This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America(27)

I watched that video while I still lived in New Jersey and so I kept all these questions to myself. But now that I live in Harlem, I question if the black men here would have relentlessly catcalled a woman who looked like Shoshana. I’m sure that white women do get harassed in Harlem, but not with the same amount of vigor and aggression as black women. Because unlike white women, black women exist outside the law. Historically, if a black man so much as whistled at a white woman, he could be lynched. If a black man whistled at a black woman, that was chivalry. If I had gone to the police on the night that Charlie harassed me, would they have thought that I was overreacting, or worse, would they not have believed me? Because I was not physically harmed, would they have told me that I was being oversensitive because Charlie was most likely just being nice?

In 2014, Feminista Jones, a blogger, author, and creator of the #YouOKSis campaign, told an Atlantic reporter that despite the positive intent of initiatives to stop street harassment, such as Stop Street Harassment (SSH), these movements still place white women at the center of their advocacy. The police are not exactly our allies either. They can abuse and rape us with impunity. It is a strange position that black women occupy, and it results in a difficult question: How do we protect ourselves if that means chastising black men, whom we have always been culturally conditioned to protect? What does this dual protection look like, and is it attainable in a society that sanctions violence against black bodies?

When I think about how Harlem’s streets are a place of conversation, economy, and community, I start to second-guess myself. Maybe the only goods that Charlie was trying to sell were tickets to a DMX concert. Maybe what he wanted was only money, not to climb on top of me. Maybe I misjudged his calling me “sweetheart” as patronizing when he really was just trying to be nice because he did not know my name. Maybe I was being conceited. Maybe I cried because I was still getting used to the city environment, not because I thought he was going to hurt me. The more excuses I made for him, the less trusting I became of my body and my own instincts.

And that sniper tower. It is still there. I do not acknowledge it now when I walk by. I keep my head low and my headphones nestled against my ears. I walk in a fashion similar to that of all the other black women with whom I cross paths every night as I return to my apartment. I wonder what kind of secrets they are holding in their bodies, what kind of experiences they have buried to protect someone else at their own expense. Whom they could run to for help.



As I write this, I’ve just passed my one-year anniversary of living in New York. I have only been on two dates in the past eight months, out of circumstance and choice. Fear encapsulates both of these experiences. My heart palpitated at the thought of what these men could do to me, how they could tremendously hurt me, paralyze me, even though all they did was ask what drink I wanted, or if I was having a good time. Both situations ended with the guy not being interested, and making this clear either through silence or long text messages. Each time, I thought back to my college years and wondered if there was something inherently wrong with me. I wondered if I was too much of everything, leaving no room for a man to find his place beside me. I wondered if my desperation reeked so badly that the stench made men stay far away from me. I wondered if, with each byline that I snagged, I was becoming less and less of a woman, unlovable just as David had said. I wondered if writing this essay would be the last nail in the proverbial coffin of my romantic life.

I haven’t heard “fast-tailed girl” spoken as much as I have before, but that could be because I don’t hang out around any black female teenagers. But that doesn’t make me worry less for them, wherever they are. I am still concerned about myself, a grown woman who desires to be a wife and mother. I am concerned about the women who are already mothers, the mothers in progress, the daughters, and the daughters who have yet to be born.

But I have not given up hope yet. I am learning to love myself. I took a solo vacation, satiated by my own presence. I came back to Harlem feeling refreshed, ready to transform my energy so that I could take the risk of falling in love. But that deep-seated fear still lingers in the pit of my chest, even if it does not pulsate as it did before. I am trying to shed the fear that maybe I am diseased as a black woman, chalking up these experiences to growing pains on the road to true love. I just wish that these pains didn’t hurt so badly.





5

A Lotus for Michelle




Dear Michelle,

In July 2008, approximately six months before your husband assumed office, The New Yorker published a cartoon by Barry Blitt that featured the both of you as terrorists. The theme was “The Politics of Fear,” and it was the front cover image. Barack is in Muslim clothing and you are in military garb and have an AK-47 strapped to your back. You are fist-bumping in what seems to be the Oval Office while the American flag burns in the fireplace. Many called the image offensive and disgusting, but nevertheless the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, deemed it satirical, for it held up a mirror to the stereotypes swirling around about Barack’s faith. But for me, the more problematic issue was how you were portrayed. Unlike Barack Obama, whose seemingly smooth hair was underneath a taqiyah, your hair was transformed from your usual permed shoulder-length hair to a large afro—the cartoonist accentuated the countless coils. They resembled barbed wire. Your lips are pursed, almost identical to the kind of gesture that many black women make when they are perturbed or in the midst of saying something witty. Your eyebrows are raised and your head is cocked to the side. Your lips, unlike Barack’s, are colored red, perhaps to accentuate their fullness. Your eyes, unlike Barack’s, are open and spilling over with intent. The AK-47 strapped to your back is the least terroristic element of this image. Contrary to popular belief, you, not Barack, are its true focal point. You are the one whose body is most exaggerated. You do not incite terrorism with bone-straight hair and good posture. No, your body is forced to reflect what America must imagine in order to strip away your exceptionalism: a large afro, gestures normally ascribed to the sassy black woman stereotype, and a gun for good measure. If this image was supposed to satirize “Politics of Fear” surrounding you and your family, then it succeeded because that image was exactly how many in white America could only see you, Michelle: through double vision. They rejected what their actual eyes perceived: an extremely accomplished woman whose career many of them would have been lucky to emulate. Instead they replaced you with an aggressive and violent woman. As long as their imagination is entertained, their belief in their inherent superiority as white people could be sustained.