Book: Black Girl: “I was a Token”

By Mohammad Ali Salih — Washington

18 November , 2022

The 2020’s killing of Black George Floyd in Minnesota by the knee of a White policeman flared a nation-wide — as well as world-wide — activism about the relation between Blacks and Whites, and encouraged many Blacks — also some Whites — to speak out about race and racism.

For about a year now, this Black activism involved books (a few of them were reviewed in this column), but this last one is peculiar because it is a personal story, and not an academic or historical research or analysis.

This book raised a few sensitive questions: Are Black Americans obsessed with the color of their skin? Moreover, are they emotionally clinging to slavery, which was a long time ago?

On the other side, are Whites insensitive to Blacks complaints? Are the Whites taking for granted their overwhelming historical, economic and political and cultural powers?

These questions might reflect the roots of the Black-White conflict in America today. While the first group has been leaning more towards emotional complaints (granted as being supported by facts), the second group has been more rational (scientific?) in explaining the socio-economic realities of the relations.

Blacks make up 12 percent of the population but are nevertheless ten percent of the economy, 20 percent of poverty, 40 percent of child poverty, and twice as unemployed than Whites.

The author of this book grew up in an overwhelmingly White community, and lived years of being exposed to White culture, such as movies, television, magazines and the Internet.

She and her younger sister played, as she wrote, “tennis, soccer, softball, and basketball; danced ballet, tap, jazz, and hip-hop; did gymnastics, figure skating, and horseback riding; and played piano and violin, respectively.”

To be included, mostly during her teen years, she wrote that she had to “shrink my identity into that box, setting increasingly poisonous goals.” She mentioned “painful and damaging chemical hair treatments;” depriving herself of food so as to stay skinny; and bought “the most unimpeachable and impeccable fashion clothes.”

She wrote that in school she was told to play the role of Scary Spice (the only Black Spice Girl) and that she discovered her classmates’ racist attitudes.

However, on the part of her Black people, she was criticized for her tendency to act White, which deprived her from leaning back into her racial group.

Finding a little respite in the Black community, she wrote: “If and when I got the opportunity to meet other Black kids, they usually made it clear that they did not like me.”

She also wrote: “I am conscious of the ways that my behaviors and attitudes could have been interpreted as, well, stuck up. And, because I was so partial to whiteness, I adopted behavior, language, and mannerisms that operationally supported white supremacy.”

Caught between Blacks and Whites, she added: “I became manipulative, calculating, and mean. I was desperate to gain some modicum of control, and to do that, I constantly doled out criticisms, gossiped, and stirred up petty drama. I developed a haughty affect that I employed for both passing judgment and my own protection.”

The author, all along, seems to have become a prisoner of her skin color.

She wrote: “I remember that the reality of Blackness settled onto me like a terminal illness … I desperately wondered how I could get rid of it so I could just be like everyone else. It distressed me that I would never be ‘cured’ of it and could never escape it.”

Despite all of this, she succeeded on her own in a media and show-business career, and worked her way up the ladder. She also wrote that she “looked great.”

So, what is her problem?

She wrote about “enduring hurtful questions during interviews and everyday work environments.” Questions like: “What was it like to drive here from the ghetto?” and “Are your parents on welfare?”

She wrote that, despite her professional success in the fashion industry, her ambition and self-hatred morphed into “debilitating depression and an eating disorder”.

She wrote that she was very conscious that she was often one of the few people of color in her department. And she repeatedly wrote that she “endured racial slights and erasure.”

Finally, and still in her thirties, she decided to write a book. And she wrote that “after decades of burying my emotions, resentment, and true self, I decided to confront the factors that motivated my self-destructive behaviors’

In an interview by a Black radio station after the publication of her book, she was asked: “What do you want Black women to leave with after reading your memoir?”

She answered: “I want them to understand that the pressure they’re putting on themselves all comes from the same place. It’s all in response to white supremacy.”

She seems very much obsessed with her skin color — and others’ skin colors.

But, she confessed, she didn’t have a way out.

She said, during the radio interview: “What should we be? What are we supposed to be? Who we are is totally acceptable as Black women. Just because we are Black does not mean we’re a monolith or that we fit into one box”.