"In the racial landscape of America it should be a pre-requisite for all citizens to sit, stare into space, and commit more than a simple introspection – it should be an autopsy via vivisection, on the impact of race in their lives. It is in our air. I remember studying the end of slavery for the British Empire and the court case with the famous line, "the air is too free." The air in America has never been free from the stench of racialized thoughts, behaviours, speech (let alone laws). We are a race born of race."
"As a child I loved Shirley Temple movies. My granma loved them as well. We would watch these movies together but our favourites were the quarter which featured William "Bojangles" Robinson as her servant. The life imitated the art in areas of my life which were not taken down from the shelf and examined until I became a graduate student more than three decades later. The thing that I remember most about these movies is the torture I would endure on religious holidays. I had long, thick hair which was a marvelous combination of colors. Shades of auburn, chocolate, and deep ebony as well. My hair hung down my shoulders and draped across my back. Life became art, for me, in the form of the child actor's famous barrel curls. Yes. The woman who shaves her head spent every Christmas and Easter holiday, really the day before, sitting in Miss Archie's beauty shop being tortured with a pressing comb, burning hot lava grease, and a smoking blue-black metal barrel of a curling ironed aimed, over and over, at my 4, 5, 6 and 7 year old head. No braids. No African aesthetic would appear in my life until the aforementioned three decades had taken their toll."
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