![]() It was a slur, far worse than “fatty” or “retard.” ![]() James, black - in Crayola-speak “mahogany,” “copper,” “brown,” “sepia,” “raw umber,” or “raw sienna” - was beautiful. The name was changed, in 1962, “partially as a result of the U.S. According to Binney & Smith, the Crayola company, “peach” had originally been called “flesh,” and had first appeared in 1949. “Peach,” which, in the 64-color Crayola box, stood somewhere between “pink” and “tan,” could only be white. “I think, um, maybe my uncle, or something.”Ī skinny girl with bony elbows stepped forward and aimed a finger at my chest.Ī boy with large, worried eyes compared the skin on my arm to a crayon and informed me, apologetically but with scientific clarity, that my skin was “peach.” Black could be many things, but it could not be peach. The point was to blend, to meld, to pass. I don’t know how he made it through those early years, but the Grandpa I knew sold soda pop, refused to speak Italian, and made everybody call him Frank. My grandfather, Pasquale Francisco Catania, was born in Calabria, Italy, brought to America in 1912, and thrust into an alien world when he was even younger than I was now, standing in this classroom. I’d seen it done, this transformation from what you were to what you needed to be. I searched my brain for an answer my classmates could believe. Every student, that is, except for my sisters and me. James School on the South Side of Chicago in 1976, where every student was black. Why couldn’t I be, too? Everything depended on it at St. It could be any of a hundred gradations from honey to coffee that I saw in the faces of my schoolmates every day. It could be near-purple or a yellow so pale you could see veins, green and thin. ![]() Black, after all, did not look like just one thing. I knew I wasn’t, but somehow I hoped I was, in some way, or nobody would notice I wasn’t, or maybe somehow I could be, simply by wanting it enough. The cluster of second-grade classmates waited. The answer seemed, suddenly, a matter of great urgency. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |