the bad dominicana

mujerinterrumpida:

bad-dominicana:

jalwhite:

carlosaglive:

witchsistah:

queernonymoose:

bad-dominicana:

jalwhite:

jcoleknowsbest:

mujerinterrumpida:

“This is disgusting,” I say, tearing the poster off of the register and holding it up for the man and woman behind the counter.  “This is the reason people hate themselves, people kill themselves, people kill each other.  You’re contributing to people dying…how does that feel?” - Carlos Andres Gomez

Some stuff in this article has me side-eying real hard….. REAL HARD!!!

I needed to sit with this for a little while before I could break down what I was feeling.

I have definitely been that person before. One minute, you’re out and about trying to do A, B, or C and then something happens. You encounter something that sends you to that really intense - ‘this shit is just too much, too real, too deep’  - place and suddenly you have to let it all out or risk being consumed by the intensity of what you’ve just experienced. I think that’s what happened to Carlos and I can really relate to that.

It reminds me of this one time when I was doing undergrad in Connecticut. I was at a smallish house party that was almost completely people of color. Latin music was being played loudly and a bunch of us were sitting around drinking and talking about some recent altercations with school’s public safety officers stemming from some questionable (racist) campus security emails that were being sent on a weekly basis. My boo at the time, a rich light skinned half Korean half white man who had grown up in a rural environment, started to crack jokes about how if the cops or public safety showed up, he should be the one to go out to talk to them because he (in his mind) looked white. At first we all kind of laughed but as the joke kept going, you could feel the mood shift completely and folks became uncomfortable. Suddenly, there was no humor in what was being said.

Later, when we were alone, he asked me if I was mad at him because of his joke. I told him that ‘mad’ wasn’t the word - I felt talked over. For me, the joke stopped being funny when it became clear that he really was telling us to ‘stay inside the house’ while he handled things with the police. I told him that I’m sure he had the best of intentions in wanting to help out his friends but what he really was doing was reinforcing some fucked up dynamics by asserting that he would be the face of our group (subtext: because his face was more acceptable). So not only did we need to be silent (not speak to the officers) we also needed to be invisible (stay inside, out of sight).  There were other light skinned folks present, my self included, but there was a reason he didn’t think that we should go outside - we were light Black and Latino folks. I told him that sometimes offering to do something is very different than saying you should be the one to do something.

Of course, that situation is different. But for me, it was an example of when good intentions manifest themselves in questionable or problematic ways. I think it would be a mistake to brush aside critiques of Carlos’ story or the “side eyes” it may receive as being from people who aren’t invested in this in any kind of real world way. I’d like to think that I’d have follow up questions for Carlos regardless of if I knew him - I mean, maybe even more so then.

His words leave me feeling very unsettled at moments:

Suddenly I feel a lot taller than everyone else.  As I soak in the moment, I realize that I am in fact about half a foot taller than every person in this store.  Right next to the fashion district.  In this tight-knit neighborhood, crowded meeting place for so many newly-arrived West African immigrants trying to sell their wares, hustling hard, to survive in America after winning a lottery (more precious than any I will ever know) to get into this country –

made for people who look like me.

I see the two daughters of the mother from Guinea staring at me, a bit bewildered by the entire exchange.  Both fear and admiration in their curious young eyes, watching me, the lightest skinned fool in the room hold court –

with my green eyes from my WASP mother, my light skin, and my shade under six foot build, having just berated and shamed and belittled every person within thirty feet of me.  You happy now, Carlos?

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man behind the counter says, “I’ll tell the owner what you said.  It’s just that people buythis stuff.  I don’t think it’s right, but they do.  They can’t live without it.  We might not have a store if it wasn’t for this.”

So what about those girls? And the man of color who works in a store that he doesn’t own and that might not exist were it not for the demand for this skin cream? What do they walk away with? In his own words, Carlos acknowledges that what he’s done is berate someone.

In conclusion, Carlos writes:

I don’t care what your race, class, gender, religion, sexuality, ability, nationality, language, identity, or story is…we need to make the world a safer place for each other.   We need to make sure that when we see things like Skin Whitenizer in a store window that we say something – every single time.  Because it is a terrorist threat.  More real than any other about which we’ve been warned.  It is in fact more than a threat.  It as an act of the most horrific aggression, a weapon that terrorizes us all, but most harshly targets those who are disenfranchised and oppressed, convincing us the greatest lie ever told:

You are not enough.

I can certainly relate to Carlos’ passion and his feeling of being fed the fuck up with all the ways in which society tries to tell us that our bodies and our lives ain’t worth shit and I definitely agree with his belief that “we need to make the world a safer place for each other” but I think we need to think critically about how we do this. If you say you’re trying to empower me so that I have pride in my self, what does it mean if when you walk away, I don’t feel that all? So, what happened to the people who were the receptacles for Carlos’ outpouring? What does it mean for them to have encountered this light-skinned Latino man who wants to them to understand color politics the way that he does?

And that is where my own look of concern comes from.

frankly, his rage was misdirected and as a lightskinned POC berating darkskinned POC who will never enjoy the lightskin privilege he was born with, and feeling SUPERIOR to them on top of it

this, my peoples

is how you do it WRONG. there are power dynamics and all he did was play to them on some savior shit, as someone who is above them on the social scale to begin with. know your motherfuckin place, when you preachin about how you *know* about the hierarchy better than those below you.

he dead ass wrong. does he do that shit to the WHITE people who got us here? prolly not.

boy bai, not w them shoes on.

All the commentary.

Commentary truth.

I wrote the original piece.  I wanted to clarify a few things:

I am privileged - light-skinned, male, able-bodied, college-educated, among other things.  I am entitled, although I wish I wasn’t.  I want to take ownership of my privilege and entitlement, be accountable.  I want to use my power in a way that does not reinforce the systems of power already in place.  I’m not sure that’s possible, but I want to try.  I don’t think how I reacted to the incident yesterday was “correct” or heroic or resolved anything. The entire incident to me is completely unsettling.  I did not post the story to glorify or make me look like a hero (as evidence by the many commentors who think I came off as an asshole, which I’d agree with), I put this online to try to critically engaged a complex discussion about race.

My heartfelt question to everyone here is:

What would have been the RIGHT thing for me to do yesterday?  

How could I have critically, constructively, and fairly addressed the selling of skin bleach in a situation with all of those different factors?

I don’t care who’s right in this discussion.  I don’t care if I come off as an asshole or anything else, I value what anyone has to say in this forum if it brings this discussion closer to something meaningful.  This isn’t about right or wrong, I know this is messy.  I’m listening.

Carlos,

I personally wanted to acknowledge the rage that seemed to overcome you because, as I mentioned previously, I feel it too at times. Sometimes it consumes me so much that I feel as though the sensation will never leave my body. The need to fight for my people by any means necessary is so strong that it can be blinding. For me, that is always a dangerous moment because I risk losing sight of what is actually important - I lose perspective. I think something similar may have happened to you, the moment you began to berate darker skinned people of color about skin lightening cream. If you were the lightest person in the room, I can guarantee that everyone in the room already had an understanding of skin politics - of lightness being worshiped - blackness, darkness hated. We learn that at a young age. And while race, culture, language, education, and class definitely have an impact on how we understand and communicate these understandings - the understandings do exist.

I certainly can’t tell you what to do when that feeling of passion climbs into your body  - I’m still learning the ways to manage it within myself - but I can suggest that you take a moment and think ‘to what end’ the next time you find yourself in a situation like this.

What happens to those darker skinned folks that were on the receiving end of your outrage? How did they feel about themselves for the rest of the day? Today and tomorrow. Were they are pinned between shame on either side?  The shame of being dark in a world that only cares for light and the shame of having a light skinned person tell them they should know/want better.

If he was willing to entertain the conversation, you could have asked the man working in the store, what it’s like for him to be a dark skinned Bengali man selling skin whitener in Manhattan. Or, did he feel like he had any power to change the perception that whiteness/lightness is better in his community and or the selection of products being sold in the store? This man is in the trenches of it. He is dark. And his livelihood is tied up in this beauty myth. Only it isn’t a myth - like he said, people buy that cream because they need it. They might even see a reward for their usage - a step closer to having the skin privilege that some of us light skinned folks have. In all of this though, we really can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of who this is really about - whose voices are the voices that should be at the center of the dialogue.

As you said, it is messy. This stuff runs deep. No one conversation on the internet or in a store will end the pervasiveness of racism in our communities. So, always keeping the end goal in mind - improving our lives and the lives of our peoples, I want to turn this back around to you, Carlos.

• What impact did you hope your words and actions would have?
• Do you think that impact was achieved? If not, what impact do you think they had?
• Would you actively do this again? What would you hope to change in the future?
• Will you have any follow-up with the man working in the store or with the store’s owner? Will you reach out to other stores that sell similar products? 
• How else do you think we can address colorism in our communities?

Best of luck to you - and all of us,

Jal

except no one needs to acknowledge no lightskinned cis dudes *rage* over the pain of the darker POC he was berating for feeling the effects of whiteness every day.

this dude forgets his *rage* is just a product of his entitlement. guess what dark people feel every damn day? not shocked at that kinda shit, thats for damn sure. that you were so surprised is because youre lightskinned and would never need it or have it hawked at you.  this. aint. new.

and are you challenging the fucking media and government and lightskinned POC and white people in your community (who are the ones who benefit from whiteness and shove folks out of shit to the point where they feel they have to bleach to be human), in this aggressive fashion? i dont believe so.

are you preaching to your fellow near-white POC who run everything in latin america w that fervor? i bet not.

go be angry at the fucking system that props you up as the ideal and leaves dark people as fucking animals. not the dark people for feeling pressured to look like you. wtf?

and the fact he expects us to educate him is more entitlement.

here i am taking time from my day as an oppressed ass afrolatina who DOES feel the pressure to look like your near-white ass (coz the only way i see myself on latin american tv is if im a maid or a half nekkid whore and even thats rare), explaining to you, in all your *education* that you arent gaining a damn thing by further bashing people who are below you on the social hierarchy,…….

i have to TELL you that instead of aiming your fury at darker people for living in a world that dehumanizes them and places them BELOW you unless they bleach, and surviving however they can, ……. you need to aim that fury at people like YOURSELF who benefit from it all, and enact it on a daily basis, along w white folks and the whole fucking system.

are you just as angry when afrolatinas are nowhere to be found in latin american media? do you go smashing shit at tv networks? and magazines? in the government? do you? or do you save the rage for the people who look like they wont hold you very accountable for it? coz your ass knows good and well you wouldnt get away w that shit a white establishment.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Have some respect for another human being. Cursing him out is not okay. Let’s remember Carlos is a human being. Secondly, this dialogue is hard enough as it is for people of color regardless of their skin tone or how they came to be. I am aware that on Tumblr and the internet, the mode of operation is to be completely irate, enraged and disrespectful anytime we feel justified to fly off handles and berate people.That doesn’t make it okay to speak to people that way though.

I get the side-eyeing reactions and respect your space to have them. I know this brother, I know his heart and what he stands for. I don’t know that I would have done what he did and still, I support his reaction, understanding how visceral the pain is for everyone. It is hard out here for folks of color. I get that. He gets that. I always welcome anyone who is as deeply disturbed about this as I am to speak up. We are so quick to point out what we think is wrong with a situation instead of appreciating it for what it is and as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of each other.

Disagree all you want about how he reacted. But respect him when you express your self.

those people who he was PHYSICALLY and verbally aggressive around, are human too. and he aint the first or the last and i havent even cussed him out yet so ima speak however the fuck i feel given this is the 878678675th time this fucking week. which is what people like him dont fucking get.

so i dont really care if you dont agree w how the fuck i feel coz i am not you. YOU can feel however you like.

your tone policing is right up there in derailing for dummies. you can google it.

youre basically saying we should be grateful he cared in the first place. oh well. he fucked up. consequences may sometimes be words you dont like to fuckin hear. thats life when you enact your fucking power over people like that.

did he go fucking apologize to those people? i havent heard you mention that at all. youre policing my text on the screen but i havent seen you say a thing about his altercation face to face which he had no business enacting. you backing up a lightskinned latino MAN, telling me to be NICER to him when im reacting to him being an asshole to darker people, is also seeped in some shitty ass power dynamics. side eyeing you

coz the only thing that was said was the damn truth. you allow him a visceral reaction to peoples faces to where hes fuckin up a business space, physically. but not me, via text. when i am one of the people directly affected by this particular kinda bullshit and not him.

SIDE FUCKING EYE coz i and all the rest of us are attacked day in day out on here and you NEVER jump in to say a damn thing either.

i love you, and im entirely honest when i say that. but my fucking rage is more justified than his will ever be and the fact you cant see that is

FUCKED

(via ynannarising)