Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (8 page)

For the black girls at Mills, Dorothy was like manna for our culturally starved souls. She spoke to us in ways we understood, and most important, she recognized it was tortuous for us to attend a college where we were so widely misunderstood. I remember when a white female English professor who called herself a feminist declared that slaves had a special bond with their masters that many of us couldn’t understand. I was the only African American in the class, and I was stunned by this statement. I declared myself a womanist when I realized that white women’s feminism really didn’t speak to my needs as the daughter of a black, single, domestic worker. I felt that, historically, white women were working hard to liberate themselves from housework and childcare, while women of color got stuck cleaning their kitchens and raising their babies. When I realized that feminism largely liberated white women at the economic and social expense of women of color, I knew I was fundamentally unable to call myself a feminist.

I really don’t need another white feminist to tell me that poverty, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, AIDS, unemployment and gentrification are class issues. I was once on the board of a progressive, young women’s reproductive rights organization, and the other board members were very wealthy white women who viewed many of the problems of women of color as “class issues.” We would spend hours talking about how white and black women had a hard time getting along because of our class differences. As a black woman, however, my problems have always been directly connected to race; for me, class is secondary. Most white feminists I’ve encountered seem to think class is the source of all problems. While the roots of gentrification have as much to do with class as with race, it is hard to ignore that most of the people being driven out of neighborhoods are not poor whites in Appalachia; rather, they are the poor blacks and browns in the inner city melting pots. Some would argue that gentrification only occurs in major cities, but as a news producer, I’ve traveled around the country. I can say firsthand that gentrification is kicking people of color out of communities everywhere. From Saint Paul, Minnesota, to the outskirts of Louisiana, to the South Side of Chicago, to the flatlands of East Oakland, we’re being evicted from our communities.

 

When I returned home to the Mission, I attended the open house of a new loft building opening up on Shotwell Street. I was the only black person there. Because I’ve had access to higher education, I am now able to support myself and live a middle-class lifestyle, but even if I had the money to live in the Mission, I wonder how many landlords wouldn’t rent to me as a young, single, black woman. The other people who had come to the opening were white, and they looked at me as if I didn’t belong there. I felt as if they wouldn’t want me as a neighbor even if I had the money to live among them. While I represented everything they wanted to get away from, it was ironic that they were trying to move into a neighborhood that was historically black and brown.

I’ve tried hard to intellectualize gentrification, but the harder I try, the more complicated it becomes. When I was looking for an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I was making enough to rent a studio off Seventh Avenue, yet all of the real estate agents I spoke with blatantly refused to show me apartments in the pristine, lily-white neighborhood. They kept taking me to Prospect Heights and Fort Greene, which at the time were mostly black neighborhoods. Gentrification is more about the color of my skin than the money in my pocket.

Although my building in San Francisco had been spared from the claws of wealthy land bandits, it was a cultural war zone, spurred on by economic and racial disparities. In fact, the entire community had become a war zone, where guerrilla tactics were the weapons of choice. Someone had posted signs all over the neighborhood urging people to deface the live/work lofts, scrape up the fancy, high-priced vehicles that now lined their streets and flatten yuppie tires. This vigilante had become a sort of folk hero, and the signs were part of an underground movement called the Urban Yuppie Eradification Project. The posters urged fellow Missionites to burn down the million-dollar lofts and make life hell for the new pioneers. In their own defense the yuppies held a rally, ironically, on the corner of Twenty-Fourth and Mission—the home of the infamous political protests of the 1980s. Although the local media came out for the event, only a few yuppies were brave enough to show up.

My mother had formed a sort of guerrilla coalition in her building. Along with other people of color, she had vowed to fill vacant apartments with friends and family when they heard that their new neighbors wanted to rent to filmmakers, writers and other artist types. The new renters were communicating via e-mail with the building manager to secure any vacancies, and although the plan almost worked, they failed to fully homogenize the building. It was these people who viewed me with suspicion when I returned to Shotwell Street. Their icy glares easily translated into “What are you doing here?” They were suspicious of the black girl “loitering” around the building. It really didn’t matter that I had spent almost twenty years of my life there. They didn’t care that I was a published writer, a successful TV producer or a graduate of Mills College. To them I was another black woman they were trying to get out of the neighborhood. I needed so badly to say, “This is my neighborhood. I grew up here,” but my anger silenced me.

More than the air of wealth that now permeates the neighborhood, it is the attitude of superiority that angers me. It is the look of hate that aggravates me, the icy glare that says, “We are willing to take over this neighborhood at all costs.” It leaves me wondering about the future of my friends and neighbors. I realize that women of color may never have a place to truly call our own. At times I think about returning home to the old neighborhood to organize my former neighbors, but doing that would mean giving up the life I’ve worked so hard to create in New York.

As my mother’s only child, it is my responsibility to make sure she will always have a place to live, whether that be in San Francisco or elsewhere. It angers me that someone’s greed could take away the apartment she has called home for almost thirty years. Countless women are grappling with having their rented apartments put on the auction block without regard for where they will go next. And the chances are that the person who buys that building/apartment/ duplex will probably be a white person with more power and a lot more money. What is to become of all the other mothers and grandmothers in the Mission whose children have neither the income nor the knowledge to help?

 

I pay more than a thousand dollars a month to live in a Brooklyn neighborhood where the amenities include a round-the-clock liquor store, a marijuana delivery service, illegal all-night gambling and numerous buildings for Section 8 families and people on welfare. My building is earmarked for upwardly mobile professionals and white people. Throughout the neighborhood, signs of “revitalization” are cropping up. White kids walk smugly down the street, sometimes riding rickety bikes or skateboards. Internet businesses are opening up alongside yoga studios, and I have a fully renovated apartment with superfast T-1 Internet access. I am on the cusp of the revitalization, and although I have an amazing apartment in the midst of the hood, I am more than conscious of the fact that the low-income women around me may not be here for long.

I am sure they look at me and the other professionals moving in and wonder “What are they doing here?” Do my low-income neighbors realize that the new buildings being put up like wildfire are not for people like them but for people like me, who can afford to pay inflated rents for renovated apartments in the hood? I am keenly aware of exactly what is happening, and I realize that neighborhoods don’t have to be financially rich to be culturally vibrant, and that white people moving into poor neighborhoods do little good for the people that already live there. When white people move into black neighborhoods, the police presence increases, cafés pop up and neighborhood bodegas start ordering the
Wall Street Journal
and the
New York Times.
You rarely see low-income housing built alongside million-dollar lofts or social service centers built next to yoga studios. When I think about this, I am caught somewhere in the middle, because although I have the money to live in a neighborhood that is being gentrified, I still hear the words my black real estate agent whispered to me: “Just think of this as your own little castle in the hood.”

I don’t want them to take over my San Francisco neighborhood, but five thousand miles away, in another state and another community, I “am on the front lines of gentrification,” as a neighbor so politely put it. When I come home at night and see the crackheads loitering in front of the building next door, I realize I may have switched sides in this fight. When I dodge cracked glass and litter when walking my dog, I realize that this neighborhood really could use a facelift and that the yoga center that just opened up on the corner is a welcome change from the abandoned building it used to be.

Parts of my Brooklyn neighborhood are symbolic of what the media and sociologists say is wrong with “the inner city.” I live on a block where the police don’t arrest drug dealers who peddle crack in broad daylight, where young black men drive around in huge SUVs but barely speak grammatically correct English, where I see the same brothas every day standing on the street corners, doing absolutely nothing. They don’t hustle or harass me but instead politely say “hello,” as if they’ve accepted me. I feel strained by my situation. While I am intimately aware of what is happening to my new neighborhood, I feel powerless. I’ve been in Brooklyn long enough to know that although it is not the most savory neighborhood, it is a community where people feel connected, where the old folks know each other, where neighbors still chat. But sometimes I feel like telling the young men on the corner, “ Get the hell off the street! Don’t you see that life is passing you by? Don’t you see this is what
they
expect
you
to do? Don’t you see they’re moving
in
and in a few years, you’re gonna have to get
out
?”

In my neighborhood men shoot each other, the sidewalks are cracked and many of the buildings are abandoned, and I’ve witnessed two drug raids from my bedroom window. When I come home at night, I put on my sweatpants and walk my tiny dog on littered sidewalks, past tomboys in goosedown coats doing each other’s hair on stoops of aging brownstones. When I see these girls, I remember my own childhood and think that they deserve more than this. They deserve a neighborhood that is clean and safe and provides some hope, a place where they can learn that some dreams do come true and that Prince Charming doesn’t drive an Expedition and sell weed to his friends.

Walking the streets, I realize my neighbors and I are alike in many ways. We like the same foods, the same music, and most important, we are a group of African-American people living together in a neighborhood that is on the verge of change. But in the end we are also very different. If the rents go up, I will have options and they may not. They may have to move and I will get to stay. Although we look the same, we are different. We are connected by race but remain separated by a slip of paper called a college degree. Our block, our hood, our neighborhood has become the next stop on the White Flight Express.

 

Fast forward. It is 1998. I sip chocolate martinis in what was once an immigrant’s watering hole. Ironically, the bar is now called Sacrifice. A jukebox replaces the mariachis and top-shelf liquor takes the place of Night Train. An old flame, Ron is trying to convince me to marry him. I’m thinking I haven’t seen this guy in years, but I thank him for his compliment. And then I see a short man, a few inches over five feet and wearing dirty gray pants and a button-down shirt. His eyes are glazed over and he is barely able to stand. He is singing a song and I recognize the accent, from Juarez or Tijuana. He mumbles something profane in Spanish and appears to be confused by the sea of white faces (and me!).

He searches the room for his
compadres,
and it becomes evident that this place he had once known so well is now as foreign as it is to me. He blinks his eyes a few times and tries to shake himself from this drunken haze but soon realizes that what he is seeing is no illusion. He stares at the blond woman with the multiple tattoos and pierced lip and wonders where his friends might be. He has never seen white people in this bar and as he looks at her, I stare at him and relate to his longing for days gone by. And then he turns from her and looks at me as if to say “What are you,
una negrita,
doing here?”

We lock eyes and I allow him to see my shame while I share his sadness. I too am lost in a place I knew so well. Like the old man looking for a drink, I am saddened, disillusioned and disgusted by the changes. Like him, I also feel powerless. He glances around a bit more, struggles to his feet, curses a few words in
Español,
throws down his tequila, closes his eyes and stumbles out of the door.

 

 

Stella Luna

 

 

 

 

 

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being an actress. I enjoyed making up silly dances and putting on shows for my friends and family. Being the youngest of five children and arriving six years after my sister, I had the privilege of being the center of attention throughout my childhood. Our family lived in a suburb of Los Angeles that was generally classified as Mexican middle class. My father was a second-generation Mexican American who believed in strong family values and a religious foundation. As in many Mexican-American households, our family always came first. My mother wasn’t allowed to work because my father believed her place was in the home taking care of our family. I never saw my mom question this arrangement, but I noticed actions that discreetly displayed her desire. For example, my sister and I weren’t allowed to do any of the household chores or cooking. She would say, “One day you are going to be forced to do this stuff to keep your husband happy, so I’m not going to force you to do it now.” I happily obliged, but in the back of my mind, I began to visualize marriage as the beginning of a lifelong service to others.

As I grew into my teens, it became quite apparent that dating was a privilege and not a right. Under the watchful eyes of my father and my three brothers, I was given strict rules to obey. I didn’t mind these rules, but what bothered me was my mother’s constant fear of my getting pregnant. I found this confusing because my parents never had a sex talk with me and it hurt to think they had such little trust in me. Years later, my mom would brag to her friends how her girls “didn’t have to get married because they were pregnant.” She considered this a personal achievement.

After high-school graduation I began working full-time as a secretary, and I loved having my own paycheck. I began dating one of my coworkers, an Anglo man, and my family was furious. Brett wasn’t like the
machista
guys I had grown up with. Instead, he encouraged me to explore my own ideas and become more independent. My dad disliked him and didn’t appreciate that “this white guy” was placing all kinds of crazy ideas in my head. My dad’s anger heightened when I decided to start spending the weekends over at Brett’s house. My mom accused me of “ruining myself.” I grew tired of the bad blood between my boyfriend and my family, so Brett and I decided to get married. Deep down inside, I honestly knew I wasn’t ready to get married, but I just didn’t want to see my family hurt and upset anymore. My father was happy with our decision, and my mother insisted that I could still be married in a white dress. I angrily thought to myself, “Why wouldn’t I be married in white?”

Soon after we were married, Brett was offered an engineering position in Arizona and we moved. I really didn’t want to leave my family, but my dad convinced me that I had to support my husband’s career. Soon after our arrival in Arizona, I became very homesick and felt like we had made a terrible mistake. I discovered that Brett and I were very different people, and I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life with him. I also found that I couldn’t be an adequate partner to him, because I was still figuring out who I wanted to be. Brett was also unhappy and accused me of being a “daddy’s girl” who still needed to grow up. Sadly, I had to agree with him.

We got a divorce a year later. My family was devastated and insisted I immediately move back home. But I had just started a job that I really enjoyed, and a friend had asked if I wanted to room with her. I had never lived on my own before, and I was anxious to see if I could succeed without my family’s assistance. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I had to find out on my own. I wanted to prove to my family that I wasn’t a helpless little girl.

 

I loved my newfound freedom. I began dating again and became involved in a short-lived relationship. Even though it didn’t last, the relationship would come back to haunt me in years to come. I had saved up enough money to move into my own apartment, where I became acquainted with a sweet guy living across the hall from me. Within six months of dating we were married. Despite the fact that Jay was Anglo, my family absolutely adored him. I think it was because he had a gentle spirit and an enormous respect for our family. My father trusted Jay because he was a hard worker and held strong values. I felt like I had met my soul mate.

Unlike my first marriage, my life with Jay was so easy and non-confrontational. I remember looking forward to coming home each night and just being together. The early years of our marriage were an incredibly happy time in our lives. Two years later in 1993 I discovered that I was pregnant, and we were overjoyed when the doctor confirmed through an ultrasound that the baby was firmly nestled in my tummy. He informed us that as a routine procedure, he asked his patients to have blood tests performed to check for anemia, hepatitis, diabetes and HIV. My husband asked why I needed to be tested for HIV, and the doctor told us that it was a test he offered all of his patients. It seemed unnecessary but I agreed to the blood work. We left the appointment and didn’t think anymore about it—until two weeks later, when I received a phone call that would change my life forever.

I was one month pregnant when the call came from my doctor. One of my tests had come back with unexpected results. He asked if I had ever been a drug user. Offended, I said no. He asked if I had ever had sex with someone I presumed to be bisexual. Again, I answered no. I began to feel dizzy. The doctor said that although he was confused with the results, I had tested positive for HIV. Just then, Jay walked through the door and I handed him the phone and burst into tears. Through my crying I could hear Jay shouting to the doctor that there must be some kind of mistake. I glanced up to look at him and he had tears streaming down his face. He was asked to come into the office the next day so that they could run an HIV test on him. The doctor was bringing in a specialist to discuss our options.

Jay grabbed my hands and told me that he was the one who was probably infected first. I wasn’t sure how to react. I called a couple of our gay friends and told them about the test results. We hoped that maybe they would be able to bring some insight into this whole nightmare. We knew that they had lost a number of friends to this disease, and we felt safe sharing our sad news with them. Our friends came over and spent the evening trying to calm us down. They hugged us as we cried and tried to tell us that it was going to be all right. I would have never made it through that night without them. That evening, we all formed a special bond that has lasted more than eight years.

At the doctor’s office the next day the specialist told us that the life span of someone with AIDS was five to ten years. He said if our baby was born infected, his or her chances for survival were close to none. He encouraged us to abort the baby. We went home that night and thought long and hard about our future and our unborn child. We came to the conclusion that even if I died from AIDS, we still had to give the baby a chance at being born HIV negative and living a full life. We believed our baby was created out of love and it wasn’t right to destroy it.

A week later Jay’s test results came back from the lab negative. My mind went into a tailspin. I instantly recalled the person I had briefly dated between my two marriages, and I assumed he had to be the one who had infected me. I called him and told him, but I never heard from him again. Although it narrowed down only to my relationship with him, he never confirmed it. It amazed me how the disease had been spread around.

My pregnancy progressed normally, except for the blood tests that I was required to take to ensure that my immune system was still strong. The treatment for HIV positive pregnant women in the early 1990s was not very progressive. Clinical trials were still being conducted on the dosing of Azidothymidine (AZT) to pregnant women to lessen the chances of their child being born with the disease. Because this method was still considered experimental, I wasn’t offered any type of drug treatment. Instead, I relied only on herbs and vitamins to keep up my immune system and minimize my stress levels.

Jay tried to be supportive, but I noticed that he was slowly distancing himself from the situation. We had decided not to tell anyone about the HIV. The only people who knew were our gay friends, my sister and Jay’s best friend at work. This lack of disclosure made it very difficult for me to cope with my feelings. It also began to make me feel resentful toward Jay. I began to think that he was ashamed of me. I recalled my feelings when my parents got upset that I had decided to sleep with my first husband before marriage. Maybe everyone did have a right to be ashamed of me. I had hurt the people I loved because of my intimate decisions. I wondered, Did I actually have the right to bring another human being into this world when my moral behavior had brought on such a horrible disease?

 

On a cold December morning, my son Alex was born. He seemed to be a very healthy baby. When he was three days old, he was given his first HIV test. The doctor had high hopes, and when the results came back negative, we felt like we were finally out of the woods. I returned to work and we sought out a caregiver for our son. When Alex was six months old, he was given another HIV test to confirm his negative status. We anxiously awaited the results. Sitting at my desk at work, I saw Jay walk in with a stricken look on his face. I immediately told my boss that I had to leave and I followed Jay out the door. We walked hand in hand and he began to weep. Alex’s pediatrician had called: our son’s test had come back positive.

The pediatrician believed that the disease hadn’t manifested itself in Alex’s system back when the first test was taken. He had given Jay the name of a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the children’s hospital. The piece of paper with the specialist’s phone number was crumbled in my husband’s hand. We held each other and cried and talked about moving to Seattle. We had always dreamed of living in the Northwest, and we agreed that if we lost Alex to this disease, we would just run away to a place where we wouldn’t feel so much pain.

That night we held onto Alex so tightly. I felt like God was yanking him away from us. We couldn’t believe that this beautiful baby was going to die. We didn’t know how we were going to survive through this nightmare. The following day, we told Alex’s caregiver about his condition. We apologized for not telling her before, but we honestly didn’t think that it was going to be an issue. We told her that we still wanted her to take care of our son, but after careful consideration, she told us that it would be impossible for her to subject her other parents to the risk. Our hearts were broken, but we really tried hard to understand.

The next day I went into work and put in my two weeks’ notice. I told my boss the whole story and although he was shocked, he was very understanding. That night, he called to tell me that his wife had offered to take care of Alex, and it didn’t bother her that he was HIV infected. I broke down in tears at his kindness. I thanked him but explained that maybe it was time for me to stay home and spend as much time with my baby as possible. In reality, I thought that it was time for my son and I to stay home and prepare to die.

We took Alex to his first appointment. We were scared and didn’t know what to expect, but the doctors were wonderful. They told us there was some new medication being tested for HIV treatment and that they could possibly get Alex on a clinical trial. A few months later he was given AZT and two other antiviral drugs. I poured the liquid directly in his baby formula and tried to get over the ugly feeling I had about giving my son an experimental medicine.

 

Sitting at home with my son and our diagnosis, I spent a lot of time getting upset about our situation. I even ventured out to an HIV support meeting, but I left the meeting feeling isolated because I was the only female there. I was beginning to feel like I was the only woman in the world with HIV. I really began to wonder what God had against me. One day I spotted an article in the newspaper proclaiming that “the new face of HIV” was a woman who had been diagnosed with the disease and had given birth to a baby. The article concluded by giving information about a women’s support group held in the Phoenix area. I immediately called the agency to find out the details and then anxiously waited for the day to arrive.

I was so nervous when I walked into that meeting, but the women immediately put me at ease. I listened to the women’s stories and was amazed at the courage they had toward combating HIV. I was also surprised at the diversity of the women. This confirmed my understanding that HIV could infect anyone: All you have to be is human. I became friends with these women. Some had overcome obstacles such as IV drug use, but there were also college students and housewives—women who didn’t understand how this had ever happened to them. I began to realize that I wasn’t alone in combating the disease. It was such a comfort to know that I had people to talk to who would understand my feelings and not judge me. It is incredible to realize women’s strength during times of struggle. I experienced this strength firsthand as I watched the group come together as sisters and empower themselves to fight for their lives and their dignity.

Later, we would use this empowerment as the foundation to advocate on our behalf in the HIV/AIDS community. In the midst of this local HIV women’s movement, renowned HIV/AIDS specialist Dr. David Ho announced to the nation that he and his team of researchers had developed a combination therapy that was proving to slow the progression of HIV in clinical trials. My doctor immediately sent me to a clinical trial site and enrolled me in an experimental program. I began taking a combination therapy (a.k.a. drug cocktail) that was similar to the drugs my son Alex had also began being treated with. Although I was riddled with horrible side effects, I continued my routine and anxiously waited to see if it was going to improve my blood count. In the meantime Alex’s blood work was showing incredible improvements. In fact, his CD4 blood count, which indicates the immunity in his body, was within normal range.