Silent Accomplice

March 15, 2016 - Cimpossible 1 Comment

I have spent the last couple of days processing what to say in this post. If you are on Facebook, you might have seen the post where I stated that a man referred to me in the derogatory “N” word. He calling me a Nigger is not the first time I have had my blackness muddied in America. His word was hurtful but not as terrifying as the low growls of dog set upon me in the streets of Somerville. Nor was it as soul-crushing as the persistent lack of opportunities I have faced in Boston as a black woman.

One of the blessings of my life has always been that my heritage lies in Nigeria, in the grand Yoruba land. My heritage lies in the stories of my ancestors. It lies in the stories I was told as a child in Yoruba. It lies in the songs that I was sung. It lies in my name. In my ‘oriki.’ My strong connection with my past means that in my present I feel no trauma. I have always believed that I am a first class citizen. Not second…first.

For the longest time, I lived in that bubble in America. I went to schools where I was the token black student. Instead of feeling somewhat isolated, I felt I was special and breathing some rarefied air. In the past few years of living in Boston, I have come to realize that my privilege as the token black kid in class is, in fact, another symptom of my second class status in America. The truth is no matter how many doors open for me because I am special or different, as long as the door is not open for all, discrimination still exists. Where discrimination exists, we all remain victims. And some of us, remain perpetrators or even beneficiaries of such discrimination when we remain passive. The truth is if we are unable or refuse to confront/deconstruct the false privileges of being exceptionally black, then we cannot truly begin to claim equal status.

In this age of nuanced racism, I feel bad for people of color who are unable to process the complexities of racism. Sometimes I see a black person express an idea that is so racist and I cringe. Maybe partly because I have been that person. You know that person that claims to be African, not African-American, because we believe we are somehow exceptional and not black. I cringe because I understand that when awareness dawns, this person who is now exceptional would have to deal with accepting their ordinariness and redefining how they see the world.

The thing that makes a lot of racism, as well as other discrimination, so dangerous is the small ways that they sneak up. The truth is, in this day and age, a very few people have the gall to say that they believe that a particular sub-set of people are second class. Those people who wear their bias openly are actually not the most dangerous. They are annoying as hell. The most dangerous people are the people who have conscious, even unconscious, bias that is not clearly expressed. Those people would send you to a mental home trying to figure out if you have just been slighted or you are being overly sensitive.

While I was processing how to write this post, I was lucky to run into this essay by Kevin Powell. His sentence on the silent neutrality being an accomplice to injustice validated my decision to break my vow not to speak about Trump. Early in the election season when Donald Trump first started his craziness, I checked out. I refused to acknowledge him. Maybe it was my privilege or naiveté, I had a feeling that America the great melting pot would strike him out. So I took a voice of silence and told everyone I won’t speak about him. The truth is I don’t like talking about discrimination and racism. Who wants to be an angry black woman? I have had a group of white friends tell me that I have a chip on my shoulder when I tried to engage them on diversity issues.

As much as I loathe discomfort, I refuse to be a coward. I refuse to be an accomplice to injustice. I refuse to luxuriate in black immigrant exceptionalism. I refuse to confuse living in the ghettos of inequality as being accomplished. I am going to start making more comments about what it means to live in a black body. About how I feel unsafe on the train now because I am not sure what lies behind the eyes watching me. About how I am unable to walk on the sidewalk of my neighbors’ house because they have a dog and I am afraid they might set it on me because someone once did. About how I don’t network in Boston because I am usually the only black person or one of a few people of color in a room of professionals. About how I am considering a second career but I am trying to avoid fields that may lead to the black tax.

I refuse to be silent.

The Guilt of No

February 9, 2016February 28, 2016 - Cimpossible Leave a comment

I was a consumer behavior researcher, for a hot minute during my graduate school days. My research work dealt with the relationship between intention and behavior. One of the most important things I learned is that intention precedes behavior. Intention, for the most part, is within the full control of a person. Behavior is influenced by a series of factors that are not necessarily within the full control of a person.

Understanding and acknowledging the relationship between intention and behavior is an important part of living a guilt-free life, in my opinion. Sometimes we intend to help but we are unable to help. By understanding that which is beyond our control, we are able to let go of the guilt of being unable. I am reminded of this a lot when I volunteer on Mondays. This past Monday I was leading the shift when an older couple came in. Neither one of them could have been younger than 80. They were both almost frail but sort of full of life. They had stopped at the office to see how they could help.

There are many ways you can help a campaign. Not everyone is able to do everything. The older couple that came in were unable to help much because neither one of them couple could complete basic tasks on the computer. They both felt so guilty and kept apologizing. I kept trying to reassure them that their intention in coming to help was much more important than the fact they were unable to help. The fact that we are using a computerized system is beyond their control. As such, they shouldn’t feel guilty.

Personally, as much as I intend to help the campaign, I can’t do everything. Sometimes, I can’t do anything. Sometimes, I am unable to volunteer for more than 3 hours at a time. Sometimes, I feel guilty about leaving people behind and going home. I know this guilt is irrational. One of the things that I am working on is letting go of irrational guilt.

I have started spending a lot of time thinking about my intentions. What am I intending to do when I go to work in the morning? I intend to help customers have a wonderful shopping experience. However, if a customer asks me to answer a question and I am unable to answer it, does that mean I have failed for the day? No, it means that the question is beyond my volitional control as such I am unable to follow through on my intention.

By focusing on my intention, I have also been able to recognize my limitations. Yes, I would like to help. But, no, I am unable to help. I am learning how to say “no.” In the past, I would edge my bet and say “maybe.” Saying “maybe”was a way of not having to acknowledge my limitations. But “maybe” really was a way of delaying the guilt. Now, I am honest. I say “no.” By saying “no,” I set myself free and I am able to do the best of that which I can.

The Joys of Doing Nothing

January 25, 2016January 24, 2016 - Cimpossible 1 Comment

I am a big Marie Forleo fan. I discovered her when I was living in Ibadan, Nigeria and I was wondering what the next step in my life should be. I have kept up with watching her videos every now and then. For some reason, I saw her Facebook post on her interview with David Bach and it stuck with me. I was really interested in watching the interview because of financial curiosity. This interview was really enlightening about finances but the biggest take away for me was at the end. The final segment of the interview covers Mr. Bach’s sabbatical from his job for 18 months. This got me thinking about my own life. Read more

Shonda Rhimes ‘Year of Yes’

November 19, 2015 - Cimpossible Leave a comment

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes explores a year of affirmation of self

I am different. I am an original. And like everyone else, I am here to take up space in the universe. I do so with pride.

-Shonda Rhimes ‘Year of Yes’

Just finished Shonda Rhimes Year of Yes! OMG! This woman just changed my life. There are a few pivotal moments in my life. One of them was the moment when I realized I was not crazy or weird but an introvert. Recognizing my introversion set me free from the burden of trying to be like everyone. It allowed me to create my own space and celebrate me.

It is funny and powerful that a couple of days ago I was writing on Facebook about how I am learning to occupy space in public by watching men in the gym. I have always struggled with the idea of taking up space in the world. I have tend to favor hiding away from the world, both literally and figuratively. As a child and as an adult, if there were too many people around, I like to hide. As a child and a teenager, I hid in my books. I took books with me to parties with my sister and read in a corner while every one mingled. It was my thing. When I first moved to Boston and lived in a house with young adults that favored house parties, I liked to hide in my room and lock the door. They must have thought I was the strangest person ever. I have been struggling with the idea of needing my own space but wanting the intimacy of sharing space with others. I have never felt like I had the social skills to succeed out in the world. I am awkward. Sometimes, I feel ugly and self-conscious. I say the wrong things. I can be too passionate among people who would rather that share anything concrete. Sometimes I experience temporary deafness and I can’t hear what is being said. In my own world, with my own room and within my own imaginary world, my flaws are not fatal. So I choose to hide.I feel like Year of Yes is really about how to balance the need to be within yourself but still make space to be with others. Reading about Ms. Rhimes’ social anxiety was so relatable but encouraging. If she can break out of the box, so can I. I can learn to be social and connect with others.

There are so many moments in the book where I had to stop and take it in. So many life-affirming moments for me as a black woman, both personally and professionally. I am not exactly breaking ceilings in the work that I do but at the same time I am not exactly surrounded by role models who look like me in the work that I do. I like that Ms. Rhimes is not afraid to speak openly about what it means to be in a room that is often filled with ‘others’. I never realized the concept of the ‘other’ until I moved to the California at 16. At community college, I was underage, a non-drinker, non-driver, nerdy student in a campus where everyone thrived on being cool. Perhaps the greatest flaw I had in those days was my inability to be black. I was called an oreo more than once; looks black, acts white. I didn’t understand what that meant then, I still don’t fully get it now. To me, I am who I am. Color never had anything to do with it.

I know that I need a year of yes of my own. I don’t think I say it enough but coming to United States, especially Boston, made me yet broke me in more ways that one. I lost my innocence and optimism in Boston, one racist incidence after another. I think I allowed myself to be made small, to be told not dream, to accept that in many ways I can’t be the type of success I always dreamed I wanted to be. Some would say I did not try but I dare anyone to walk into a room where no one looks like you, sounds like you or understands you and still feel comfortable. I have been doing some of the work in preparation for my Big 30 but reading Year of Yes makes me realize that I need to do more.

I need to open myself to more things that scare me. Nothing scares me at the moment like dating does. Putting myself out there is like asking people to judge me and tell me if I am worthy. But the thing is that the dream for me has always been marriage, children, the house and maybe a cat or dog. My dreams have nothing to do with traditions of being an African woman. They have everything to do with the need to love, to care, to have my own tribe and to create a home. So as scary as dating seems, nothing seems scarier to me going out of my 20s that a life spent alone without a home, a place and a people to ground me. Ms. Rhimes says dreams don’t come true by dreaming but by doing. I need to be live life more fully in lusty pursuit of impossible dreams. I need to be a doer.

Be a doer, not a dreamer.

-Shonda Rhimes ‘Year of Yes’

Reading Shonda Rhimes Year of Yes, I can tell already, is going to have a huge impact on how I look at what it means to be an introvert. I have laughed, I have cried, I have had deep thought and really shallow thoughts reading this book. I have paused and raced through this book. I have felt the magnitude of this book. I have gifted out this book. I have recommended this book. I recommend this book.

Me and My Mother’s Daughter

July 15, 2015July 11, 2015 - Cimpossible 1 Comment

And the speaker, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, says in this TED speech that “These women lived in the ‘and.’ You could be fierce and feminine.” As I listened to this TED talk about a band of female soldiers who served on the frontline of Afghanistan even as there was a ban of female soldiers on the frontline, I thought about the many ways women have to live a dichotomous lives. Women live in the ‘and’ everyday in the choices that we make. Sometimes the ‘and’ is a function of cultural of expectations of what womanhood is. To be soft AND firm. To elegant AND strong. To be quiet AND heard. To navigate a tightrope between womanhood and the desires to be more than the prescribed bounds of woamnhood.

For me, the ‘and’ is something that I have struggled with all my life. I was thinking back to my teenage years earlier today before watching this TED talk. One of the things I am trying to come to terms with is the abuse that I inflicted on my body via an eating disorder. Surviving an eating disorder is something that has shaped my view of my self, body and my place within the world. I have come to realize that there are times when I try to make myself smaller because I feel ashamed to take up space. When I was in secondary school in Lagos, I remember that one of the pleasures of having an eating disorder was the eating less. Being less at something gave me lots of pride. The look of surprise from classmates when they realized I was eating just a small portion of food. The ability to be more with less. The surprising part of the less obsession was I couldn’t see myself shrinking. Even in my memories of myself in that phase, I still see myself as being large. It is only when I see pictures of myself that I realize that I was shrinking.

This many years later, I can say that I am past the worst of my eating disorder. I think of myself in the terms of a drug addict. I am always going to be in recovery. It is this acknowledgement of my continuous struggle with my body that allows me to be conscious of myself. I am able to look at my approach to life and reel myself in when I am about to make crazy extreme decisions. In the past decade, I have been unable to maintain a stable weight. I have been big and I have been small. I am, and I have been, on a journey to understand what it means to exist within my body.

I am learning that it is possible to be a lot of things in one body. I can be fat and graceful. I can be skinny and love food. I can be sad and happy. The sadness and the happiness is one that took me a long time to learn. I can be strong and I can be weak. I am somewhere in the spectrum of being an introvert and an extrovert although I identify more with being an introvert. Wanting a different life that my mother imagined for me does not make me less of my mother’s daughter. I can be some of who she wants me to be and I can be somewhat different that she imagined I would be.

I can be pure AND own my sexuality. One of the things I struggled with through my early adulthood was that idea that it was okay to be desired and to desire others. I was one of those girls who reached puberty really early physically but mentally I was still a child. Having older men lust openly after my body and make insinuating comments to me made me feel ashamed. In a lot of ways, I wanted to shrink and disappear. Also growing up in a society in which women who appeared to be sexual desirable where considered cheap and tainted made me feel ashamed of my body. I hid myself from the rites of adulthood by being oblivious to appropriate advances and making myself unavailable for the dating rites.

When I started choosing to live in the ‘and’, I gave myself permission to live a life that is authentic. This is why I relate to those soldiers’ lives. In the story that Ms. Lemmon tells, there runs a line of authenticity. A line where being a soldier on the frontline does not mean giving up the feminine. By occupying a space that is considered masculine in a way that celebrates the ‘and’ these women where able to create authentic roles for themselves and many other young women.

In what ways are you living in the ‘and’? Let me know in the comment section.