Black like me White like me: (The complexities of a life lived in chocolate & vanilla)

By Jane Moore

“The baby’s cute . . . why don’t you adopt her?”

“If her own mother doesn’t want her, why would I?”

This conversation took place between two nurses in the delivery room right aft er I was born to a 16-year old unmarried mother. This was a precursor of the kind of struggle my life would be unti l I stood up and shouted, “I AM SOMEBODY!” Why did it take me so long???

I don’t want you to think I am harping on the bad things that happened in my life. Despite everything, I am an incredibly positi ve person, who has taken a licking and kept right on ti cking! My saving grace is mentoring, and standing up for those who just need someone to stand up for them. Maybe one of these days, I will be more able to stand up for myself. I’m getti ng there. This is just my life, honey, simply the way it is. I am telling you my story. This is a story about success, and giving back to a community that mostly kicked me in the teeth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9798369402788

Jane Moore

My mother died early in my life, after which my brother and I lived with various relatives until our father remarried. During my first twelve years of school, I changed schools over 24 times. After graduating from Oberlin College, I married my college sweetheart. We had forty years together, during which he had a full career in the Air Force. After he died I moved to Air Force Village in San Antonio, where I met, married and survived two Air Force retired officers. Three happy marriages! Writing has always been my hobby, and most of these stories were written for a writing group I joined in my later years. Their advice and positive suggestions have led me to recount my life’s experiences.

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Copyright © 2009 by Jane Moore.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 07/07/2023

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Contents

The Signs Of Blackness

Introduction

Age 1

Age 3

Age 4

Age 5 (The Age of Enlightenment)

Age 6

Age 7

Age 8

Age 9

Age 10

Age 11

Age 12

Age 13

Age 14

Age 15

Age 16

Wow, All Sorts of Stuff Happened At 17.

Age 18

Age 19

Age 20

Age 21

Age 22

Age 23

Age 24

Age 25

Age 26

Age 27

Age 28

Age 29

Age 30 And 31

Age 32

Age 33

Age 34

Age 35

Age 36

Age 37

Age 38

Age 39

Age 40

Age 41

Age 42

Age 43

Age 44

Age 45

Age 48 (What It Took)

Tha Low Down

To my real parents

I want to acknowledge Linda Lyndell

for being as black as she wanna be, even though she is a white girl.

(she recorded the original song,

‘what a man, what a mighty good man,

back in 1968, which prompted the

KKK to issue death threats against her)

Thanks for taking some of the heat off me, Linda!

THE SIGNS OF BLACKNESS

I have very nappy hair that has different textures, the most striking of which, is right in the front. No amount of Queen Helene Cholesterol tames the front of my hair down when I wear it curly. I use big palmfuls of greasy conditioners to tame it, and when I use those conditioners, and press it with an iron, it looks just like regular white people hair. I tend to prefer wearing my hair curly, though. My friends and my sons accept and appreciate my ‘black girl hair’.

I have grey eyes. Actually, when I am feeling romantic or happy, they are blue. When I cry, they are green.

My skin is light latte at this point. I used to call it café au lait. But I’m very light now. My complexion has changed many times throughout my life.

I have a white splotch just behind my left ear, at my jaw line.

My nipples are chocolate brown.

I have a ‘bump’ at the bottom of my back, just setting on the top of my butt.

My pubic hair is black and wiry, and there is a lot of it.

I have a dark strip from my vagina to the back of my butt.

I must be up front at all times.

I identify as a black woman. I feel my blackness defines me.

When there’s a phat bass line going, and I get up off of my seat, it’s goin’ down! I’m testifyin’ about my blackness when I get up and dance.

Then there’s ‘the nod’. Sometimes, I will be at the mall shopping, and out the corner of my eye, a brother will get my attention. Not in a sexual way. I just kind of sense his presence. As we pass each other, he will throw me a sort of a sideways glance as he nods his head. I do it back. I take it to mean, ‘I see you, sistah. I know who you are!’ Italians would express it as ‘paesan’. It always makes me feel welcome and black. Whenever I get the nod, I hold my head high, stick my chest out, and bounce proudly as I walk.

But if you saw me with my clothes on, even with my ‘black girl hair’ in its full glory, you would probably not even know that I am a colored girl.

INTRODUCTION

"The baby’s cute . . . why don’t you adopt her?"

If her own mother doesn’t want her, why would I?

This conversation took place between two nurses in the delivery room right after I was born to a 16-year old unmarried mother. This was a precursor of the kind of struggle my life would be until I stood up and shouted, I AM SOMEBODY! Why did it take me so long???

I don’t want you to think I am harping on the bad things that happened in my life. Despite everything, I am an incredibly positive person, who has taken a licking and kept right on ticking! My saving grace is mentoring, and standing up for those who just need someone to stand up for them. Maybe one of these days, I will be more able to stand up for myself. I’m getting there. This is just my life, honey, simply the way it is. I am telling you my story. This is a story about success, and giving back to a community that mostly kicked me in the teeth.

I wrote this book because my sense of self is finally more important to me than my family’s status quo. This book is exceptionally graphic. It will most likely be shocking to middle America because I lived a parallel existence, growing up in a middle America that most other people have not experienced or maybe never even heard about. (The names have been changed to protect the innocent – and the not so innocent as well).

Nonetheless, I want to thank my real parents, who were faced with an oppressive situation (pun intended), and did their very best to raise me right with limited resources and being right there on the front line all the time. They both did their best to stand by me, and I want to thank my dad for his sense of humor, and my mom for her graciousness. By the same token, I would like to hereby express my appreciation to my brother, and I’m trying real hard to understand my sister, who did not accept me or treat me like a member of her family. I’m tryin’, Lord. I guess I have to thank her because she was on the front line right along with everybody else in the family. It must have been so hard for them all to deal with everything that got thrown their way because of me. All other thanks are scattered throughout this chronology of events as the circumstances present themselves.

Imagine, if you will, that you are waiting to be adopted by an earth family. It is at a time when adoptions are closed. If whoever gave birth to you isn’t sure which planet your birth father came from (because she visited LOTS of other planets), then you don’t have a father named on your papers. You have been labeled illegitimate. Hopefully, some adoptive parents come along to legitimize your existence.

One day, your new parents come along. Halleluiah! Congratulations, you are now legitimate. The adoption agency sends you off to live with your new parents, assuring them that everything will be fine. You will be just like their own child. That is until you develop unmanageable alien hair, and incredible strength. Your skin color must be alien because it is different from anyone you have ever known. These things are normal on planet X, per all the literature your adoptive parents have read to try to understand the differences. But they are definitely not normal on planet earth. Then, noticing these differences when you start school, the general population starts having questions that they direct at you, the unsuspecting child. What hospital were you born in? How much did you weigh? What’s up with the hair? Why is your skin that color? Does it rub off? Why are you so strong? Do you come in peace? You don’t look right . . . tell ya what, just don’t come near me, OK? Then, without some essential guidance from any of the authority figures at school, it all goes straight to hell. Curiosity turns to cruelty. You thank God for one loyal friend who will actually allow herself to be seen with you at school, but you also curse that same God for putting you in this situation to begin with.

Pretty soon, you realize that you are the product of an extraterrestrial encounter between and earth woman and an alien. Although no one else will speak of it. You realize that there is no one who will answer your questions. There are obviously many questions you don’t have an answer for and probably never will.

Sometimes, they even have assignments in school where you are supposed to make a family tree, and you simply do not know the information that is supposed to go on the tree. When you answer honestly that you don’t know, because you were adopted, a collective gasp goes up from the class. You think to yourself, what am I supposed to put here, that I come from another planet? Why is my personality completely different from the rest of my family? Why does my adopted brother fit in so well and I don’t? Did they have a better Grade A selection when they adopted him? My sister is really theirs. I know that she will never have a problem fitting in. That only leaves me. I sure can’t write that most of my family is one nationality but I am not (german and some are italians). Can I? I’m willin’ to give it a shot to be proud of my alien skin. But no one else wants me to talk about it. No one.

Then, you have one question that keeps asking itself over and over in your mind. Where did I come from? You look up at the stars and you picture who you might look like. You wonder if they have a big telescope on their planet to keep an eye on you and be proud of you. You ask yourself if the woman who gave birth to you is still visiting other planets and leaving the results of her cross breeding behind, or if maybe she joined a convent or something.

That’s exactly what it felt like to me. However, it was my blackness that was the unspeakable thing in an all white neighborhood, an all white community, an all white town, in 1961. That was when, at the age of one, my blackness became evident.

My parents tried for many years to conceive and couldn’t. So they adopted my brother, who is four years older than me. That went very well for them. He is incredibly good looking, and, even though he is not the same nationality as they are, he looks italian, and they are proud of him. When they followed up by adopting me, they truly did not know what they were letting themselves in for. My mom was already overwhelmed by parenthood. She was very nervous and unsettled. Nerves ran in the family. She had survived breast cancer. She had also been blind for 8 months, and they couldn’t figure out why. Although she had recovered her sight, I believe that the possibility of blindness was always looming for her. I think she needed more time to contemplate and come to terms with what she’d gone through. I don’t think she really got the time she needed. Mom was very child-like and self-centered. It wasn’t very often that she could come out of her own world to be a parent.

Then, of course, the inevitable happened. After adopting me, my parents learned they were expecting. They could have just gotten a boat and gone into a lot of debt instead of adopting, but hey, whatever works, works.

The church had advised them to take me back to the adoption center and tell me that was where I came from. I never understood how on the one hand, my dad could say that it broke his heart to take me there because he always felt that I was his child. He would ask how they could make him take me back there. But then, they would say things like, we took you in, and "we treated you just like you were our own child, and Well at least we know she can’t POSSIBLY take after us. This last comment was usually made after I had said or done something that was unlike what my family would have done. I can’t remember them ever saying those things about my brother. It was confusing, to say the least. I remember almost constantly thinking, Well, if I’m not your child, then whose child am I? Is someone coming to get me at a certain point? Is this situation temporary?" I always thought I was on probation. But I didn’t dare speak up. I knew lots better.

My sister looks just like my dad, and I don’t look like NOBODY in my family. Oh, lonesome me. They were delighted to have their own child when they had Nicole. The more I think about it, now that I am grown, the more I realize that if you didn’t know I was adopted, you would think my mom had an adulterous affair with a black man and my dad had been cuckolded and was now raising some other man’s child. Now I realize why they always needed to keep my being adopted on the front page. Back then, though, I thought it was because I was unworthy of them and there was something wrong with me.

I perceived this burning need for information as my olympic flame. It burned continuously, high and bright, constantly fueled, as my need for information about my origin increased. When I was being tormented and beaten for my blackness, the flame was so low, it was almost out. During those moments, I didn’t care where I came from, I just wanted to escape. Maybe they’d beat me to death, and I would go straight to heaven with my fist extended like mighty mouse. I would go right past St. Peter, knock all the angels out of my way and bring my screaming vengeance straight to God himself. That would be some fight right there. It would be an epic struggle that I bet I would win because I was so angry. Then I would have to go to hell for dissing God. Oh well, I bet I could pick some really good fights in hell. I might even be happy there.

I was raised in a solid, blue collar, working class neighborhood. It was pretty close to Mayberry RFD. You just know that if a black person moved into Sheriff Andy’s neighborhood, somehow or another, they’d work it out, even if it wasn’t really the norm. That’s the way I felt about our neighborhood. No one spoke of it, nor was I relegated to the small side section adjacent to the community where only black people lived. It was interesting to have heard of the area, but to have never seen it or been there, or to know exactly where it was. I thought about finding it and sneaking in there, but I never did. I longed to see who lived there, and if they would welcome me and if I would be home. Would I find my birth mother? Did she sneak out of the black people section and leave me on my parents’ doorstep? Would there be an elderly man wearing a hat and glasses, and maybe a short sleeve dress shirt and chinos with a belt? Would he wave to me and smile? Could I come to the picnic? I wonder if black people really have picnics as much as I’ve heard. Would they think I was too white? After all, my blackness was only rumored. It was an unsubstantiated allegation. This despite the fact that wherever I came from, whoever my natural parents were, I sure was black.

My dad worked a lot. He was out of town sometimes. Mom and dad mostly had a typical 50’s type marriage. Dad provided. Mom tended the homefront. What dad said went. Although, I have to add that my dad was atypical for a traditional husband. He was (and still is) very maternal. He tells stories about tending to me when I was two months old and had chicken pox. Worst case the family doctor had ever seen. My dad was very proud of his maternal instincts. My mom also stepped outside the box of a traditional marriage to be a substitute teacher at the church-run elementary school we kids attended.

There were some truly stunning turn arounds in my life. For instance, up until I was about one year old or so, I looked like a white baby. My adoptive parents (my real parents) had no idea of what was about to come. Then, sometime after I turned one, I looked completely black. Fairly light skinned, but obviously black nonetheless.

I was born in 1960, and, unfortunately for my parents, that was quite a bit early for equality to have taken hold. At age 45, I look almost completely white now. But being incognito in the white crowd, I can also tell you that equality has not necessarily taken hold even in 2005. The comments and put downs just happen in private now. The people who hold these beliefs don’t say it in front of black people. Some of them will play with a bi-racial child at the mall, tell the parents how cute the baby is, then go home and talk about how dreadful it is that the races are mixing. How could anyone sleep with one of them anyway? I’ve seen it for myself. If anyone thinks prejudice is a thing of the past, then they are either in their own world, or are simply not included in these discussions.

This is a story that’s not for the faint-hearted. If you want to stay in your ‘two cars in every garage’, ‘a chicken in every pot’, ‘plenty for everyone in America’, world, then you’ve probably never been touched by any of this seamy stuff. Lucky you. Put down this book and continue to sleep peacefully. I hope though, that you want to go beyond the white picket fence to understand that there were some real struggles out there. Not imagined struggles, or made out to be more than they really were struggles, but the real thing. I lived it every day. In some ways, I still do. Although I have the unique perspective of having lived on both sides of the fence. Sometimes simultaneously. Back then, I felt if I could only peel off my black skin, straighten my hair enough, and ‘act white’, I, too, could be normal.

Do you remember the black and white video of the little black girl being escorted to an all white school by security guards? She was maybe six or so. She was so small, and surrounded by violent white people who would have ripped her to shreds, if they had the chance. Probably wouldn’t have gotten any jail time either. That’s how I felt nearly every day of my life. Like most everyone was watching me and my blackness. If they could just get their hands on me. Get beyond my security guards ( my family – who were also unsure if they could accept me and sometimes played for the other team ), maybe they would have beaten the blackness out of me. Sometimes, they did. It seemed to me that the only thought on their minds was How far can we go? What could we get away with here, and not be punished or evicted from the faith? I just couldn’t believe that any and all comers were allowed to berate me and beat me. How could a church-run school let this happen? This was truly the religion of hypocrisy and back biting. They teach love and acceptance, and yet they turn their backs and close their eyes to my suffering at the hands of other classmates who were supposed to be my equals. I have not considered myself a member of that faith for many years. Fuck them. After I got my second son baptized, since I didn’t want him to go to hell for my sins, I dropped that religion like a self-destructive bad habit. But, apparently, as you can see by what I just said, I lived the hypocrisy enough years to develop two opposing, warring sides. I certainly bought into Alexander needing to be baptized too.

It was so intriguing to me that even through all of it growing up, I was not told directly that I was a black woman until I was seventeen years old. I fumbled in the dark for an identity, I knew I was black, but couldn’t speak of it or acknowledge it. I knew that if I did, my mother would have the long awaited nervous breakdown she seemed on the cusp of having most of the time. (Really, if the dishwasher suddenly stopped working, my mother would’ve had that long awaited nervous breakdown. It didn’t have to be a big, earth shattering event that pushed her over the edge). I desperately wanted to find my tribe. Somehow I thought I had to stay where I was, powering and emitting the locational beacon I always imagined I had for them to find me. I just knew they would be like me. I wouldn’t be alone any more. I needed someone to hold me and accept me as I was, not as society would have me be. When would they come?

My parents would not allow me to undress at anyone else’s house. If I admitted that I had changed clothes at a friend’s house, they would look at each other and be absolutely mortified. I couldn’t understand why. What was wrong with my body that I couldn’t show anyone? I didn’t think I had any kind of birth defect. What was wrong with me? I understand now that it was because of my chocolate brown nipples, and my wiry black pubic hair. They never wanted anyone to see it or know for sure what it meant. They were afraid.

I began to have a question on my mind: what’s wrong with being black? Why does it have to be hidden? It seemed the whole community functioned very well as long as I was not out in the open about it.

I thought I was a pretty neat kid. I was a leader. I would typically initiate the activities my friends and I would participate in. I had several friends in our neighborhood. I was well rounded. Sometimes we would sew ourselves pocketbooks out of an old blanket, and other times we would build stuff, like the go cart we made. I alternated between being a tomboy and a feminine girly girl. I couldn’t abide those damn white girl dolls, though. The doll I played with had that long, blond ponytail that you could pull to make it grow. I understood, very clearly, even at age nine, that this was a standard of beauty and whiteness that I would never live up to. I hated her skinniness, I hated her straight, blond hair. I played with her long enough to satisfy the other girls’ need to play with dolls. I pretended to marry the boy doll. Then I’d be all about changing the subject and moving on to more interesting play. Something meaningful, like building stuff, or creating something.

Looking forward a bit, I remember when I sprouted all that wiry black pubic hair. That definitely didn’t match my doll. Her private area was clean shaven and mine looked like a jungle! I would strip naked and compare. I’d look at myself in the mirror, and I’d look at her. I knew that she was on one end of the spectrum, and, I, on the other. I was not comfortable with my body. I cut off all her long blond hair. But I still did not obliterate her whiteness, or my blackness, for that matter.

My family is in denial about my blackness. They do not accept my ‘black’ behavior. In this day and age, I simply cannot fucking believe that I am a closeted black woman within my own family. We actually have get togethers where some of them talk about how the brotherhood is all over the Acme mall. Won’t be long before they run down the whole area. Drugs, crime, etc., etc. You know what I usually respond to this? I say, No Way! When did this happen? Why was I not invited to the meeting? You’d think they would at least mention it to me if we were going to take over a whole area. Maybe I’m not in the black girls’ club any more. To which they all respond by looking at me like they don’t understand why I would say a thing like that, and then they change the subject.

I absolutely revel in the grittiness and depth of my black soul. When I have superficial conversations with some members of my family, I feel fake. I feel like a plastic white girl dolly on the phone with another white girl dolly. Nothin’ but air in that hollow, blonde head. I need flavor! When I talk with the people who know me best, I feel fulfilled and satisfied, like I have expressed myself. When I try to express myself to my family, they treat me like I am an alien. I keep saying that I come in peace, and they really want to believe me, but they have the gun handy just in case. My blackness scares the shit out of them. Sometimes it scares the shit out of me, too. It’s a powerful thing.

Many black women tend to be very jealous of me. They see me as passing for white and snagging their idealized life and their unattainable white man. I have experienced it. In a restaurant, for instance, I have seen the seething anger in their eyes as they seat me and my white man right next to the rest rooms. They gang up. They tag team. Oops, did I spill that in your lap? I’m soooo sorry. Here is the gentleman’s meal; yours had to be re-cooked. Sorry. They all but sit in my man’s lap to take his attention away from me.

Good luck, girls. I got it goin’ on!

Y’know, if y’all had any sense, you would recognize that I hear everything that white people say behind your backs, and instead of blaming me for passing (which is simply a result of my looking white now), you should embrace the fact that I have inside information that I will share. I could prob’ly straighten my hair and infiltrate the red neckiest clubs there are and let the rest of my people know which white people they can really trust and which ones to stay the hell away from. BUT NOOOOOOO! Y’all gotta be a whitey hater, even on me!

In fact, I did infiltrate a ‘whites only’ club, albeit unwittingly. A man invited me out to his club for our first (and only) date. I was dressed to the nines I tells ya. Just when I thought I was going to settle in and have a nice time with him, he said, ‘there’s only one thing you will never see here’. I didn’t even get it, at first. When I did, I turned to him and smiled and said, ‘except me’. He said ‘oh’. He laughed nervously as he looked around to see if anyone heard.

See, I stand up. For all of you. I represent us at ‘all white’ clubs. Even though most