OMM:To The Letter, January - February 2022

MATRIX

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All Black women are part of One Matrix

January - February 2022

This Ain’t That!

Brandi Lowe shares her story on

how she embraces being Black despite experiencing racism from Whites and marginalization from both Whites and Blacks with OMM.

Playing In The un

S

OMM examines how colorism impacts our lives and, how it contributes to our misunderstandings of it.

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To The Letter

ONE

MATRIX

OMM: To The Letter is the One Matrix Newsletter. Published bimonthly with special periodic issues. Advertising opportunities are available.

Please send inquiries to s2ndrising@yahoo.com

The Team C. Chekejai Coley “Rev Bev.” Saunders Biddle Beverly Paul Tina Marie Coley

Creative Director Senior Editor Managing Editor Issue Advisor, Editor

Images & Credits Shane Samuels, @Shane @marianarodr @BBMedia Dazyah Al-aleem, @Dazyah @pixabay @alyssasieb @RootedColors @NappyStock Alex Starnes, @Starnes

Brandi Lowe All images from Nappy.Co. are public domain and used by permission. Images of Brandi are also used by permission.

Special Thanks The Ida B. Wells The Light of Truth cap is available at Shopify.

OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

Nappy.Co, Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Erika Knight, Simone Christian, Rev. Jeneene R. Macklin, Rev. Dr. Iyanla Vanzant

Contents January - February 2022

The Cut? Next go, promise! The editors and I penned an engaging piece about colorism, ‘though. Check it out. Also, Brandi Lowe shares how complexion creates misperceptions in her life. I am sure that both pieces will resonate some with you. And, we would love to hear from you. The door and the floor are open! @The_OMM_Collective

Playing In The Sun Color-Struck-Ism

Colorism (an aspect and byproduct of racism), has had a tremendous impact on people globally.

This piece examines some of the impacts of colorism on life for Black people.

Help save lives and help improve the global economy.

Buy Fair Trade.

Ask your grocer.

https://www.fairtradeamerica.org/ why-fairtrade/

Image: The Hilltop

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This Ain’t That

Brandi Lowe speaks with OMM on how she embraces being Black despite the dichotomies and social complexities that she faced because of ideas and perceptions of skin tone.

Image: Qimono, Pixabay

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DO GOOD IN THE WORLD

Image: brown-paper-bag, gngkey.com

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Sign of the Times

Explore Your Vision

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O ri g i na l s & Pri nt s Abstracts

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Oils

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Still life Landscapes

www.chethighsmithart.com 267.679.5811 267.521.CHET (2438) 5

OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

“...colorism, like colonialism, sexism, and racism, impedes us.”

- Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Garden (From the essay, If The Present Looks Like The Past What Does The Future Look Like?)

C o l o r S T R Ui C K s m Playing In The Sun

“Colorism made no sense to me. But it was as undeniably a part of the world as the stars and the moon and the trees...I loved to climb. It made no sense that just because of my color I would have to,... ‘step back’...but step back I did.”

- Marita Golden, Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex

Image: Heaven, Pixabay Stock

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When I was little my mom was really obsessed... She wouldn’t want us in the sun too long.

“No, get outta the sun. You’re gonna get too dark.” That was impressed upon us early on.

Biany Perez (Black woman, Black American of Afro-Dominican heritage) One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race by Dr. Yaba Blay, Ph.D.

Note: Throughout the course of this piece, Brazil and Brasil are spelled interchangeably.

Brazil is spelled with an “s”. In One Drop quotes, you will see the word spelled as it is in Portuguese.

OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

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rowing up I had a younger cousin, Rezie, who openly fantasized about someday becoming white. She was about 7 or 8 when she began to imitate white folks on the regular and, by “regular” I mean daily. She was actually a really cute kid. She had glowing skin, an impressive and radiant smile, a cute round face and beautiful eyes beautiful brown eyes. She, like many little brown-skinned girls, had a very beautiful and creative spirit. She would have more-than-likely grown into a stunning woman if she had the chance.

“Chance” meaning being affirmed of who she was — a beautiful child — a “Brown Baby” as the ascended musical and political master, Oscar Brown, Jr., put it in his 1968 song, “Brown Baby”.

Everyday after school, myself, my brother, Rezie and two other cousins (Vi and A.J., Rezie’s younger brother) would get sequestered into my paternal great grandmother’s bedroom which was on the 2nd floor of her 3-story house on Chester Avenue in southwest Philly. My great grandmother, my great grandfather, two aunts and two new baby girls (Rezie’s sisters) would be sitting in there. The adults were already watching the soaps and talking.

My brother, and one other cousin who was around on occasions, and I were generally not allowed to go anywhere else in the house. We were to sit on the floor, close to a corner between a TV and a bed, and wait for someone to come for us.

After putting her school bag down and finishing a snack, Rezie would stand in the mirror that stood on the dresser in my great grandmother’s room with a long, silk scarf on her head, and hum out songs or just hum in a cartoon princess (or crazy white

girl locked away with rodents) kindof-way. Ever watch My Little Pony in a Nutshell? After each scenario they always say, “Let’s sing” emphatically and spontaneously break out into a song. The spontaneity happened repeatedly in the nutshell within the few minutes of the video. Rezie would do the same. Although we don’t always really require prompting to sing, in her case, this seemed to encourage her behavior — a way to pretend to be someone other than herself as a black child. She would even take on their tone of voice as she spoke, changing from her natural tone to one that was completely outside of her natural intonation.

My brother and I would watch the other children (all 5 of them) eat as we also watched stories of starvation in Ethiopia or the soaps on TV while we sat on the floor. There was never an offering extended. It was clear that there wasn’t enough for us and no one encouraged sharing. Around that time Rezie checked out from us and checked into one of the white girls that she envisioned herself to be in the mirror. Her mother would chuckle at the behavior but assuredly called her every “black thing” and “bubble butt” under the sun.

See the dilemma here?

Rezie’s mother had 3 other children at the time — A.J. and the 2 new babies. All of them were lighter than Rezie who desperately did everything imaginable to turn white. I guess it makes sense; she wanted to be where the “love” was and, in order to get some of her mother’s love, she needed to be lighter than the lightest two – who, like their father (a different father than Rezie’s), also had light eyes.

Nothing in Rezie’s environment affirmed her. Hippie Jesus hung on the wall in the living room. The image repeated throughout the house. He even showed up in my grandmother's

room and in the hallways.

The world outside (school teachers, books; church, the grocery store images) told her (and every other black girl) that white skin was more desirable and deserving of love than she was. She and Vi (who was light skinned and a couple of years older than Rezie) had every white doll imaginable. Rezie eventually grew up and had a child by a white man. She also got a long blond weave (down to there) and wore blue contacts for a while — still fully checked out of her beautiful brown-skinned, girl-woman self.

The women on that side of my family believed —firmly — that the lighter the person, the more desirable and beautiful. To this day, they still ascribe to the notion that even heaven — the eternal after life — is full of whiteness. Y? That very f-ed up way of thinking is devoid of the love that my cousin sought and needed -- that all African American girls continue to need.

My aunts believed also in the inverse — if you were any gradation of brown, you were, “of course” ugly, unfit and undeserving of true love.

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Seems natural, right? Well, think another thought! This -ish produces some real ungodly stuff. My cousin could never see anything inherently good in herself as a black girl, which distorted her understanding of who she was. It showed up in the blue contacts that she wore for a while. She didn’t even need glasses to see or read. See the point?

The colorism in my family was obscene on both ends of the spectrum. By obscene I mean outrageous! The saddest part is that there were some beautiful brown folks, like my cousin, who was destroyed by these obscenities.

Whole lives commandeered by a lifetime of being told that they were nothing because they were not “light enough” to be loved.

They believed it too and, in time, they became “nothings” — faded to black and I mean that in the dramatic sense and maybe even a psychological one (yep, I said that “psychological” word) — not in the racial sense. But, maybe. They came to believe in their “nothingness” — the abyss of all of life. The mental anguish caused by watching love pour into the lighter hued ones while their lives were extracted into the stupidity of it all was palpable. They became real life problems. Lights! The wild part is that there were some questionable-looking light-skinned folks who had real f-up notions about who they were — not all though — and ultimately the colorism took them down too because the level of narcissism and social schizophrenia created the conditions for the family to implode.

In all of this, colorism is really only one part. It’s an effect of racism so my family is not entirely to blame.

There were many other contributors to it — poverty, low educational attainment, crime in the area, police violence, health disparities, a mental

conquering, white supremacist notions, que sera sera and etcetera.

It’s hard to think through that stuff and it’s easier to feel fear (granted) than love when it’s hard to keep food in the fridge.

My cousin’s exposure to trauma and lack of mental health care (no one was trying to heal black girls back then plus, black folks thought of anyone in therapy as crazy - another whole entire dilemma) would have her create an escape for herself — to

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that didn’t fit right in the first place.

We tried to grow into it though. After generations, it was so far beneath the surface of us that we thought that it was natural and right to destroy ourselves. Implosion was easy. Ultimately, the house on Chester Avenue itself was fire bombed after one of my browner boy cousins (brother to a light-skinned adored sister) stole drugs to ease his pains. He was called a “black something” a lot as well.

If Rezie’s inability to become self-loving because of the influence of white ideas of beauty and the inability of the family to accept and love her without skin color conditions was isolated, it would be bad enough.

But, it’s far from the one case of a family that disregarded the beautiful ones.

Race and colorism complicates the hell out of stuff all over the place — when I say, “place” I mean the globe.

Colorism, like racism, is a universal issue — same root: British colonialism. In India, where the people actually look a lot alike, and by all standards can be considered to be beautiful people across the board, colorism is equally acute if not more severe. Many chemical companies actively discourage healthier outlooks on browner skin by promoting skin bleaching products. What-the-f?

They came to believe in their ‘nothingness’ - the abyss of all life. The mental anguish caused by watching love pour into the lighter hued ones while their lives were extracted into the stupidity of it all was palpable. They became real life problems.”

OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

release herself, in some way from the perceived painfulness of being black.

In truth though, melanin — in and of itself — does not hurt. It is actually quite comfortable but I digress. It’s the social aspect of colorism and racism that creates these situations so I don’t fully blame them for the way that they thought. It’s a global issue. I do pray that they can come to their senses.

Our social schizophrenia and liminality was (is) based on what whites thought of us and how comfortable they were with us - to our dismay and discomfort (vs. the melanin part).

This part can feel a lot wacky though.

We simply took that on and wore it like an old dusty-assed, worn out coat

[Sidebar] I had a friend in college in Daytona Beach, FL in the early 90s who was from India. She had a boyfriend who was black, her family, after attempting to lock her away in an Indian-owned hotel disowned her after she was able to get away. Something about denigrating the family and the impact that her being with a black man would have on her younger sisters – and about her sisters being less desirable because of her relationship with a

black man.

In Brazil, racial designations are based on proximity to whiteness. “...one’s racial identity depends largely upon one’s phenotypical appearance. Here, the idea of “passing” would be as foreign a concept as the one-drop rule—one is what one looks like. In Brasil, for example, racial categories are predicated not only upon one’s looks but on socioeconomic class. As a popular Brasilian saying puts it, “o dinheiro embranquece” (“ money whitens”)—the higher your social class, the more likely you will be treated as someone of “lighter” race. As would be expected, Brasilians use a wide variety of terms to identify race and many more to describe skin color, all of which are framed in relation to one’s approximation to Whiteness or distance from Blackness.”

— One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race by Yaba Blay In countries in Africa, Like in India, women also use whitening (skin “bleachers”) creams to make their skin lighter. In a 2018 article, it was reported that in 2011 77% of women in Lagos, Nigeria alone were using bleachers.

It’s more than skin deep, skin tone has been used to determine race, class, social acceptance, mobility and if a woman marries or, if she will feel unloved in a romantic sense — which becomes an issue and matter of “worth”. Some societies can make a woman feel like an outcast if she is not married. Skin color became a way to measure a woman’s value. The sad and ironic twist is that woman have also attempted to bleach the skin of their small children which poses a significant danger to the child.

Brown Paper Bags & Stuff “I lived my whole life this way” (in my Oscar Brown Jr, “But I was Cool” voice) I had a neighbor who had light skin and light eyes and she absolutely detested all of the black guys around her because of her ideas of the amount of melanin in their skin.

She liked black men on one condition - if they had skin that had a certain glow and if they had loose enough curls in their head - then, maybe. She went out of her way to have a child with a Puerto Rican man to assure that her child would be light. She was fascinated with them all during high school in the 80s. Many of us were because of their skin tone/color and hair textures.

All of this colorism wore on the surface of our community in southwest Philadelphia amidst the broken glass in the street and the frequent gunshots and territory wars. Many of the young brothers died before the age of 50. Some before 40. Some long before then. The light skinned people, however, lived on. No slight.

Slightly elevated, though.

Just pointing out the set up. They made it out and went on with their lives.

I had another neighbor who went out of his way to have a child with a very light skinned woman. This neighbor also once told a friend of mine that she was,

Yep, I said it!

A portion of a 1929 Letter from Edward H. Taylor, a Howard University student on the whacked practice of separating in fraternities and sororities on campus.

(Taylor, 1929)

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“too black”. That was also in the 80s, when kids still went outside to play organically. It shocked and stunned us.

His reaction to her was unexpected. I don’t think that the relationship with his child’s mother lasted. He, like the other neighbor, only linked up with the

...accepting others for who they are with and without shade.” gradations of the person.

Colorism operates much like racism. It affects every area of life.

For centuries now it has had a tremedous impact on the quality of life for people. It even affects jobs and income helping to create the existing disparities. Colorism, however, “hits home” faster. It lives in the same house with us which hurts quicker because it’s a complete internal operation (pun

intended). One way to begin to deal with it is to become aware of it within ourselves, to understand how we experience it and project it. Here’s an article by Hip Latina to get you started.

One more way to deal with colorism is to love yourself and accept others for who they are with and without shade.

BOOKS & WHATNOTS Bell, Derrick. “Space Traders.” Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence Of Racism, Basic Books, New York, 1992, pp.

158–194.

Blay, Y. (2021). One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race. Beacon Press.

Cassuto, L. (1997). The Inhumane Race: The Racial Grotesque In American Literature And Culture. Columbia University Press.

Giddings, P. J. (1984). When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. W. Morrow.

Golden, Marita. “Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex.” Anchor, 2005.

Morrison, T. (2020). The bluest eye. Alfred A. Knopf.

Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste (Oprah’s Book Club): The Origins of Our Discontents (Reprint ed.). Random House.

ARTICLES & ABSTRACT STUFF Dupree-Wilson, T., 2021. Phenotypic Proximity: Colorism and Intraracial Discrimination among Blacks in the United States and Brazil, 1928-1988. Ph.D. Coppin State University.

Black Lives Matter Gets Indians Talking About Skin Lightening And Colorism Putting A Question Up To Howard Students, Taylor, E. H. The Hilltop, pp. 1–3. (1929, April 29). http://dh.howard.edu/hilltop_192430/74 Skin Bleaching in Africa: An ‘Addiction’ With Health Risks. Knowledge Bylanes (2018, August 10).

Note: The skin bleaching article appears under many different writers and on many different sites. The link above is to a different site from the one referenced. The content is the same.

SPIKE LEE VIDEO & SITES TO SEE Good and Bad Hair, School Daze Fight Sneaky Signs of Colorism Webb, S. (2021, October 27). Colorism Exists in Africa Too. Colorism Healing. https://colorismhealing.com/colorism-exists-in-africa-too/ MADAM ZORA! (So skillful) Color Struck, A Play in Four Scenes by Zora Neale Hurston. (1926). Fire Magazine, 1(1), 7–13.

OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

Beverly Paul Contemporary Artist www.beverlypaulsart.com beverlypaulsart@yahoo.com

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Bu c k s h o ts Color Identifiers (Colorisms), White Proximity & Racial Distancing Terms used in Brazil

amarela (yellow) amarelada (yellowish), branca (white), branca-morena (darkish white), branca-suja (dirty white), branquiça (a white variation), cabocla (mixture of White, Negro, and Indian), clara (light), esbranquecimento (mostly white), escura (dark)

Skin Tone Identifiers & Colorist Terms used in the US

Image: Pixabay

White Proximity Identifiers & Racial Distancing Terms used in Louisana.

OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

scurinha (semi-dark), miscigenação (miscegenated), mulatinha (lighter-skinned white-Negro), meio-preta (mid-Negro), negra (Negro), parda (dark brown), parda-clara (lighter-skinned person of mixed race), preta (Black), and pretinha (Black of a lighter hue).

— One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race by Yaba Blay Image Credit: Photomix Company, Pexels

Image: Pixabay

high yellow, reds/redz, redbone, light-skinned (skinneded), brown-skinned, dark-skinned, black, blackie, “too-black”, light-bright-damn-near-white, cafe-au-lait, jigaboo, wannabe, pinkie — Philly streets, Black English & School in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Creole (free person of color), Quadroon/Quateron (1/4 Black & 3/4 White), Blanc Force/Passe A Blanc (passing for White), Octaroons/Sang-Mele’ (1/8 Black & 7/8 White), Griffes (3/4 Black & 1/4 White), Quinteroon (1/16 Black & 15/16 White) Sacatra (7/8 Black & 1/8 White) — One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race by Yaba Blay

Image: Louisiana Map Louisiana Clip Art

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OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

BRANDI LOWE

T h i s A i n ’t T h a t

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ONE WOMAN’S STORY ON NAVIGATING THE SOCIAL COMPLEXITIES OF RACE AND SKIN TONE.

met Brandi Lowe in April of 2021. She was standing in the small passageway of my cousin’s apartment right before our children were set to hunt for Easter eggs. The passageway that she stood in connected my cousin’s apartment to her cousin’s home which was in a quickly gentrifying section of Montgomery County, Pa. I initially did not know how to identify her racially but the moment that she started to speak — following our introduction — I knew that she was a sista.

Her tone of voice and the way that she used language made it abundantly clear that she was a black woman. After the hunt, Brandi and I talked about how people perceived her racially. We talked again shortly afterwards for a deeper conversation about perceptions, complexion misconceptions, race, behaviors and acceptance. Here she shares her story.

All images of Brandi Lowe are used by permission 17

OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

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There was nothing else for me to be but Black.

-Brandi Lowe

I could identify more with my mom because she's light. I knew that I belonged despite being lightest in the family. I knew that I'd belonged because the shade of my skin was close to my mother so that wasn't an issue in the household. The real conflict came outside of the family. I remember being called an n-word in first grade by a white girl. This is when I moved up to Ambler (PA) in first grade — that year I was called a “n-----”.

This one girl Sarah, she was a white girl and she was friends with another girl, Jill. I remember walking down the steps to lunch and Sarah was like, “want to wait for me?”

And I remember hearing Jill say, “we cannot be friends with her because she's black — a n-----.'' That was just a shock because I knew I was black but I had never felt any type of rejection because of it. You know? So that was dumb. It hurt and it made me feel like I couldn't be friends with someone.

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I am Black and I just want to be Black and that’s it.”

As I got older I started making friends with people who I racially could relate to. I became very close with the girls across the street who were mixed. For me that was a place where I felt like I really fit in. All of our skin tones were the same and, even though I was black and I had a black mother and they had a white mother, it was still a very comfortable place for me. A lot of my childhood was like that.

Growing up and, in school, a lot of people thought that I was biracial. But, the topic of my race really didn't come up a lot until like, high school — where my dad worked at the school that I went to — and, you know, they realize, “you know, your dad is... brown.”

There was no question of him being a Black man so a lot of times people will come out and say, “hello, what is your mom, white?” That used to really piss me off because I know my mom is not white. So I do have a lot of anger about that still and I think about having to go through that. White people would say, “oh” and then go on being white.

My answer was never good enough — always especially with black folks and, [it] always mixed into a very insecure place with me because I sit with blacks — all blacks — but my answer with both [black and white] was never good enough. It hurt more with black people though.

The things that I realize now but I didn't realize then — like I did have probably two really really close friends — One was Irish and Indian. So, she was distinct off the bat. And, one was a white girl. Their families were very open with me. I felt very comfortable. But, there was always that feeling — walking into public places with either one of their families — and being “the black friend.”

I always was aware of that but I never processed it. I lived OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

around it and didn't [understand] yet still knowing it was there, you know? I am not the white girl coming to your family picnic, you know? But, I'm “not as ‘black’ as some of the other black people”. What am I trying to say [is] I was an easy pass, right? And, they were a little bit more comfortable, you know? They wanted my tan but they did not want my hair.

I understand what biracial people go through and I'm not biracial. My mom is black but very light-skinned and my dad is brown-skinned. I have a sister who's brown and a cousin (on my mom’s side) who is very light. My mom is lighter than her but darker than me and there's a whole spectrum between. There's like Native American in there. There's my great-grandfather and he was black and white. On my dad’s side, my nana is black and my biological grandfather is black but he's light with light eyes.

In terms of the way that people look at me and me them — I think I feel like there are three different ways that I look at other people who is looking at me. There are black women that have the perception that all light skin women think that they “it”. And, there are Black men out there who wanted to be with me because of the color of my skin. I wasn’t anybody’s trophy, you know? Right? Then, there are Black women who could care less like you (youself), you know? But just see me for who I am and know, “she’s a sister. I don’t know if she’s half or whatever but I see that part of her ‘cause it’s just the beauty of a Black woman.” It is undeniable. You can’t not see it.

I am black. I just want to be black and that’s it.

I feel black through my pores, to my blood and the end.

Maybe it's because I don't feel like I need to prove any-

“I think the flavor comes through more and that’s only because I’m more of who I am. I love that part of me.”

thing. I just hold on to Black culture real strong because of the power in it, you know? Because of the strength that we have in the hardest of times. You know how we got our humor, how we listen to our music. You know, like those things are — like, those two things on top and those two things are just enough for me.

My grandmother used to say all I have to do is stay black and die. I feel like now, that I'm more who I am, I feel like people — just black people — just kind of say, “oh, she's black.” You know? Like it might take a little while to talk to me for a little bit, or something.

I think the flavor comes through more and that's only because I'm more of who I am. I love that part of me.

Put a seed in the ground.

PLANT LIFE Grow food and help the environment and, each other. IJS

“...I see that part of her ‘cause it’s just the beauty of a Black woman.

It is undeniable.

You can’t not see it.

Image Credit: Photomix Company, Pexels

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OMM: To The Letter, January - February 2022

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