prejudice – Tessa M. Perko's Blog

The Maid and the Parking Valet

We stayed four nights in an expensive hotel on the beach in Central California. Every night, I slept fitfully in a luxurious bed with the ocean waves rolling right outside our sliding glass door. It was heaven near the sea.

As we left our room each day, we said “Good Morning” to Lili, our maid, who cleaned all the rooms on our floor. She spent about 45 minutes to an hour in each guest room—picking up the wet towels, wiping down the shower doors, polishing the faucets, making up the king-size beds, vacuuming, cleaning the coffee pot, arranging soaps and shampoos near the tub and at the sink, and moving the patio furniture back into place.

I had read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich so I knew that hotel maids earned minimum wages or not much higher. When I saw Lili’s envelope on the dresser after her first cleaning, I thought about the book and made a note to leave a tip at the end of our stay. Meanwhile, we wished Lili a good morning each day before she came in to clean our room. When we came back each afternoon before dinner, our room was immaculate and inviting—an oasis by the sea, the waves making music just outside.

On the morning we were packing up to leave, I saw her tip envelope again. “Let’s leave a tip for the maid,” I said to my husband, a retired, successful man.

“I don’t usually tip the maid,” he quipped.

“We should,” I said. I went to my wallet and found a twenty-dollar bill. While I was slipping it into the envelope, my husband handed me a ten-dollar bill. “No, I’ve got it,” I said.

I tucked the envelope’s flap inside and carried it with my luggage down the hall until I found Lili’s cleaning cart outside of another room.

“Lili, I have a tip for you,” I stated across the open room where she was arranging the curtains.

Lili’s face registered total surprise. She walked up to me and took the envelope with two hands. “Thank you so much.” She didn’t seem to get too many tips. I wanted to watch her open the envelope to see her reaction, but I thanked her again for her wonderful work and continued down the hall with my husband.

As we were walking out to the front entrance, we decided that I would go get the car that was parked in the lot up the hill and drive it to the front where my husband would wait with the luggage.

When we got to the open door, the parking valet wished us a good morning. “You were here four months ago, weren’t you?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m Sean. I thought I recognized you.”

My husband proceeded to chitchat with Sean while I got the car. By the time I came back with the car, he had found out that Sean had two sons and Sean coached both of them in soccer. Since my husband had been an athlete and a coach for our sons, he enjoyed this conversation quite a bit.

Sean put our two suitcases and two other bags into the trunk for us. He also got us a bottle of cold water to take on our drive home. My husband tipped him outside while I waited in the driver’s seat.

When he got in the passenger seat, I asked my husband how much he tipped Sean.

“Six dollars.”

“What? For only a little conversation and lifting four items? At the most, he was with you for ten minutes.”

“He was a good guy,” my spouse said.

I’m sure he is a great guy, but I’m curious as to why Lili didn’t get the same equal treatment. The inequality built into the exclusive hotel system left a cruel impression.

Corona Virus Integrity

Pope Francis claims that the Corona Virus Pandemic is presenting humans with an opportunity.

A few weeks ago, right after the San Francisco Bay Area was ordered to shelter-in-place, I signed up to receive his daily email messages as a way to continue my journey toward cultural humility.

I’ve always respected this pope and believed that his spirituality reflected a mature connection with God. He never judges. He never criticizes. He accepts responsibility for his mistakes and, since he is the Pope, he recognizes the mistakes of the Catholic Church and works to heal the pain caused by the Church in the past.

He also understands the power of joy in life and the profound goodness it can achieve in helping someone develop a stronger spiritual life. I watched the movie The Two Popes; at one point, Francis tries to teach Pope Benedict how to tango. Pope Benedict never learns to dance well, but, while dancing, his face lights up with pleasure, a delight that he didn’t often feel before Francis arrived.

I’m impressed. I really am. Pope Francis brings joy into the lives of many people; he behaves as a human being of integrity.

Today, the day of Easter, his message is thoughtful and profound. He advises his readers to become inventive, creative. This makes sense. Creativity is the origin of life, the basis of growth, and the source of expanded understanding.

The Pope suggests that Christians use their creativity “in opening up new horizons, opening windows, opening transcendence toward God and people.” In simple words, for humans to love one another.

Before the sheltering-in-place order, many people attended Mass, and then, after leaving the church, they thought nothing of discriminating against other people. Some disparaged the LBGTQ+ community by criticizing pictures of gay marriages on television. Others labeled Muslim women as terrorists simply because they wore Hijab scarves while shopping at Safeway. Others accused people of sinning just because they didn’t follow the same “rules.” Some angrily rebuked people who had different political values. This is hypocrisy, not love.

Pope Francis asserts that today’s crisis puts “a spotlight on hypocrisy … It’s a time for integrity.”

To live a life of integrity is to love all human beings, and no one can fully love someone else unless they try to treat that person as they, themselves, would like to be treated.

This is cultural humility. A person cannot assume that they fully understand anyone. They, instead, must open to learning more and more each day about people and their lives.

Here’s an example. A heterosexual cannot fully love a member of the LBGTQ+ community unless he or she treats that person with respect and kindness. This does not include judging the behavior of that person; instead, the heterosexual can attempt to better understand the other person’s life without any prejudice at all.

People who claim that they don’t condemn the person, just their behavior, are not loving. They are living lives of hypocrisy since integrity does not include any type of judgment.

Pope Francis explains that the Corona Virus Pandemic does not discriminate against the rich or the poor; all humans are vulnerable to its deadly seed, and humanity can learn how to develop better spiritual lives if they strive to practice integrity—wholesomeness, oneness in action, unity.

Pope Francis also shares an idea that he gleaned from reading the Aeneid; don’t “give up, but save yourself for better times.” He asserts that humans should use this shelter-in-place time to become better, more trustworthy companions to their fellow sisters and brothers. He says that we should be “coherent with our beliefs”—make sure that our actions imitate what we claim to believe.

Amen to that!

If people are honest with themselves, they know when they are loving vs. prejudiced.

I realize that I am in the midst of my own journey toward cultural humility, and I’m sure I’ll be on this path for the rest of my life. Yet, I’ve learned how to achieve more cultural humility, another word for integrity, by practicing the following.

When I meet believers of Islam, I engage in a conversation with them. I learn about their histories, their daily lives, how living in America might clash with some of their rituals, what their goals are, or how they have experienced prejudice from other Americans. If they offer to share their foods with me, I accept them with eagerness and gratitude.

When members of the LBGQT+ community share their gender status with me, I welcome them into my life with open arms. I accept their lifestyle as a natural condition, and never question why they have chosen that persuasion. I also read about their lives and listen to their stories to reduce my ignorance. Finally, I show them respect by including them in my life; for example, I listen to the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus to hear incredible singing.

I befriend people of all races and treat them as valuable contributors to my life. During this crisis, I have financially assisted some people so that they can maintain their small businesses. I know that my concern for them strengthens our bond and friendship. If I didn’t have the money for helping them, I would have helped establish a Go Fund Me page or found another way to provide some help.

I actively seek the beauty in members of races different from me. For example, I love the braided hairstyles of African Americans that demonstrate their creativity and African culture. Whenever I can, I compliment a man or woman on his or her hairstyle.

Another attractive trait I’ve discovered are the traditional costumes of Indian citizens with yards and yards of glittering fabrics swirled around the female body. When I meet a woman of Indian heritage on the street, I tell her she is lovely.

The Corona Virus has brought danger, but also opportunity—the chance to become a human of integrity. I am not beautiful if I don’t see the inherent, non-judged loveliness in my sisters and brothers. Only if I accept them completely will I ever achieve integrity—the pinnacle of spiritual life.

Achieving Belovedness

The African American woman has the most to complain about in America. She, after all, was brought here against her will in the bowels of a ship, raped by her master before she turned fourteen, bore his illegitimate children, fell in love with her lighter progeny, lost her mind when her children were ripped away and sold to other plantations, lashed across her back and legs when she did not submit, and forced to smile day after day beside her master’s wife.

To understand the African American woman’s plight, we must contemplate the plight of all women in America.

Most still have not achieved equity. This is tragic, especially for a country that pats itself on the back for its individual rights. No, American women don’t all wear veils and burkas, but their voices still are silenced and subjected to the will of men in power.

Blatant examples exist all throughout American society.

One example: American Catholic women have no voices. The power of the church is carefully guarded and only granted to males through church “laws” that maintain male power. When Catholic women speak, they are expected to follow the strict rules set down by Catholic men ever since the church was first adopted as the official Roman Empire religion. Never mind that, prior to the Roman take-over, Christian prayer groups were once led by women. Catholic women are not encouraged to think independently; instead, they are coerced into following orders. Like soldiers in the military: valued for their obedience, not their wholesome humanity.

In American culture, women are raped and blamed for their acquiescence. They are prevented from rising above the glass ceiling while blamed for having children. They are paid less than men who hold the same jobs and blamed for not working harder.

Even First Lady Melania Trump walks like a voiceless doll next to her husband. When she is asked a question, her answer is amended by the opinion of her husband. And so, she is silenced, muzzled.

But the African American woman has suffered some of the greatest indignities. Perhaps this is why Toni Morrison chose to be her voice. In interviews, Morrison said that she wanted to tell the story of the female slave: what being a woman was like under the yoke of bondage, the lack of having a voice or will, the scourge of being at the mercy of selfish and insensitive men.

I first read Beloved by Toni Morrison when I was a mother of two young children. Much as I wanted to appreciate the story, written by this African American professor whom I admired for her achievements, I was confused. Trying to understand how a dead daughter floated in and out of her mother’s life and then lived and haunted her mother, sister, and friends for over a year was intriguing, but what was the author’s point?

I was frustrated that I couldn’t understand the story. Was my white privilege so strong that my heart was unable to empathize with a slave woman’s experience? Was I too comfortable in my white prosperity that I didn’t really want to understand? I knew that slavery was immoral, but what else could I learn? Clearly, Morrison had pondered about the African American story for a long time. She knew a story that I didn’t know, and I longed to overcome my ignorance.

After I read Beloved, I read every Morrison novel I could find: Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, The Bluest Eye. I also read essays which spoke to the aspects of Morrison’s writing such as “Toward the Limits of Mystery: The Grotesque in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” by Susan Corey. Then, finally, I read one of Morrison’s own essays, “The Source of Self-Regard,” in which she supposes that Beloved is an intimate version of history.

Much to my surprise, Beloved is based on a true story of a run-away slave named Margaret Garner. While being pursued as a fugitive slave, Gardner slit the throats of three of her children so they wouldn’t have to return to the cruelty of slavery and endure the abuse and torture that she knew too well. One of those children died. Remarkably, Garner wasn’t tried for murder; she was tried for the theft of her master’s property. Proving that history is carved by those in power.

In Morrison’s fictional version, the protagonist is Sethe. Sethe escapes from Sweet Home Plantation with her four children across the Ohio River to Cincinnati. When the slave-catchers find her, she grabs her kids and hides in a woodshed where she slits the throats of three of her babies. Her two older boys live, but her oldest daughter dies in her arms. We never learn this dead baby’s name, but Sethe has the word “Beloved” etched into her tombstone. Her younger daughter, Denver, is uninjured.

Abolitionists succeed in securing Sethe and her three remaining children’s freedom, and she moves into a house in the community. When the boys become teenagers, they leave home, tired of their mother’s grief for Beloved and wanting to become men.

One day, neighbors find a strange adolescent girl sleeping outside of Sethe’s house, and they believe it is Sethe’s dead daughter Beloved. Sethe becomes enamored with Beloved; she cooks for her, bathes her in affection, and ignores her other daughter.

A former fellow slave, Paul D., escapes captivity and finds his way to Sethe’s house. He, at first, removes Beloved’s ghost from the house, but later, when Beloved has transformed into a more physical presence, she seduces him and becomes pregnant with his child.

Once I understood that Morrison wanted to tell the story of the female slave. I decided to read Beloved again. To hear the female slave’s voice. To feel her pain and sorrow. To experience her fear and dread. I finally felt like I was ready to understand the meaning of the story that had eluded me for twenty years.

This is what my second reading of Beloved taught me.

When Sethe is attacked in the plantation’s barn by the Schoolteacher’s grown nephews while her husband watches from the rafters, I feel her indignity—a knife thrust into the pin cushion of her femininity. They drink the milk from her breasts that she needs for her infant. Not only do they rob her of her intimacy, but they harm her child’s viability. These men violate her center, the core of her femaleness. Tragically, her husband, her one-time protector, dies from insanity, not having the power to save her, and she loses his partnership.

When Sethe takes the life of her daughter, her already weakened core responds, and she acts out of distress—trying to save her children from all the abuse that their parents have endured. At least in death, they can find peace; in a slave’s life, peace will never come.

But Sethe suffers dearly for her actions. Psychologically, she lives in anxiety, questioning whether or not she made the right choice for her child. No matter what the child’s name, the child is her “beloved.”

The pain of Sethe’s conscience is so deep that she believes that Beloved comes back to her, so that she can make up for depriving her mother’s love. This is a manifestation of Sethe’s guilt. Whether or not Beloved is really present is unimportant; in Sethe’s mind, Beloved is present, loved, lost, wanted, missed, and grieved. Beloved can also wound Sethe, and she does when she becomes pregnant with Paul D. Like betrayal, the loss of a child hurts acutely and forever.

Sethe’s suffering is raw, violent, and close to the surface. Her pain wracks her body with weakness and her soul with despair. She can barely live, and has no need for freedom after she has lost so much of herself.

At the end of the story, Sethe tells Paul D., “She was my best thing.” This means that when Beloved died, Sethe died with her. She lost her willingness to live, he ability to think without guilt or sorrow, and even her capacity to love her other children completely so that they could enjoy their free lives.

Female slaves lost not only physical dignity, but also their emotional and psychological self-possession.

Paul D. corrects her gently: “You your best thing Sethe.” What he is asserting is that she can overcome her deep grief and loss and find a way to recapture who she is. She can wash up her battered body and mind and live the present. Put the past in the past. It does not have to define her.

As an American female, I am the African American’s sister; I, too, have lived with the loss of dignity. Even though my damage does not equal the forfeiture of slavery, I have been slashed by violations, a lack of voice, and scars of discrimination.

I stretch out my femaleness, my soft center, my vulnerable heart to my African American sister so we can raise each other up, celebrate our communal bond, and feel unified. Our past does not determine our future. We have changes to make in this America.

Clearly Bothered

I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor.

Movie Theater — I felt like a target, sitting in a dark theater with a hundred college students and only one other professor . . .

One night after I teaching my courses at Diablo Valley College, I attended the showing of a movie—Sorry to Bother You—written and directed by Boots Riley, who will be coming to campus in March as part of Black History Events.

The movie is an artistic commentary about the negative characteristics of capitalism. The main character Cassius Green, who is Black, gets a job as a telemarketer and finds out that he is successful only when he uses his “white voice,” a nasally, high-pitched tenor with overtones of lassitude and a lack of interest.

Just as the poorly-paid telemarketers unify to demand a union and better pay, Green is promoted to the “Power Telemarketer” floor where he enjoys the luxury of a modern office and sells labor for a company named Worry-Free.

While Green is enjoying the parties, alcohol, and access to the CEO of Worry-Free, he learns that the company transforms humans into horse-like creatures who can work harder and stronger than the average human, creating even more profits for capitalistic, greedy companies. Green’s girlfriend informs him that all labor is slave labor when capitalism controls the corporate culture. The employees work at the mercy of those in power, thus having no rights or voices.

Finally, in the end, Green quits his job, gets back his pure-of-heart girlfriend, and retains his morality.

I walked into the theater right at 4 p.m., thinking the movie would be starting on time. The room: a theater with about three hundred seats that stepped down to a big screen, where a podium stood to the side with a laptop set up to show the movie. An IT woman, that occasionally comes to my classroom to fix technical problems, stood behind the podium.

I looked around before choosing a seat. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I sat in a seat on the right aisle about six rows from the door.

Scattered in the rest of the seats were students who did not reflect the diverse nature of the college. About half were Black, sitting in twos and threes, sprinkled throughout the room. Several Asian students, sitting by themselves, also filled the seats. Three white students sat together. Where were the Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Indians, and Native Americans? I saw no professors—the people in the room were all in their teens and twenties.

Waiting for my English colleague who was bringing her class to the showing, I changed my seat to an aisle seat in the middle section of the room. Definitely felt like I needed some physical support in this room that did not reflect either my age group or my status. Finally, I’ll call her Carol, Carol walked in with her class—an assortment that more reflected our college’s diversity, and I adjusted more comfortably into my seat.

At about 4:15 p.m. a Black man strode down to the podium and turned to face the audience. He wore his hair in a wide, black afro and dressed in casual clothes, not helping me decide whether he was a fellow student or professor. In any case, when he started talking, his sophisticated vocabulary and well-practiced speaking voice let me know that he was used to speaking in front of groups about issues that he supported. He introduced himself. Let’s call him Brian Miller.

Miller explained the focus of the movie. He discussed how students have to use their “white voice” when they speak with their professors.

At this, I squirmed in my seat. I spend lots of time in my English classroom teaching students how to speak and write in Standard English. I explain that they will have to use formal language in the workplace, and that they will be more successful when they attain a command of it. I preach that the acquirement of this language is empowerment.

I also inform them that, once they learn the mechanics of formal English, they will be able to purposefully adapt the language to suit different writing and speaking purposes. While speaking, they can employ a short sentence to give listeners time to think. When writing fiction, they can utilize fragments to create emotions or visual impressions.

But here, this person was inferring that the formal language I teach is not only “white,” but also oppressive. That what I teach in my classroom is a form of domination that subjugates people to conform to those in power, and those in power are the “whites.” I wasn’t sure I belonged in this room, being an English professor and white, but I wasn’t willing to miss learning about how an African American film director was going to portray the white culture. I wanted to know and try to understand, so I stayed deep in my chair.

One scene in the movie showed the CEO of Worry-Free Company surrounded by scantily clad women who fawned all over him. Another scene showed naked women having sex with naked men at a company party. I was certainly offended at the misogyny of the scenes, and commented about it to Carol. My first thought is that people are more concerned about equality amongst the races than they are amongst the genders. Troublesome. A uniquely American issue that continues to plague our whole society.

At the end of the film, Miller asked the audience to rate the film from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. Most people rated it as a 3 or 4 as Carol did. I didn’t even raise my hand. The film was such an in-my-face opinion about the culture that I represented that I couldn’t even decide what to think.

What could I learn from this Avant Garde criticism of America set in Oakland, California? As I drove home from campus, dodging the headlights of dozens of cars whirling around me, my heart fluttered like a moth burned by the heat of a lightbulb.

Why would this director claim that capitalism was “white” culture? Because the white Europeans colonized the Africans in order to rob them of their land’s natural resources such as rubber and diamonds. Because the English aristocrats, who profited from the Caribbean plantations, left the sin of slavery behind when they went back to England to live in their mansions and estates. Because American plantation owners treated the slaves like they were savages and erased their African roots by converting them into Christians and partial human beings. Because African Americans have never felt like the benefactors of the capitalist system. They have slaved before and after the Emancipation without profit and, for hundreds of years now, have been robbed of their human dignity.

When I got home, two new volumes of African American literature were waiting for me on my doorstep. I recently had ordered them from Norton. As I sat at the kitchen table in the hallowed light of the room, I read the Table of Contents of each volume.

The first volume starts with the words of spirituals—religious songs sung by African Americans since the earliest days of slavery. As I followed the long list of songs, I recognized the name Brer Fox, but most of the words were not familiar. In the latter lists, I spotted Phillis Wheatley, a slave who was taught to read and write by her mistress, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Harlem Rennaissance poet Langston Hughes. Volume 11 covers literature up to the 2000 years, and I knew of Melvin Tolson, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

But the lists of people I had never read was longer. The editors of the volumes are two African American professors from elite Eastern universities. Obviously, they have used their long literary careers studying the works of African American authors of all forms and styles. I never even heard of many like Bob Kaufman who wrote Jail Poems or Adrienne Kennedy who is still living and wrote Funnyhouse of a Negro.

I’m not surprised I don’t fully understand the perspective of Boots Riley and other African American writers like him; I have two disadvantages. For one, even though I have experienced discrimination and prejudice for being a woman, I have never worn the dress of an African American. Second, I have much, much more reading to do and more empathy to cultivate until I understand why Blacks distance themselves from me, from someone who wants to be their fellow citizen, but, first, who needs to qualify.

My Search for Cultural Humility

Maya Angelou wrote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” This is the quote that will guide me through my search for cultural humility.

I was born white. Nobody asked me what color I wanted to be. I was just born this way: pale skin, toe-head blonde, pink fingers and toes. I was also born female. No one asked me what gender I preferred. Then, about a month after I was born, my parents even chose my religion; they had me baptized as a Catholic. These three conditions created my destiny, my opportunities, my struggles, my pains, and, for a long time, my opinions about people who were different than me.

I was raised in a white community: white neighbors, white church members, white school, white grocery stores. Both of my parents were white. All my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were white. As far as I knew, everyone in the whole world had bleached skin.

When I was nine years old, my father—an Air Force sergeant—was transferred to England to serve there for four years. So, in the middle of my third grade, my large family of nine white children flew to England to live for four years. While there, we lived off-base in the English countryside and attended English Catholic schools. I can only remember white classmates, kids who looked even paler than I did.

In California, state history is taught in fourth grade, so I missed learning about the California missions, the Spanish colonialists, and the Gold Rush. I didn’t study about how the Franciscan priests converted the native Indians to Catholicism, made them work in the missions making wine and bread, watched them contract the white man’s diseases, and buried them in the mission cemeteries.

In seventh grade, California students study United States history, so I missed that too. While kids back home were studying about the Colonial times, I was learning about Anglos and Saxons settling the British Isles, William the Conqueror’s successful takeover of England in 1066, and the tumultuous and factious rule of several royal families like the Houses of Lancaster, Tudors, and Stuarts. I became fascinated with Elizabeth I, whose reign produced William Shakespeare. To me, she was a powerful, ingenious woman who used savvy strategies to maintain her hold on power and her queenship in a male-dominated world.

If my old friends in the U.S. studied anything about slavery, I didn’t at all. I leaned that the men from aristocratic families often sailed out of England due to business, but nobody ever talked about where they went, what decisions they made, what they saw, what they were responsible for, or how their wealth was produced.

My family lived in England from early 1966 to late 1969—important years in America: civil rights. I missed hearing about all of Martin Luther King Jr.’s marches, his speeches, what he was speaking for. On the day that Robert Kennedy was killed, Sister Genevieve asked me to stand up in front on the class and tell everyone else how I felt about his assassination. I didn’t know.

I never even heard about Martin Luther King’s assassination, and no one asked for my opinion when he died. An ignorant mind doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about right and wrong or concepts of equality and freedom.

I knew little about Black people except what I learned from the mouths of my parents. My father thought they were lazy. He told stories about the Black men in his unit who were supposed to work on the plane engines. He described how they sat around smoking cigarettes while the white men brought in the parts, organized the work spaces, and fixed the broken planes. The Black men smiled as they smoked, knowing they could get away with doing nothing.

My mother used the “N” word. Whenever she talked about Black people, she called them “N****s.” I knew that it was a derogatory term by the sneer that formed on her face when she said it. The tone of her voice emphasized the first syllable in a low guttural sound, and then let up on the second syllable like the backlash of a whip. One side of her lip curled up like she had just found a cockroach in the garbage can.

While we lived in base housing—a pastoral oasis with grazing cows and forested valleys—a Black family moved in next door to us. My parents reacted with quiet, stunned faces. One day when I was outside in the front yard, one of the boys from this family walked out onto their patch of front lawn. His skin was black, as dark of my father’s shoe polish. We looked at each other silently for several long minutes.

After noting his skin, I searched for his eyes—not black. In the English sun, they shone like deep, brown pearls floating in seas of white cream, friendly, wistful, inviting, tender. I softened in response, like a morning glory opening in the early light, and a wad of shame built up in the center of my chest for all of my preconceived notions.

Yet, this was only a first impression and short-lived. Soon, our family was on our way back to the United States and away from our next-door Black neighbors.

And so, I came back, enthralled with a love of English aristocracy and royal lineage and the literature that upheld their good and righteous glory. I believed in the goodness of Henry V as he protected the English throne on the edge of France. I believed in the moral purity of Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

I never studied American history until I got to college. In high school, I studied World History in freshman year. No Black peoples or slavery interrupted my understanding of Egypt, Rome, Constantinople, or Napoleon. As a senior, I studied Civics, never learning about the constitutional amendments that finally allowed women and Blacks the right to vote freely, without literacy or taxation barriers.

In college, finally, I took American History from Colonial Days to 1877. 1877 was the end of the Reconstruction Period in the South. Did I understand the significance of ending Reconstruction? Absolutely not. Looking back, I wonder why the academic planners chose to end my history class right before Jim Crow took over the South.

So, I entered the world of adults, ready to work, vote, contribute, change, and mold my society with an incomplete understanding of the history and make-up of my country or the world. Little did I know that I would learn what discrimination meant, but from a female point of view. But, even with good intentions, I was ignorant of who my fellow Black brothers and sisters were and how they felt about themselves and me. My perspective was too white, too female, and too Catholic. My journey toward cultural humility was going to be a long one.

Broken Bloom

Every baby girl born will have far to go. She doesn’t know this, of course, as she lies in her cradle and makes her first speech with sweet coos and babbles. And she will start at her beginning, like all baby girls. She will make mistakes as she tries to find her own direction, which will pull at her throughout her whole life until she discovers what her course is and then takes charge of it.

Because she is a girl, her potential will get crushed early on. Someone will tell her that she doesn’t have the right or authority to reach the same potential as a boy. And she will come to believe this so deeply and thoroughly that this limitation will become part of her personality. This belief will be the ink stain on her white blouse, the deep crease in a linen dress, and so woven into the fabric of her being that she’ll likely never distinguish between the nuances of her unlimited character and the poison that tells her that she is a lesser human being.

This is why it takes women decades to figure out what has held them back for the majority of their lives. They feel ashamed of being subordinated for so long, and so deeply shackled.

Based on this belief in her lack of power, she will make decisions. For example, she may decide that when she can’t find love, she is unlovable. When she feels unlovable, she will lose her self esteem in running the rest of her life since love, after all, determines self-worth. She will shake when she meets a new person at a party, or she will decide not to go to the party at all. No one would want to meet her anyway. At her job, she will perform like someone who is not important because how could she be important if she is not worthy of love? Accordingly, she will not be promoted and will be overlooked for more challenging positions.

When she graduates from high school, she may think that she has to choose either motherhood or college, not both. If she already has a child and she is not married to the father, she’ll struggle to support this child without a higher education, guaranteeing her a life of struggle and poverty. The fact that she had a child so early will make her feel like victim or a loser, some one who has no control over her life. So, she won’t ever have control over herself.

The woman who chooses motherhood, but is unlucky enough to be infertile, will break into a thousand pieces of sorrow and unresolved anguish. Not only is she not powerful enough to get a higher education, provide the income for a family, or lead a corporation, she also lacks the one power that a woman has traditionally called her own–the power to grow a child inside her, a potential so profound that inequality, discrimination, or misogyny have all failed to steal this role away from women. When a woman doesn’t even have this ability, she will feel as if she has nothing at all.

When a man treats her as only a sex object or demeans her sexually in any way, she will believe that she essentially plays the role of a prostitute, and that this is her major role in society. Even without labeling herself, unconsciously, she will treat herself as a trollop anyway. This belief will determine how she dresses, styles her hair, wears make up, and walks down the street. She will use her sexuality more than her intelligence to attract a man.

She will come to understand that she does not deserve to be paid as high as a man because she will agree that hiring her is risky since she may take time off to have a baby, showing her lack of commitment to her job. If she is a soccer player on the national professional soccer team, she will settle for lower prize money since women’s sports don’t bring in as much advertisement as men’s sports. After all, prize money must be determined by profits. Right?

And when she is spending all her time being the limited person that she has been told she is, she won’t get any closer to the woman that she can really become. She won’t figure out that she is a naturally gifted teacher who can transform or even save the lives of her students. She won’t dare to invent a drug that cures leukemia or challenge the male-dominated glass ceiling of corporations. She won’t recognize that she is a gifted artist who can paint philosophical lessons into her images to help her community heal from prejudice or other sins of society.

She’ll miss opportunities for better jobs, healthy relationships, and fulfilling activities. She’ll be blind to her full potential, and, if she never finds her power, she will live like a subordinated human being her whole life–never truly finding happiness, a joy that she could achieve by living her glorious, powerful, fully-blooming life.