Vitiligo

I wanted to be white once.

Growing up in Bath, Maine I was the only black kid in my class.  I remember the first time I knew I was different.  We were learning about slavery. If looks could kill. The glares from the white kids in my class stung. They stared as if they were apologizing for what their ancestors had done to mine. I looked at my left hand resting on the desk. I noticed how dark it was. That was the first time I realized I was black. The first time I neglected the blood of my great-great great’s that ran through my veins.  The first time I covered my ears and eyes to all Dr. King, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks had done to make it possible for me to be the only black child in a white classroom. 

Still, I wanted to be white.

You should see my white friends attempting to run their hands through the tough terrain I call hair.

“Shawnee how do you get your hair to curl like that?”

“Shawnee, how do you get your hair to look like that when you braid it?”

They called it curls, I called it naps.  As I looked at their long, straight, silky hair, I asked them the same question in my head. The texture of my dark, kinky hair would never allow it to flow like theirs.  

I just wanted to be white.

I guess I had a serious case of vitiligo. I wanted skin that glowed as the sunlight glistened off of it.  Skin that tanned. Sometimes I would scrub my skin extra hard hoping I had a layer of white underneath all this dark.

I guess I had vitiligo of the soul. I would perfectly pronounce my words and let them carefully roll off of my tongue. Oreo- that’s what my cousins called me. I was black on the outside and white on the inside.

I just wanted to be white.

Race has been a major influence in how I view the world.  Growing up as a black female in Maine, white was my reality. As I got older, my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother helped me cope in a society that kept telling me that white was the only way to be  beautiful. My mother would always tell me I was beautiful. My grandmother let me know that “beauty was skin deep.” My great-grandmother told me stories on growing up in the 1920’s when black people were hated, beaten, and discriminated against, and how she was still “black and proud.”

Vitiligo really took its toll on me. It almost won. Almost. I realized that society is not just black and white- it is everything. Just because something is the “norm” doesn't mean you are abnormal because you are different. Everyone is beautiful-despite what society may try to say. Looking in the mirror, I see a beautiful person. Now, I have a case of confidence. Confidence? Yeah, I like the sound of that.