"I Do See Color" weekly newsletter: November 30, 2022
Weekly newsletter 9: Combination of race- and culture-related posts from "I Do See Color," "BlackTechLogy" and "Window Shopping"
Welcome to the “I Do See Color” newsletter (with a bonus section of two first-person interviews called “Deuces”).
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Now let’s get into the weekly newsletter!
Each week, eight* carefully selected posts will be chosen, which focus on culture, politics, health and race from a black (wo)man’s perspective.
NEW! 1. White therapists for Buffalo shooting? You missed the point ~ When a hate crime against black people happens, white therapists are not the best answer
A room full of white therapists set up to talk to black people after a hate crime: There is no better way to describe obliviousness than that. I’m fairly convinced that this group was organized with the best of intentions, but these are those moments when Mainstream America really doesn’t understand just how stressful racism is on marginalized groups.
2. Is Santa black? Or does it matter? ~ If kids ask the race question about Santa, what's your response?
My parents never seemed to mind my much bigger reaction to Santa’s gifts versus theirs, nor were they phased by my line of questions each year. They had planned out their answers beforehand. And one question that started to build up as I got older was why didn’t Santa look the same on Christmas cards taped all over our living room or each time we went to their holiday parties. When I’d go to my father’s holiday work parties, Santa Claus was almost always bespectacled, rosy-cheeked and white.
But I noticed that when I went to Evergreen Plaza (South Side Chicago residents know this mall well), Christmas was totally different than my father’s mainly white bank parties. R&B and family-friendly rap music blasted through the speakers.
3. White teachers, please stop judging your black students ~ The fine line between empathy, pity and casual racism in education
“Black people just aren’t united like Asians and Hispanic people are.”
I quietly listened to the white male instructor go on and on about his knowledge of African-Americans and Africans during an opening speech. Apparently he’d gotten his “expert” opinions from classroom teachings and a handful of books. My first thought while hearing this diatribe was, “If this is supposed to be your invocation speech, how does this qualify? The entire point of this particular speech is to provide an inspirational thought or pledge of the day.”
4. Black teachers, please don’t tear down your black students ~ Contrary to popular belief, words do hurt
I looked from my classmate Kellz* to my favorite teacher. I couldn’t believe she had just said that to him. Kellz had come to class and kept talking during the teacher’s instructions. “Disrupting the class” is how report cards would’ve described it. But he and my teacher Mrs. Fossil** struggled to have a peaceful relationship from the very beginning of our fifth-grade class.
Apparently he’d gotten on her nerves one too many times that day and she blurted out, “Shut up, you little ignorant boy. You’re not going to be anything when you grow up anyway.”
5. Dating black women: Interracial dating gone right and wrong ~ Step one: Stop talking about slavery at dinner
A couple of beers in and suddenly we rounded a corner into talking about his family problems, how he’d never dated a black woman before and the sister-versus-slavery rant. Just like that, “funny” and “intelligent” perks quickly diminished. There was no spark. I quickly changed the subject to something else, and by the end of that date, I politely thanked him for the meal, gave him a quick hug and was so relieved we met in separate cars.
Ghosting people is not my style, so I was honest and told him there was no spark when he wanted to hang out again. Although there was no immediate magnetism, the slavery conversation on date one was what really killed it for me. These experiences are why I fully understand why black women are hesitant to date non-black men. While Eve and Maximillion Cooper make it look reasonably easy, interracial couples (and daters) are still daters and couples who have to get through all the usual humps, on top of being from different backgrounds and races.
6. Andrew on ‘Insecure’ is Issa Rae’s middle finger to Cancel Culture ~ How we learned to love Andrew more than Molly
When Alexander Hodge showed up in the Coachella scene of HBO’s “Insecure,” eyebrows raised. The actress and creator of HBO’s “Insecure” had already been canceled for a chapter in her 2015 book “The Misadventures of Awkward Girl.”
The easy way out would have been for Issa Rae to flood “Insecure” with the darkest, most splendidly handsome brothas she could find to “save” herself from the backlash of Cancel Culture. (Viewers like myself thank her profusely for every scene with Y’lan Noel.) But Cancel Culture has a habit of wanting to win instead of wanting to just have the conversation to learn and reevaluate. Instead of bowing down to it, the creators of “Insecure” challenged the same people who were challenging her. In comes Andrew (played by Hodge), who is flirting profusely with Molly (played by Yvonne Anuli Orji), a black woman who cannot wrap her mind around the idea of being an African-American woman dating an Asian man — similar to Cancel Culture’s loudest protesters.
7. Coloring inside the lines with new shades of brown crayons ~ Black art teachers influence support for black artists
My skin color is somewhere between Deep Golden and Extra Deep Golden, but my art teacher — a black woman — long ago showed me how to use traditional crayons to create my actual complexion with a mix of several colors. In her class, I learned about van Gogh and making papier-mâché dogs. But I also was introduced to the kinds of artists that were featured in various episodes of “The Cosby Show,” including that main painting — “Funeral Procession” by Ellis Wilson. I admired colorful art I could relate to, like Marvin Gaye’s cover of the “I Want You” album — “The Sugar Shack” painting from Ernie Barnes. It was impossible for me to not see how these artists colored black people in their own work. I took notes.
8. Want to combat your prejudices? Expose yourself to ‘others’ ~ The German Shepherd question that explains my take on racism
Recently, I was interviewed about dog training and being a dog walker. During the talk, there was an intriguing comment made by the interviewer about German Shepherds. I’m not sure why this question had never come up in 22 years of me being a dog owner and one year as a dog caregiver, but she told me she used to be really scared of German Shepherds because of the Civil Rights Movement photographs she saw as a kid. I knew exactly which well-known photograph she was talking about. I could instantly picture the young, black man who was helplessly being attacked by one dog while two police officers were doing nothing to stop it from happening.
“Deuces” ~ “I Do See Color” newsletter’s bonus interviews:
1. Black Santa has his ear to the street ~ What does Santa do the rest of the year?
Everyone knows what Santa is doing in December, but what does Santa Claus do the other 11 months of the year? There’s not a lot to be said about what happens when the boots, the belt, the hat and the suit head to the hamper, and the spectacles to their case.
But for Chicagoans like Andre Russell, also known as Dreezy Claus (“Chicago’s Black Santa”), being in children’s lives is an all-year round process. With a background in Criminal Justice from Chicago State University, Russell started his career by working in an after-school program. Shortly after, he made the decision to navigate his way to at-risk youth.
2. Justifiably Maladjusted
“I think psychologists are in a very important position to strategize,” said Dr. Nathaniel Granger, a U.S. Army veteran who earned his Psy.D. in 2011. “Majority of psychologists need to be more vocal when it comes to social ills. Cowardice should not be encouraged, and we cannot allow cowardice to become fashionable in dealing with social woes. We need to do something to ameliorate the symptomatology associated with the sensationalism that we see.”
Did you enjoy this post? You’re also welcome to check out my Substack columns “Black Girl In a Doggone World,” “BlackTechLogy,” “Homegrown Tales,” “I Do See Color,” “One Black Woman’s Vote,” “Tickled,” “We Need To Talk” and “Window Shopping” too. Subscribe to this newsletter for the weekly posts every Wednesday.
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