Last Day for APAH

This is the last day for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.  I went to no events or celebrations.  But then I’m not really surprised, this is the midwest.

This morning I woke up at 5am and was able to catch The Cheat  on TMC.  I was tired and ended up falling asleep on the last half which is sad since the movie was only an hour long. 

This past month my book blogs was dedicated to Asian books and I was very happy that those have been getting high hits.  Last time I checked one particular blog was almost 3,000 for the month but I’m not sure how it compares to other people’s blogs.  I’m just hoping that the people above will see that I’m generating a lot of interest in it and perhaps we, as in Institution, should think about maybe doing something next year for that population.  Although their numbers are small in the area they are the 2nd fastest growing ethnic group.

But the whole point of having your own month is to be able to take if for granted.  Like Black History or women’s history month.  In school I used to be like, “Awww, man, we gone learn about Harriet Tubman again?!” 

Except for the shows I pointed out to my husband he didn’t to out of the way to watch any specials on being Asian although for some reason he thinks the Spelling Bee broadcast on ESPN is one of the shows.    Hmmm….

Shrugging Men/Screaming Women

What does it take to make a sweet ordinary young black girl metamorph into a screaming black banshee full anger and suspicion? 

There’s truth to every stereotype.  It might not apply to the group as a whole but there’s a good percentage of people who roam the earth whose job it must be to help confirm the stereotypes for others.  Like when you are in a majority white audience and throughout the crowd there are some who clap off the beat and it throws others off.  The black people in the audience (if they can clap on beat) will give each other knowing looks. 

Or its like meeting an Asian American who excels in school and got a full ride to M.I.T.  Or you walk past a home that has a few caddies up in the yard and a group of Spanish speaking people walk out the door. 

A person may encounter it, file it away and for the rest of their life use it as their point of reference when dealing with people who may fall in that group.  Its hard for them to change it, even when confronted with an image that goes agains the stereotype.  The stereotype, which is sometimes negative, will always remain the measuring stick and the other anomalies.

“Yo, Winston, what’s the square root of 9628?”

“I don’t know.  I suck at math that’s why I’m a dance major.”

“Really, huh.  I thought Asians were good at math.”

Its really the problem of the other person.  The other person being so stupid and lazy that instead of getting to know you as a person, you as an individual that instead they would rather take characteristics of someone they met and project it on to you and everyone that might look like you, share your culture or share your community.  But then  a lot of people begin to do it and what was once a bad stereotype becomes an indicator of your subset/group.  First, people in the group refer to it as a joke (Oh, you know we come on CP time) until its said so often that people begin to believe that its true and a genuine phenotype of themselves and their group (I’m late?  You know black folks run on CP time).  Some within the group begin to claim the stereotype and call it true for themselves if its positive or use it against others (or themselves) in the group even if its negative.

I am not the stereotype of a black woman but sometimes people behave if I am.  I am overly acquiescent.  Sometimes I comply too quickly.  I bite my tongue when sometimes I should say what is on my mind. 

 ever since I realized there was someone callt

a colored girl an evil woman a bitch or a nag

I been tryin not to be that & leave bitterness

in somebody else’s cup

~from For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

But then its hard trying to be that person: to be soft and female when you know its seen as a weakness.  I had friends who had ‘tudes. Being around them sometimes was too hard.  They were insecure and would sometimes take the simplest things as slights.  They didn’t want anyone getting over on them, no matter what, and would sometimes cuss someone or, if things got really heated, take to fighting.  In youth it was okay but as I got older the drama and the walking on eggshells in some conversations got to be a bit much.  One day I got off the phone with one of my friends and thanked God I wasn’t a lesbian. 

I understand why we scream.  We want to be heard and we feel like we aren’t being heard.  We want to be seen because sometimes we feel invisible.  We are uncomfortable in our lives, in our space, in our bodies, so why should we afford someone else comfort when they are the ones causing the pain?  We’ve been messed with and we don’t want to be messed over anymore; who is going to try to take advantage of the strong, loud black woman who isn’t afraid to cuss you out?  Our primal yell is our strength.

But really it isn’t.   Going by health statistics black women live longer than black men but not as long as white women.  Perhaps its because we have a heavy load with no one to help us tote it.  So although we may be more outspoken than our white counterparts it doesn’t seem to help us live longer.

It also doesn’t seem to help get much changed either.  We are angry but that hasn’t seemed to have changed the state of the black community.  Quite a few black men seem to be at a quandry about what to do.  They are looking for a leader although they aren’t necessarily looking to us to help with the role.  For those black men who are trying to help the job is daunting considering how small they are in numbers.

Our anger isn’t working.  Our nagging isn’t working and my mama says God answers prayers but you have to be willing to work to make it happen.  Isn’t it time we got up off our knees and became the solution instead of the question?  Besides, sore throats don’t carry voices across generations.

But Supposin’ She Say She Loves Me?

Black men and women should institute a “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” rule when it comes to interracial relationships.  Black women shouldn’t care about who black men are dating, but they do.  If the black male is not dating you then it shouldn’t matter who they are with and why they are with them.  I don’t think I have ever known a black woman to question a black an about the black woman they are dating.  If she’s black (light, medium, or dark) and with a cute guy other women may mean mugg her or try to stare her down because women can be petty but rarely will the guy get the inquisition about his choice of mate.

Why is this?  Its because in the black community dating can be political.  For a long time black women have kept to the colorline while black men crossed back and forth tasting the rainbow.  There are some black men who appreciate the racial fidelity of black women because when it comes to (mating/procreating/dating –you pick your word) any man of any color would like to have a wider field to choose from.  So for them to have black women as a safety net benefits the small number of black men who like to play the field way past the point that anyone with any sense would have settled down. 70% is the number that is being bandied around this year as the number of single black women of marrying age.  I think I might pull that down to maybe 65 or 68% because some of us might not want to be married (or married to a male).  But still it’s pretty high. 

Black women are wondering why the number is so high.  We are looking at ourselves (are we overeducated?  too overbearing?  too defined in our ownselves?) and we are looking at them (too many are in jail/uneducated/on the DL/want white women). 

Black men have some reasons why the high number– for us.  They will say we are too loud, we are too brash, we are too independent, we are too fat.  Never is the question asked about how many of them are unattached.  For black women and black men the focus is kept on the women.  We didn’t need for staticians to divulge that many of us were single, we already knew.  Which is why we have been mad and berating the black males we see on the street for crossing over to the white side.

And then we want to know why.  In our minds its simple: if the white woman is a bit overweight its because her skin is white.  If she’s thin its because her skin is white.  If she’s pretty or smart or dumb or ugly its because of her skin; for us it all boils down to he’s with her because she’s white and we, too, can be  all those of those things he’s attracted to in her but he didn’t choose one of us, he chose one of them. 

There are some men who are that shallow, who only assess the containment of a female and not what’s within because he doesn’t see the woman as a person but as an object.  A few of these men who exclusively date white women will then slur us behind our backs to them, degrading our beauty and our intelligence as they uphold anothers just because of race.  Any woman with any sense would see that this man is not a prize for neither black women nor white women.

But then there are some men who will say they are in love with the whole person.  They were attracted to her physically and then grew to love the person inside.  They may have dated all sorts of women but she is the one he ended up with.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what these men have to say about why they chose to love the woman they are with because in the long run they are off the market to viable, intelligent, worthy black women.  Why wonder about what’s not for you?  Why let it hurt you?  A few years ago on an interracial forum I used to have a black woman went off on a black male because of a disagreement they had over something simple and suddenly she wrote,” Why are you even responding to me?  Aren’t you married to an Asian woman?  Go talk to her!”  The black woman herself was engaged to a white male and claimed to have been in several interracial relationships.  But it was apparent to a lot of people on the board that the idea of bm interracial dating upset her.  I wondered if she dated interracially because she was interested in the men or if it was for spite. 

When black women see a black male with a non-black female they shouldn’t sweat it.  It doesn’t diminish our beauty no matter what reasons any particular male has for dating out.  People have the right to choose to love whom they want to love and not have it become a statement on who they are.