White Flight

Being white made me feel like one of those Christmas sweater vests with sequins

and beads that everyone said they liked just so you’d keep wearing it. It was as if there

was some joke going around about me that I didn’t pick up on. A paper airplane thrown

across the classroom that got stuck in my hair. A giant piece of spinach stuck in my teeth

that no one bothered to mention. A belief in unicorns, the pied piper, and the Easter

Bunny. Coldplay.

Or at least for me.

I didn't really know I was white until I was eight years old. If you'd asked me
before, I would have told you my skin was white, just like my hair was brown, my eyes

were blue. But I didn't know I was white. I'd noticed the differences in skin color at

school: black kids and white kids. I’d noticed we clung together with our own; there

were always just a few black kids in my grade though, so it didn't appear to be all that

unusual. My only real observation was that they were black, I was white; I was a girl,

others were boys; I was short, others were tall; these were all descriptive terms. There

was a little black boy in my third grade class named Luke Pierce, who I’d always thought

was supremely cooler than everyone else; I desperately wanted to win his favor. He was

a troublemaker, frequently sent to the principal’s office, but I thought it gave him an edge.

One day, Luke flecked chili on me from across the lunch table with his spoon, and I

became depressed. I just knew it was because I was white. There was no other excuse.

I had to find a way to make Luke like me.

I was brought up in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a tiny town at the peak of the

American South with a population of about 12,000. Our entire city could fit into Yankee

Stadium four times. Hendersonville was tucked into the middle of the Appalachian

mountain region; a hub of country and bluegrass music, outdoor festivals honoring

agricultural commodities, and pure Southern pride. It was deeply embedded with

Conservative, backcountry values: a devotion to God, the Republican party, and Kenny

Chesney. Here, Nascar was a holiday, and people went to rehab for chewing dip.

Along the outskirts of the area, trailer parks spread like a population of their own,

and large white crosses were stuck in the ground, painted with slogans like “Jesus Saves.”

The Blue Ridge Mountains provided not only an illustrious milieu to the area, but also

served as an obstruction from the spread of modern ideas and ways of living. Other than
Baptist churches, the town was mainly comprised of tawdry gift shops and franchise

restaurants like Outback Steakhouse and Denny’s. If you said 5-star, it was in reference

to some extra large breakfast combo. Nevertheless, there was something endearing about

the simplicity of it all, and that was to be admired.

Hendersonville was a segregated area in the way most Southern towns were those

days. There weren’t signs hung over water fountains any more, just unwritten laws that

didn't exist but were strictly adhered to. White people high-tailed it to the outskirts of

town to live in security-enriched, gated communities, which were about as effective in

guarding property as French poodles. Residents paid an expensive membership fee to

have old, retired men in uniforms sit in a booth and have people sign a clipboard to enter

the neighborhood; most of the time, you didn’t even have to show an ID, therefore the

name you wrote down was irrelevant. But every guest had to pass through security, and

that made residents feel important, much like the magical mirror made the wicked

stepmother in Snow White feel pretty.

The black community in Hendersonville was mostly concentrated in Green

Meadows, our “projects” by all standards. I wondered why it was called a project, as it

wasn’t really an ongoing piece of work, more a story nobody bothered to finish. An old

train station stood ominously at the entrance like a blockade; it was a pass-through for

dirty freight carriers, but also a resting nook for the homeless, and most likely the scene

where drug deals went down. There was always some arrest reported in the local

newspaper, a drug bust or sometimes a homicide. Every block was sprinkled with

concrete and worn-brick tenements—classic government-style architecture; a few liquor

stores were positioned on key corners, and there were basketball courts and a baseball
field where kids played during the day.

Green Meadows was located on the east side of Hendersonville, far from where

the wealthy, gated communities were abundant; beyond where my island of suburbia

drifted steadily. A coincidence, of course. There was a myth it was situated towards the

center of town, rather than the outskirts, because it was easier for police to supervise low-

income blacks at a near distance. Tighter security with no additional cost to residents.

Hendersonville was considered a resort area. It drew an elite crowd of retirees,

upper-class white families, and Floridians who golfed there in the summer. In fact, the

population nearly doubled during the months between May and September. Much of the

town’s activities took place at the local country club where, incidentally, blacks were

denied admittance. The club always managed to find an excuse as to why they didn't

qualify; perhaps it was because they weren’t carrying a big enough stick up their ass. My

family managed to pass the test, so I spent my summers lounging poolside every year. I

never even noticed there wasn’t a black person around until middle school when a black

friend of mine came by one afternoon to say hello. All eyes drew to the dark stranger in

the entranceway causing a bit of a stir amongst the pool moms, whispering behind their

Redbooks.

"Hide your purses!" I wanted to yell out. But they already had.

I asked my mother about it and she told me blacks weren’t really allowed and I

asked her why and she didn’t know what to say.

Of the few monumental points in my childhood, one stuck out more than others as

being quite historic. I was ten years old, in the fifth grade, and, after years of begging,

my parents finally allowed me to graduate from VHI to MTV. I’d previously been
sneaking MTV whenever I could, but at last I was free to watch it in the open, and this

was when I discovered hip hop. The first song I could remember hearing was Sugar Hill

Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” It had been released years before I was even born, but as it

was so epic, they still played it all the time. I loved that Wonder Mike guy rockin’ to all

the colors and the riddles; all that be-boppin’ and hippity hoppin’, on and on, it couldn’t

stop—it was so cool, I thought. This was what was missing from my life. Luke would

never fleck chili on me again.

From that point on, I was hooked. Naughty By Nature was down with O.P.P;

TLC was crazy, sexy, cool; Missy and Timbaland were supa dupa fly; and I played No

Way Out on repeat for almost an entire year. Juvenile, Mobb Deep, Blackstar, Common

Sense, A Tribe Called Quest, Reflection Eternal, The Blueprint, Aquemini, Ryde or Die

Vol. 1 & 2, Straight Outta Compton—if rap was involved, I was involved.

I began memorizing the lyrics and watching the music videos; I played it in my

room and danced. I was obsessed with the alliteration, speed, shrewd semantics and

quick-wit. I wanted to see if I could spit out rhymes the way Q-Tip and Puffdaddy did; I

wanted to move my feet, roll my shoulders and swagger my hips to the beat like Left

Eye. Rap artists seemed to find the perfect words to describe any situation, and I’d try to

quote them in my daily dialogue, when appropriate, though it didn’t come naturally. It

was like watching a dog swim across a lake; he could do it with some effort, but he was

no fish.

There were rules to black rhetoric, as it was an art in itself. You weren’t supposed

to pronounce the "g" on verb endings, for instance, but I would accidentally let it slip

from time to time. I would say tripping instead of trippin,’ which had two completely
different connotations. There were also slang terms I didn’t quickly pick up on, like "G,"

a word for friend. I learned this when my pal, Matt Pelz, came up to me at school one

day, and said "What up, G?"

My last name began with G, so I thought the expression was in direct reference to

it. "Not much, P," I replied. P for Pelz.

He laughed, but I didn’t understand why.

In high school, my chemistry teacher asked me in front of the class whether I

understood his explanation on the calculation of combustion, and I replied, "Word.” I

was fairly positive I'd used it accurately, but everyone still laughed. This was before

"word" really took off though; it was a novelty item back then. Now even my chemistry

teacher had probably incorporated it into his vocabulary.

Not surprisingly, from the onset, my mother was abhorred by my newfound

musical taste; I played it every day in the car on the way to and from school. She found

hip hop to be offensive, crude, and misogynistic, and would make horrible faces at me to

illustrate her frustration.

“This is repulsive,” she’d say, flinching her mouth as if she’d tasted sour milk.

“They don’t really mean it, Mom,” I tried to explain. “They’re just venting.”

“They’re talking about drugs, Courtney; aren’t you listening to this? They’re

doing drugs.”

“That’s what’s happening in their neighborhoods; they’re describing what’s

around them. They can’t help it.”

“Can they help using all this profanity? This is gross, I can’t believe you listen to

this garbage.”
 I tried to point out that it was just a mode of expression like painting or ballet

dancing. I even attempted to find a song that demonstrated the positive message of hip

hop, but all was lost on her.

“Listen Mom,” I said, Tupac rapping in the background as our mini-van pulled

out of the garage. My little brother would just sit silently in the back, buckled into his car

seat, while my mother and I continued with the ongoing debate. “He’s talking about

discrimination and seeing each other as brothers and sisters. See what I’m saying?”

“Uh huh; and did you know your Tupac used to get arrested all the time for drug

dealing? He gave his brothers and sisters crack cocaine—is that how you treat someone

you love? He was a thug; everyone knows that. It was on the news all the time.”

“Whatever, Mom.”

Even when Biggie was slain, and all the Latino students at the school where she

taught were crying, she still didn’t get it. This was the power of hip hop, I told her; he

spoke to them. He spoke to me. She dismissed it as another celebrity infatuation. Rap

music was simply distasteful and abrasive. Additionally, she uncovered lyrics to the song

“What Y’all Niggaz Want” on our coffee table (I’d printed them out to learn), and it only

furthered her case. I eventually gave up on her, but Dr. Dre continued to be heard from

the windows of our Ford Windstar every morning and afternoon.

The lyrics were what really attracted me to this style of music. I was fascinated by

the stories that unfolded within every song on every album. Things I’d never heard about

before—people and places and events—I would sometimes have to reference them in the

encyclopedia to understand what they were talking about. Eliot Ness was mentioned in a

few of my favorite songs; I determined he was the prohibition agent who busted Al
Capone. Wyclef talked about Guantanamo Bay and the refugees, and there were

numerous allusions to historical figures like Cassius Clay and Malcolm X. Through hip

hop I learned about police corruption, drug dealing, and a world slanted high in my

direction—the white direction. Black people didn’t get a fair shake, according to Mos

Def and Easy E, and apparently, it was because they were vilified by white people. White

cops stalked and harassed them, imprisoned them through laws that played favorites in

order to keep them behind bars. White families isolated themselves in better

neighborhoods; white politicians ran the government. White people controlled the world.

When I was 14 years old, a KKK rally was held on the steps of our courthouse. I

was shocked; I didn’t even know the KKK still existed. I only saw a brief glimpse of it

as my mother forgot about it, and we accidentally drove by on the way to the grocery

store.

“Don’t look,” she said, but I did.

There were men draped in white robes standing on the steps in front of podiums;

there were people cheering them on; there were protesters and there were cops. The

KKK was alive and well.

Around town, it was also common to see Confederate flags waving from houses

and cars; trucks with bumper stickers that said things like "Why apologize for being

right," or "If I had known this I would have picked my own cotton." When I started

driving on my own and would pass one on the road, I would turn up my hip hop to the

maximum volume, blasting “Hit ‘Em Up” so loud the windows and side mirrors on my

car shook, just to get their attention; to let them know I didn’t agree.

“That’s why I fucked your bitch you fat motherfuckah,” Tupac yelled at the
opening of the song.

Out of context, it was perfect.

Hip hop became my tool to use against the racist thread spooling its way through

the social fabric of the South. I thought by listening more, by dissecting the music and

the stories, I would somehow counteract my whiteness. Whiteness was like being blind;

you were born with a veil of ignorance over your eyes. Sometimes it was a conscious

decision, but half the time, you weren’t even aware of it. You’d been given a picture of

the world, and that’s what you were told it was supposed to be like. And you believed

those people who gave you the information because you had no reason not to. At least, at

first.

Then you started listening to Tupac and things changed.

I began to wonder if Green Meadows was like Flatbush or Compton or Southside

Chicago—areas frequently described in hip hop; if there were drive-by shootings, turf

wars, or kids selling dope on street corners. You had to pass by the neighborhood on the

way to the movie theater, so every time my family went to the cinema, I would stare as

hard as I could out the window to see if I could witness someone getting murdered, or at

least carrying a gun. I only saw kids playing basketball.

In high school, I decided I would try putting cornrows in my hair. I wanted to

incorporate something of black culture into my own style, so Tameika Smith, a girl I

knew from school, agreed to do it for my junior year homecoming dance. On the day of

the event, I went over to her house in Green Meadows for styling, which was almost as

exciting as getting my hair done. The community had such a poor reputation around

town, but I figured a lot was probably fabricated. Society loved to focus on the negative,
especially in regards to African Americans. I couldn’t wait to tell my parents too; they

would be really nervous and roll their eyes and sigh and warn me, and then nothing

would happen at all and I would laugh.

Tameika's house was small, but not all that cramped. She shared a bedroom with

her sister; there were two twin beds with pastel pink blankets and posters on the wall. It

had a big window, which looked out onto a small yard in the front leading to the street. If

there had been a wreath on the door, you'd have thought we were at the Cleavers.

“You wanna sit on a chair or the floor?” She asked me when I arrived.

“Either’s fine,” I answered. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Couple hours.”

!?!?!?!?

“Oh,” I said, “Really?”

What about a braid could possibly be so laborious?

“Yeah, girl,” she said, “Get comfortable.”

I sat on her bedroom floor while she and her cousin ran gobs and gobs of heavy

goop into my hair, yanking it into every direction as one might pull weeds in the garden,

then tightly rolling it into ropes on my scalp. The braids were curvilinear rather than

straight. In other words, they didn't run down my head in parallel lines, which was

common, but instead wove around it like barbed wire.

"You ok?" Tameika asked, gripping pieces of my hair as one would the reins of a

horse.

"Yeah," I replied, "I'm cool."

Obviously, I couldn't tell her the truth.

 “You ain’t talkin’ much,” she said.

“I’m just thinking, that’s all,” I replied.

“’Bout what?”

Waterfalls.

“Nothing in particular. Just looking out the window.”

Though it was one of the most agonizing hair experiences of my life, it was also

moderately entertaining. While they worked, I sat in front of the open window where

neighbors would poke their heads in periodically to chat and observe.

“Whatchu doin’ Tiki?” Two girls came up to the window, smiling while sharing a

Nutty Buddy and watching me like I was in a variety show. I now had tears in my eyes.

“Who dis?”

“Oh ya’ll ain’t met Courtney, yet?” Tameika replied.

They shook their heads no, and from the smirks on their faces, I didn’t believe

they cared to either. Their hair wasn’t in cornrows but long, loose braids, I noted,

wishing I'd considered my options.

“Courtney, this is Tamara and Dionne,” Tameika introduced us.

“Hi,” I said; it was all I could muster. I felt like I'd gone in for an operation and

the doctor forgot to give me anesthesia. Every tug, every fold, every wrap was like a

knife digging into my scalp, jerking apart the skin, and ripping organs out from my body.

I debated jumping ship, but you couldn't just get up in the middle of a procedure or you'd

bleed to death, which I suspected might also be the case with my cornrows.

Tameika's friends watched for a few more minutes then left when the amusement

wore off.
 At one point later, we ran short of gel. This caused me to briefly panic, not out of

concern for the hairdo, rather the gel had become a sort of soothing lotion for my burning

flesh, kind of like Icy Hot. I wasn't going to make it without it. Tameika had to scream at

someone down the street to bring over a replacement bottle.

“Marquita!” She hollered out the window to a friend of hers who happened to be

walking down the way. “You got any a dat pink oil sheen?”

Fortunately for us, Marquita did have some in stock. She poked her head in, and

brought over a bottle.

I wished I knew my neighbors well enough to yell at them for hair goop in times

of emergency. Even if I did though, I’m not sure they would share. My neighborhood

wasn’t close-knit like Green Meadows. I didn’t even know my neighbors names nor had

I seen their faces. If we had a problem, we wrote each other a letter and stuck it in the

mailbox. If you needed flour, you were fucked. We were all too busy inside our gated

homes, watching satellite television and playing Sega Genesis.

When all was said and done, the cornrows looked ridiculous. My hair was short,

so the ends of the braids poked out in small stubs around my neckline like spikes on a

Pitbull collar. I was one braid away from Snoop "Doggy" Dogg. It was worse than a dog

trying to swim; it was like he was attempting to perform cannonballs into the water.

Even Tameika had to agree. She and her cousin gave me the once over after

they’d finished, offering a tiny, sarcastic grin. “It’s a'ight,” she said.

So, mediocre.

The only fulfilling part of the entire journey was witnessing my parents’ reaction

to the new do. You’d have thought I’d gone bald. I wore them for the dance but took
them out the next morning, as the pain alone was too much to endure. It was

unfathomable that black people could do this all the time, but I guess they got used to it,

just like I did board games, pot roast, and cotillion. There were black people things and

there were white people things, and while all things were interchangeable, race

determined how adept you were with one over the other. Some boundaries were more

difficult to transcend.

Luke: I hope you flecked chili on me that day not because you despised me, but

because you had a crush on me. That was what I ended up telling myself over the years.

Wherever you are though, it was a good thing you weren’t around to see me in cornrows.

Straw that broke the camel’s back for real.

I was sure there were ghastly things happening in Green Meadows, but the only

sore sight I saw that day was myself. Of course, there were ghastly things happening in

gated communities too; evil was like that. A wall was only a wall—all it really did was

block the truth from sight. Put up a border—the truth still existed. Poor did not mean

criminal; rich did not mean angel; and the world could never be simplified to black and

white.

Word.

Please read my blog: livinginafog.com