To my black sister
Thank you for loving me even when I don’t get things right
Dear Gisa, every day you challenge me and help me become a better person. Knowing you, a feminist who believes in a more equal society, I can’t think of a better way to honor you than to share this story, hoping that it can bring awareness and clarity (and love) to the ones who read it. Te amo! ❤
PART 1: Gaining awareness. Are you awake?
Last year, me and Gisa went on a small quest to buy a wedding dress.
We went to this awesome store in Avenida da Liberdade, Lisbon, and one of the assistants received us. She wasn’t particularly nice, I must say, but we also weren’t like the most super excited girls with glow in the eyes looking for the Say Yes to The Dress experience either.
Can I just say how ironic it is that a post about feminism begins with a story about a wedding dress?
Gisa tried some dresses and she liked one in specific. That dress had lace on top and beneath the lace there was like a light skin colored fabric, called “nude” (Seriously people?! I’ll get back to this later.). The wedding dress was lovely apart from that fabric, it just didn’t look good in her darker skin color. So she asked: “Can you make this in a darker shade?”.
And the answer is…
“No.”, the assistant promptly replies — and a bit aggressively I might say. No apologies, no “I’m sorry.” and no justification. At that moment me and Gisa are looking at her stunned, trying to disguise our shock and anger. The assistant adds: “This is not a fabric to imitate skin color, it’s like a champagne color. The only option is to have it in white.”
I am boiling inside. Four things come to my mind within 30 seconds:
1.How come a wedding dress which costs thousands of euros and takes 6 months to be made, most of the time customised, can’t have more shades of fabric to complement the bride’s skin tone? This is an international brand, the design team needs to be aware that they are creating products for women of all skin colors.
2. What’s that about calling “nude” to a fabric which approximates to a white person’s skin color? What happened to the other dozens of “nudes”? Shouldn’t they be considered as well? From the design to the prototypes and manufacturing, it didn’t occur to anyone that this was wrong and offensive? (Just as a fyi, apparently this is very common, because after this I saw the name being given to many other things, from nail polish to home wear.)
3. What kind of training does a brand and a particular store gives to their team? They serve people from everywhere, specifically people from Brazil and Angola. Is this a case of we looking poor and being mistreated or are we talking about stereotypes and racism?
4. I really don’t want to mess this up for Gisa. Shall I just call this shit out and leave the store? The woman didn’t even let us take pictures of Gisa with any of the dresses, with full knowledge that her mother was in Brazil and couldn’t make it to Lisbon to see her daughter. I really hate this place.
I look at Gisa, she looks at me. We just finish trying the dress. We couldn’t waste anymore time. She came on purpose to Lisbon to try the dress all the way from Finland. I booked the appointments in advance. We had to, in Michelle Obama’s words, “go high”. We told the assistant that we didn’t agree with her, that the brand should think about POC (People of Color) when designing their dresses and that the color of the fabric was not ok.
This was the day that my white girl’s naivety died. Of course I had heard about racist comments and behaviours, but I thought it was a thing of the past, and that they were isolated incidents.
On that day I realised how systemic racism is. And still hurtful, unfair and segregating. And that I was privileged.
Let me explain and give you a bit of context. It’s not that I didn’t know it was systemic. I didn’t realise how really really systemic it was. And pervasive. It’s a racism that most of the people who perpetrate it don’t see it, nor realize they contribute to it with their every day choices, it’s normalised.
I also consider myself to be naive because I really can’t compute why people think black people are different (read inferior or any other inappropriate adjective) or not equal to white people. I celebrate everyone’s skin color and other physical traits, I think they are beautiful just like the one’s white people have. The same applies to culture and everything else.
However, without realising it, I was and still am part of the problem too. And I am profoundly sorry. That assistant is part of the problem as are most of us.
It hurts to see ourselves as people who maintain a segregated and unfair society, we don’t want to see ourselves as the enemy. But only after we do this, we will be able to apologise and make things better.
This was not just about a dress. This is not even just about the fashion industry which perpetrates racism by calling nude to products from nail polish to bras. By the way, now that we are talking about bras, usually the only skin color bras you see on the stores are for white people. And if you’re white I bet you haven’t thought about it before. Just like me.
This is about all of these “things” that make everyone but white people feel set aside and not being able to get access to the same products, opportunities, jobs, treatment, justice and every other stuff which affects a human being’s life.
This is the reality: racism still exists. Accept that. Please. And like *now*. We can’t change what we don’t see. Humankind depends on us (you included) to see this!
PART 2: Not being racist is not enough. We need to stand up and speak up. Be anti-racist.
So, we went on with our lives and Gisa, as the incredible woman that she is, ended up buying that dress in a different store, with the white fabric underneath the lace, instead of the “nude”. You might be thinking WT@? Why didn’t she boycott the brand?
It’s not my place to judge what she did. And by doing this, she showed me that she didn’t have to give up the dress she liked just because of that experience. She also taught me about forgiveness and to move on. She is making a difference in so many other places and I hope to do the same.
A couple of weeks later I saw this video and realised this matter wasn’t over yet.
Of course this wasn’t over yet! What was I thinking! I need to stand up for her. I really shouldn’t have accepted this from the beginning. I am going to write an email to the company about this situation. But first, I need to apologise to Gisa for not having done nothing.
I called her and told her that I wanted to do something. I wanted to write an email to them. She started crying. I started crying. “How come I haven’t thought of this before?” crosses my mind. She really matters to me, and even if she didn’t, this is *always* the right thing to do. This small intent or action touched in a way that I probably won’t understand.
From this moment on I started to be more pro-active and vocal regarding this matter, both in my personal life and professional life. I would bring up this issue and talk about it in normal conversations. I would tell this story to people, especially white people.
I have also been working with several initiatives of women in tech, but it finally hit me why the amount of black (but also asian, muslim,…) women didn’t come to our events as much. I was not addressing this problem specifically.
Having a team made of white women organising events for women of all different backgrounds, (skin color, religion, etc) is the equivalent of having a team of white men organising an event for women. It just won’t work.
There are many reasons why this won’t work: from the needs of each group, to the awareness and communication reach. One day I will write about this further, but for now let’s focus on this subject: We need to be pro-active! We need to be anti-racist.
Bring up this matter, talk with your family and friends. Talk about this in conferences and on your workplace. Read books. Talk with black people. Ask your company to be more inclusive. Organise initiatives in your community or company. Don’t go to conferences where the panels of speakers are not inclusive, or if you do, complain to the organisation and if they say that they tried but no one answered, tell them that’s not enough, this is really important.
More than anything please know that just because we gained some awareness of the struggles people of color go through, or we are trying to do something, that doesn’t make us heroes. We are just doing what is right. This should have been done ages ago.
PART 3 — You still don’t know everything. Listen. Learn. Don’t dismiss POC’s stories and opinions.
So after a while I wrote that email. It was not easy, I procrastinated a lot, especially because I was afraid of messing things up and offend people. I showed her the email, but I didn’t want to pressure her because, in the end, she picked that dress to get married and I didn’t want to keep associating it with a negative feelings.
When she finally gave me the feedback I realised that I still had a lot to learn. Her perspective was different from mine even in the way the assistant treated us. I have never had someone looking at me or being rude to me because I was black. What I’ve had is people judging me based on my looks or what they perceived my financial status to be.
I got nervous and scared that I was not communicating properly, questioned myself and ended up not sending that email. I guess this is a bit like many POC feel. These situations happen so many times and drain us so much we end up not saying anything. I became consumed by it and decided to forgive and move on. For the sake of standing up to my principles, I will probably send that email someday. This might not the best way for this story to end, but I’m human and this post is about real life. These are lessons learned.
In the meantime, our conversations became deeper. I would send her links of stuff and she would explain things to me. I learned not to dismiss whatever she said, even though I am very opinionated. She is incredibly patient with me.
I felt that every time we talked I learned a new thing, even if it didn’t appear like it, sometimes I just had to give it time to let the information sink in.
So, if I could ever give you an advice, it would be to listen with a open mind and a open heart. For sure it’s going to be hard to understand their struggles because you have not been through what they have. However, on some occasions you can use some similar experiences to get an idea, even though they are not the same thing.
Most importantly, believe them, don’t dismiss, nor question, nor gaslight them. You will make mistakes, lots of them, so don’t forget to apologise.
Let’s make our society more inclusive. We need everyone to help!
Have a lovely International Women’s Day. Let this day be a recognition of the efforts and sacrifices many people did and still do for us to have a better life.
If you enjoyed reading this post or feel like this message is important, please click on the green heart and/or share it with your friends. Thank you for reading!
A special thank you to Gisa and Pedro for reading this huge post and giving me feedback. ❤
And if I have offended anyone, I apologise in advance. I am here to listen and to learn. Thank you!
