8 minute read
THIS BLACK LIFE MATTERS
Words By Stella Umeh | August 16 2022
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Lying with my six year old, we are snuggled up together in her pint sized bed. Her little head is perfectly nestled atop my left shoulder. Wisps of her hair tickle my chin as I try harder to get closer and closer to her. The heat from her breath caresses my cheek and smells of sweetness and toothpaste. As she inhales and exhales the gurgle and crackle from her nose and throat ring out like a high school band during warm up. This is the telltale sign she has finally LET GO and fallen asleep. Bedtime snuggles are my most favourite part of the day. They are the sacred and coveted moment where I get to lie next to my kid as she settles down and melts into me. She goes from chatty and spunky to quiet and relaxed with a handful of deep breaths. It is in this time I stare at her, I smother her in kisses and prayer and hope. I hold her so tight it is difficult to see where she ends and I begin. It is in this moment that my very clear and very stark reality bubbles to the surface and rears it’s head as a long and laboured exhale. I have to admit nighttime snuggles often brings up an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and loneliness.
With little warning those feelings swoop in and virtually take over. Tears well up at an alarming rate and quickly spurt from me eyes like hot springs. Once the dust on my day settles and my world goes quiet my constant state of feeling unseen and yet so analyzed pours out onto the top of my daughter’s head.
Cold hard truth: I am a Black Canadian woman. A daughter to a Nigerian father and a Guyanese mother, raising a biracial brown baby girl, living in one of the whitest spaces I have ever been in... Newcastle, NSW Australia. By giving birth to my curly haired, doe-eyed brown skinned girl, I gave her the colour of my skin and with that inheritance, I directly gave her a bucket full of baggage that she will have to learn to navigate the world she lives in, carrying. To be black or brown looks and seems cool. There are countless instances on social media platforms that covet the edgy and colourful Black experience, but our experience, as it would appear, has been reduced to memes and trends. The reality is, to be black or brown is to force change on oneself to fit into a society that has a stronghold on virtually every aspect of one’s BIPOC life.
Most days I struggle to properly articulate or decipher my feelings. Raising a brown-skinned child in thepost George Floyd murder aftermath is a daunting and lonely space to be in. Only to be leveled up because I am living in a country which, on its face, appears so forward thinking, diverse and open, but simply put... is not. I feel like I have been drop kicked into a time warp where things that were once said and thought about the Black experience have made a massive comeback from circa 2001. I often walk through the days of my life batting away a constant borage of comments that are offered like compliments, but end up being statements about mine and my daughter’s appearance. The neverending attention being brought to our hair or our skin tone is tiring.
I will say it... I am tired. To be honest, my six year old gets it far more than I do. I suppose with a child comes accessibility and increased entitlement. I am also reasonably aloof. I wish we could wear a shirt that says, “we are much more than the way that we look.” I cannot make it through a day without being asked the question: “where do you come from?” This happens before I even open my mouth and my obvious Canadian accent flies out of my face. That right there goes to the heart, the very real and very old school mentality, that my BLACKNESS sets me apart and positions itself in my life as the message that I do not belong. My skin tone, my hair, my everything places me on the fringes of what it is to be accepted into the Australian cultural landscape.
I may have grown up in white spaces, but North America is teeming with diversity. In my life here in Newcastle, I rarely come upon people who look like me. It has me catching myself, asking myself the question do I still fit into my own community? Not a word of a lie, when I came face to face with the diversity of the domestic airport terminal in Melbourne, I gasped because I literally had not seen people who look like me for over two years. It is such an odd place to exist: I feel incredibly invisible at the same time I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. It is so strange that I am a middle aged woman and I only feel safe and comfortable when I am with my six year old daughter... alone, I feel eyes burning through the back of my head. For instance, I attended a church service one Sunday morning on my own and when we, as a congregation, were encouraged to turn around to meet someone new I did it with such reluctance. It was almost like I could feel curious questions mounting atop my shoulders. Without fail when I turned, a gentleman greeted me, and then proceeded to ask me where I come from. My response was, “can someone who looks like me, not be from here?” He responded with a double down and said, “no I mean, what is your cultural background?” When I responded with Canadian he looked very perplexed and I left it at that.
My coping mechanisms have evolved and morphed in different ways. I have stopped trying to explain my blackness to others or engage in lines of inquiry. I have turned my attention completely to helping, supporting and guiding my daughter in her journey of being a beautiful brown skinned girl growing up in Australia... she has now started school. Admittedly, my responsibility of motherhood and having no family around me, has invited a new layer of anxiety. Knowing that it all rests on me to advocate, support, protect and teach my brown child is an emotionally taxing and palpable daily grind. The conversations at our dinner table are very different from the ones my daughter’s white peers have at their dinner tables. We talk about the colour of her skin and what it truly means in her day to day life. I have had to warn my child that she may feel underrepresented in books and activities at school. Together we come up with vocabulary that empowers her to use her voice. We talk about ways she can manage her hair and the endless curiosity and entitled touching that she will have to endure. And thankfully we already had these conversations, so when the unabashed beast of curiosity reared it’s head she was not completely shocked.
There was an incident at her school where seven of her peers had their hands in her hair at once as she stood waiting in line, pleading with them to stop touching her. Not one child listened, they all just laughed and carried on because no one had ever told them they couldn’t. Thankfully her school leaders rallied and the situation was dealt with immediately, but the journey never ceases. A child, five years young, had to be armed with the tools she needed to stand up for herself in a way her white peers will never know.
In all transparency, I was terrified to send her to school. I still am. I feel myself constantly on high alert, but the wonderful thing that I am witnessing is her tenacity, her fortitude and her wisdom. She speaks frankly and honestly about the colour of her skin, the texture of her hair. She loves every inch of her being and when she sees herself represented in the media or a display in a store window, she squeals and says, “look mummy, they look just like me.” It is when I hear those words blissfully spill from her lips that I know I have earned a moment of exhale. I am certain in those moments my child feels safe, seen and included. That is my spiritual, emotional, psychological padlock of healing. The knowledge that my daughter is learning to exist in white spaces and yet she is not feeling invisible is landmark. She is my strength, my breath, my victor because if she can navigate this world knowing that her beautiful Black Life Matters, so can I.
