Black Man, White Face

I have been listening with some interest and some pain, actually, about Michael Jackson and his work to change his appearance.

Actually, I’ve been answering questions of white interviewers as they have asked, confused, why anyone would want to change his or her appearance? Why, they ask, would Michael do that?

How about because white people made it so that the only standard of “beauty” was white beauty. The white definition of beauty made some to many African Americans not want to be brown or dark-skinned. That same definition made black people ashamed of nappy hair, big lips and big hips.

Little black girls grew up wanting hair that moved and that didn’t puff up after getting wet. Black people ruined their own hair using harsh chemicals to straighten their hair out …so we could look more “white.” Some black people bleached their skin.

Black people (brown and Asian too) grew to hate the way we looked because we did not “fit in.” We could not hide our skin color or our lips or hips. Even if we managed to get a good education, which many of us did, we still could not escape our curse of being of African descent.

The European standard of beauty didn’t only affect black, brown and yellow-skinned people. I remember seeing my Jewish friends and white friends as well put their hair on ironing boards to make it straight. I remember white friends of mine being very upset that they did not have blonde hair and blue eyes – the highest rating one could receive for being beautiful according to European standards.

But at least at the end of the day, Jewish girls who got nose jobs and who straightened their hair, Hispanic girls who could downplay any “ethnic” look they had, and white girls who had brunette or red hair, could “fit in.” White America was slow to admit that someone other than a Nordic look was beautiful. Modeling agencies like the Eileen ford Agency slowly began to look at other ethnic-looking models, but only slowly …but be clear, if one looked “too black,” one could forget about getting a job as a top model.

Why doesn’t white America understand that?

I heard a Michael Jackson biographer talk about howthe pop star made disparaging remarks about black people, though he was black. That cut to my heart, if it’s true, because his own community so loved him. African Americans have hated our look because white America said we were ugly. That Michael would hate his African ethnicity so much to essentially butcher his own natural good looks is so painful to think about, and it is more painful to think that he may have hated those who so loved him.

I can remember the daughter of a friend of mine crushed at prom time. She was a beautiful, very dark-skinned girl with amazing features and a stunning head of jet black hair that fell past her shoulders. She had a boyfriend who decided he would not and could not take her to her prom because she was “too dark.”

There are still African Americans who would rather be anything other than who they are, African American men who will not date African American women, or if they do, those women have to be very light-skinned.

Everyone wants to “fit in,” but America made it hard for African Americans to do that. Instead, we stuck out like sore thumbs, walking targets for the most horrible judgments and comments to be made about who we were and what we looked like.

That’s why Michael Jackson “went there.” Obviously, there were some other things which drove him; changing his looks became an obsession, or so it seems from the outside, but clearly, his desire to change from black to white came from a hatred of what this world seemingly hates.

I am grateful that for some African Americans, at least, we have dropped the term “good hair,” meaning hair that is not nappy. In my mind, any hair on one’s head is good hair! I am glad we are free enough to wear dread locks and other natural styles. I smile when I see white people now imitating us, not only with the hairstyles, but with injections to get bigger lips, and efforts to get darker skin.

Seems we weren’t so bad after all, eh?

Wish Michael had known that.

That’s just a candid observation.

Justice, Really?

Today the United States Supreme Court is slated to hear the case concerning Troy Davis, a 40-year old black man who was convicted in 1991 for the murder of an off-duty white police officer.

Not only was he convicted but was sentenced to death, and his chance at or for life has come dangerously close to an end. His execution has been put off three times, but if the nation’s highest court does not rule in his favor, his time may well have run out.

Davis from the beginning claimed his innocence, and no weapon was ever found. Then, beginning in 2000, seven of nine witnesses who had testified against Davis recanted or contradicted their testimonies, and said that they had been pressured by police.

In spite of that, Davis has been unable to get a new trial.

I am thinking that I would not want to be in Davis’ shoes. I am not sure that there is real justice in many to most cases.

For the longest time, I have noticed that it seems that “the system,” consisting of the District Attorney, the police and the courts, are reluctant to admit when they have made a mistake. I have watched, fascinated, as the Innocence Project has been able to prove that too many innocent people have been shoved into prison, with nobody believing their claims of innocence.

It makes me shudder. What chance does a “nobody” have in a system which is more apt to dole out justice to those whom it chooses, and ignore those who do not “make the grade?”

It’s been shown that the testimonies of so-called “eyewitnesses” is not all that reliable. It is a known fact that many people think all people of another race all look the same. That is the result of our racism, and our unwillingness to get to know other people. We live on assumptions and opinions, not real knowledge of each other.

Then, there seems to be some machoism at work. It seems that too many male law enforcement officers define their masculinity on being right – even when they and everyone else knows they are wrong. I keep thinking of the recent footage on CNN showing an Oklahoma State Trooper harassing an EMS ambulance.

What came through in the footage was outrageous behavior of the trooper, menacing the EMS tech who calmly and repeatedly explained that there was a patient in the ambulance. The trooper kept up his harangue, and kept threatening the EMS tech with being put in jail.

The entire event was caught on tape, but I shuddered. What if there had been no tape? Would there be yet another American citizen thrown in jail, trumped up charges against him, with no chance of justice?

Mix together the disparity in treatment given to people with money compared to people who do not have money, the machismo factor and the ever present racism in this country, complete with the assumptions and opinions that disease has planted in too many of us, and real justice is elusive, unreal and too seldom given.

I would hate to be in Troy Davis’ shoes. I’ll bet he believed at one time that when it comes to justice, truth matters.

It does not.

And that is just a candid observation.

What Michael’s Pain Says About Us

I just heard an interview on CNN between Wolf Blitzer and Deepak Chopra and it made my skin crawl and my spirit cry.

Chopra, talking about his concern about his belief that the king of pop was addicted to prescription drugs, also said that Michael hated himself.

He said that he kept his face covered because he was ashamed of how the vertiligo made him look. (the disease takes all pigment from the skin). And, Chopra said, he engaged in “self-mulitation,” including plastic surgery, to make himself feel better about the way he looked.

I thought of how I have heard people say they hate themselves because of the way they look. Overweight people will often stay in the house because they do not want to go outside and be stared at. I remember Oprah saying that after she had gained weight after losing a lot that she felt terrible, that she didn’t want be onstage and accept an award, that she felt uncomfortable and self-conscious on her own show.

How quickly we forget that we like to “fit in,” and that we like to be liked. We need to be liked; we need the affirmation of people, and even though Michael Jackson received great affirmation for his great and unique talent, it was the sneers about how he looked that he heard more.

He was a great man, and a greatly misunderstood man. He gave all he had inside through his music and dancing, and received acclaim for that, but knew the whispers about him were not good.

If it is a fact that he was addicted to prescription drugs, I wonder if it was partly because he needed to numb the pain. I think it is a fact that all of us, or most of us, are addicted to something. I do not understand it – this tendency of us to need something with which to self-medicate, but what I do know is that we as a culture, or maybe we as people everywhere in the world, seek to ease the pain of the reality of being alive.

Deepak Chopra talked about Michael’s addiction to prescription pain meds. Oprah and others have talked about food being their drug of choice. There are those addicted to cigarettes; I heard, in light of the recent sex scandals involving national legislators, that they were possibly addicted to sex. Dr. Drew said in an interview that sexual addiction is one of the hardest ones to lose. There are people addicted to gambling, others are addicted to hurting themselves.

What in the world is up? Why can’t we live without the addictions?

What makes me sad about Michael Jackson, his pain and his possible addictions, is that it shows how unsympathetic we are, how prone we are to rush to judgement and make disparaging remarks about others, remarks that hurt bad and go very deep. How many of us sneered at Michael Jackson’s consistently changing appearance, due to the excessive plastic surgeries? How much do we laugh at and criticize people who are obviously addicted or out of control? And how much of our criticism and laughter is an attempt by us to run from our own demons?

I would sure like to know the physiology of addiction, or maybe the psychophysiology of addiction. I would like to know what it is about humans that makes us so prone to need a crutch to get through our days and nights. But I would also like to be able to understand our incapacity as humans to show real compassion for each other.

We would rather point a finger and laugh, as well as make assumptions about what is than to extend a hand to someone who is obviously in trouble.

It happens, often, that great people are very often very tormented people. Michael Jackson falls into that category, or at least it seems. If it was that he was addicted to pain meds, and the doctors with whom he was in relationship fed his drug habit in order to collect healthy paychecks, I will be angry and sad, but not surprised …because people are also addicted to power and money.

Or at least that’s my candid observation.

Are Affairs No Big Thing?

I found myself a little taken aback by my thoughts about Gov. Mark Sanford’s admission of an affair.

I was kind of …non-plussed.

I mean, I felt bad for his wife and children, but I found that in terms of his having an affair, I just wasn’t angry. It’s almost like my actions were saying, “oh well, boys will be boys.”

From the time I can remember, older women would tell us younger girls that men “play around.” I remember being puzzled by it and my mother saying to me, “Susan, there are some things that just are.” I was appalled, but my mother kind of implied that it was the lay of the land, and that women learned to deal with it.

“All married women have to deal with it,” she said.

So, though I hated the thought, I grew up thinking, believing that “playing around” was just what boys and men did. As I thought more about it, I began wondering why any society or culture would insist upon monogamy if everyone knew that some people had no intention of keeping that promise.

I ached for Elizabeth Edwards and Hilary Clinton and women I know personally as their marriages caught the infidelity virus. Because of so much infidelity, I am not sure I even believe in marriage anymore.

So, that’s where I was and am as concerns affairs. I thought it was admirable that Gov. Sanford didn’t lie about being in an affair, but I was really mad at him for another reason.

What was the deal with the lies about where he was? How dare he lie to his staff, his wife and children, leaving them all to scatter and try to figure out where he was? And when he said he’d been in Argentina to see his mistress, all the steam in my ears rolled out.

The audacity! I found myself fuming over the selfishness of it all. How could he not care about how it was all goin to pan out? Did he think at all about his boys? I heard that he left no contingency plan in place for his state, had something happened to him. So, if something had happened that needed his attention to governor, he didn’t care anough about his office and the duties he swore to uphold?

When the United States Congress wanted to impeach Bill Clinton because of the Monica Lewinsky incident, I didn’t agree. He had shown poor judgement and questionable morals but he had not done anything illegal. He had broken his wife’s heart and disappointed his daughter, but in terms of the oath he took to uphold, protect and defend the United States of America, he hadn’t done anything wrong.

But Gov. Sanford’s situation is quite different. He left his role as governor, not saying anything to anyone. Nobody is sure if he used public funds to travel to Argentina, this last times or the times before, but it is clear that he sublimated his role and duty as governor to his sexual and romantic pursuits.

Where is the outcry? Where are the scores of people demanding his impeachment?

When I feel the passion rise about the governor reneging on his public responsibilities and duties, and feeling next to nothing about his affair, it gives me pause. Could it be that we as a society are so used to “scandals” and “affairs” that we no longer care? Are marriage and” family values”as important as we make them out to be, or are we blowing hot air?

It seems that we are on a slippery slope when it comes to marriage and affairs. In one sense, we are the harbingers of morality, and on the other hand, we let breaches of morality go too often without thinking too much about them. I find myself wondering if the majority of people who heard about the Sanford affair were enraged about it, or just sort of blase.

It would be a bad thing if for us affairs are just no big thing.

That’s a candid observation.

From Cocoon to Butterfly

I hate the fact that I have been shy all my life.

It might be because I felt unwelcomed and unwanted in my adoptive family. My new cousins always made sure I knew I was an outsider. They were good and quick at pointing out how I was “different” from everyone else.

I’d been told that even as an infant, I was quiet, but that kind of familial rejection made me even more quiet. For the longest time, I yearned to “belong” to the family, but after a while, I stopped yearning and turned even further inward. I had made a cocoon, and inside, it was warm and I was safe.

The cool thing about the cocoon is that it IS warm and safe and keeps you isolated. The bad thing is that living in isolation doesn’t work in a world based on relationships.

I had succeeded in making myself super shy. As a teen, I would freeze if anyone even looked like he or she was going to approach me. I lost a chance to do television work a couple of times, I was told, because even though I was good on camera, once I’d lost the security of those cameras, I didn’t have anything to say! I can remember going to to lunch after a particular television interview, and being almost in tears because I had to sit with people whom I did not know.

I’d succeeded in making myself lonely. All I wanted was the safety of the cocoon.

Fast forward to the mid 8Os. I was still shy, but trying to work through it. I had few friends, but that was OK with me. But I was in seminary, for goodness’ sake. Though I am now struggling with organized religion like I have never before, that wasn’t the case back then. I was working in churches as part of my theological training, and HAD to talk to and mingle with people whom I did not know. People reached out to me, but I couldn’t reach back. I was stuck in the cocoon.

I became a pastor and had the hardest time pulling out. By now, I had gotten it: people who make it in the world do not make it in isolation. OK. I got it, but I was stuck. It was like I had gotten my head out, but was lying transverse in the cocoon and was holding up the process. The difference between being stuck now and “back in the day” was that now, I realized the value in getting out of the cocoon, and I realized that there was a whole lot more I could be and do.

I finally got out, and realized that I had missed many an opportunity by staying inside so long … but now, at least, I had something important to teach my children. My son was a natural extrovert, but my daughter, I could see, was as introverted as was I. Hah! Now I was a butterfly with wings, and if nothing else, I could teach caterpillars wanting to stay inside the cocoon the value of letting themselves be pushed out in order to become all they could be.

So, I would push her gently to talk to people. “I don’t know what to say,” she’d protest. “Not a problem,” I’d say. “Just learn a little bit about them and get THEM to talk. Chances are you won’t have much to say, but you will be letting yourself get a little further down the birth canal.

I am still pushing her ever so gently, and she is, thank goodness, allowing that push. She is beginning to get her voice, find her stride, and she definitely knows that she cannot live life in isolation.

I never really had close friends, but at least my daughter does. Not a lot, but a few really good friends. I was never in the wedding of a friend, but she will be. It makes my heart sing to know that she will experience what I never did because I had chosen to stay inside a warm, safe place.

My daughter is almost out of the cocoon, and I, her mother who stayed in the cocoon for far too long, am finally able to grin as I see her wings coming out …because I can finally look around and see my own.