I sit in the empty public bus, my brightness up, my ears submerged in Michael Jackson while delving into an array of Buzzfeed quizzes such as, “What Disney Princess Are You?” (Cinderella) or “Do you remember the entire Twilight series?” (I do). A rich concoction of tunes remains in the queue, a playlist composed of lyricism that others – my grandfather and an indie friend of mine – refer to as “rap crap”, a playlist I call, “Being a Coco Pop.” As MJ’s song plays, I can’t seem to erase the image of the black and white babies sitting on the globe, followed by a bleached Michael Jackson jerking erratically in front of a green screen as he ironically sings, which I know you’ll sing,
“It don’t matter if you’re black or white,”
Oh Michael, perverted Michael, if only five-year-old me didn’t trust in your words as much I trusted in that love calculator link sent to me in Year 6, (yes my crush was exposed) Jordan if you’re reading this, I SWEAR I was joking. Nevertheless, Michael lied.
I grew up bearing the stares when reading the books – To Kill A Mockingbird, even articles on slavery, civil rights movement, etc – and the curiosity one has for the texture of my hair and the desperation to know the colour of my nipples and the apparent peculiarity of my given names and the difference in colour between my palms and the back of my hand; the sheer fascination for the way I “pop” versus the way others “bubble”. Some say, it may seem that this additional attention is rather flattering, they all want to know about me and my foreign ways, and sometimes this may be true, like when lavender-smelling old women stroke my head (with permission), but maybe I’m just weird, or accustomed? Baffling as it is, despite all the questions, even the fondness for my nipples, it seems that sometimes some people don’t know my roots: my cotton-picking days. Do they remember the history or recognise boundaries?
I am a Coco Pop amongst Rice Bubbles in full cream milk, in a white ceramic bowl, eaten from a white plastic spoon, and consumed by a white person, in a white home, in a white neighbourhood. Shall I try to make chocolate milk – should I, can I provoke change? Kendrick Lamar begins playing,
“Shit don’t change until you get up and wash your ass nigga,”
I’ve seen my peers’ break into hysterics, laughter, that is, as I tell them that my father’s “African” name is Kofi. Oh, and how could I forget the most memorable, one of the most wild questions I’ve been asked, “Hey, do you see black and white or have normal vision?” Only reflecting now do I realise the paradoxical nature of her question: black and white was all she could see. I think I’m having a midlife crisis at 20.
They touch my hair without permission, pulling and prodding, following their uninvited petting with “Weird!” or “It feels like pubes”, provoking a red face from me but a cackle from their friends. Then they ask what I wished for from Santa? If I recall correctly, a GHD and heat damage. Solange sings,
“You know this hair is my shit
Rolled the rod, I gave it time
But this here is mine”
Some even attempt to explain that I should not be offended. Their use of the N-word does not apply to me nor the Black Lives Matter Movement as “Your Dad is West African, not African American,”, “You’re Australian not American,”, you can tell they put their milk before their milo… Must I educate them?
In class, a boy I now (hesitantly) call a friend asked a naive question on two occasions:
- In Year 8 Religion, where we were instructed to blurt out our stupid opinions, well so it seems, asking, “Why can’t WE (as in white people) refer to black people as black fella or something similar, but THEY can call us white fella,”.
I had a posse of support (my white friends who watched intently while standing beside me). I took my gun off stand by.
2. In Year 9 English. The same question. The same white boy. A different grin on his face.
I was sitting at the head of the empty desk, at the centre of the classroom, my two friends absent. You wanted me to raise my hand, but I choked in disbelief, as if your words flew up my flared nostrils, made their way to my brain and beat the living shit out of my rebuttals. Why did you ask again, why did you choose to use “they” and “we”, why did you make me cry in frustration in the shower months later, turning my shower karaoke into a regretful soiree? These 20 minutes of my adolescent life crawling about the walls of my matured mind like a pregnant spider – I squash, only to prompt a creepy-crawly frenzy. Sometimes I wonder if his question will be asked again. So, I compose an argument, analyse it for flaws, improve it. Compose an argument, analyse it for flaws, improve it. J.cole harmonises,
“You were the one that was trying to keep me way down,”
It’s not just people, my private school labelled braids and cornrows, the hairstyles my sister, ancestors and I have been wearing since birth, as “extreme”. And why? All because of some white skater boys employing the look for some attention, do they want the fucking oppression with it? I’m that angry, sassy black woman that I was made to be on TV – Aretha Franklin, Big Momma, Mama Ronzoni you name it. I rap Kendrick Lamar,
“You never liked us anyway, fuck your friendship, I meant it,”
Accordingly, I started writing a piece titled “The Common White Male,” which I then stopped. Even, writing this piece, I’m already dreading the question, “What are you writing about?”. I’d wish to tell them that “I’m fixing things they don’t know need to be fixed”, but in all honesty racism is a controversial topic, a topic that wonders on the Aussie dinner table and manages to run away without discovery, am I to have table manners or be the hostile black woman who talks while she eats?
I turn my brightness down so the typed words are hardly seen. I rest my head on the vibrating bus seat, and dream on, while my headphones still penetrate my ear drums with sound. To tell humanity that you don’t agree, that you don’t like it, to provoke change is not a mere mission but an arduous task, and although seismic stress occurs, I still don’t know how Rosa Parks did it, and maybe I never will. “Plain milk it is” I mumble.