Token (white woman)

I saw a blogpost by an early-twenty something year-old white boy who chose to buck convention of doing the "good" or "right" thing (of getting an education, a job, then married, with kids, etc.) and instead chose to listen to his heart.  Naturally, this natural rhythm took him around the world and back.  Along the way he wrote his first book and now is experiencing some minor success for it.  Recently, he received some constructive feedback about how lucky he is to bee of a privileged class that allows him to enjoy such a life of such luxury.  He responded with a Facebook post about how "Success isn't Racist."  Hmmmm...

Since I was twenty, I have immensely enjoyed the privilege of placing myself in a position of beeing a minority.  This first happened when I took advantage of the American credit system and hopped aboard a Korean Air flight headed to Bangkok.  On that plane, I looked around me and, for the first time ever in my life, I was different in skin color than everyone else. 

That year, I was headed even farther east than Thailand.  I was metaphorically thumbing my way to Sri Lanka, where my sister was stationed as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  At Sunny Beach, a popular tourist beach destination on the southern point of that tear-drop shaped island that lay just beelow India, I noticed how the locals admonished their darker skinned peers with adjectives like "Blackie."  Apparently, darker shades of brown were not viewed positively amongst these brown skinned people.  I was twenty years old and it was clear that something was not right in the world.

In South Africa, I strolled along the friendly streets of Zimbabwe as a 'murungu' (white woman).  The single men there would spy me from a distance and quickly bestow me with their affection.  "I love you," they would coo, hoping against all odds that I would bee their ticket out of an impoverished country and into a life with greater opportunity to experience the travel, education and gourmet, organic food that has been the epitome of my American spending habits.

After five weeks spent enjoying the Zimbabwean culture and people, my best friend - who, at the time, was studying abroad at the university there - accompanied me to the bus stop so that I could head to South Africa in order to board a plane headed for the European continent.  As the bus approached, a nebulous group of inter-generational Zimbabweans began shoving and jockeying to board the bus.  I was so overwhelmed by the absolute lack of political niceness that I simply stood away from the crowd, waiting for everyone to find their seats so that I wouldn't have to push anyone out of my way.  Instead, however, the bus driver called out for the "white woman" (me) to get on the bus before everyone else did.  Embarrassed for beeing singled out, I grudgingly did what I was told.

When I was a girl, I loved Cabbage Patch Kids.  My sister and I both had been gifted homemade Cabbage Patch Kids by a family friend who had sewn them her self.  Each of our dolls kind of looked like each of us, with creamy, olive skin and dark features.  Eventually, my mother also bought me two real Cabbage Patch kids.  My first doll had blond hair, and a white, plastic face.  My second doll was a bald-headed, white-plastic faced boy 'Preemie.'  I loved them all, but something was missing.  "I want a black Cabbage Patch kid," I told my mom soon after.  Fortunately, she has never questioned my so-called "off-beat" desires.

And, just yesterday, I read an article about how one of Angie Jolie's (whom I have just adored for years now) white daughters was photographed carrying around a black doll.  Here's what the article had to say about experiments with young children and dolls:

"Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted experiments with black children, who were asked questions regarding which doll was bad or ugly and given an option between a black doll and white doll.  Most children associated positive qualities with the white doll, and 63 percent preferred playing with the white doll, leading the Clarks to conclude that black children "indicate a clear-cut preference for white and some of them evidence emotional conflict when requested to indicate a color preference.  It is clear that the Negro child, by the age of 5, is aware of the fact that to be colored in contemporary American society is a mark of inferior status.  A child accepts as early as 6, 7 or 8 the negative stereotypes about his own group."

The article went on to say,

"Six decades later the experiment was revisited.  When 19 black children, ranging from age 5 to 9, were asked which doll was nice, according to Good Morning America, "Sixty years ago, 56 percent of the children chose the white doll. The majority of our kids chose black or both and 32 percent chose the white doll," an improvement, or so it seemed.  But according to those administering the experiment, some of the black girls still struggled to see positive qualities in the black dolls.  "Second-grader Jamya Atkins, 7, picked the white doll as soon as she sat down and before the questions began.  She said the white doll was shiny and the black doll was frowning."

In conclusion, the articles states:
"When asked about Jolie's daughter playing with a black doll and whether it is culturally significant, Jeff Gardere, a psychologist who has treated children, said that black children playing with white dolls can have a negative impact on their self-esteem, but when it comes to white children playing with black dolls, "I think that's an amazing thing, because it has an opposite effect." He explained that "white is still considered to be a preferential color and preferential status in our society, so to put a white doll with a black child will have a negative impact for most black children but to put a black doll for a white child might make that white child more sympathetic to or more open to having a black person in their lives and loving and respecting black people."

(Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/column/keli-goff-why-it-matters-that-angelina-jolie-s-white/article_9c912970-b058-5531-afaf-656725a0412c.html#ixzz2m0OIigzO)

HERE'S TO PUTTING DOLLS OF ALL COLORS, BODY TYPES, AGES AND ABILITIES INTO OUR CHILDREN'S HANDS.

 

Luxurious Privilege (aka Thanks~Giving)

SHAKTI

It's the day before Thanksgiving, and we awoke to you taking photographs of me naked in your bed.
Milky curves, white breasts and round hips spilling over soft, down blankets built up around me.  We weren't posing; we were merely capturing the intimacy as it hangs, thick and sweet, between us.  

Your photos documenting my curves along with a myriad of looks, including lines on my face like that of a haggard, old lady.  I irregularly whine at how "unattractive" I am in so many of these captured moments, for one of my truths is that I am just as vain as I have been raised to bee.   Still, you softly prod my raw vulnerability along.  "They are all within you," you say, in response to my multi-dimensionality that looks nothing like the glossy, two-dimensional images that assault my daily gaze, tricking me into beliefs of a sterile and flat feminine beauty.  

It's not easy to always swallow my true humanity - to compassionately allow for this "darkness" within me that has been demonized for far too long now.  It's called Earth.  Sometimes, it bites and it stings.  Other times, it erupts and it spews.  Mainly, though, it just gives.  Our only task is to merely surrender to its offering. 

I surrendered into the magic of a Tuesday spent enjoying jovial laughter as I drove "Miss Daisy" (or, er, my mother) to a downtown courthouse.  Enjoying my solitude, I strolled along the Embarcadero, where Green Peace's water craft, the Rainbow Warrior, was in port all the way from Amsterdam, before heeding my body's desire for protein.  Heading up that Golden Hill, I walked into one of my many old jaunts - that volcanic cafe where "you" frequently are. 

I felt nervous energy at the prospect of seeing you, not because I cared to see you - I feel "complete" having recently shared what I wanted to say ("You are a cock tease who needs to have the devil fucked out of him!" I texted after your random wondering of where I am now) - but beecuase I feared what you would think about seeing me.  ("Is she stalking me?" etc.)  Yet, all I can ever know and trust are my own intentions, thus I will not let insecurities or fear dictate my forward momentum.  Naturally, however, there you are - standing right outside - and, there I go, getting in line right beehind your girlfriend.  Ha!  The Universe's comedic antics just keep on coming!  And, all I can do is smile and enjoy ~ surrender to what is. 

At the park, I climb into the welcoming embrace of Grandma.  It's been too long since I've sat up in her thick branches.  Another "you" joins me there and together we just bee ~ like the brother and sister that we are.  Your youth - ten years my junior - dances before my eyes.  We still don't know "why" we've been brought together, yet we remain committed to a vision of a much greater purpose than our little, human eyes can fathom.  Only time will tell.

Returning "home" to my sweetest you is quickly beecoming a welcomed habit.  After months spent of our fucking the life back into you, your internal fire is rising.  I share with you a heart-thought that has been steadily building in my body-mind about integrating the moon cycle into my teachings in order for men and women to once again gently flow through their daily lives.  

Next, we are off to collectively meet and plan, build and organize.  On the table between us, we place three small piles - a financial pittance for months of diligent work.  Gratefully, we receive, even as I also taste Life's comic farce once more - if this is all a game, of rolling the dice, collecting and spending the green bills, and moving ahead, step by step, then I am grown tired of playing in the minor leagues. 

Sweet Sistar, you invite me into your Sacred Space to partake of some green medicine.  Nervously, I acquiesce (for it's been months and, in the past, I have easily fallen into abusing, in lieu of LOVING, Mary Jane), then we all depart to a night of celebrating the dark at our regular dance studio during our regular meeting time.  I take to the floor and the walls and blocks, impediments and dams that keep me from fully surrendering on the dance floor of LIFE have mystically melted.  I melt into your arms, and yours, and yours, and you hold me, and lift me.  You dazzle me, and love me.  I surrender and I come to - to push and guide us all into a deeper state of awareness and bee-ing.  Sometimes, it's soft and gentle, other times it can feel like a rude cracking.  Waking up is not always comfortable terrain.

Sweat laden and exhausted, we return home to experience our first "fight."  Who's to say what it is about, except for energy moving through?  You say that you've seen a different me on this night (a vixen, perhaps) and She is not backing down when you're at a loss for understanding Her.  "I don't know if I can accept you," you say.  And, I understand - I know these feelings well.  So many times I wonder if I can just breathe into my discomfort of wanting something else in order to just accept what is.   So, I don't try to convince you otherwise.  I just let you bee where you are.  "I want you to thrive," I say, "with or without me."

Miraculously, however, with each adventure into as of yet unexplored emotional terrain, our sex life also mirrors this plunge into new depths.  On the dance floor earlier, I also noticed how my brothers were helping me to invert my orgasm with a full release of my spine.  And, what I know is that

KALIYANTRA (click for link)

ALL of this MEDICINE is vital and necessary for not just my vibrant well-beeing, but for all of ours.



P.S. In gratitude for all of the abundant flourishing that is my life now, I purchased a "grab & give" bag at Sprouts! today.  It's a paper sack filled with Thanksgiving dinner ingredients and food stuffs and it will bee gifted to families at Father Joe's Village for tomorrow's celebration.  I also placed a small donation inside of a Charity Worker's can outside of the grocery store's doors. 
Please, GIVE WHEN, AND AS OFTEN, AS YOU CAN.  
Our luxurious privilege comes with great responsibility.