Don't Touch My Hair

First, some background: The midwifery students had our orientation last Wednesday. There are 16 of us in my class, 3 of which are black and 1 who is latina. (Yes, it was a record year for the school) Me and my friend sit together in every class. The other black girl sits far, far away in the front of the room, but because she was one of the last ones to come in the room this day (and because it was a very small room) she sat in one of the few open seats...it happened to be in between me and "the" latina (yeah, I know, I hate this too). As soon as she sat down I realized it. I thought "oh my, we're sitting in a row, we're going to look like we're segregating ourselves" despite the fact that we were all in a very small room, with desks arranged in a circle.

Back to now, my friend went out 2 nights ago and was cornered by a drunk white girl from our class. Here's some of what she said during the very long conversation:

"Why do the black girls sit together in the class?"
"I want to step out of my socioeconomic status and learn about those different than my own."
"You and X should talk more in class because there's so much I want to know."
"I just feel like there's a divide. I don't want there to be."
"I've been the minority before - I went to Kenya."

and on and on and on, followed by:

"I feel so much better now."

Now, first of all, my friend happens to come from a background similar to most others in this program...and so does the other black girl in the class! And for the record, I'm talking boarding school followed by Ivy undergrad for one of 'em. So of course there's this moment where she says she realized that this girl assumed that because she was black she was also poor, and that pissed her off.

Other than that, how does one propose we don't sit together in room of 25ish chairs and 17 or so people? Purposely sit every other chair? LOL Then there's the fact that these *&%$ have private midwifery dinners that none of the 4 of us have ever been invited to...and they even have inside jokes and conversations IN CLASS about stuff that is obviously said at these little dinners they host among themselves. What does segregation mean again? Damn right there's a divide, and YA'LL created it the first time you invited only some of our class to your home.

All of this crap at the bar was made worse by the fact that the whole time she was talking she had her damn hands in my friends braids. More background: the night before this night, our school met up for happy hour. I had to physically remove this girl's hand from my head! On the walk over I had just gave my class credit (only me and two friends walked over together) for not touching my hair the whole day, and lo' and behold this chick comes up and grabs my hair. I have dreads, and I know that many people are curious because they have never felt them before. But in case those reading don't know, do not ever walk up to a black girl and commence to putting your hands in her hair...dont pull the spring to see what happens...don't pat the afro, or otherwise touch it. For real, I'm trying to help you. We don't like to be patted on the head or otherwise touched like what you see is rare; I aint no monkey and this aint no pettin zoo. Further, unlike most european hairstyles, if you mess with our hair, it isn't necessarily going to just fall back into place. A fro takes a long time to get even in the morning...some people spend a good hour trying to get that hair to lay down "right" for that flat iron. My husband would like to add "do NOT rub your fingers on the cornrows either!" Ok back to the story:

This girl who did this was at the bar the night before when this happened to me, and she was there for the subsequent teaching moment about not doing this, yet there she was feeling all over my friend's hair.

There's so much I can say about this, but I'm getting off my soap box. This is basically what I would like these girls to know:

Just because we're all black or brown, it doesn't mean we have the same backgrounds.

Before you ask why we're sitting together, ask yourselves why you're sitting together.

Just because my socioeconomic background is different than yours, it doesn't mean that I'm going to be speaking for all the poor black people of the world.

You spendin a summer in Africa is not the equivalent of me livin in this brown skin forever.

It's gonna be a long school year if you think that you're just going to come up and dump all your shyt at my feet. I am not here to help you with white guilt, make you feel comfortable around black people, answer all your questions about brown people, or be anybody you think I should be.

We can learn a lot from each other, but this isn't how to start it off right. Please keep your hands to yourself, get to know me before you ask me personal questions, and tell yourself the truth about what's really happening in the classroom.