Colonial Girls School

I was home recently right after hurricane Dean. I had the rare pleasure of sitting and talking with an old church sister of mine. She is now 15 and attending Mount Alvernia High. I noticed that in the 8 month since I had last been at home she had straightened her hair. What a shame. Once you start that it's hard to get out. But worst of all it wasn't really her choice. The principal of her school had said (according to her) that " We are black and we are proud but we don't have to wear our ethnicity on our heads." What colonial bullshit. As if the natural hair of a black woman isn't presentable. Her mother thought it wasn't a battle worth fighting; her daughter was going to graduate soon anyway. But things like that are not acceptible in a school in 2007, least of all a school associated with the Catholic Church. When my little church sister was telling me how they harrassed her when she had natural hair, I remembered how many times I was pulled into the principal 's office in my high school days for wearing my hair natural and in twists. I wonder what lessons she is going to take from school- what self-image, what idea of beauty. I know in my day, my English teacher was nice enough to let us know what was going on; we attended a colonial girls' school.

(this poet attended my school, and wrote this poem about it)

Colonial Girls School by Olive Senior

Borrowed images
willed our skins pale
muffled our laughter
lowered our voice
let out our hems
dekinked our hair
denied our sex in gym tunics and bloomers
harnessed our voices to madrigals
and genteel airs
yoked our minds to declensions in Latin
and the language of Shakespeare
Told us nothing about ourselves
There was nothing about us at all
How those pale northern eyes and
aristocratic whispers once erased us
how our loudness, our laughter
debased us.
There was nothing left of ourselves
Nothing about us at all.
(Studying: History Ancient and Modern
Kings and Queens of England
Steppes of Russia
Wheatfields of Canada
There was nothing of our landscape there
Nothing about us at all
Marcus Garvey turned twice in his grave.
Thirty-eight was a beacon. A flame.
They were talking of desegregation
In Little Rock, Arkansas, Lumumba
and the Congo. To us mumbo-jumbo.
We had read Vachel Lindsay's
vision of the jungle.
Feeling nothing about ourselves
There was nothing about us at all
Months, years, a childhood memorising
Latin declensions
(For our language
-'bad talking' -
detentions)
Finding nothing about us there
Nothing about us at all
So, friend of my childhood years
One day we'll talk about
How the mirror broke
Who kissed us awake
Who let Anansi from his bag.
For isn't it strange how
northern eyes
in the brighter world before us now Pale?