It was upon reading those words that it all came flooding back to me – so quickly, in fact, that it was dizzying. The times I was embarrassed to tell my friends at my public school how often I went on vacation. The times I felt embarrassed to go to my father’s side of the family for Christmas, for fear my appearance that day wouldn’t be up to their Jamaican standards. The times my non-black friends made derogatory black jokes. In most of these situations, my embarrassment stood firmly inside of me – I didn’t let any of my feelings of shame and self-consciousness out.

When writing about race and class-fueled embarrassment, Smith – herself half Jamaican and half English – was describing the celebratory night of the 2008 presidential elections. She was at a party in New York City, and a friend of hers invited her to hop over to a rowdy reggae bar in Harlem. She hesitated. Why? “I’ll be ludicrous, in my silly dress, with this silly posh English voice, in a crowded bar of black New Yorkers celebrating,” she thought.

Smith isn’t divulging a feeling akin to white guilt, but rather digging into the sloppiness and imperfections of commonplace race and class encounters. In addition, addressing the race issues that are closest to your heart be can uncomfortable, especially in a culture that privileges the anodyne.

I’m going to give an example that’s close to my own heart, memories, and experience. My high school, Toronto’s Oakwood Collegiate Institute, was proposed by the Toronto District School Board as becoming the city’s first Africentric secondary school. Last Tuesday night, in the auditorium where I used to watch talent shows and had my graduation ceremony, the decision was postponed. A small disclaimer: this isn’t an article about whether or not I support black-focused schools. (I do.) Nor is this an article about whether it would benefit Oakwood, a school that had – and to my knowledge, still does have – “black doors,” “white doors,” and “gino doors.” (It would.)

I use this example because I know the feelings it incites in people. Much of Oakwood’s media attention in the past few days has focused on visceral responses from students, parents and teachers. Words like “passionate,” “volatile,” “controversial,” and “angry” are thrown around to describe the affectivity of the situation. Because I’m aware of the “sensitivity” of this so-called controversial subject, I think twice about how I approach the topic. I think twice about posting it on my Twitter, on my Facebook. I hesitate. Despite my initial hesitations and my embarrassment of my “controversial” opinions, I truck on in the hope of not only overcoming my fears, but also showing to the world that despite what my apathetic Facebook profile seems to suggest, I do in fact believe in something. Most of us do. Sometimes I’m just too embarrassed to tell anyone about it.

Smith finds embarrassment in places I had never considered. In a discussion between Smith, who is currently Harper’s New Books columnist, and Gemma Sieff, Harper’s Reviews editor, earlier this year, Smith talked about the relationship between embarrassment and fiction writing. “It requires all these other embarrassing things,” she writes, “things that seem too banal to talk about, like empathy, like sympathy, like the appreciation of small details that other people leap over because they are not even worth discussing.”

While discussing embarrassment is difficult in all circumstances, it becomes even more so when it arises in the context of a confrontation between friends. Alas, this is my final post for “Mixed Like Me”. What better way to bring this column to an end than to discuss how talking about race makes me, at times, feel weird and uncomfortable? Even with my friends. Especially with my friends.

It’s sometimes easier to share opinions on things that are far removed from us, but it’s most important to give our opinions on those things we find closest, those things that matter the most. Smith’s idea that we can negotiate our own identities through emotion, and especially through embarrassment, is beautiful. Despite my own self-consciousness, the huffiness of race-related discussions is worth exploring.

Zadie Smith went to the party after all, leading me to believe that our grandest and most embarrassing barriers are flexible, fluid, and utterly fragile.

The post Goodbye to embarrassment appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Tiana Reid. I’m mixed and I’m in university. I’m a girl. I’ve never lived in the projects. I’ve never dealt drugs. I’ve seen a gun, like once, and it was registered. In the interest of full disclosure, I come from a single-parent household, but a middle-class one. As such, there’s no way for me (and probably the majority of the people that listen to, or more importantly buy, rap music) to wholly relate to and connect with most mainstream rap – lyrically at least.

Rap is still coded as black and underclass. Regardless of how many subgenres have emerged, rappers – like today’s heavyweights Lil Wayne and T.I. – are still stereotyped as having participated in violence, and many have – and still do – get in trouble with the law. After all, rap emerged from a struggle. It emerged as a distinctly black experience, one that followed in the footsteps of the civil rights movement, and in the golden age, tackled anti-oppression and black consciousness. It emerged from the black working and under-classes as an attempt to overcome distress and to nourish the black musical tradition with awareness and self-expression. It’s a voice that spits fire from the margins. For those reasons and more, rap is heavily concerned with authenticity and legitimacy. But what about its listeners? What does our connection have to be to the struggle – or any struggle? In what ways do we relate to rap?

First things first, what do I mean by relatability? To relate to something is to understand it, connect with it, identify with it, and empathize with it. Of course, there are numerous reasons, besides relatability, why someone would listen to a particular genre: technical aspects, personality, image, wordplay, etc.

Sometimes, though, I need to relate to lyrics. My case in point is Das Racist. Their 2008 “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” became an internet hit, but at the time I had dismissed them as joke rap. I didn’t – no, I couldn’t – relate. And then in 2010, Das Racist released two free mixtapes: Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man. Since then, Das Racist, whose lyrics touch on consumerism, social justice and racism, have been polarizing – sometimes described as clever, and at others, as the demise of hip hop. Personally, I’ve never related more to rap than I do to Das Racist. I’ve never found another rap group or artist to attest to my lived experience. And yet, Das Racist aren’t black.

Das Racist are college-educated. If you listen, it’s obvious. Their songs are packed with sometimes-obscure references and they cite academics like Slavoj Zizek and Gayatri Spivak. My ability to empathize with Das Racist stems from many things: my class, my otherness as a minority, my university education. What’s more, as someone who studies race, class and feminism, I’m aware of the discourse surrounding the arguably less oppressed (white middle-class scholars) attempting to speak on behalf of others. Author and professor Sara Suleri argues against a constructed dichotomy that pits academia against the “real world.” She disputes feminist academics’ emphasis on realism and lived experiences as a legitimization of scholarship. In her case, as in the case of rap, race allows for what Suleri calls a “claim to authenticity.”

Similarly, Das Racist engages in dialogue about their position and legitimacy in the “real world” and in the rap world. In March, Himanshu Suri, one of the members, wrote on his Twitter: “feel like I shudnt rap cuz theres somethin problematic bout middle class indian rappin but then like i’m good at it and at least not white?” By the same token, Suri said in an interview with the New York Times, “I’m an Indian-American who is participating in a historically black art form, while acknowledging that the experience of South Asians in America has been a relatively easier one than that of black Americans.” And because of a worldview like that, one that melds humour, experience, and socio-political awareness, I melt. It’s one of the many reasons I have an undying intellectual crush on the group.

In December 2010, Rawiya Kameir wrote a piece about Das Racist for Thought Catalog and quoted her friend on their problem with the group: “They have nothing to talk about. Their music doesn’t make you feel anything.” Maybe they didn’t relate. I, on the other hand, have never felt more of anything.

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But what about when black folk lighten their skin? Is that flirting with the Other in the same way? Or is it considered self-mutilation?

Tyler Perry’s promotional ads for his forthcoming neominstrel/neomammy play-turned-film Madea’s Big Happy Family, featured the “female” protagonist (Tyler Perry) as “the real Black Swan,” with white hair and caked white skin, like a reverse blackface, I suppose. Jezebel.com called it “horrifying.” Rightly so.

My aforementioned examples are more or less about performing colour in a venue outside of everyday life. In contrast, skin bleaching has always been in an alternate category for me, one with much more deeply negative connotations. I’ve read newspaper articles about it, but for the most part, the use of skin whitening creams and soaps was something that I relegated to the land of the far, far away; or at least to the less industrialized world.

A few years ago, skin whitening hit home – literally. I was visiting my dad in Jamaica, and my cousin, only a month older than me, was sleeping over. We were getting ready to go to an annual A.T.I. Negril party, where Jamaicans meet up during Independence weekend, for something akin to North America’s spring break. While she was applying purple eye makeup to match her outfit, I was looking through the cosmetics she had strewn over the dresser in my temporary bedroom. I thought I didn’t look the part for the party. My hair, dress and talk is all very, well, Western, so I thought that some of her makeup could help me out. I saw a skin whitening cream and halted my rummaging. I said nothing.

What. The. Fuck. I had to digest this. I hadn’t planned to have a “decolonize your mind” discussion, especially with my own cousin. And plus, who am I to say anything? As someone that has light skin, I’m aware of my privilege. In Jamaica, I would be more likely to get hired. And maybe even in Canada.

There are studies that back this up. In the U.S., light-skinned blacks fare significantly better than dark-skinned blacks on standardized tests, and the gap is so wide that it parallels the gap between whites and blacks. What’s more, skin whitening extends past psychological issues, and presents serious risks to physical health; hundreds of Mexican-American women got mercury poisoning as a result of skin whitening creams, according to a 2003 article by Harvard neuroscientist Allen Counter.

And so, I’ve always felt privileged because of my skin colour. It’s a brown that fashion-lite magazines might compare to coffee with cream. I’ve never particularly hated the colour of my skin, in the way that, at times, I’ve hated my hair or my thighs. In Toronto, I get called “light-skinned,” and in Jamaica, it’s “browning.” My friends and family have always complimented my skin tone. I’ve directly benefitted, in many ways, from my links to whiteness.

Despite the incident with my cousin, I wondered: is skin bleaching about self-hate? During a speech in 1962, Malcolm X said it best: “Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the colour of your skin to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man?” Even with such strong views, many people tend to trivialize the issue. In January, Jamaican dancehall artist Vybz Kartel said, in an interview published on rollingout.com, “I feel comfortable with black people lightening their skin. They want a different look. It’s tantamount to white people getting a sun tan.” What’s more, Kartel’s “before and after” photographs have been spinning around the blogosphere due to his drastic change in complexion. Reactions have been similar to when Jamaican dancehall artist Lisa Hype released a song in 2009 called “Proud a mi Bleaching:” shock and disgust.

However, when thinking about skin whitening, it’s crucial to go beyond placing individual blame on people like Kartel and Hype, and instead acknowledge the larger system of white hegemony that reinforces beauty stereotypes for both men and women. Skin whitening is about more than individual choices or beauty rituals: it’s much more complicated. Particularly in Jamaica, colourism is framed by writer Edward Kamau Braithwaite’s concept of creolization, which has created a dichotomy between the lighter-skinned middle classes and the darker-skinned working classes. In Jamaica, skin bleaching could potentially be a form of resistance against traditional norms of masculinity as well as the civilizing mission of the middle class.

Rollingout.com argued that Kartel and “other uninformed blacks are victims of a senseless epidemic that destroys the progression of the black community.” Demonizing and victimizing the alleged uninformed populations, which is how the conversation around skin whitening is often framed, is hateful and unproductive, and leads to an environment that reinforces negative stereotypes of the black working class, instead of exposing the broader dynamics of power at work.

The post Who is the fairest of them all? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

It’s about time someone gets down to the nitty-gritty of diversity (or lack thereof) at New York Fashion Week. Jezebel has been collecting this kind of data beginning in Fall 2008, and since then, the 2011 Fall/Winter collections, held this past February, were the whitest of them all.

The post New York fashion week a washout appeared first on The McGill Daily.

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This is the introduction to Tiana Reid’s blog. Find further posts every Wednesday at mcgilldaily.com/blogs

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