Dream Act 2009

For those of us supporting and fighting for positive change for immigrants, the re- introduction of the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) to Congress on March 26, 2009 is good news. The act would allow young people who are undocumented to qualify for residency status, opening the doors of college and possible citizenship for thousands of deserving young people. Most have been here since they were young children, have graduated from high school in the U.S., worked, and are a fabric of our communities in every sense of the word.

Watch this bill, support it, and urge President Obama to make it a priority in 2009!

Change.org has great information on why this act is so important.

Should Goldilocks always be white?

There is a series of kids books that re-tell European and European-American fairy tales with all African American characters. Jump at the Sun books include Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and more.

My four-year-old granddaughter, Rya, has two of those books and we used to read them all the time. That is until about a month ago, when she said after we finished reading Goldilocks, "Grandma, this book isn't right. Goldilocks is supposed to be light like you." Meaning white. Meaning blonde hair. Meaning definitely not brown.

She caught me up short. At four, she is all about figuring out everything. Her family is a favorite topic of exploration since we are a complicated stew of skin color, culture, sexuality, chosen and given family, and so much more.

Rya likes to point out all of our shades of brown -- she lines us up in order: Ti Ti is the darkest (my wuzband), followed by Mommy (my daughter, who is mocha-colored), followed by Rya (light tan), followed by me (the only white person in the family). She tells me I am "just a little lighter than sand," and that Ti Ti is "like yummy chocolate brown."

I love when her mom explains to Rya why she has such light brown skin and sandy curly hair: "You just didn't bake in the oven as long as some other kids."

Us.

So back to Goldilocks. I don't think Rya was making a self-effacing, anti-brown skin or anti-brown people comment. I think she was speaking her truth. I actually think she was being supportive of me -- pointing out a character who is "really light" like me.

She loves, loves Dora (don't we all love Dora). And she loves her books starring African American characters and families -- Amazing Grace, Jamaica's Find, Lola at the Library, Dancing in the Wings, and more.

When my kids were little, I had to scramble to find books with characters that looked like them. There was no amazon.com to search the world for stories that fit us. I would have been very happy if the "Jump at the Sun" books had been around back then. And books about interracial families? I found just one, Through My Window. It's a little better in book and video land now, but not by much.

"Jump at the sun" comes from Zora Neale Hurston's famous book, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston said, "Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground." The phrase is, as the book is, all about Black self-love and empowerment.

I think Zora would want kids to read African and African American folk and fairy tales full of illustrations of Black people and Black life, and to read European and European American stories illustrated as the characters were intended and imagined. She'd insist a story be true to its roots.

So maybe Rya is just thinking like Zora.

Which makes me wonder: Should Goldilocks always be white? Blonde? Was "The Wiz" misguided?

What do you think?

Tell It WOC Speak: WOC and Allies Have Something To Say

The next blog WOC and Allies blog carnival is up! If you want to be a part of this, Renee (Womanistmusings) says the next one will go up April 15. Spread the word!

Tell It WOC Speak: WOC and Allies Have Something To Say

Louis CK on being white -- check this out!

Louis CK on being white -- the first funny thing I've ever seen a white person do on white privilege.

Review: "From his latest stand-up "Chewed Up" - Louis CK tells people why it's great being a white male. It's advantages and it's futuristic disadvantages" DVD is out. He cut his chops writing for David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Dana Carvey and Chris Rock. He is best known for directing and writing the feature-length film Pootie Tang, starring a character that he created for The Chris Rock Show. See more on Wikipedia

I feel bad about my neck, too

I inherited the neck of my father's side of our family. Thick. Connects directly from chin to throat. I've always thought it was one of my worst features. If you think that's vain, I'm here to tell you that all women know exactly which body features they hate. Just ask anyone. She will tell you, with scary precision, what she believes is horribly wrong with her nose, or her thighs, or her eyebrows, or her ears.... It is a sickness we all carry.

So when I saw Nora Ephron's book, I Feel Bad About My Neck and other thoughts on being a woman, I about shrieked with delight. A whole book about fat, bad necks.

As it turns out, the book is about much more than necks; it's about aging, and it's the best thing I've read on the topic yet. An excerpt:

"Every so often I read a book about age, whoever's writing it says it's great to be old. It's great to be wise and sage and mellow; it's great to be at the point where you understand just what matters in life. I can't stand people who say things like this. What can they be thinking? Don't they have necks?"

How can you not just love her for speaking THAT TRUTH?

Her neck deal has to do with the fact that necks start going in our early 40s and there is really no fixing them. Some women choose to do all kinds of things with their faces to slow down the inevitable advance of disintegration, but, as Ephron says, "necks don't lie."

We've all seen women -- mostly Hollywood types and rich people -- who tighten their faces up to the point of silliness, and look even more ridiculous because under that over-lifted face is an over-droopy neck.

My neck is indeed getting worse with age. It's thicker, jowly, and careening towards a gigantic double chin. I actually think about how to minimize my neck-ness when someone is taking a photo of me. And I avoid turtlenecks since my neck kind of flows over the top of them. Not cute.

Yes, this is silly. Yes, this is vanity. We all say gamely that we don't really care, "considering the alternative," but we do care.

For me, it's mostly about coming to grips with leaving the "older side of young" and moving into the "younger side of old." It's a new, surprisingly scary place, where you come home from work too tired to do anything but watch TV, have the short-term memory of a pea (a friend calls it "CRS" or "can't remember shit"), aches and pains, yaddy yaddy yada... It's a time when movie stars your age who once were the hotties have jowls and saggy necks, and now show up in minor, non-hottie, sporadic roles on TV. It depresses me. I am 52, a phase of aging where Ephron says we go through "age shame." I think she's right.

In your forties you are still on the old side of young. You still look juicy. The fifties are when you come to grips with the fact that you are no longer one of them. That you realize, as Ephron says, "now" is "their time," and not "our time" anymore. You might know who Alicia Keys is, for example, and love her music, but she is not of you, she is of them.

And Ephron says this about the sixties:

"When you cross into your sixties, your odds of dying -- or of merely getting horribly sick on the way to dying -- spike. Death is a sniper: It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know, it's everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again you could be."

I feel that coming and I'll be honest -- it terrifies me. So we focus on hating our necks (or what ever aging body part we hate) because it's easier than being terrified. We hate our necks because they symbolize the slow march to the end of our days. We hate our necks because they remind us it is not our time anymore.

Maybe more of us need to take off our game face, be more honest, and fess up that aging really sucks, no matter how great our lives are, no matter how happy we are to be alive.

So I'll just say it: I really do feel bad about my neck and I am so not ready to be sliding into old.

~~~~~

P.S. Nice collection of reviews of Ephron's book here. I hope you'll read the book, whatever your age.