[lilyblue]

I wanted to resurrect the Busties of Color thread. Allies welcome.

Reading in another thread about what is feminist/not feminist got me thinking about how people perceive women of color. For me, being black, I have constantly spent most of my life being told that I am not black enough. Even my grandmother has said that to me.

I remember sitting in my hairdresser's chair and asking if we could turn the news off. I simply found it depressing. She then said that "my grandmother was right, you do think you are a white girl". I was crushed. It still hurts to think about because I just want to be myself. I am just me, yet it's not good enough.

Sometimes I wonder if I should call myself feminist or womanist. Am I betraying other WOCs if I call myself feminist? Do I really think I'm white?

It's been the bane of my existence for years. I've been depressed over it and I would love to discuss stuff like this.

Also, in what ways does the feminist movement still exclude women of color?

[girltrouble]

*shudders from faerie's tale*

yeah, there is a huge difference between respectful admiration and making a group a personal fetish.

i've had a few gfs talk about the contrast in our skin colors and how beautiful it was when we were lying together. that's cool. i had a girlfriend who had the most beautiful goldenbrown skin, and i loved that about her. but that wasn't why i wanted to date her. yeah, i thought she was fawksy as fuck, but it was more that she was super smart, and stronger, funnier and more ambitious than me. but when you reduce someone as a racial/ethnic sex object, it's just gross, and i could never get why people couldn't see the difference.

that said, at the risk of making myself look like an ass, i wonder (faerie) what you would say about my constant crushes on cholas. i grew up around them and to me i just really love the asthetic. that style of makeup, and toughness is just very beautiful to me. i wouldn't date a chola if i didn't think she was the shit, but is it the same thing?

one thing that has always interested me is subcultures and subcultural slang. a few days ago a co-worker of mine (she's asian) gave me a ride home, someone pulled in front of her, and by reflex she said "what is this nigger doing?" now, i didn't mind cos i usually give 'brown kids' a kind of pass. she asked me later if she offended me (i'm black), and i said no. what bugged me was how weird it sounded coming out of her mouth. some people say it like they are comfortable with the word and other people-- well it just sounds like the are trying to be 'cool'. this sounded kind of like that. race is a weird beast here in seattle. it's very progressive like where i grew up, but like where i grew up, just below that progressiveness is a distrust of anyone not white. anyways, i know this girl has black asian latino friends, and we always joke about asian culture (i am obsessed with korean films+japanese subcultures, and she always introduces me to asian slang words. like last week i heard the phrase "riced out". she said, yeah, i think my car got jacked cos it was all riced out." meaning it looked like an tuner-- a suped up import that asians drive.

i call anyone who is not white a 'brown kid' which makes her laugh. for me it's a phrase of solidarity. to me it means that you have some experience of living in america as some sort of other. a shared experience if you are latino asian indian or black. i got the phrase from a girlfriend who was german and puerto rican. her best friend was black and korean, and they would talk about each other's cultures in racial terms. my gf would talk about how she had a puerto rican 'flat ass' and her best friend would say she had korean 'moon face'. i suppose i have 'tranny feet'. but there were also slang phrases. if there was an asian who was particularly assy, they would retort "whatever, asia minor!"
but then they were into odd slang. like a person who was annoying or boring was "potatoes all-rotten." but between them and their friends-- brown kids --race was something that was a fact and to be talked about playfully....


anarch, i am really interested in the book you were talking about. what's interesting is finding out that totally segregated states (like oklahoma at one point) were the center of black uplift and black self sufficency..... until oil was found and white people took back the land that years before was 'unusable'. sometimes i think segregation at one point was the best thing for black people-- when it wasn't under an apartheid system....