Color Struck: A Brighter Shade of Black
If you white,
you alright
If you yellow,
you mellow
If you brown,
stick around
If you black,
step back
We were Negroes and I was in the first grade when our teacher for some inexplicable reason asked us to line up by skin color. Thinking generously, one might think she was just trying out a new method for lining up so the same beginning and end of the alphabet weren’t in the front and the back. Thinking otherwise, one could imagine all manner of reasons as I have over the more than six decades since then.
Still it’s inexplicable because this was in segregated Mississippi, meaning all the students were Negroes as was our teacher. But I no longer think the why is really important as I look back.
I see my six-year-old self place myself in line among my darker chocolate friends near the end of the line. My friends laugh and my teacher tells me to stop fooling around. When I look at her with my face wrinkled in confusion, she grabs my arm and moves me until I’m second in line behind the albino little boy who, for the first time, leads the line. I was traumatized.
Not too many months before I’d experienced the trauma of my mother abandoning my sister and me at our father’s apartment, declaring we were “cramping” her “style” – the lifestyle, I assume of a newly divorced woman. The trauma was mitigated by our father’s love and devotion as he took us from Chicago to Mississippi into the nurturing arms of his mother.
This trauma was worst. My first grade teacher stole my blackness, my identity, my sense of self, my perception of myself.
Whenever we jumped double dutch chanting that rhyme to help us keep rhythm, I never imagined I was white or yellow, however “right” and “mellow.” I preferred to be brown and “stick around,” unlike my mother.
And I was especially drawn to black because that was the signal to “step back” -- jump out of the ropes, showing off my skill at double dutch and impressing those southern kids who didn’t have my skill. Then I’d jump back in, chanting the next rhyme with even more impressive moves.
First on heel, then on toe
Split the rope and around you go
I like coffee, I like tea
I like a black boy and he likes me
Step back, blackjack, you don’t shine
I got a nigger boy to beat your behind
I think I thought a “nigger” was even darker than a black boy. Remember, I was six. Still, I was always attracted to dark skinned boys. I loved the texture I could see in the rich and diverse shades of darkness in their skin. I did date (no sexual euphemism) lighter skinned men occasionally, and even a dreaded white boy once. But the beauty of blackness was always my prejudice.
After that incident in first grade, I was constantly bothered by people calling into question my blackness, reminding me of my bright colored skin. In the south, I was called “high yellow” more than once and that would conjure up that first grade memory and the shock of identify I experienced at that time.
Before first grade, family members would sometimes use the nickname “Red” or “Little Red” to refer to me. This was pretty common in the south, too, at the time to refer to a light skinned Black person. And my father, with whom I shared the same skin color, was also “Red” to some of his co-workers. I thought my nickname was because my plain brown hair had some natural auburn strands coming through the thickness of my nappy hair. I never associated it with my skin.
What was most bothersome was knowing I was “an acceptable Negro” when it came to hiring because I could be a good token on paper. They could check off that “Black” box without bringing in someone obviously Black. Yellow raisins like me made a better “fit” in their bowl of tapioca. I might stand out a bit but only if you look closely. I was not a threat to the company image.
I still forget my actual skin color until other people point it out to me – by their words or their actions. I am especially irked by white people pointing out how light my skin is. “Look!” they’d say with delight, putting their arm next to or on top of mine, “My tan is darker than you are!” These incidents give me nightmarish shivers, complete with goosebumps and memories of first grade but I never let anyone know.
When I was younger, the 1960’s and 1970’s, it seemed as if I had to “prove” I’m black enough. With the dawn of the age of “biracial” and “mixed,” I have been too often asked, “What are you?” I am not biracial because both my parents are Black – one light skinned and one of the darker persuasion. You have to go back a couple of generations to find the white people on my family tree. I am no more “mixed race” than most African Americans who can trace their ancestry to antebellum times.
“What are you?” It seems I’m back in first grade, lining up by skin color and trying to figure out where I belong. I still expect to be humiliated and traumatized when someone moves me away from where I think is my place in line.
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