Remember a Luna Bar, What It Represents. And Modeling.
First thing before actually beginning things.
I am at Starbuck’s now at 7:56am getting started with a day that didn’t start as I planned. I caught the bus at 6am and got to the Health Center here, one of them, at about 6:55am. The doors open at 6:45am, and this isn’t early enough to be one of the first four people to sign up to apply for the sliding fee scale healthcare. I would have been sixth or seventh on the list.
So I have to get there earlier to be one of the first four. They only guarantee seeing four people and I don’t have time to wait to just see. I have to try again next week earlier.
Basically, I am still okay. I can’t wait to start blogging about more things that help me.
Right now, I took the bus to the coffee shop and went to the grocery store to get a snack before. And really, I have an idea to balk the traditional grocery store in lieu of the international farmers market and other places that I realize influenced me. This would be a better idea for a Black person, a culturally inspired grocery store. Because the racism I experienced at the grocery store here in being racially profiled, just like the food that they have, it is all carcinogenic. It is part of why a Black person no matter where in the world, but particularly in Western countries, has more disparate outcomes with illness, healthcare, etc. The combination of unhealthy experiences, food, etc. Western exports with food that does not align evolutionarily with an African-descended palate, and worse treatment. Food has energy and it is time to really make an adjustment. Experiencing racism was a painful experience, but there is a seed for new from it I think. A kind of a compass. Of course transformation is deeper than food, but it can be one component of course.
Also, as I am making other dietary changes for nutritional therapy to support my sibling and get healing Godwilling underway, I went to the traditional Western grocery store (for now), and got Luna Bars. I was introduced to it through a girl I had gone to Pace Academy with named L**** D****. She was a White girl that lived in an upscale part of Atlanta called Buckhead. What an awful name. But before dance class, her mom was nice enough to sometimes take me back to her and her daughter’s home after school. She was divorced I remember, and her daughter called her father by first name, if I remember. And sometimes as her daughter/my classmate took a Luna Bar to snack on before Ms. Reiko’s CII ballet class, her mother or L**** would give me one too. Lemon Zest.
It was another Black girl/woman who was the receptioninst at Atlanta Ballet who told me that being a White girl, this girl I went to dance class and middle/high school with, because of this, she would have an easier dance experience than me. Or that I should still be nice even though she was treated better. This is interesting considering I saw an African girl on Twitter comment on how Black Americans in the United States are more prone to call racism out than an African person because they have been here longer, implying that Black immigrants are more accepting of racism. Many people liked this post. Yes, I think that there is a certain truth to what this person said, but also, it’s an untrue statement too.
This Black girl in Georgia who gave me advice on still accepting a person’s LinkedIn request despite racism, she was Black American I believe. Not to mention the implied assumption that I should just accept racism as being par for the course while still befriending a beneficiary of it (so confusing!), and her assumption that this was or had been my reality, which is fine. I am not special. It is reality generally, even when it might not be for an individual.
Still, it was, even though she wanted to help me in my confusion with race, it was her best. She was a very kind person to me and had me tutor her nephew for extra money. Still, I mention this to say that the truth is that contrary to popular belief, a Black American person may not necessarily know how to address or confront racism. Many Black Americans did not physically participate in the Civil Rights Movement to my understanding. They, you, just wanted to live your life like a normal person and were not organizing protests, getting sprayed by water hoses, or worse. Living daily life with discrimination was bad enough, is difficult enough, to get through.
It was a movement spearheaded by Black Americans with slave ancestry in the US, due to overarching discrimination, yes, but there are people with Black immigrant heritage like Malcolm X (whose mother was from Grenada and father from Reynolds, Georgia, two hours from Atlanta), people like Malcolm X that were also major part in the United States of Black liberation movements. His immigrant heritage is not first-generation from an African country, but still, he is a good starting example. I only know him now, but I will find MORE.
Please stop rewriting history that at least one Black immigrant I can currently name also helped to create (my sibling corrected me on this before, too). I am kind of tired of the ignorance on both sides to be honest, and yes, this would include a Black immigrant person who does not speak up, too. Anyone.
So I hope I carry the mantle my way because just because you are Black American doesn’t mean that you are the primary person who speaks up against bad behavior because sometimes you do not, or are not the only one who does.
In fact I am surprised because the times when I have started to find my own voice relative to this, I would think that you would speak up more because you have been here for generations, but that is not always the case in my experience. And to assume that, I now see that it is kind of silly. Like, in addition to the Black girl who was nice to me at Atlanta Ballet but gave advice I do not think is self-affirming for the look both of us shared, also the Black man I rented from with the mixed daughter was triggering to be around. Seeing skin bleaching cream in his bathroom (called “Nadinola”) was proof enough that my being triggered in his presence was right. I have had too many bad experiences with Black men to be honest. I have hurt Black boys/men too, I know. I am not blameless. Still, I have to trust my Black girl spidey senses with people.
Anyway all I want to say is that something feels renewed in me today after talking with my friend. I will call the places I applied to later after I finish here, still in the morning, but in a more quiet place. And also, I want to talk about the influence of modeling that my sister has for me.
Luna Bar Reroute Tangent
The Luna Bar for me represents a memory that was good. I got it today from the store to let it go. I think as I change my diet and go to the store today to start to make the transformation, I will release this food and memories attached to this health bar. Within it I will recall how I was disconnected from so much. I had a grandmother two hours away and I never interacted with her attending any of my events. Or knowing her really, as she took care of her grandchildren as her children. I did not have a paternal grandfather to be present. My Nigerian grandparents, they did not take part in my things growing up. Distance I do not think is a valid reason to not have connected at least by phone. What happened? I am learning my life now.
So the Luna Bar kind of a respresents piece of the past that connects me and binds to be able to remember and place the right context around things, and bring it to 2024 to bring yesterday with me, forward. At that time, I was 13, 8th grade…
At that time, as I was crossing over into mainly White culture down the street from the Governor’s mansion, around White and Black kids who were rich, I had relatives in a segregated hood part of Columbus, Georgia who carried the history of segregation and slavery. Who I did not interact with much. I do not even know if the home I rarely visited is specifically where my father comes from, if he lived in this neighborhood his whole life or what. He was the first in his family to go to college and had integrated a school in his young years. I do not know a lot still about my father. So many questions. Still, the neighborhood even felt unsafe when I visited years late when I was 24. And again, with the harm I experienced from my father and my grandmother’s not helping me, my Black girl spidey senses I am right. They are a compass.
The cousin I contacted who grew up in this environment did not contact me back, by the way. Maybe I am the White girl Black cousin or something to him. Or someone who thinks they are “too good”…I fear, who never really came around anyway. I fear he might think that about me/us. Which I would understand but I don’t think it’s true. He mentioned one time I talked like a White girl when I was a kid, I remember, and I never visited them much, my younger siblings visited more. We existed in two different worlds, even when I was in majority Black environments, even though we were poor. How can that be?
It is after time that I sadly begin to see the dysfunction of things and how it impacted all of us I think, though I see more and more the privileges I have experienced. My bicultural experience is one where I observe the good, the privileges, and the disadvantage — I carry a duality. Though I speak only for myself not my siblings. I was the only one of us at a private school in middle and high school, for example.
Modeling
So it is something that I have started to do. I have to organize this today for some things I’ve started working on. I am thankful for my ability to simply walk. It is not simple. Not everyone can walk.
My older sister modeled and loved modeling. She went to Barbizon, a modeling school, when she was younger, 13 maybe. She models now though I do not know what she has done. So maybe as I grow and heal, I can start to ask her about her life with this. I hope.
Anyway let me go now. I took about 20 minutes to write this and have to get to the next item. 8:16am now. And it took even longer to edit, ETA.
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