i am not my hair?!?!

divorcing the mind/spirit from the body/flesh
or
i am not my hair

so this song has served as inspiration for a lot of people lately. india.arie comes out with the hits...brown skin...anytime you hear a white woman exclaiming "brown skin, you know i love your brown skin...i can't tell where yours begins, i can't tell where mine ends..." you know she's on to something. and yes, i've heard many a white woman say that that song (in particular, interestingly) has served as inspiration. so it seems the same is being said for i am not my hair though i don't think i agree with the contours of the argument

true. i am not my hair. i am not my skin. i am not your expectations. no.

but...i am my hair, my skin and my expectations. i think the fallacy with claiming that we are not what others see is that it somehow lifts up an inner-self that is more valuable than, more true and more pressing than the outward self...

it functions in two directions. in one direction, you have people placing expectations on you based on what they see...so they see nappy hair, dark skin and full lips and they expect dumbassedness...they expect failure...they expect problems...

but in the other direction, the one from the self that declares that they are not their hair or skin, there is a way in which the declaration separates the outer from the inner...it's the old sacred/secular split of victorianism. what i believe the song implicates, ever so delicately and even unconciously, is that life exists in dualisms and that which is apparent is the fallacious whereas the one that is not apparent is the true, the good, the underlying. what i mean, simply, is that saying "i am not my hair...i am not my skin" forces folks to look elsewhere for your meaning. it causes the eyes to avert away from the intelligible self, that is, the body which we can see, to search deeper, further, inwardly for some other, hidden value. and it's the hidden, inward, secret, deeper that causes problems for me. because this deeper level is purported to speak to something much more profound and, at the base level, real than what is perceived outwardly...

it's the apostle paul's declaration that there is no good thing in the flesh...and that the spirit wars against it daily...

it's the victorian ideal that white flesh (what is outside) is more godly because it's more reflective of a white, clean soul (what is inside)...

so for a black woman to declare that she is not her (black, nappy) hair and not her (black, dark) skin is to cause us to wonder...well where are you? the worth and value must be somewhere else...somewhere inside...as india.arie says, "i am the soul that lives within..."

though i understand the need for self-affirmation, this is peculiarly similar to how folks have bastardized the and trivialized the statement, "Not the color of skin but the content of their character" as put forth by Martin Luther (the) King, Jr. (lol)...

i'd rather a song that declares...i am my hair...and my skin...but not your expectations of them...the soul that lives within is only intelligible through the body that lives and surrounds it. instead of reorienting people to see some huge worth inside my being, why not reorient and affirm that which is on the seeming outside? why not cause people to respect my hair and my skin and change their perceptions and expectations, yes! you don't have to see my soul to know that i have intrinsic worth. you don't need to divide and divorce my flesh and hair from my being...

this is why baby suggs is such a paradigmatic figure...in her sermon (Beloved), she exhorts the crowd to do love their bodies...

Baby Suggs called the women to her. “Cry,” she told them. “For the living and the dead. Just cry.” And without covering their eyes the women let loose.

It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart…

“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it…No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them! Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again...

This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved.

i'm worried that not being "hair" or "skin" is away to let xenophobic folks off the hook. an exclamation of not being "hair" or "skin" allows others to look away from that which is grotesque: dark skin, nappy hair...and i don't want you to look away but i want you to look and bask in all of my blackness...and fatness...and nappiness...

but taking my cue from baby suggs, i'm gonna be my hair and my skin and i'm gonna love it...and love it hard