The “black” brand vs my Blackness
Society branded the invisible words “black” on my back the moment I arrived in this world and out of the womb of Jacqueline Louise Ward. I, in my heavily melanin-induced state, apparently latched on quickly to my mother’s breast and was greedy for her nutrients to fortify me against the racism this world would shove down my throat. As I grew further away from that pure state of being a gift from God, that brand continued to sink deeper and deeper into my body. I had adults around me, sometimes my mother and my father, who worked diligently to reclaim this word, to whisper things in my ear that told me, “Black is beautiful” and that it is God-like, precious, and a gift. Sometimes, I would glance down at my enriched, heavily melanin-induced state and smile with pride, run into the sun wanting to be even darker, and dance up and down the street shouting, “I am proud to be Black.” But this black-bodied struggled to swallow those moments and the salve of those positive messages when, as I grew older, I continued to feel the burn of that “black” brand; it sizzled like fresh raw meat in a frying pan and sunk deeper into my skin.
In places where I was a minority in a sea of white-bodied persons, I questioned whether I belonged and asked why I was not seen or heard like them. In places where my skin was many shades darker, my hair thicker and kinkier, and my economic class lower because my mother received food stamps and my daddy gambled his money away, I questioned whether I was good enough, why I could not be pretty, admired, held, and valued. They dislocated my body, and I yearned for a desire to catch hold of the belief that I belonged anywhere and everywhere. There were times when I could run back into the safety of those who embraced my Black-bodied self, those who poured sweet elixirs down my throat, my mother’s milk fortifying me against the onslaught of irreverence and violence.
The brand sunk deeper. No longer was my skin blistered and keloidal; the brand had permeated my nerve endings and also the nerve endings of those around me — other black-bodied persons who saw my darker skin as something that needed fixin’, lightening up a bit and who deemed me as less valuable — because not only was I a darker brown but God also decided to gift me with a beautiful thing called a vagina. This brand “black” had long infected and seeped into the skin of other non-, black-bodied persons, those white-bodied persons, and others. It made them numb a long time ago as they have witnessed and continue to witness a society where the cries of this Black body and others who share black bodies are unheard. It made them numb long ago as they witnessed black-bodied persons ripped apart, amputated, raped, and exploited while sipping on their iced teas and whiskey and quietly attempting to ask Jesus for forgiveness. No, those white-bodied persons held their bibles close to them, trying to recite scripture and tout their allegiance to God while keeping Black fathers imprisoned, running gun shops, selling them to the nearest white-bodied vigilante, and condoning violence under the false guise of patriotism and keeping America great.
I have attempted to reclaim this Black-bodied self and all those who wear this brand deep into their skin and DNA. It still kills us, sometimes fast and sometimes slowly diminishing our life expectancy. We, Black-bodied persons, have an invisible expectation, work harder to be just as good, be smarter and still seen as less intelligent, to rest little because we do not want to be deemed as lazy, to stay silent or be seen as too loud, and numb rage unless we want to be killed. It is the greatest paradox of living in the U.S., a desire to be genuinely free and feel Black and proud in a reality that tells you otherwise. We get purposely designed distractions to remind us to stay in our place, they attempt to tell us don’t dream TO BIG, they attempt to keep us trapped in the trap of Jim Crowism in the 21st century, in Superior Court decisions that want to revert the progress of freedom, and in a financial complex that tells us we can’t be trusted with the money you owe us for the hundreds of years of free and exploited labor. These distractions keep us from our healing!
I am working to reclaim this Black-bodied self, to continue to fortify my existence through my mother’s milk and the salve of those around me who pour salvation into my soul and refuse to let me swallow racism and its poisons. I am holding on tight to my humanity in this Black-bodied self. In my heavily melanin-induced state, I want to love harder, freer, and dance down the street to all the music of my people, the bembe drum, blues, rock & roll, jazz, hip hop, trap, and all the in-between sounds. I want to rest hard, sleep long, and separate myself from the wheel of productivity equals worth (e.g., how many barrels of cotton can this Black-bodied woman produce?). I am deciding to dig deeper into my skin, cut that “black” brand society gave me, pull it out with all the other scarred tissue, and drop that shit off on the side of the road — let it be their burden to bear, not mine.
