Wednesday, February 18, 2015

WHO IS A LADY?


Asian beauty of Yunjin Kim 


Qi Shu 19

Link to Elle MacPherson 

pure white beauty of Elle MacPherson, model

I was talking to an Elder, a Clan Mother yesterday. We often talk at length at least twice a week on a variety of subjects. There is a lot to discuss as an Elder about the many things that gather life together. A lot of joking goes on in Native communities despite the concerns threatening the edges of our identities and validity of our existence and between us it was no different. Clan Mother and I share a spiritual heritage with our African and Native bloodlines, so you can imagine how deeply and encompassing our talks are. 

I brought up a subject. Setting it up I had to speak about the panel of the CBS television show, The Doctors. I am not a fan of the show. The tone of it turns me immediately off, but occasionally I tune in, or like yesterday when the TV came on it was on. There are two new members, two women. I described the first as a Black woman with a wig, I suspected and the other a white lady with... The Elder cut me off.

"You see what you said?"

"What?" 

"Did you hear what you said?" 

"Yes. No. What did you hear?"

"You referred to the Black lady as a woman, and the white woman as a lady!" I didn't get it. She continued with an edge in her voice to simply explain the language I used was tied to an insistence that women be distinguished by classifications denoting superiority of one over the other. The Bible, she explained, talked of women being made after man, and women not made, but fashioned by God. White people insisted and drummed it into Black people that a woman is a lady if she is white, and forever a woman, but never referred to as a lady is the lot of Black women. I didn't realized this. I'd no recollection of Mommy talking about these things. I knew the word 'lady' vacillated between a woman who was dignified, or trashy. The vernacular of the word was in songs and roughly referred to in the language of tough men on film and on any given corner men congregated to talk about women and leer at them. I sat for a while bringing it all in. If I summed this up I'd be talking about language; the language of what is pure white standards. 

Gregory E. Woods
Keeper of Stories 9.18.14 
 

Eva Mendes wearing a white shirt.


Julianna Margulies 78 Eva Longoria 804 Bridget Moynahan 54 Lauren Hutton 22 Traci Bingham 105 Tyra Banks 188 
Carrie Anne Moss 61 


pretty legs of Ann Margret, actress 

eyes of a beautiful woman of color


dark beautiful woman's seductive allure 


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