"You talk like a white girl."

My last post described my plans for the month of February and possibly an extension beyond this month in honor of Black History. One website is asking one question a day about "blackness." The responses I've read thus far have been quite interesting, but I wanted to feature some responses on my own blog.

Sure, I know other people who are shades of brown like myself. But I don't know their life experiences. Just like no one really knows mine...I couldn't tell it if I tried, but I could offer a piece of it.

I reached out to some of my good friends, as well as family members to help me out by sharing their stories by answering a question of their choice, posted for the month of February. We each have a unique experience and no one can understand and tell it better than the person who's been through it. I will feature the entries I receive one a week or two a week, depending on how many entries I have.

With a goal of opening minds and taking a chance at understanding the life of someone different from your own, I offer these entries...starting with my own (below). If you have a submission, please comment/contact me and I will be happy to feature you.

-Stacia

Q: When did you first realize you were Black?

A: I can’t say I particularly remember a defining moment where I looked at myself and said “I’m black.” As a child, the term “black” can be damaging because it’s looked at as a literal term, and it can be confusing…most “Black” or “African-American” people (whatever term you choose) look down at their hands and don’t see a shade resembling black. I would say that a child views the term “Black” that same way. For this reason, my family often refrains from using the terms “black” and “white”, especially around my nephew, a 4-year-old child. So, looking at my skin tone, I always thought I was brown. My time as a small child, up to about 3rd or 4th grade, was spent on military bases where I played and interacted with kids of all shades, and saw combinations of parents from different backgrounds all the time. This was my reality as a military brat. I viewed everyone as just another color out of a box of crayons. I couldn’t see a difference when it came to inequality, discrimination, etc. I didn’t experience any of that as a child.

But when I moved to Tennessee (where my father retired), I remember a little Black girl saying to me in 4th grade “you talk like a white girl.” I couldn’t really fathom what this meant but I cried and cried. I just knew it hurt my feelings. At that point, I struggled for a while to find my “identity.” My eyes were opened to how some people talked differently from others but there were people of all shades who were just like me…I don’t really remember a specific point where I could blatantly see the difference in treatment but it was probably sometime in high school. I’d be around groups of people that were white and while they’d talk, they would often reference a Black person with some offensive description that made me feel some kind of way…a feeling of discomfort. Quite a few things happened, actually. I can recall some examples so clearly it’s as if they happened yesterday. When one of my white friends would hang out with me and other Black people, she’d be accused to acting like a “wigger.” Whatever that meant…it was pure ignorance. Like déjà vu, I was told (by a white person this time) that I was the “Whitest black person they knew.” Once again, I was insulted and my feelings were hurt. I even heard a girl in my class once reference Black people as “colored.” SMH. One of my Korean friends told me the negative things she would hear about African-Americans in Korea before coming to the United States…how we were “bad.” However, she told me that she realized that she had more in common with us than most of her white counterparts. She spoke as if she understood Black Americans better through some sort of “minority connection” that caused her to experience the same types of discrimination and uneasiness that Black people in America faced. These particular things stuck in my mind, obviously. To this day, I haven’t forgotten them and several other instances where I’ve felt…well, Black, I guess.

I could never and will never understand why certain people, white or black, equate my intelligence, the way I speak, or the way I carry myself as being “white-like.” I’ve always just done me…and, until Tennessee, that was good enough. My life experiences have forced me to open my eyes and see that ignorance doesn’t discriminate. It crosses color barriers. It's a taught behavior to see that people are different and my parents never taught me to see that. They raised me to believe that we are all the same. But it was the kids whose parents did teach them to see differences that opened my eyes to realizing, I was different.

Black History Month...Colorblind

written by: stacia_doss.
Over the years, I've written a lot of poems that can all be relevantly used in honor of Black History month. I want to do something a little different on TWU this February and hopefully continue throughout the year in between my usual posting subjects.

I stumbled upon this site: http://howtobeblack.me. It offers viewpoints from a variety of people (not just Black people) in honor of the book "How to be Black," a lesson that people from any cultural background would be intrigued by, including myself. In short, here is what the site is doing: "Throughout Black History Month (and beyond), we’ll be focusing on questions of identity." Check it out on your own, because I have obviously given a pretty vague description. I, myself, will be answering some of these questions and I invite you all to, as well.

Here are the first eight questions that have been posted:

Blackness Questionnaire

1. When Did You First Realize You Were Black?

2. How Black Are You?

3. Have You Ever Wanted to Not Be Black?

4. Can You Swim?

5. How’s That Post-racial Thing Working Out for Ya?

6. Why Can’t We Just Ignore Racial Differences Already?

7. Has Social Media Affected How People Understand What It Means To Be Black?

8. How Does Race Affect Your Faith In The United States?

First, though, I wanted to post a note I published on Facebook in 2006. It still is and will probably always be relevant:

i think back to when i was little...

i didnt see color..

all i saw was people-

until that point in life that i realized,

we're not the same,

the point in life where one incident shows us

that we are treated differently...

but now , though grown and far from naive...

im still ignorant to the question of "why?"

why did i have to reach that point in life where i realized

such a thing as color existed?

sometimes i wish we all had the innocence of a child...

when different colors of skin were blind to my eyes,

and we were all ONE people....

Define charisma.

Article by:stacia_doss.

charisma[kuh-riz-muh]

1. Theology. a divinely conferred gift or power.

2. a spiritual power or personal quality that gives an individual influence or authority over large numbers of people.

3. the special virtue of an office, function, position, etc., that confers or is thought to confer on the person holding it an unusual ability for leadership, worthiness of veneration, or the like.

This is the noun commonly used to describe a quality possessed by our current president, Mr. Barack Obama. I’d say that (looking at the definition), it’s a pretty accurate term.

I’m a very open-minded person, so I’m interested in hearing various viewpoints. I may not agree and I may get frustrated at the opinions of others. Nonetheless, I listen to them…

With that being said, I have watched a couple of the Republican debates. Though I’ve missed most of them, I have refreshed myself after just about every one of them with recaps of the events from the night before amongst the GOP. I was not impressed by any of them.

All that I saw was a slew of candidates with some pretty harsh attacks toward one another who couldn’t agree on much of anything except for this clear intent: "Obama" needs to be out of the White House. They represented a divided party, and as potential candidates have dropped out, they haven’t even been unanimously endorsing the same sole candidate. (Huntsman endorses Romney, Perry endorses Gingrich, Cain endorses...uh..."the people")

Bottom line, when I look at the potential Republican nominees, I see nothing but wealthy candidates who seek POWER and a “title” with hardly any concrete plans for the country and little to no ability to relate to the average American at all. They pretty much just stand for “getting Obama out.” Do we know anything else about these candidates? I mean, personally, what do we know about them outside of their record on politics, their religious beliefs and their families. Do we know who they are as real people? Do they even know who they, themselves, are? Artificial is all I see.

President Obama is like no other candidate I’ve seen or witnessed in my lifetime or have read about in my history books. We know him, or at least we feel like we do. That, my friends is a very comforting quality. As a product of multiracial parents, he represents the “Melting Pot” we call America, meaning he can relate to so many of us. He also has experience working with real people…real Americans, not just being someone’s wealthy boss and “firing” people (as one of the GOP mentioned he liked having the ability to do).

Every time he expresses his opinion or shows his humorous/outgoing side… (the real him), he is criticized by “haters” and naysayers who blame him solely for them not having a job and the country’s current economic state. “He’s not funny.” “He should be creating jobs, not telling jokes.” When I read these types of comments, they make me shake my head and they irritate me….which is why I try my very best to not read them under articles and posts. However, like I said, I force myself to hear and read the opinions of everyone anyway.

He’s probably the “realest” candidate this country has ever seen, and he’s human. I guess POLITICS and only things involving POLITICS should be the only words that ever come out of his mouth, huh?

Give the guy a break. (People would even have a negative comment about that sentence)He does his job, he compromises and still stands his ground, all while giving us a piece of who he really is. I can’t say America has ever seen that, and I hope that we will continue to for the next 4 years.

I know this is long, and there are probably things I should have said and didn't but I'll end it here.

Thank you for being a friend.

Funny funny.

Iphone, you think you’re so great.

(Credit: Larry Magid)

I’ve had an iPhone 4S for eh…about two months, I guess…and it’s cool. But Siri, (the main component that adds that “S” to the end of my phone’s name) isn’t quite as brilliant as the commercials make her look. You can ask her a handful of questions with sensible answers. The rest are…well, quite comical if you ask me.

Check out this interview that Siri graciously agreed to do with CBS News & CNET. Impressive or annoying? I will let you be the judge. Let’s just say…Siri definitely needs some work before she re-introduces herself on the next Apple iPhone.

Listen to it below. Read full article here.

Forget about the price tag?

written by: stacia_doss.
It seems nearly impossible to do so in professional sports. (Now begins my rant…) Price tags determine who will be on your “Championship-bound” team and sometimes even determine if the team will even continue to exist (in that particular city). Such is the case of the St. Louis Rams.

One. yard. short.

Before I moved to the area, I didn’t care too much about the Rams. All’s I remembered is them beating the Titans in the Superbowl years ago. (How could I forget that image to the right?) I didn’t really follow baseball, either, but I have allowed myself to be slightly sucked into the Cardinals’ news and Rams news, too. Not too long ago, I was informed that the Rams team will likely leave the city in 2014 if significant improvements are not soon made to the Edward Jones dome. In the long run, the city gains revenue from the Rams being around, but hey, they will probably be gone. From living in Greater St. Louis, I see the professional baseball fans around here far outweigh the football ones anyway.

Back to the Cardinals. I also was particularly and almost involuntarily aware of its latest Pujols fiasco. The battle to get him…who would put up the most money? It was all over the news in multiple stories. Frankly, I didn’t care, but I downloaded a local news app simply to enter an Ipad 2 contest and got a surprise “update notice” the next morning. It was Breaking News that Albert Pujols had signed a ten year contract with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. He was drafted by the Cardinals in 2001, and he was ready for a change. Plus, the Angels clearly put a bigger “price tag” up for Pujols. People got a little sad around here, some even hostile, but hey, I’m happy for the guy.

Those are just two fine examples of how forgetting about the price tag is nearly impossible in sports. “Dream teams” only exist when they’re not dreamt up and pieced together on purpose. Real dreams of teams come together over time.  

I’m ecstatic that the NBA Lockout is over, but the past five days have brought my head spinning. Tyson Chandler to the (New York) Knicks, Lamar Odom to Dallas (Mavericks), Chris Paul to the…Who knows now? And Dwight Howard begging to be out of Orlando. Price tags…and dream teams. They go hand-in-hand, I suppose.

You can expect my next post to be more uniform than this, but I had to get that off my chest. It’s been a while. 

My! The power of Technology....

I will soon have the latest iPhone. Stay tuned to see what lovely music I may create with my device :-) Check out this awesome video/creativity. I discovered this Youtube clip that's a little over a year old on this article. Cool, huh?