What if I told that you that when Ben and I first started dating, it wasn’t because he found me particularly attractive? Okay, well, maybe that’s not surprising.
When you read the story about how Ben and I met, it’s all very romantic. We meet in a salsa class, and we danced with each other from across the tracks. However, Ben and I were merely acquaintances then, and Ben grew up in a culture where white skin was the standard of beauty. He was not at all interested in me then, and when he became interested, he definitely fell more for my personality and writing style.
It’s not surprising to me that the book and movie Black Beauty is the story of a horse, not a human being.
When I first went to China, I loved that many people used umbrellas on sunny days. It made a lot of sense to me to want to carry some shade with you in the blistering Beijing heat. Even though Beijing is in the north and can get very cold, it is quite the sauna in the summer time. I didn’t know then that people were also, maybe even primarily, using the umbrellas to keep their skin from becoming tanned or too “dark.” In Chinese, this literally translates to “black.”
My first year in China, I met a student who said she would only ever travel to Egypt in her dreams because she wanted to see the pyramids, but she didn’t want to get too dark (“become black”). The sun in Africa was too strong, and she seemed to have the impression that irrevocable damage would be done to her white skin if she ever set foot on the continent. I was amazed by this. I mean, carrying shade around with you in the heat I could understand, but avoiding the sun to the extent of not considering a one- or two-week trip to see one of the seven wonders of the world suggested a fear of dark skin that troubled me.
Once a couple years ago, as my belly dance class was taking a break from our three-hour practice session, a woman leaned over and took a photo with me (without asking) because she wanted to show her friends how light her skin was in comparison to mine. She apparently had recently gone on holiday and gotten somewhat tanned. Her friends had been making fun of her “black” skin since, but now she had a real black person to show them how white she still was. What great luck!
Even in completely random situations, where I simply walk onto a train, people may use my dark skin as a way to elevate themselves. A few months ago, I went by myself to Shanghai for a two-day Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) workshop. I got on the metro one evening to go have dinner with friends in the city. It was rush hour, so the train was quite packed, but I had just enough space by the door. I would only be on the train for two stops. In that time, the family behind me started a loud conversation about me. The father asked his two children what they thought about how I looked. The boy, who was probably about 10-12 years old, decided that I was “hideous, unsightly.” The little girl and father agreed. They just kept repeating these phrases in that mocking way that promotes a kind of group bonding among them. When we arrived at the first stop, I moved further into the train to avoid the crowds of people rushing in and out of the doors. This meant going past the family behind me, who moved out of my way in that dramatic “Don’t touch her, it may be catching!” kind of way.
I said and did nothing.
I understood that some forms of abuse were not about me. I felt a kind of pity for the family who rallied around putting others down in order to feel closer to each other. In my mind’s eye, I just saw people of other marginalized groups who I know experience the same kinds of contempt without any provocation whatsoever. In all societies, we find groups of people to look down upon, whether that’s members of the LGBTQ+ community, members of certain religious communities, or simply women whose underwear you can see under their clothes.
We all do this. We’ve been trained to pass judgements with our words and our actions.
I remember one day wearing my favorite strappy blue dress to my high school in the last days of senior year. I wore my favorite white sandals with them, and I had been getting compliments all day on how nice I looked. Even without the compliments, I felt really confident and beautiful that day. Then one of my friends said, “You couldn’t bother to paint your toe nails before wearing those sandals?” In truth, the night before, I had thought about it, but in making sure to remove all the hair from the visible places on my body and doing all the other primping women are normally expected to do for the sake of “hygiene,” I simply had not had time for more than a cut, filing, and clear polish on top.
Can you imagine me daring to put on open-toed shoes without a complete pedicure? How will we ever achieve world peace or address all the humanitarian crises around the world?
Okay, I know. I’m being dramatic.
I think we have all been guilty of this at some time or another. We without any provocation find something about someone to look down on. That thing could be the lack of color polish on their toe nails, their skin color, their religious identity, or anything that so inspires us. Even if something is not said out loud, we have all experienced that look someone gives us that suggests we have failed to meet their standard of X.
Dr. Kristin Neff does interesting work on developing self-compassion instead of self-confidence. Self-confidence is “I feel good because I’m better at X, have more of X, or follow X rules better than other people.” Self-compassion, on the other hand, is “I’m human. You’re human. We all suffer. I’m no better than you, and you no better than I. You may be up today, but you could be down tomorrow. The same is true for me.” The problem is that we’ve been teaching self-confidence for so long, it’s hard for us to derive confidence in ourselves just from within ourselves.
So as that family on the metro used self-confidence (i.e. my skin is whiter and therefore more beautiful than hers) to try to make themselves look and feel better, I focused on compassion for myself and for all the people who have been there. I opened an app on my phone and sent some friends a hug emoji and thanked them for the recent ways they had been kind to me or expressed support. I felt this response would do more good than turning around and embarrassing that family, pointing out that I not only could understand and speak Mandarin, but I could be mean in the language too.
Now, you may be wondering where I’m going with this. What’s this about toe nail polish, compassion, how I met Ben, and discrimination against black skin?
Well, as you may have read in the previous post, Ben’s parents have not always approved of our relationship. Even though that’s now in the past, there are still echoes of it. After our family trip to Jamaica in 2017, Ben’s dad was under a lot of stress because of an upcoming court case involving Ben’s mom and the driver who had hit her in a car accident the previous fall. Now Ben’s dad, like me, can be quite irritable when he’s under stress.
It was in this frame of mind that he told Ben about the neighbors who saw me, Ben, and his parents walking together to go to the airport. Apparently, the politically correct neighbors wanted to know why Ben decided to find a black wife. “It’s not really about the skin color,” they clarified. “She’s just not attractive / good looking.”
Oh, yes, right. It’s not that I’m black; it’s that I’m ugly. Thanks for clarifying.
I never imagine Ben’s parents found me anymore attractive than Ben did when we first met. However, the way the episode above played out left me with a deep impression that Ben’s parents shared the neighbor’s ideas on my attractiveness or lack thereof. I could be wrong on this, but I don’t believe that for a minute. In truth, I move on because how other’s perceive my physical appearance is truly inconsequential. But as my pregnancy develops, I am left with the same questions that have been buzzing in my head since Ben and I started talking about having children years ago. The only thing is that these questions are much louder and pressing than they’ve ever been.
Are Ben’s parents excited that they are going to have a grandchild? If they are, is that excitement tempered by the fact that this grandchild will be half black?
Will they excitedly share photos and videos of the grandchild, or will they keep those photos to themselves to avoid awkward conversations about the baby’s dark skin and curly hair?
Can they handle the questions, supposed “innocent” curiosity, that will naturally pop-up when they are taking the child in a stroller around the neighborhood?
Would they prefer this child to be raised abroad, even if that meant they got to see him or her less, so they wouldn’t have to deal with the gossip?
Do they even know what they are getting into? What kind of unsolicited, unprovoked abuse and judgment they will now receive walking around with a Chinese-(black)foreigner-native?
Will the reasonable anger, frustration, and exhaustion from all the microaggressions be taken out on me, Ben, or the baby?
Will they make comments like, “Oh, the baby’s hair will straighten out as s/he grows.” or “At least s/he has big eyes like their mother.”? (Note: Double eye-lids and the appearance of “big” eyes are big deal in this part of the world).
Now, it’s important to note that Ben’s parents have said and done nothing in well over a year to warrant suspicion that they will be anything less than the best grandparents a child could ask for. I know, that deep down, these questions come from a personal fear. It comes from a protective instinct. It comes from wanting my child to live in a more accepting world than the one I live in now. I want my child’s inherent beauty and worth to be visible upon first glance, but I worry that this will never be.
When Ben and I decided to give this interracial, intercultural relationship a shot, we made a promise that we would not give up easily. It was that promise, that pinky swear with a thumb seal that saw us through great storms.
However, we would now need to expand the circle of people who were in on that promise, and it scared me. It scares me.
We are going to have to engage in honest, courageous conversations about what bringing a black-Chinese baby into this world would mean. We would have to promise to leave all the world’s opinions outside the doors of our home. We would have to promise to choose love and compassion at least for each other, and to the extent that we could, for others as well.
We would have to pinky promise to stick together no matter what so that this child would know acceptance and unconditional love.
**The featured image was taken of me after watching a gorgeous sunrise on the white sandy beaches of Jamaica.
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