Oh, how sad it was to learn you grew up in a home without your father.  The severing may have begun during slavery.  Or maybe, blame the sixties, when black men were denied opportunities to care for his family, and the government made it plain and bullhorn clear that we will feed your wife and kids, we will pay their rent and utilities, but we will not pay for lazy n*****s to eat free off the backs of hardworking white Americans.  Men hate failure.  A black man used to be a man.  A man’s job is to provide for his family.  When a man cannot provide for his family, his ego dies.  Killing the man.  So Papa, always baby steps from utter failure, laid his hat in somebody else’s home—so the song goes.  And never came home.

It was also sad to hear that you were college educated, only to glean that “white culture” was “better” than your own “black culture.”  As usual, the American education, spinning so many white lies and whitewashed fables, has failed to teach its stepchildren—especially the slower ones like you—that for every fantasy-filled nursery rhyme is a reason.

You failed to mention you PREFER WHITE WOMEN EXCLUSIVELY AND WOULD NEVER GO BACK (presumably black) because you are attracted to them.  And since you made no mention of any redeeming or magnetic quality, such as the sea green of her eyes or the softness of her heart, as justification for the draw to her unearned loyalty, it struck your mother, sister, aunts, and grandmother (and some of us from rainbows of diverse blackness, whom you will never go back to) as odd.  It struck us, as deep as a fist to the gut, that you were not aware of the weight and breadth of the forces guiding your decision.

It was sad to learn that 400 years of socialization and a few years of community college, combined, did not advance an explanation as to why you keep “tapping your nose” on the “white girl bell.”  All a few misguided years of community college did for you (standing in the shadow of all those hundreds of years of pink people socialization) was illustrate the unfathomable and far-reaching power of 400 years of conditioning in the obliteration of the black psyche.

During the beat down, you were conditioned to tap the white girl bell.

That fruit’s been forbidden for so long, you’ve had to die a thousand deaths for just plucking white lilies.  You’ve hung from her trees, reaching for her buds, and drank all her river water just a-whistlin’ for her attention.  You’ve had your genit@li@ tucked away like memorabilia in your mouth, for knocking those knees, to feel under the canopy of her skirt, for something as airy as the fragrance of elusive a$$ to pump up your ego.

This is the Officer Tatum…for him, it’s the culture. He thinks college opened his eyes.

A strong buck like you, forced for 400 years to use muscle instead of your brain, should know it’s conditioning.  You do know brain conditioning is just as effective as muscle conditioning, right?  White people do.

“It’s not ‘the white woman’s culture’ then that has you so casket ready for all of us blacker women to mourn your loss.”

It’s the bright lights of Hollywood fading away her flaws, capping her teeth, minting her breath, whitewashing her stretchmarks, smoothing her wrinkles, the wind-blowing of limp do-nothin’ hair in defiance of gravity in slo-mo.  They’ve even stopped her cycle because blonde/blue beauties—the whitest lilies—don’t bleed.  Check the ads; they’re on loop, tying the noose around your neck as we speak.

All to funk up the browner woman’s flow.

While it was sad to learn that you had not tasted sushi until you rang the white girl’s bell, at this fork in the road, you shouldn’t be surprised.  For, it’s not at all suspicious that you couldn’t find it on your own.  In the store, where they sell it.  Or around the way, where they perfect it.  Where not one pretty and petite Japanese girl could be found to serve you a plate, alongside a slice of ginger or dollop of wasabi.

And while it was sad to learn that you, with your Holyfield body, was too weak to be the change you wanted to see in your father.  Too weak to resist being a sellout for wholly unrighteous reasons for a woman with lips as sweet as your mother’s temperament.  Too weak to be the change you seek for a woman topped with light and airy cotton candy for hair, that delicious, that sticky, with chocolate poured over all that strength to raise yo’ black ass.  Alone.  It’s no surprise—due to conditioning—that you keep ringing the white girl’s bell, hungering for her culture, at the table of her mythical father.

A father who could never be an alcoholic; down on his luck; jobless though educated; hopeless though god-filled; abused though human and kind; denied though worthy; murdered though minding his own got-damn business; rejected though perfect just the way the Creator made him; or a deadbeat dad (because he couldn’t stand the fall, of failing you and your mom).

Our mouths will no longer go dry salivating for you, “brother,” while we walk white lines off the black street to beat the po-po off your ungrateful black backs with our bare—and yes, forsaken—hands, while you tap the white girl’s bell and nose around, ringing the hem of her skirt . . . for sushi.

All women have sushi.  But, in case you’ve forgotten, black girl sushi is not only funky.  Bitch . . . it’s fresh.

Sincerely,

The Ungloved Hands of Black Women Chafing in the Fight for You

***

In the famous experiments Ivan Pavlov conducted with his dogs, Pavlov found that objects or events could trigger a conditioned response. As he gave food to the dogs, he rang a bell. Lo and behold, at some fork in the road, all Pavlov had to do was ring the bell, and the dog salivated. The mythical father didn’t even need to show the sushi! Dog doesn’t even have to know whether mythical sushi exists! Dog doesn’t have to know whether mythical sushi is good! It doesn’t have to be, all dogs are conditioned to salivate . . . for killer sushi.

P.S.  To all our white friends with self-esteem low enough to trick them into believing this post is about them—although you have been conditioned to believe everything is—everything is not about you.  Sometimes, it’s about housecleaning, about finally sweeping a low-down, dirty floor.  It’s simply about family, keepin’ the Negro honest. –Holliday Vann