Raised by the White Is Right Campaign

Raised by the White is Write Campaign

For years I have badgered my brother about letting go of the torment caused by our parents but I am here writing about them. In the current climate, I have rooted out an underlying problem. I discovered festering wounds that I am in denial about. I can finally see how my parents’ self-hate shaped my entire life. Their beliefs determined who I hung out with, where I went to school, and what activities I did.

So what is the White is Right Campaign? It's my parents! My mother is from a small town in Georgia and my father is from Trinidad and Tobago (the Trinidad part). My mother was born during the late 40s and she is a Black African-American woman. My father was born during the late 30s and he was a Black Trinidadian.

Considering that one parent is African-American and the other is Caribbean, you'd think it would be an interesting dynamic. Black people in America and Black people from the Caribbean frequently have different perspectives on racism. Both of my parents ran the White is Right Campaign even though they each had very different perspectives on racism.

Like most Trinis, my father was a proud Trinidadian. He taught me about Trinidad's natural resources. According to him, all of the streets in America were paved with pitch from the pitch lake in LaBrea. He was attached to Trinidad's national instrument, his steel pan, at all times. Through my father's stories, I also got an idea of what it was like to emigrate to America.

But, while my father had national pride he shared no connection to Trinidad's rich African history. In fact, my father embraced Latin culture with a fury instead. He was obsessed with the Spanish language, Latin music, and Latin people. He taught himself Spanish and would speak with anyone else who spoke Spanish. Due to colonialism, my paternal family has diverse roots but we are clearly African. The culture he admired and participated in is not ours and his obsession was beyond admiration.

My father never introduced me to our rich culture. I spent little time with my Trinidadian relatives and a few times a year, I was allowed an opportunity to participate in my culture. Carnival in my city was my only real connection to Trinidad as a child. Another indicator of my father's preferences is the family gossip. Relatives still say, "We thought he'd bring home a white woman. And even though he did not marry a white woman, your mother is still fair (or light-skinned)." It was very clear to me that for my dad, lighter was better.

My parent's views on race and color show their unconscious self-hate. They both bought into the whole grass is greener for white people dichotomy. The White Is Right Campaign never ended. For my father, he encouraged my brother and me to engage in certain practices or regiments. When his attempts were met with resistance, my brother and I frequently heard, "You don't want to get ahead. White kids and their parents are doing these things to improve in school." Simultaneously, he did not support my mother’s staunch belief in us attending predominantly white Catholic schools. Somehow he disliked white people but thought they knew the right way to get ahead. This is a tough paradox for me to unravel.

But nothing says self-hate more than a flashback to a 9-year old African-American and Caribbean girl submitting a family background report on Scotland. The memory just came rushing back. My father frequently talked about his Scottish ancestors. He seemed quite proud of it and even told me the elegant family name of our distant relatives.

The girl, with more than enough Trini and Southern Black American history, picked Scotland! My elementary school was somewhat diverse, but Irish Catholic values were the school culture. I wanted to fit in and be just like the other students. I pulled out the "S" book from the encyclopedia series that my mother purchased from our local grocery store and set to task on my Scotland report.

Moving on to my mother, she was far from better. Her practices were similar to my father's but she loved white people. I rarely spent time with my Southern relatives. I rarely had opportunities to spend time with other Black people. The list of examples is numerous. Within the last year, my mother told my partner, "Jim Crow wasn't so bad." This is a woman who beat my brother for correcting a teacher who continuously mispronounced his name. She also never failed to interrogate us whenever we returned from visiting with white friends. She wanted to know about their things and how they were living.

Finally, enduring four years of racism at a white Catholic high school by force really took a toll. I begged my mother to let me leave school. She watched me break down day after day, year after year from dealing with racism. But she decided that was the best environment for me. Those formative years of high school were torturous.

For a long time, I thought the racism that I experienced was the underlying cause of many of my problems. I thought the racism alone damaged my self-esteem and self-worth. The underlying cause was my parents' failure to teach me about my heritage and ancestors.

I became hell-bent on fighting racism at the age of 14. I was shell shocked by how someone else's racism could immediately impact my life. I frequently said, ignorantly, it's 1997 and this isn't the South where my mother grew up. Up until that point, I had never been called a nigger to my face.

I was blinded and maybe the Black community is blinded by the fight against racism. Please do not misunderstand me. I strongly believe in the fight against racism. But Black people's collective problem could be the same as mine, dealing with this suppressed issue of self-hate and the pervasive mindset that white is better.

Self-hate and white superiority has been promoted by the colonizers forever. It is something that needs to be addressed alongside racism. At least we openly talk about racism now. If we never deal with Black people's self-hate, we will never succeed. It is impossible to succeed as a community because each day we are still promoting the beliefs that were instilled in many of our ancestors during slavery. They are harming us with their racism and we are harming ourselves with their racism. We need to love Blackness more than just superficially to truly move forward.