Living Black & Loving It

Living Black and Loving It

When President Obama was elected, "they" told me that Sam Cook's proverbial and prophetic change had come to America via that election. "They" told me that the almost 400 years of deprivation, marginalization and disfranchisement, that long night's journey into day, had at long last come to a close because America had finally elected a black man as President of the United States of America.

I was excited to hear the news, really I was. A black man would live in the White House? Wow! But even more Wow! than this mind boggling fact was the reality that a black woman would be the First Lady of the land! Did this now mean that the black woman would now be the woman to validate the guest list of every simpering socialite? Would we become the women to watch and emulate (as if this were not already happening) simply because we favored (as in we looked like) our First Lady?

A thought that was a little more worrisome, however, was the notion that we African American women would now have to be the standard bearer for our First Lady. What if we dropped the ball and did something dumb or ill-mannered in polite company and the effect would immediately be translated to the First Lady of the land? What would I do then? After all, I had spent most of my life making sure I did nothing that would warrant the continuation of a stereotype; what was I to do now that my race and my gender would be even more subject to the scrutiny of the masses?

Living Black in America comes replete with an unwritten compendium of regulations and by-laws and rules of conduct and good manners for those moments when we find ourselves in the presence of the majority culture, none of which are set in stone tablets anywhere. Nevertheless, most of my generation, as well as the generations that came before me and passed the image torch on to me, know the "shoulds" and the "oughts" of good behavior and living Black in America.

The older women who raised me (the village mentality was very much intact during my coming-of-age years) were always neatly kempt and tastefully stylish. They may have worn uniforms to clean "Miz Anne's" house, but those uniforms were always crisply and starchily pressed. Every tightly wound, hard pressed curl and every stringently marceled wave was neatly in place and the red lipstick (that always turned orange on us) stayed put even in the heat of the kitchen.

Perhaps it was the constraint of the weekly white uniform that dictated the dramatic dress of Sundays. I remember my grandmother's faux hair, a length of curled hair (real or not, I do not know) that was attached to a band of elastic which she would slip onto her head and then comb her hair over it to blend the two. To handle the recalcitrant gray at her temples, she would use a black stick made of "what that heck is that" to cover those unruly strands. It never seemed to occur to her that the goo she applied to her edges would eventually succumb to the sweltering summer heat of south central Texas to turn into black rivulets of sweat that ran down the sides of her face. Yes, Sunday meant dress-up and the cost of a black woman getting herself together to enter into the presence of the Lord was never too expensive or too demanding or too strenuous.

I can still "see" my mother on many a hot summer Sunday morning wrestling herself into long-line bras and latex saturated girdles. This main event of the morning was usually followed by the putting on of make-up which would then go into battle with the rapidly rising summer heat which always resulted in another full application after the donning of the de rigueur Sunday suit. A hat was always carefully and stylishly set upon her head, whereupon she would then hustle us kids into the car (if we hadn't already walked ourselves to Sunday school) to get to church and congregate with all the stylish mavens of our Baptist Ekklesia. How these women managed not to swoon somewhere between the long-winded and rote prayers of the deacons and the whooping histrionics of the pastor is definitely a mystery.

No, denomination was not a divider when it came to Sunday morning style (unless you were of the Pentecostal persuasion that eschewed fancy dress, lipstick, powder and paint, those hell and damnation ancient trappings of the vile Jezebel, that wicked manipulator of King Ahaz and persecutor/prosecutor of the prophet Elijah); most of the good sisters of my southern community always dressed to the nines on Sunday.

But I digress, greatly. Change is here, so I continue to hear, and continue to hear, and continue to hear, and we African Americans should be excited, nay, hysterical with ecstasy and unbridled joy. The long night is over! But I am a little bit concerned about this great cultural leap into positive change, so I have a question. How long will it take my cultural eyes to adjust to the light of this new day? Can I really step into the sunshine of change and quickly shake the dust of the collective past of my people from my weary feet?

Have I, have we, truly overcome?