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The Eye Is Still Blue: Epistles on Loving Blackness

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The Eye Is Still Blue: Epistles on Loving Blackness Colgate University Libraries Digital Commons @ Colgate Senior Honors Theses Student Work 2016 The yE e is Still Blue: Epistles on Loving Blackness Aidan Davis Colgate University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://commons.colgate.edu/theses Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Aidan, "The yE e is Still Blue: Epistles on Loving Blackness" (2016). Senior Honors Theses. Paper 12. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Digital Commons @ Colgate. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colgate. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 The Eye is Still Blue: Epistles on Loving Blackness A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Women’s Studies By Alexandria L. Davis Advisor: Dr.Berlisha Morton Colgate University Hamilton New York Spring 2016 2 Prologue Dear God, First, sorry for cussing, but at this point, I'm tired of having to say the same thing over and over and over again. I'm tired of theorizing with friends as to why men of color will claim they love black women by citing their black moms, grandmas, and aunties. However, those same black men don't realize that they just named women who provided unconditional care and that type of love is very different from loving black women. Love has nothing to do with loving mother, but rather being genuinely invested in the woman behind that title. Be invested in her passions, her goals, her likes and dislikes. Who was she before she had you? Your one way loving with once a year mother’s day gifts and weekly calls don’t count. I'm tired of having to point out how by citing their mothers in that situation they still continue to dehumanize them by only appreciating their existences as caretakers, hence my reason for saying I am not mother. I'm tired of having to ask all the questions, lend all the ears, and examine all the sources of pain for everybody else, but I don't ever hear about men of color theorizing with their friends about how they potentially hurt black women I'm tired of black men telling me they love all black women, but only see and hear lighter skinned women, and then, claim its innocent taste and preferences. On top of that, they explicitly tell you they cannot learn from black women and have to learn how to be a man from another black man who doesn't know either. They constantly looking for that one brotha and when that brotha doesn't show up, he turns to white men. I can't teach how to be a black man no. Not sure I want to, but I could help and grow with folks in learning how to be an empathetic and loving human being, but that would require one to forsake the pursuit of power. I'm tired of men of color claiming they love black women but don't understand why cultural appropriation is PAINFUL for black women. And for the last time, I'm tired of shitting on men of color who don't hear or see me no way. I have no agency in these issues because they don't have anything to do with me and I'm just fucking tired. I'm tired of other black women telling me I need to hop off that political shit and just have fun and be happy...like da fuq? You think I ask for this shit? They say I should have more apolitical relationships with men of color and I'm just like 'you think I haven't tried?' Also I'm not here for that fake as fuck, superficial as shit relationship. Funny how in the many times I've said the same thing over and over, men of color will interpret this as shitting on them when really I was crying in pain and trying to tell them to stop hurting me, but they make it about them. A black boy I tried to talk to once asked me if I ever asked black men for help. I laughed because when you think I'm shitting on you that's exactly what I'm doing and it ain't about help. I'm asking you to see me as human but you want to read me as an illogical, petty, and bitter monster like that bitterness didn't come from a history of never being seen as human, let alone woman. I laughed because like the black lives matter movement and the many other movements led by black women, black men never had to ask for support or for their humanity to be seen by black women. In fact, I love black folk so much, sometimes I forget how to love myself and I've been wishing we could love together, but you're not interested and I'm tired bruh. I'm fucking tired. Introduction Why is it so hard for me to love myself on this campus, and what is blocking my joy? These deeply vulnerable questions seem so familiar, yet are still deeply terrifying. But because they terrified me, I knew I needed to explore them further; so, I made them my preliminary 3 research questions. Surprisingly when people inquired about my thesis topic, they were confused by my preliminary research questions. People often said “that’s cool,” but showed no genuine interest in the topic. I also heard responses like “Wait, you don’t love yourself?” And then, I felt this compulsion to cover up and reframe what I said by throwing out buzzwords like “self-care,” even though I am not engaging in that discourse. So in truth, I want to know why people reacted that way, why is that normal, and most importantly, why couldn't I just admit No, I don’t love myself like I should and I am curious as to why. Rooted in Black feminist theory, I want to know why and how my commitment to black love and loving blackness is impeded by gendered colorism but also how the combined stress of experiencing the two exacerbates loneliness a state of loss. No doubt, that in a world where my story of being a black girl is often told by others, I want to assert agency over my own story and narrative. This is dangerous work. In a capitalistic patriarchy hooks (1994) contends that power is the ability to control the narratives of the other (p.170). When Black women, like me who have been historically dominated, explicitly dispute public narratives, I am often met with aggression or defensiveness. Therefore in this work, I resist the urge to both comfort myself or those interested in maintaining their inflated sense of personal superiority. This project began as a means for me to forge my own path as a scholar. Through the process, I worried about the legitimacy of my inquiry. Previously, I looked at other paradigms and asked questions I wasn’t emotionally committed to because I wanted to maintain white patriarchal standards of objectivity in that I am the outside looking in. Indeed, I have over- extended myself this year by taking on three strenuous writing projects all so that I can be taken seriously as a scholar. However, Dillard (2013) encourages researchers of color to turn away from our desire to belong to a particular paradigm, or an acceptable way of analyzing, formatting, and articulating meaning. Instead, we must nurture and aid in the growth of paradigms that demonstrate one’s cultural and spiritual understandings of memories and histories that shape our ways of knowing and ways of being and perhaps inform our interactions (p.58). In other words, what I want and need to make visible as part of not only black feminist scholarship, but also black feminist healing cannot be adequately expressed with writing in a linear format. Linear formats require a structured beginning and an end. The ways in which I understand and understood loving blackness is not linear but informed by many experiences processed at different junctures in my life. 4 In this thesis project, I am attempting to analyze and articulate meaning in the intersection of black love and colorism that has informed my challenges with self-love at Colgate University. Although a plethora of research exists for gendered colorism and how it affects women’s conception of beauty and perhaps self-worth, little has emerged from academia on the intersection of black love and colorism as an obstacle to joy as well wholeness for black women. This was surprising. hooks too urged black feminist theorists to speak and write more on love, particularly self-love. There simply isn’t enough research, and yet self-love is a critical part of our survival and happiness. For this reason, I want my research to discuss the specific obstacle of colorism using my own personal narratives as evidence. In addition I intend to interpret and understand these narrative using a black feminist theories on the significance of narrative inquiry and as a legitimate social critical theory. Dillard (2013) suggests that an endarkened feminist epistemology articulates how reality is known when based in the historical roots of global feminist thought (p.59). As I intend to illustrate in later sections, Colorism exists as a valid historical gendered reality for black girls that has not been articulated enough in academia.
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