Readings from Audre Lorde

I read through Audre Lorde's book entitled "Sister Outsider" as I rode the metro today. I was engulfed in it. I couldn't put it down. I could relate. I don't have to tap into this type of pain. I feel it every day on our collective shoulders:

"Every Black woman in America has survived several lifetimes of hatred, where even in the candy store cases of our childhood, little brown niggerbaby candies testified against us. We survived the wind-driven spittle on our child's shoe and pink flesh-colored bandaids, attempted rapes on rooftops and the prodding fingers of the super's boy, seeing our girlfriends blown to bits in Sunday School, and we absorbed that loathing as a natural state. We had to metabolize such hatred that our cells have learned to live upon it because we had to, or die of it. Old King Mithridates learned to eat arsenic bit by bit and so outwitted his poisoners, but I'd have hated to kiss him upon his lips! Now we deny such hatred ever existed because we have learned to neutralize it through ourselves, and the catabolic process throws off waste products of fury even when we love."

'I see hatred
I am bathed in it, drowning in it
since almost the beginning of my life
it has been the air I breathe
the food I eat, the content of my perceptions;
the single most constant fact of my existence
is their hatred...
I am too young for my history**'

    -from Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde,
      poem from Nigger by Judy Dothard Simmons

Light Skin, Dark Burgers

This past Friday, my big brother and I decided to go out and get drinks and dinner. On him of course--he always spoils me. So we're having our usual intellectual conversation and then the waiter comes to take our order. I wasn't feeling fancy so I decided to go with a burger--but I don't eat meat. So I ordered the "Black Bean Burger." The waiter immediately asked me "Why are you ordering a black burger? You're light skinned."

Huh???

I didn't know if I'd heard him correctly. "You just don't know, I'm as Black as they come" I said in response. I understand that he was joking, but that's not really something you joke about...especially not with strangers...especially when they're supposed to be the ones giving you a tip. I brushed it off. My brother was like "Wow that was really off putting. And it wasn't funny...kinda corny." My brother is classified as a dark skinned black male, so his experiences have been quite different than mine throughout our lives. "I get that type of thing all the time" I told him. "Really?" he said. I told him yeah--that's why it was so easy for me to keep it moving.

Who does that though? I understand that black people (and other non-white people) are color struck due to centuries of white racism, but come on man...let's have some basic etiquette.  

Then when the waiter found out that my brother and I were siblings and not a couple (as most people assume), he proceeded to keep telling me that he wanted to see me again--and asked for my "Facebook." If he even remotely thought that there was a chance he was gonna holla at me, did he not think that type of statement he'd made earlier would turn me off?

So this is what we do in 2012? Scratching my head in mental angst.