Fuck Skittles. I Never Asked for this Rainbow.

The most amazing thing about being a so-called “Black” woman is the propensity for sisterhood with other strong black women. We always have the opportunity for community: put any 3 black women in a room and common ground will soon come up.

The Bible says that when there are two or more the presence of the Lord is there.
Well, in the Black Temple, of feminine wiles, the almighty presence is of “Hair.”

The first night of my Columbia career, on a penthouse floor of strong Black women, I spent three hours talking about “black beauty.” On my personal hardwood floor, I got to know women from no place like the one I called home, by listening to their preference for Shea Butter over the great Cocoa. I found sisterhood, in a dirty New York dorm, on the virtue of the tone and texture of my skin. After watching a film written for nothing more than sisterhood, I have to wonder at what point this is lost.

I don't hate you because you're ugly(beautiful.talented.successful.powerful)

You're ugly because I hate you


It appears that we get caught up in ruthless competition, because society often tells us that there is only enough space for one of our kiln: one space for a woman of power, of pedigree, one space for this woman to get that kind of man. In this struggle, we find resentment, but we choose to direct our hostility towards each other, rather than directing our anger towards that unspoken rule that says that WE cannot be in a world only ready for I.

I, the black female politician.
I,. the black female lawyer.
I, the black female doctor.

Incidentally, in all these “I’s,” there is a remarkable amount of blindness. We choose not to see that our strength is in our unity. We tear each other down, hoping that somewhere in all the hate we’ll find the freedom to build ourselves up. It's a "dog eat dog world, son" but never was this about the Black woman being a "bitch." Ignorance. “Divide and conquer” is the modus operandum for Western Caucasoid dominant culture - we try to draw strength in our minority status, ignoring the fact that much of our struggle is rooted in our delineation as MINOR. I am not minor, my sister and mother are not minor. Perhaps growing up in a sea of black faces, only fighting the tide of socio-economic deliverance, has made me skeptical of this - I am from a place where the black face is the face of prosperity.

“You strike the woman, you strike the rock”

I wonder sometimes when I learned to hate. When did I learn to disregard my fellow females, to turn my back on my so-called “sistuh?” I always had issues with the familial connotations of “black” greeting norms - every man I meet is not my brother, and by no means is every woman my sister. I share no bond with you other than the color of my skin, and even in that my shade is not yours. So what do I owe you? Respect? Love? You have to earn my respect and I guard my love. So what then is it? What is the reason for which I should give you a piece of my time, my respect or myself, other than the fact that you, like me, would have once been called “a colored girl?”

Don’t get me wrong, I was as skeptical as anyone about TP’s attempt at “cinemizing” a poem that means so much to so many. As an actress, I don’t know a single fellow Black female actress (personally or otherwise) that has not at one point been a part of the Rainbow. I’ve read Lady in Yellow, cried with the Lady in Orange, begging someone to hold my hand so that I can “survive on intimacy and tomorrow.” For this reason, I guard the women of Ntozake Shange’s skittle-less rainbow closer than I guard my own feelings. They hold, in their disjointed phrases and stories of unhappiness, many different parts of my own experience. What right did a man with cross-dressing tendencies have to put them on a movie screen? I’m still undecided as to how he reconciled his role with the story, but the power of seeing my experience on a screen in an art-deco theater in Brooklyn is beyond words. Phylicia Rashad told the wild child in me, the wild child in Orange, to look for love beyond the temporal touch of a stranger’s early morning goodbye. Whoopi Goldberg told the lost little girl in Purple (that I carry on my sleeve) that she was proud of her, with a voice my mother never used and a love that I don’t know if she has. In For Colored Girls I saw a million stories that I never told.

In the aftermath, I’m left feeling divided - I want to reach out and hug every hued woman that I see. I want to tell every “colored girl” that she is beautiful, that no matter what this/that man did to her she is the strongest force on this Earth. Period. But, I also want to lash out - at the women in my life who didn’t tell me I was good enough, at the women in my life that couldn’t if they wanted to, at the women in my life who look down on me with a precedent that is not theirs to own.

I rode a subway train today
In the dark of a stolen hour
I fought the urge to lash out at you
Betraying
The depth
of My power.

I sat in pink
And Black
And Blue
Beaten by an hour or three
Trying to reconcile the
Faces in the dark
With the woman that I want to be

I threaded with red,
The anger I’ve fought
The blue that kept me from drowning
I looked through some yellow,
some purple
some gold
to see what my favorite Brown is.

I want to be
everything
and yet
to be no-one
I fight to be jagged, rough

But my heartbeat is smooth
My color is blue
I am colored
And the rainbow wasn’t enough.