Top Quotes: “Black American Refugee: Escaping the Narcissism of the American Dream” — Tiffanie Drayton

Introduction

“Only when each individual American is free to achieve self-actualization will we collectively find the strength, and muster the resilience, to heal racial divisions, inequality, and oppression, and finally make the promise of peace, liberty, and justice for all a reality.”

Childhood

“My mother had emigrated from our homeland in Trinidad and Tobago with a few dollars, a big dream, and a newfound confidence in her life’s purpose. On a quest for a better life for all of us, she left Trinidad with one suitcase and an address in her pocket for a Brooklyn-based agency that placed immigrant women from the West Indies with families who wanted live-in nannies. Mom made two hundred dollars per week yet somehow still managed to send money to my grandmother biweekly for our care, ship down huge barrels filled with goods twice per year — once on Christmas and again right before the summer — and save enough money to buy our tickets when the time came for us to join her.”

“The only Black faces Mom saw were “the help,” so it was hard for her to imagine any other path for women who looked like her. This reality was amended only when a friend recommended she apply for a job at Chase Bank and, to her surprise and delight, she landed a teller position at a branch on Water Street in downtown Manhattan.”

“Black women R&B singers of the nineties were powerful, angelic, graceful, and feminine. Most had medium- to light-brown skin, wore their hair permed bone straight, and had long, slender bodies and perfectly straight, pearly-white teeth. They reflected an ideal womanhood I would spend my life aspiring to. One that I now know was carefully curated to be acceptable and wholesome to all Americans.”

“Every Black child remembers the moment they learn that certain white spaces are off limits to them. Through encounters that are technically harmless and legal, but that undermine us anyway, Black children learn from ordinary citizens who take it upon themselves to clandestinely patrol common spaces that we not only are unwelcome but also somehow represent possible danger.”

“Texas’s 1866 Apprentice Act legalized the kidnapping of Black children under the guise of “providing them with guardianship” and providing “good” homes for them. These children were then used as forced, unpaid labor. The very same pretext — the separation of Black children from their families as a means of “bettering” their circumstances — would undergird profitable practices of the twentieth century that disproportionately forced Black children into foster care and child protective services.”

“”BLACK BITCH,” an opponent wrote one day, right after I defeated him 191–72. “YOU FUCKING BLACK WHORE.”

I stared at the screen, puzzled. Then I waved at Niki, urging her to come view the spectacle.

“Can you believe this?” I asked her, dumbfounded.

She read the message and turned toward me with a queasy look.

“Yeah, I get a lotta those too,” she responded.

Niki confessed that she’d sat through many similar encounters on Literati before she finally decided to change her avatar to a flower, which would not give away her racial identity. She shrugged at me and walked back to bed and continued to thumb through her novel. After that day, it was like the floodgates of online gaming racism had opened. Almost every other win was followed by message after message containing the words “nigger,”“black,” “bitch,” “dumb,” or “whore,” or some combination of the five.”

“After that day, fights became a regular part of my life. When I tried to neutralize one threat to my safety, others erupted like weeds tormenting a perfectly manicured lawn. A wrong look, an accusation of desiring another girl’s “man,” refusing to change seats for friends to sit down beside each other on the bus, and even refusing to loan my family’s plastic pool to a peer all led to verbal or physical altercations. The worst of the abuse occurred right before or after school. After two girls jumped me while I was walking home from the bus one afternoon, for a reason I remain uncertain of, I skipped school as frequently as possible, hoping to stay off my tormentors’ radars. And that’s when I had my first run-in with the law.”

“Not too long after I started hiding out all day at home, a letter came in the mail bearing a bright red stamp and header that read “Office of the District Attorney.” Inside was a summons addressed to my mom from the state’s family court with a hearing date and an explanation that my continued absence from school could result in criminal charges or her children being taken away by the state. Texas family court was threatening my mom with legal action because I had racked up too many unexcused absences. She immediately got on the phone with the principal of my school.

“How could you do this to a hardworking parent?” she spit through the mouthpiece.

The principal explained that it was Texas law and absences were calculated and reported to the court via an automated system. A student was considered truant once they missed more than three days of school in a four-week period.”

“The bright lights. The music. The energetic and magnetic preacher. His fully engaged congregation hung on every single one of his words.

“It’s my wife’s birthday!” he boomed one day. “And I want to thank everyone who made her ten-thousand-dollar shopping spree possible in the name of the good Lord!””

“As violence became more common, the local police implemented a 9:00 p.m. curfew for children under seventeen. We couldn’t even go to a Saturday-night movie or hang out with friends at the mall without risking being ticketed. More men stood around idly. The final straw was when Domino’s refused to deliver to our neighborhood – the delivery men were being robbed too frequently.”

“His fifth-grade teacher threatened to call the cops on him when he announced that he would be going to Harvard Law School and was open to taking on clients interested in protesting the absence of chocolate milk from the daily lunch menu. Apparently, he refused to back down when the teacher told him he would never get into the prestigious university, and that standoff led to a verbal altercation that ended with him in the principal’s office and threats of suspension.

“He would get into Harvard,” the teacher declared during their parent-teacher conference in front of the school’s principal, “because of affirmative action that would steal my son’s place and give it to him!”

“Your racism cannot stand in his way, because his path has already been decided for him,” Mom responded plainly before leaving the room. She proudly told us over dinner that night about her mic-drop moment defending Stefan.”

“Michelle and her sister were fortunate they weren’t among the thousands of children raised in foster care or behind bars alongside their incarcerated mothers who, in exchange for “good behavior,” were rewarded with the chance to rear their kids in prison.”

“When Mom picked us up that day, I announced that I would not ever return.

“Yeah, it smells terrible in there,” Stefan concurred.

On that evening, while driving home, I promised myself I would do everything in my power to never again risk being engulfed by such failure, despair, and hardship. I would do everything possible to avoid Black neighborhoods and schools. Only a couple years removed from all I had experienced in Houston, I couldn’t confront the horror of that school and its surrounding environs. My heart raced and my palms became sticky with anxietv as memories of the constant fear of violence and the relentless fight to survive flooded my mind. I wasn’t ready to re-enter such a place. I couldn’t help anyone there.

“I need to volunteer somewhere else,” I told my counselor the following day.”

“The experience of volunteering at Da’Quan’s school juxtaposed against my time at the tennis clinic only further cemented my belief that whiteness was good, rich, and worthy of aspiring to. Blackness was a condition to abandon and run from. My mind never contemplated Da’Quan’s well being as I handed out breakfast sandwiches during the neighboring town’s annual 5K run during the next community service project. We community-serving tennis girls gave the mostly white runners-out-fitted in their Nike shorts and sneakers – high fives, food, and Gatorades as they crossed the finish line. I spent only forty-five minutes engaged in the endeavor but racked up six more community service hours. I also accrued five community service hours for helping to decorate a clubhouse for the tennis team’s end-of-season party, in an exclusive neighborhood where one of the players lived. By the time I was a junior, I was already halfway through earning all of the hours I needed to qualify for the scholarship, and I had managed to thwart the counselor’s attempt to Blacken my experience of what “giving back to the community” meant. In my mind, there was a clear distinction between me and the other Black kids. I was Black, but in transition in the direction of whiteness. Though it would be impossible for me to arrive at that final destination, the reality of my skin color didn’t stop me from trying to shift toward whiteness.

Welcome to the light!

As I walked past the hallways filled with Black and Hispanic kids, I felt a deep sense of superiority and pride in the fact that I would be joining the white kids in the higher-level courses. I was one of the “smart” kids whom my teachers adored. Though I stood out as the only Black girl in my AP classes and battled some self-consciousness, I much preferred the absence of full acceptance over the outright fear of violence and ostracism I had come to anticipate in Black spaces after Houston. Every time I passed by a rowdy, uncontrollable classroom full of students of color or saw a fight break out among the Black kids, I sighed with relief. I had escaped their fate and would no longer be subjected to such indignities or abuses.”

“When we arrived at neighboring schools for games, we knew which teams would be easy to beat just by the state of their fields. And, of course, by the color of the other girls’ skin. We could always feel confident we’d pummel majority-Black-and-brown teams.

“And look at their uniforms!” a teammate screamed when we approached one school where the team was warming up in plain T-shirts.

The entire bus erupted in giggles, the girls pointing and further commenting on the shortcomings of the other team, their environment, and their equipment. I laughed along awkwardly. Though the other girls looked more like me than my own team, I refused to identify with their circumstances.”

“We moved back to New Jersey a few weeks later – instead of risking a move across the street in Florida. It didn’t take long before all of my friends left our Florida neighborhood as well. Karla moved to a town forty-five minutes away so she could continue going to a good school, and Michelle moved two and a half hours away to Fort Lauderdale. Dennis and his family moved north to Philly. The twins, Brielle and Rochelle, returned to upstate New York. We rolled Big Mama into a U-Haul and began the long journey back up north. Meanwhile, the government spent billions to bail out big banks. The CEOs and executives who were in charge of the banks earned millions. But normal families like ours were just uprooted and forced to resettle elsewhere. We were discarded.”

“On Halloween, as I walked toward the class-room, I spotted a tall brown princess with flowing hair, wearing a ball gown and glistening silver sandals with a small heel on them. When I got closer, I noticed this princess was my math teacher. Except he barely resembled the shy, unassuming man whom my peers ignored.

“Good morning, my students!” he said that day at the start of class, with beaming eyes and a huge, beautiful smile.

As Cinderella, he stood tall – his posture resembling royalty. He approached the chalkboard with confidence and hissed threats at students who attempted to interrupt him. He was another person in that gown, and his self-assuredness was hard to miss. The next day, our unassuming math teacher returned and students resumed their disrespect. But a few weeks later, Mr. Bolado disappeared. We, his students, became increasingly curious as to why. Gossip circulated that he had terminal cancer or had possibly gone to jail, but I shrugged it all off. Eventually, days became weeks and weeks became months. Christmas came and brought the gift of a two-week vacation, and all of the kids scurried home, still wondering if their teacher would return to teach, ever.

Upon our return from winter break, the school’s counselor came to our classroom.

“I’m sure you have all noticed the absence of your teacher,” he began. “Everyone should feel free to pursue a path that will lead them to happiness – that is their right – and sometimes that pursuit requires courage,” he continued. By the end of his speech, we had learned that our teacher would be returning to instruct us as a woman, with a new first and last name: we would have to refer to her as “Ms. Samantha Melendez’ going forward. For the first time that year, the entire classroom fell completely silent.

The next day, I entered to find a smiling teacher wearing a woman’s blouse and a formfitting pair of pants. Admittedly, I felt a bit confused at first. I looked around for cues to show me how to react in a way that was acceptable. Then I remembered the insightful words of that counselor: Everyone should feel free to pursue happiness – that is their right. I knew all I had to do was respect that right. And that is precisely what I – and most of the student body – did.

Though there were a few students who were, from time to time, intentionally rude or disrespectful, they were outnumbered by the many who respectfully kept their opinions to themselves or outwardly showed support for Ms. Melendez.”

Adult Life

““There’s this place called Splash that I heard is amazing, and I want to go tonight,” he said.

I went home on a mission to get dressed and have a night on the town. I felt invigorated by a sense of newfound purpose. When I burst through the front door, Stefan immediately sensed my busy intent.

“Going out tonight?” he questioned. “Where ya headed?”

Unable to keep the excitement to myself, but cautious not to reveal Jessi’s secret, I told him about my plans.

“Jessi and I are going to a place called Splash in the city,” I responded.

A smile swept over his face.

“Oh, I think I’lI meet you guys there,” he said.

I assumed “there” meant the city, and I told Stefan to give me a call when he arrived, then quickly changed into a cute shirt, jeans, and red pumps. I was already dressed and waiting when Jessi pulled up. He sped down the highway and through the Holland Tunnel like a bandit breaking out of prison. We cruised through downtown New York City, no longer in awe of the busy and crowded streets. We parked, fed the nearby meter, and then joined a slowly creeping line for Splash as a single bouncer checked IDs to make sure patrons were all over eighteen.

Inside, the club was jam-packed and the gayness was both refreshing and fabulous. Men with chiseled bodies and perfectly square jawlines were bumping and grinding on one another, some without shirts and most carrying colorful drinks in one hand. The atmosphere was energizing and invigorating, and the men waved and blew kisses in my direction as I passed.

“Oh my God, aren’t you so precious!” one random man squealed while cupping my face in his hands.

I swelled at the validation and began to whip my head around, twisting my hips in excitement. When beads of sweat began to drip down my face, I stood outside the bar and drank in the night air. My cell phone vibrated: it was Stefan. I stuffed it back into my pocket, uncertain what to tell him. Just as I was about to head back into the club, I caught a glimpse of a tall, handsome Black man strolling toward the entrance wearing skinny jeans and a sports jacket over a white V-neck T-shirt. He had a wide grin spread across his face and walked with both control and ease. As he came closer, a vague sense of familiarity swept over me.

“Let’s go dance!” the man screamed at me over the music that spilled out of the club.

It was Stefan. In that moment, a veil lifted and I could finally see him as his whole self. My brother who sang Disney soundtracks with me to ward off moments of sadness, who was always there to anchor me in my experiences of the world as a Black girl, had come out. To me. It was my moment to bestow support upon him, and I wasted no time doing so. I grabbed his hand and we disappeared into the venue, where we spent hours dancing, shaking, and twirling to Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and EDM. By the time we left, we were drenched in sweat and giddy over shared tales of our first night in the city’s gay scene.”

“Another memorable incident occurred months before that, when the mother of my good school friend came to pick her up from our house. “You in this house full of Black people?” the mother asked when, upon arriving, she discovered to her dismay that my family was perhaps two shades more pigmented than she was.

“You will never come back here again!” she screamed behind my friend, who burst into tears and ran out of my front door in shame.

“Ay, negra puta,” one mother announced upon entering her home and finding me comfortably seated, watching a movie with her son, a long haired Puerto Rican kid from the neighborhood with whom I had spent a few evenings sitting on the Rocks and exchanging flirty looks.

Only moments earlier, he had slipped his fingers between mine and pulled my hand into his lap, as if claiming it for himself. I appreciated the gesture, hopeful that perhaps it meant a change in my dating fortunes. At the sound of his mother’s voice, he jumped out of his seat and rushed toward the foyer to intercept her, but by then it was too late. I quietly made my exit as they argued back and forth in Spanish over my mere presence.

“It’s not that serious. Don’t be so dramatic,” Jessi cajoled when I spoke of the pain of the repeated attacks on my Blackness.”

“Debbie and my uncle had traded their three-bedroom house in Edison for a larger home in an even whiter neighborhood farther away from the city. They had also managed to purchase a UPS Store in a shopping plaza near the house, which they ran as a family.

“Pa has to lie to the white people and pretend he is just a worker,” Ashley disclosed during her stay while telling us over dinner about the way her dad ran his business, her voice monotonous and lifeless.

He had changed his name from Darnell to Dave, so as to not offend the sensibilities of their customers, who were all white. My family and I listened to her tales from the burbs with equal parts shock and fascination. During her visit, she told us of one-sided friendships where white schoolmates would come to her birthday party but never invite her to theirs; of teachers who would accuse her of being too talkative or loud while failing to reprimand boisterous white boys.”

“Tales of mothers clutching their dead infants while begging in the streets for food and the lips of the dead being stained green by the grass they desperately (and futilely) tried to eat were common in that horrific time. Still, it didn’t take long before “white” (WASP) Americans branded the Irish refugees as poor, disease-ridden rapists and criminals who threatened to steal jobs and strain welfare budgets. Italian immigrant newcomers were subjected to similar treatment, being deemed as essentially “Black” in early America.

When they first arrived in America, Italians were met with a wave of literature that depicted them as “racially suspect” and were often relegated to Negro spaces. White America called the Italian immigrants “dago,” “guinea” (an epithet used against enslaved Africans and their descendants), and other terms that more clearly exemplified their Black status, like “white nigger” and “nigger wop.” The now-infamous Columbus Day holiday was birthed as a diplomacy effort between Italy and America after a bloody New Orleans lynching claimed the lives of eleven Italian immigrants and nearly pushed the two nations to the brink of war.”

“”Mawning, mawning,” a voice croaked.

My body tensed with anxiety as I searched for the greeting’s origin.

“MAWNING,” the voice more loudly insisted.

I turned my head around and caught sight of a woman pouring water into a dog bowl placed near a fence in her driveway. Then I scanned the street seeking the object of her greeting. We clearly didn’t know each other, and I couldn’t fathom the reason why two strangers would exchange words. Years of living in American big cities and towns taught me to avoid the gaze of strange passersby. I shrugged and continued my jog. But I couldn’t run away from those discomforting moments, which seemed to follow me everywhere as I rediscovered my homeland.

“Mawning,” a passenger greeted everyone as he climbed aboard a maxi taxi, which would travel along the country’s bus route to and from Port of Spain and through Trinidad’s eastern towns.

“Mawning,” the other riders responded in unison.

I turned my body to the window to avoid him.

“Good day,” workers greeted me as I entered local stores. I rushed past them and grabbed the items on my shopping list hastily.

“Good night, good night,” fellow joggers bellowed as they bounced and stretched past me, following the track along the local savannah.”

“As if to undercut its harsh history, Trinidadians take Carnival very seriously. In the 1800s, Carnival was originally meant for white, French plantation owners to celebrate before Lent. Enslaved Africans were unable to participate in the extravagant masquerades and balls indulged in by the planters. However, when emancipation brought freedom, Afro-Trinidadians created their own parallel celebration called Canboulay. They danced through the dark streets, carrying torches, beating drums, and singing songs with cheeky lyrics. They participated in stick fights and wore revealing, outrageous costumes.

Prudish Victorian-era white culture frowned upon the “obscene” nature of African Carnival. White aristocrats outlawed African percussion instruments in an attempt to stomp out the celebration, but then African perseverance birthed the steel pan – the country’s national instrument. Plantation owners forced Africans to stop speaking in their mother tongue, but then Africans created calypso music to mock their “owners” and secretly communicate with one another. Canboulay was banned entirely, but it was reborn as J’ouvert, and spectacular costumes were created to represent characters from Trinidadian folklore.”

“Late one summer night, I received a message on Facebook.

“You looked so sexy,” it read.

I stared at the computer, bewildered for a moment.

I scanned the message and read it over and over again. The sender of the four-word statement was my father. At Alex’s behest, I had reached out to him before going down to Trinidad. My dad still lived there, and Alex thought it was worth attempting to reconnect.”

“During the Revolutionary War, around nine thousand African Americans became Black Patriots and fought beside white men to secure the country’s freedom from Britain. Many were lured by promises of freedom and the hope of first-class citizenship in exchange for bearing arms. But postwar America conferred little reward on Black Patriots. Many enslavers reneged on their promise to free captive Africans who fought in the war. And after the war, some states in the North and South even restricted Black participation in the military. In 1792, Congress outright banned African Americans from military service.”

“I was over thirty thousand dollars in debt and once again became a cruel statistic. Black women held two-thirds of the nation’s student loan debt and were more likely to default because of nonpayment. By the end of my college career, I couldn’t even find the money to pay what I owed on my tuition directly to the school, so they decided to withhold my diploma. What was the point of all of my hard work?”

“After the War of 1812, thousands of African Americans who served on behalf of the British fled the U.S. Black American soldiers, who had been lured to fight for the Brits in exchange for their freedom, boarded boats destined for English-ruled territories throughout the Caribbean when the British lost the war. By 1816, many had settled in Trinidad, the southernmost island of the Caribbean and the land of my birth. They became known as “Merikins,” and their legacy of economic prosperity would endure for centuries. Merikins were among the tens of thousands of Black refugees who escaped the U.S. for freedom, gaining that freedom even after fighting for the losing side in a war. Others made their way to Canada alone or in small family groups, and many settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.”

“According to the 2010–12 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, nationally, 45 percent of Black women experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

According to the CDC, Black women ages twenty-five to twenty-nine are eleven times more likely as White women in that age group to be murdered while pregnant or in the first year after childbirth.”

“Although in the eighteenth century Haiti was France’s wealthiest colony (then known as Saint-Domingue), it would be reduced to pain, hardship, and rubble in the centuries after its emancipation, beginning when the French arrived with warships in 1825, demanding the country pay millions in reparations.

Since that day, Haiti has paid its former colonizer over $21 billion in reparations, plunging the country into economic duress that has created widespread social instability. By the time a catastrophic earthquake rocked the tiny nation in 2010, it was already buried in poverty, poor housing conditions, and violence from years of being subjected to unfair trade sanctions that can be traced back hundreds of years to white anger over Black freedom.”

“We’re gonna run a couple of tests and do some blood work,” she said with a smile. “I’m glad you came in now, because you almost missed the time frame for some of these tests.”

One of those tests was called “nuchal translucency screening,” an ultrasound test that helps to identify possible chromosomal problems like Down syndrome. It was supposed to be done between weeks eleven and thirteen of pregnancy. I was already thirteen weeks pregnant, and had I not changed health-care providers, I would’ve sat at home with my feet up drinking water while, unbeknownst to me, the narrow window for testing closed. A nurse came in at the end of my visit and filled vial after vial with my blood to send off to the lab to be tested for everything from vitamin deficiencies to genetic abnormalities to even the sex of the baby.”