It's Not OK: A Black Girl 101

I am no longer going to let you off the hook.

I don’t care if you are really embarrassed.

It’s not ok to confuse me with another black girl.

It's just not ok.

It’s especially not ok to confuse me with a black girl four shades darker or four inches shorter.

You know what. It’s not ok even if the girl bears a passing resemblance to me.

I don’t care if you feel bad.

You should feel bad.

It’s just not ok.

It’s especially not ok if I had a long conversation with you, over an hour. You had enough time to see what features I have that differentiate me from other black girls. (I should mention that I am six feet tall.)

It’s not ok to confuse me with another black girl in our high school alumnae magazine. This is really not ok because all you had to do was fact check. Grab a person – heck, grab a black person that went to high school with us -- and check. (Is it any wonder why I’ve never donated to our alumni giving campaign?)

One tip to avoid this confusion; don’t use our hair as visual indicators. Thanks to the Obamas and Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair, newspapers and magazines are covering black hairstyles in droves. Please pick one up and you will learn that we change our hair in dramatic ways all the time. When attempting to tell us apart, why not try something less ephemeral, like our faces.

At a shockingly homogenous, progressive conference, a guy came up to me, hugged me tight, and grazed my non-existent ass. I pulled away knowing he had confused me with another black girl. He realized his mistake and said, “You’re not the girl I hung out with last night.”

“Nope.”

“Oh, we had a really great time.”

When you figure out that you have made this mistake, it’s not ok to all of a sudden act like a freak around me all night. And do you really need to hide behind people to avoid me? That’s a little unnecessary.

This mistake is not ok for many reasons. One lesser-known reason is that sometimes my frustration around this issue drives me to be unnecessarily standoffish to other black girls at social events. An example: When I am the only chip in the cookie (code for black person in an all white setting) and another black girl enters that sort of looks like me, I get a sinking feeling. I think, “Great, people are going think I’m that chick all night!”  Then I don’t even bother talking to the other girl because seeing us together will later cause confusion. And one day, in a week or so, some guy will come up to me thinking I’m that other girl. I’m telling you. It happens.

My Dad used to confuse young, white men all the time. While watching Terence Malik’s ensemble drama, The Thin Red Line, he couldn’t tell the difference between Jim Caviezel and Ben Chaplin. It made the movie really confusing for him. I couldn’t understand what was so confusing. Jim Caviezel has a steely intensity and beautiful, blue eyes. Ben Chaplin has a boy next-door kind of look and brown, puppy dog eyes. Dad said he didn’t look at people’s eye color and he’s not into men so they all looked the same to him.

I’m not going to say that I haven’t confused people of the same ethnicity. Of course I have. Everyone has. But if I’m not 100% sure, I just play it off. If you have even a millisecond of doubt, please just re-ask the person her name. Trust me it’s better to ask me my name again than to call me Carmela. I promise.

This entry is dedicated to all the black girls I’ve been confused for over the years: Moira, Kibra, Isha, Kim, Jasmine, Michelle, and the nameless, faceless others. I salute you.

Follow Angela Tucker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tuckergurl

Comments

[Angela Tucker - Huffpost Blogger]

Hey all. Figured I would jump in and comment a bit here. I definately agree about not taking it all too seriously. This is why I wrote this and placed it in the Comedy section. Still, it's irritating.

As for not liking the word race, well, that's too big for me to tackle. I think we are part of the human race but distinction exist within the human race. That's just a face and I wouldn't want it any other way. We need to become better at handling our differences instead of just wishing there were none.

I do appreciate philmit's nice comment about me being distinctive :) But for those who agree that people tend to confuse people because they are not distinctive, I would recommend you read this article:

http://gawker.com/5386893/they-all-look-alike-msnbc-mistakes-jesse-jackson-for-al-sharpton

[Maurerguy]

Around 1980, while I lived in Richmond, VA, I realized I was starting to know a lot of Black people, and that I was likely to run into one of them on the street unexpectedly. I had to consciously re-train myself not to ignore Black folks as I walked down the street. I did it, but it took an effort. (And I had been part of supposedly anti-racist organizations for more than a decade, and always have known at least a few Black folks.)

There is a qualitative and quantitative difference between the mistakes we all make sometimes and the systematic way whites don't recognize Black folk. Let's not try to deny what Angela has experienced. Show a little respect for this courageous young woman.

Disliking the term 'race' is kind of like disliking the term 'war.' It doesn't change the facts. The white and black races are a myth in biology, but a very powerful reality if you are interested in understanding life, death, power and profit in this country. If you don't think it matters whether you die at 78 or 71, then you can ignore race.

[LunaNik]

I've only misidentified someone once...and she was my own "race." I actually went up and hugged her, thinking she was someone else. When I realized my mistake, I apologized and we both got a good laugh out of it.

OTOH, I've been misidentified many times...by people of my own "race" which, BTW, is white.

Digression: I dislike the term "race." It implies that separations are necessary, which they are not. My "race" is human. So is yours.

[valkyrie607]

I did feel bad, and then I apologized.

Not sure what else to do.

[Json]

Don't take it all personally. Some people just have bad facial recognition skills. I am pretty crappy at it, so I've tried to focus on a distinctive feature in order to identify people I don't know well.

In high school there were two girls that I simply could not tell apart. Both were reasonably attractive blond girls with straight hair and each had a class with me. One I chatted with occasionally and one I barely spoke to at all. Outside of the classroom, I was basically unable to differentiate the two. My friends kept pointing out what they felt were glaringly obvious differences between the two, but it never helped. The only way I could tell them apart was that one of them dressed fairly conservatively and the other was a wannabe surfer girl.

[skantea]

Certain people just don't stand out enough.
They could have green hair and piercings and yet 5 minutes after meeting them, you wouldn't know them freom Adam.
Others can look and carry themselves completely normal, but after talking to them for 5 minutes you'd recognize them anywhere.

I think it's a personality thing, but I could be wrong.

[philmit]

Skantea, you obviously don't know Angela Tucker! She is one of the most distinctive individuals you could meet. Its not a personality thing. Its a racist thing!