Multi-Racial Read #19: Notes of a White Black Woman by Judy Scales-Trent- Part I

Congratulations to Cat Michaels who won Leonardo the Florentine from last week's blog. 

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I purchased NOTE OF A WHITE BLACK WOMAN several years ago and recently found it while unpacking. I'm glad I did! Judy Scales-Trent provides amazing insights into racial identity as she reveals her thoughts and emotions as a "white black woman." As I often do when reviewing a book like this, I'm going to quote different sections that particularly hit me and which will inform Half-Truths. Since there is much that I want to quote, I will intersperse blog posts from NOTES OF A WHITE BLACK WOMAN with other book reviews and writing observations. I hope this book will challenge your thinking as it has mine.

Pennsylvania State University Press, 1955

Introduction 

Where race is important, there must be a way to sort by race. Thus, to the extent that we talk about race in America, we are basing our talk on notions of racial purity. The concept of race cannot exist without the concept of racial purity.

 The need for racial purity laws arose in America as soon as an African and a European had sexual relations here and produced a child. Was the child African? European? Something else? It is not surprising, then that the question was raised early....By 1662 the state of Virginia, troubled by these relationships, passes its first law banning miscegenation. (p.3)

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Just as the forced migration of millions of Yoruba and Ibo wrought destruction on those cultures in Africa as well as in America, so has this newly created African American community been devastated by a vision of the world in which light skin and dark skin are seen as meditations on good and evil, civilization and savagery, intelligence and ignorance. This cruel lesson has not only affected how we see ourselves in comparisons with white Americans; it has also informed how we look at each other within our own community. 

Like my parents, I am a black American with white skin, an African American with both African and European ancestors. Thus, I live a life that is often disjointed, troubling. I also see the world in a different way...For my position does not allow me the luxury of thinking that the notion of race makes any sense. If you are black and white at the same time, once you finally realize that it is not you that is strange, you realize something very strange is going on in this society. Perhaps more directly and more starkly than other Americans, I understand "race" as a socially created metaphor, for my very existence unsettles expectations of "race." (p. 4)

photo © Rob McElroy, 2015

 Journal Entries

November, 1978. Cast out, cast out, always cast out from the only home, the only safe place, the only refuge in a terrifying, vicious land. Cast out, and alone.

No home. No home.

No place to belong.

No place to rest a frightened and lonely heart.

No place to hide.

White people would let me in, of course. They think that I belong with them. They smile at me. They welcome me. They think I'm their sister.  

.......

Missing the safe warmth of my childhood, a colored girl growing up in the protection of a strong family in the segregated South, surrounded by their love and their strength and their definition of me and of themselves.

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But I lost something more when I grew up and moved out of the segregated South, out of the safety of my childhood home, because the Jim Crow laws gave me an identity and a protection I couldn't give myself.  

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What do you do if you're rejected by one world,...and are constantly rejecting the other? I am perceived by some as white, by some as black, by yet others as a black person but "really white," so (a) you can trust her and (b) you can't trust her. 

And yet I'm me all the time.  (p. 13-14)

How are You Celebrating the National Day on Writing?

October 20th is National Day on Writing. I'm celebrating the day by sharing a book that I have just begun to read as I research my young adult historical novel.

Notes of a White Black Woman (Pennsylvania State University Press: 1995) was written by lawyer Judy Scales-Trent. it is a collection of autobiographical essays about her experience as a light-skinned African American woman. It not only gives me insight into the issues she struggled with growing up, it also causes me to evaluate my own preconceived notions about race and color.

This segment is from her observations of generations of photographs in a family album:

"When you look at the photograph of my mother and her sisters, you see that two of the women have white skin. So did my uncle, Big Buddy. But then, when you turn the page to look at the photograph of the grandchildren, it almost takes your breath away, for these are all brown-skinned children. Their skin color ranges from light brown to dark brown, but it is clear that these are not white children....

I am just now realizing that I was so anxious about how they [the dark-skinned men Scales-Trent dated] viewed my color that I did not consider the value I attached to theirs. For it is very likely that without any instruction, without conscious plan, without even thinking about it, I--and perhaps others in my family--thought seriously about skin color when I thought about who would be the father of my children. For this is a country where it is dangerous to be too dark, and where it is wrong to be too light." (p. 48-9)

As a writer, I am indebted to other writers, such as Scales-Trent, who have shared their research and/or life experiences. My work will be richer as a result of their work and honest self-exploration. And that is definitely a reason to celebrate good writers and the writing craft.

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