Black child's mother says her ears gave it away

The hint of shame on an otherwise perfect face

Good Hair speaks to the upliftment and love for all women of colour. The influence of colourism and hair type bias has been an ugly remnant of a social conditioning adopted from slavery that is still very much alive and well today. 

Sally: You bring me here to ask foolish questions like that? You think anybody take time to tell enslaved people when and where they born? Many of us didn’t even know who bring us into this world, but not my children. I made sure that they grew up with me and that they knew their father.

The Caribbean has a long history of multiculturalism due to the migration that occurred voluntarily and by force. This history includes the division of Afro Caribbean and Indo Caribbean people, predominantly in Guyana, Jamaica, Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago. The same system that was held in the United States, separating house slaves from field slaves based on their shade of brown was also implemented in the Caribbean between the Indians and the Africans.

J’ai été conditionné à être un objet.

Il fallait à tout prix appartenir à quelqu’un. Mon

quotidien consistait à faire le beau, en espérant qu’on

me remarque et qu’on me choisisse.

you make me a foreigner in my own country

where disbelieving citizens welcome me with open arms

because they think I bring tourism dollars.

you rear your sinister head every time i return

and make me wonder if this is why i left.

Your thoughts and words are of no consequence to me.

I am free.

Inna mi dream -

a blue dream,

where we

trod through tanks of indigo

years upon years

with paddles,

hands wrinkled

bodies being burnt,

like your tar babies,

I can also vividly remember being told by somebody I loved that I was beautiful for a black girl. I can honestly say that I did not fully understand the implications of this comment. I now understand.

The worst part of it all, is that there are deep roots of trauma still plaguing our families yet the outsiders only care about the resorts, the plantain, or the reggae that is overplayed on certain radio stations.

Here she was, head laid, in the lap of the boy who was her rising sun, the peas to her rice. A tender moment spoiled by a bigoted anecdote.

Everything was completely white. I was the only object of colour but for once that excited me. I shut the door behind me and began to look around. There really wasn’t much to see, two white leather couches, white Persian rug, white statue of some naked man. It was boring, but new all the same.

Colonialism never done, only adapted; they changed its mask. We see our leaders are nothing but puppets to the same masters. Spitting in our faces progressive rhetorics while doing their master's bid.

Do oceans that aren’t

green or blue…

Representing how more black women have been embracing their natural hair…

My partner was a beautiful Muslim woman, and I realized I was jealous of her. Why? Because even though I had never seen her hair under her hijab, I was sure that she must have good hair, not hard hair like I had been cursed with, but the good hair that everyone coveted.

It was only after my hair started to grow into its own, after my hair started to gain length that the attitude they had changed. It went from “yuh good hair yuh cut off” to “you get your hair from me; you know Guyanese hair does grow long and nice”. Recently an aunt said in conversation that Black hair can only grow long if you’re mixed with something... I didn’t feel comfortable hearing that.

My grandfather called my hair was “too niggerish”

When my mother refused lye and hot comb

I told him my brown skin was a blessing

He admonished “Girl!

Watch your tone”

A quarter section split in two,

Wide, livid eyes deep in life

Peers into the map of my tragedy.

“Sadie you make me so mad. You skin too dark. You see this?” Sticking her hand in Sadie’s face for her to see she continued, “This is the color you supposed to get. A nice brown skin. Nice light brown skin. That’s what you supposed to get. Why you so black!?”, another tug of her hair, “Why? Black means poverty and light skin means wealth. You are nothing but a poor little unwanted child and I HATE you.”

Children live what they learn an’ fi mi muma an’ pupa look like dem frighten fi Alice. Mi sure seh dem nevah suh happy wen me did born but wen Alice come, a one piece a celebration inna di yard.Their naming her Alice-Elizabeth, after some Princess from England and my having been given the archaic name, Dorcas - Esmeralda immediately proved to me that there was demarcation based on the color of our skin.We were of the same race and one blood, so why the difference?