionally tell me otherwise, at least up to elementary school, but in my memory it was each and every day and my only hope of altering my appearance or hiding day or two-day old braids was to steal one of my brother's hats, under which my nappy hair was sure to curl up even more, resulting in the head-on assumption that I barely had any hair underneath.  


So you see, it's only fair that this woman's mistaking me for a boy had the effect of sending me once again down the long, self-hating road traveled by so many other black girls growing up in white America.   Until I get that hair... I'll never be (pick one or more, or all) beautiful, happy, successful, loved, accepted, taken seriously, and so on.


This illuminates another factor in my upbringing that needs reporting if any of this balderdash is to be believed.  Because while it's true that black girls in America unequivocally must suffer the awareness that their pretty, in some ways, will never be pretty enough, in no community is this truth more potent than in the middle class.  And I'm not talking about today's middle class, where there may be children of many hues and many hair textures; I'm also not talking about urban middle class communities in chocolate cities like Washington, DC, Baltimore, MD, and Atlanta, GA.  I'm talking about the middle class of America, which, for clarification, is a country that was founded and built for the advancement of white people.  As I mentioned before, my parents are of a generation that was born into a segregated America, and they were part of a group of black Americans who stood shoulder to shoulder with their leaders as they ushered in a new America, where supposedly racial harmony would rise out of the ashes of burnt crosses dismembered black men.  You know, the America we live in now.  


What all this means is that when my parents made the decision to move our family from Hollis, Queens, NY, to Princeton, NJ, it was a sound decision, complete with all the hallmarks of sound decision-making.  Did the move represent a transition from an environment with many tangible hazards to growing live black children to one with far fewer?  Yes.  Would the public school system we were headed for boast far more resources and programs that could be utilized to help grow black children into fascinating black adults?  Yes.  In general, would the community we were headed for be a richer educational environment where we would have opportunities to succeed in many more ways than the community we were leaving?  Yes.  Was there a greater chance that the house we would live in would be safe from intruders?  Yes (this one was important, because our house in Queens had already been broken into).  Would my father be placed in a work environment that would enable him to move further in his career and potentially have a greater impact on far more people than his current work environment?  Yes.  Would we be moving somewhere where my mother could imagine herself going back to work once her kids were well settled?  Yes.  Would we be living in a neighborhood where my brother and I could be trusted to run wild and free, exploring the natural world and peaking our own interests at our own paces?  Absolutely.  


What they could not have known, what no parent at that stage of this country's development, was how class differences within intersections of race would impact children growing up in integrated neighborhoods.  I have heard and read many bullet points to be added to this argument which suggest that under segregation, many of the ills that befall black communities today were simply not present, or at least did not have such a ravaging effect on the community.  Many of these people will point out that while there were black professionals during segregation, just as there were poor black families, those in between as well as those who could be considered upper class, all of these groups were a joined together in one community, which meant that everyone knew that there were options, and that their class didn't have to be a birthright.  We came here as slaves, and slowly but surely, we built ourselves up to be more than that, all of us did.  And we did this together.  One surprise gift of the implied integration of the seventies and eighties was this: one group of blacks for whom television shows like Sanford & Son and Good Times were reminders of a past they'd rather just forget, and worse, could potentially hurt their children's positive self-image; and one group for whom The Cosby Show  was merely fantasy, something that could not possibly be representative of any real black family in America.   For my part I can say that when I arrived at Howard University to recover my blackness (presumed lost based on the stupid opinions of others in spite of having been elected President of our teen Jack & Jill chapter), I felt trapped by this distinction; I was always having to feign recognition when uproarious discussions of favorite Good Times moments came up because I couldn't remember ever having watched an episode in its entirety, at least not on purpose.  And yes, it hurts a little to admit this.  I am right now, as I write this, cringing at myself.  And again yes, I have since corrected this by watching reruns from time to time when I can stand it.  But I know it's not the same, and my coonery radar being what it is, sometimes I simply can't stand it but watch it anyway because it always feels good to see black folk on tv.  (Sanford & Son is a different story.  My grandfather is a black business owner with a quick wit & a sharp tongue just like Fred, so catching up on that one has become legitimately nostalgic.)


But back to P-town and the Livingstons.  During the time we lived there, the population was roughly 12% black.  Of course, you wouldn't know it looking at my play date calendar, or my brother's for that matter.  We arrived in town more than halfway through a school year, so we were immediately plunged into a peer universe defined by which class we ended up in and which kids didn't completely ignore us.  Soon, we found ourselves engaged in extracurricular activities that both widened and narrowed our worlds.  I was enrolled in ballet, gymnastics and swimming from the start.   My first close friend rode the same school bus as me; the next one was the daughter of a woman my mom met in the PTA who was in my class at school.  As I grew up and my interests grew more focused, I chose friends who had the same interests and similar schedules.  All along, I could count my black friends on one hand.  By the time I got to high school, I could count them on that same hand, because they were the same girls, neither of whom I went to school with.  So they might as well have been imaginary, because no one in my world ever knew of their existence.  This is all quite rational; there are several neighborhoods in Princeton where the vast majority of black people live, and we did not live in any of them.  We lived on a street inhabited entirely by colleagues of my father, who worked at Princeton Theological Seminary.  There were never any more that four or five children who lived on our street at any given time (some of the housing was used for visiting professors on sabbatical, so there was a fluidity to residential ins and outs), and the only other black family was a childless couple.   Even my extracurriculars were "white;"I became a theater nut, then a musical theater nut, then a choral singing nut.  The thing about being any of those nuts is, it's hard to become one if your family never goes to the theater, or is never exposed to classical music.  I played soccer, then field hockey, and continued to swim.  Club teams are expensive and so is equipment, and none of those sports had strongholds in the black community.  So I hung around the white kids i hung around because they were kids I liked; kids I had something in common with and because they liked me.  And I didn't only hang around white kids.  The institution that is the town of Princeton, for obvious reasons, attracts people from all over the world, who raise their families and live and do all the things that people everywhere do.  And we all figure out how to coexist just as we will for the rest of our lives wherever we are.  Within all this I was one of those well-adjusted, makes friends easily kids.  I couldn't have known it would eventually become an issue, that the kids I found so easy to get along with weren't the kids who shared my phenotype.   I noticed the differences between myself and many of the other black children I went to school with, but I didn't categorize and name them the way my experiences would soon categorize and name me.  I didn't know it yet, that my blackness was not personal or ancestral, and that as I grew up, it would be, for those who needed to box me up for proper consumption, no longer a birthright but a style that I was painfully out of step with.  


To this day, I cannot tell if I was born a Black Beckee or if I was made one.  I can point to so many moments, even some before my birth, that positioned me to grow up constantly reading, exploring nature, speaking the way I spoke, dancing the way I danced, singing the way I sung and simply being who I was.   No part of me identified any of those activities as somehow existing outside of blackness.  I knew who Matthew Henson was, and I was pretty sure no one accused him of acting white when he developed an affection for traipsing about in the great outdoors.  When She Who Must Not Be Named called me an oreo in the sixth grade, I had no idea what it meant, but I knew that she did.  And when I got home to ask my parents what it meant, I found it hilarious because anyone who came over to my house would be able to tell we were a black family even if none of us were in sight.  How could I be white on the inside when I had been painstakingly educated about my inside-and-out blackness since before I could talk?  How could I talk white, think white, sing white and get good white grades when every morning I looked into the mirror and saw this same brown face staring back at me?  My hair sho nuff was not white, just ask my mom as she chased me around the house trying to get her wild-headed child to settle down long enough to comb, blow dry, brush and braid it into submission.   


And I had to deal with ignorant white ladies calling me Spike Lee whenever they felt like it.  If that ain't a black experience, I don't know what one is.  The thing is, black girls growing up as deeply entrenched in this white girl's world as I did, have to pay a special version of the culture tax (term coined by a close friend of my father's which refers to the likelihood that, as a token minority, you will be asked to perform duties typically or stereotypically assigned or referenced to a member of a minority, and not always your minority group).   So instead of being asked by whites to fit their description of otherness (although I dealt with that, too, but that is also another story for another time), I found myself engaged as a hostile witness among my supposed "own."  When my guidance counselor asked me to join a black girl's empowerment club at school, the other girls, rather than openly defy our counselor's wish to bring me into the fold, found a job for me to do that seemed appropriate to them: faced with the task of planning a school dance, I was chosen to act as a liaison to the administration.  


It's a strange thing to grow up neither here nor there.  My emergence into womanhood brought with it the attention of the black boys I went to school with, but along with that came the derision and the threat of physical violence by some of the black girls to whom those boys belonged.  And interestingly, some of the white girls who made boyfriends of those boys amplified the reaction of their black friends, creating odd enemies across skewed  and confusing lines.  Things were different then; we hadn't yet accepted or even fully witnessed the prevalence of elements of black culture in mainstream pop culture that seems such a given now.  A white girl in a progressive, pre-green, northeastern Ivy League college town could still experience a legitimate thrill from crossing the cultural line into the black community.  I'm sure some will say I made a similar move, danced my own number in the white girl shuffle.  But I imagine it as a double yellow street line, with one line sporting dashes.   Every group in America is eventually enlisted in the white culture army, whether they want to be or not, and indeed, whether they are welcomed or not.  It's the in/come culture tax.  But when members of the dominant group make choices that reflect loyalty to another group, the natural order jiggles a bit.  So our mismatched faces made a different kind of mirror: we were at arms, but we were also struggling against the idea that our phenotypes should predictably manifest in our behavior.   But that most likely intensified the conflict.  When you are having your own identity crisis and you don't even know it, it becomes difficult, but not impossible, to deal with anyone sharing your particular affliction.   Fortunately, our school wasn't quite big enough to sustain large social warring factions; chances were you were cool with someone who was cool with whoever it was you strongly disliked.  I remember a girl I'd been in school with since the first grade, with no previous infractions, screaming at me in the stairwell as her friend stood in supportive watch less than an hour after she (the friend) and I had exchanged looks and laughed through a boring class.  In the real world, I wasn't black enough for either one of them, because if I was, they probably would have been my friends as they went through their whiteness rebellion years dating the football and basketball players (and the assumed guilty-until-proven-innocent football and basketball players) who ruled the halls and all our secret hearts.  


These cold wars carried on in some faraway corner of my life, because they didn't match any of the rest of it.  
I was a late bloomer, but when I bloomed, I was drawn to those boys like a bee to honey.  I'm sure it was largely hormonal (not to be confused with my hypersexualization as a black  woman), but looking back I can't help but see that I was looking for a connection with black people my own age, and they made it easy because they were such willing participants in my experiment.  But I could never share what came of these relationships with my white friends because the worlds were too different, and I wasn't comfortable expressing my need for a black community with people for whom that word combination had little meaning or perhaps even negative connotation.  I had only two white friends in high school with whom I was able to create a safe space to talk about race and what it meant to me.  It might sound strange, but it wasn't until I got older that I truly understood the importance of  choosing friends you can be yourself completely with.  


I was a black girl whose blackness went from innate to debated, private to public, friend to stranger, and back again, over and over, until I got my acceptance letter to Howard and five months later, started it all over again, upside-down and in reverse.  Now I am a fully grown black woman, finally making some sense of it all... on the internet.  Yeesh.