About five years old, I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon and, you know, the black curly hair. That's how I was portraying myself.
My life is not a sound bite.
I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo... imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways... that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in.
If people feel misled or deceived, then sorry that they feel that way, but I believe that's more due to their definition and construct of race in their own minds than it is to my integrity or honesty, because I wouldn't say I'm African American, but I would say I'm black, and there's a difference in those terms.
I think that it is too common for white feminists to say, 'We want some diversity. Come join our movement about gender, but we want you to check the class and race at the door.' And you can't undo that braid of race, class, and gender: all three intersect with each other, so it's important for more education to be done about that.
From a very young age, I felt a spiritual, visceral, instinctual connection with 'black is beautiful.' Just the black experience and wanting to celebrate that. And I didn't know how to articulate that as a young child.
