𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘰 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶. 𝘞𝘩𝘺? 𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴? 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘰. 𝘐𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴. 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦.
My mother said this to me when she was criticizing me for reading the DSM at a pool party. I had checked it out of the library and I really wasn't able to put it down. Social gatherings with my parents' family friends were not something I enjoyed so I usually found somewhere to sit and read.
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These pool parties were all of my parents Black friends and their kids. One of the men there had a white wife and she wasn't very popular. Another guy had a mixed wife ... who looked very white but her mother was a very dark Native American which made this man's wife more popular ... more exotic ... and more acceptable to the other Black families.
The "unacceptable wife" sat and talked to me the whole party. She expressed an interest in what I was reading. I was maybe 14 or so at the time.
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My brother and I are both adopted (from different homes) and while I never looked into my birth family, he did because he has schizophrenia which has a genetic factor. He did find his birth mother and she's darker like him.
Our adoptive mother was very light skinned, not light enough to pass or anything but she looked almost Asian in her coloring as @IronButterfly can attest ...
My mom was born in 1939 in the south ... she didn't like white people obviously.
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But it became really obvious to me that she was really threatened by the amount of time I spent talking with this white woman at this pool party. This woman spoke to me like an adult, she wasn't mean or condescending. She was actually the first ADULT to speak to me the way she did and we had a great conversation the ENTIRE 5 or 6 hours I was there. No adult had ever spoken to me for that long or even cared about what I had to say and what a shock, it was a white woman.
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All of my friends were white. All of them. Black people didn't like me, they still don't. I spent time at white people's homes ... went camping, fishing, to concerts, to the opera with white people. First Broadway play? White friend's family. First fishing trip? White friend's family. First opera? White friend's family. First D&D? White friends etc. My parents were not interested in "white things" so I didn't get exposed to them and it was especially rough because those were things I liked.
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It was weird but I got the impression that the more "educated" I became, the more my mother seemed to associate this with "whiteness".
My mother was valedictorian of her college class but to her education was a means of escaping the south, of escaping oppression, of having freedom and opportunity as a woman. Being educated was just a means to obtain a piece of privilege white people had.
Me educating myself on my own, for fun, for joy, was - to her - "white energy"
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When I went to "Black Summer Camp" I experienced brutal bullying both physical and mental from other Black campers simply because I read thick books (Piers Anthony was hardly Tolkien) or because I preferred reading to other activities. My trunk was full of clothes and BOOKS and I got beat up for it. I got beat up for using big words. I got beat up for not liking Black movies. I got beat up for being too close to whiteness and liking "white things" like violin and Hitchcock movies.
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In the first part of this thread I quoted my mom saying she also thought about things but that those things were "important" as opposed to me reading things that were "not important". The suggestion being that me simply wanting to learn about something outside of what I needed simply to survive was "nonsense". But it was also "white nonsense" because it attracted the interest and conversation of white people.
This bothered me for so many years growing up. Bothered me too much.
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When my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia I was in college. He was really not well. He was very unstable. He had to be institutionalized for a while.
My mom was really lost and confused at the time and when I was home on one break she came into my room crying and wanted to talk to me about schizophrenia to get a better understanding of what it was because she knew I "had an interest in psychology"
And yes, I told her to go find a white person to ask about it.
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Is that petty? Of course.
Especially since I was in college by this point and I had long since done the work I needed to evolve past all the abuse and trauma I suffered growing up.
But it was BECAUSE of all that work I had to do and all of what I had to survive growing up and even through my years at college that I wasn't going to give her anything of the knowledge and wisdom that she tried to belittle me for.
She didn't deserve anything from me and she never earned my respect.
𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥, 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘪𝘥, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭. - Maya Angelou
And before you ask ... no, my mother had absolutely no idea what I meant by what I had said. She thought I was being flippant and rude and she had no idea why I'd say such a thing when she was asking me for help. Of course she had no idea. She would never have any idea and that was the whole point.
Bullies always forget. Abusers always forget - or they remember and gaslight you so you don't remember.
The best gift my parents ever gave me was a toy typewriter and a journal.
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My mother gave me my first journal so I could "write down all my problems", but I spent the next 30 years writing about, analyzing, and understanding everyone else's.
My problems were, and remain, primarily caused by other people and their unknown, unresolved, unmanaged psychological, emotional, and spiritual issues.
Learning about and adopting #stoicism in middle school and high school helped me navigate a world filled with unhinged and unwell people who lack self awareness and the capacity to care about what that does to everyone around them.
The world won't change because people don't care to.
Protect your peace by any means necessary. ❤️
@thewebrecluse Timely advice.
🖤
Elaine, I really appreciate learning about who you are, though it grieves me to hear the cost of your independence & brilliance. I value that you share parts of your story. You hold a bright light up to being true to oneself. Thank you.
@ATXJane Thanks always for receiving my threads so positively and giving such genuine feedback. I share the things I do not because it weighs on me and not because I haven't resolved it but because I deal with unwell people every day and the things I experience online remind me of lessons I learned when I was younger and I feel like my experience, and the knowledge I gained, could be helpful to other people. ❤️
@thewebrecluse
In 6th grade there was Myron, a Cheyenne boy. The town I grew up in was probably 20% Cheyenne. Myron was pretty bright. Beat me in the spelling competitions and was slated to go on to area/state competitions. He backed out at the last minute and never excelled again. Found out he had been "told" not to. The folks in his community did not want him to cross some line neither he nor I knew was there. Damn shame. He was a credit to any community.
@Ulf It's a very common thing with members of the #GlobalMajority ... they do that kind of thing to their own often for the same reasons. It's a sad reality.
Nobody else gets to tell you that there's a right way and a wrong way of being who you are or living out your identity. Whichever way you find to do it is your right way.
The people who tell you these things are often intensely uncomfortable in their own bodies and have a hard time dealing with the disconnect between who they think they should be and who they are. They compensate by trying to regulate other people's lives, as if that affirmed their normality.
@DavidSalo yes I figured that out in middle school which was both good and bad for me to learn so early. People bully you because they need to compensate for things they lack or because they don't know any other way to interact with the world because that's what they learned or were groomed to believe about the world. It didn't help me much when I was younger because I had no freedom to escape it, but it was valuable understanding to have going into adulthood.
I think this really bothered my mother because she absolutely would not stop talking about it for weeks. Any opportunity she had to bring up this woman, Mary, she would take and it was always in a very negative way and it was always out of nowhere.
At one point she said the reason I didn't have any Black friend was because I had "white energy" (we lived in the suburbs) and that is why I only attracted white people around me for example this woman at the pool party.
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