Poor Little Black Girl
Updated: Feb 20, 2020
As the last child and only girl of four children, I was very aware of how different I was from my siblings. I was constantly told that I had to do certain chores from which my brothers were exempt. I couldn’t play with the other children on the street, like my brothers did. I couldn’t stay out late like my brothers or walk barefooted and climb trees. I couldn’t sit and watch the sports channel on Sundays with my brothers and uncles. I was the odd one out.
I was odd because I was born female; born with limitations strapped around my neck and an omen gene in my blood that followed me everywhere. I would watch as teachers pour accolades on my brother even when his academic performance was poorer than mine. Yet, they never once hinted at a praise for me. By virtue of his maleness he was deemed to have potential and was encouraged to develop his gene of greatness. One day he could be the Prime Minister of Jamaica. On the other hand, as a girl, I had no such gene and it would be a pity to encourage something that could never come to fruition. Therefore, my good grades and leadership skills weren't applauded by the teachers who knew that my performance was only a phase which would pass once my other female hormones set in.
As young girls around me got impregnated by adult men, I heard families respond as if the inevitable had happened. They had all known all along that sooner or later this girl or that one was bound to get knocked up, drop out of school and find her true place in life. It mattered not that these girls were being abused. The abuse was overlooked as the girl had simply become what she was always destined to be; another poor, struggling, servant who would be bent to carry the weight of society on her shoulders.
To give birth to a girl is to be cursed with a burden. Each girl is a “poor”, “little”, “black” girl, whose birth makes her parents' and society's life harder. For now, the father must redouble his efforts to protect his home or else the community gangs will lay claim to her. The mother must find ways to keep this child unduly busy for fear that she may venture on the streets and meet abuses at the hands of older men and boys. The girl child is a headache to the family in which she is born because in Jamaica women and females are prey for men.
Not every family can deal with this heavy a burden. For parents who simply refuse to "pay rent", they spend their entire days praying for that time when God would cause this omen to leave their homes. They acticvely encourage the girl to go out on the streets and meet her fate as early as possible and if she can earn some money for her sufferings then the family is grateful to her for repaying some of the hardship she has caused them. Ultimately, the aim is to dump her on the streets where she alone suffers the abuses that she has coming.
Of course, the flip side is also true. Not everyone despises female and women. There are those who benefit from a high female birthrate. . . . as long as those females are not born into their family. For these females form the surplus from which misguided, evil, confused, men prey. The girl walking to school in her school uniform is part of his free All You Can Eat Buffet. The woman on the bus heading to work is there for him to grab on to her feminine parts. If a bevy of girls did not stroll by, how would men of great skills know that they possessed the skills to whistle and catcall? If women did not exist where would Dance hall artists get their lyrics to teach society that women must be raped and beaten? Frankly, if there were no women, who would the frustrated man take out his anger on or even point his gun at? So you see, I would be unfair to paint a picture which suggests that in all sectors of society and by all peoples, women were unwanted. That would not be fair so I am proffering a more balanced perspective here before I proceed.
Memories of my childhood flood my head on these rainy, February, days. One memory that is particularly vivid is that of a conversation between one of my caregivers and her close friend. I was about eight years old and had been outside playing with the five years old son of this close friend. When the son and I entered the house and approached the adults, the son’s mother started showering him with praises. How intelligent he was, a born leader, handsome and smart. He would make her name great and her legacy as powerful as Abraham's. My caregiver nodded and encouraged the applauds. They stroked his kingly head and rubbed his knightly back as he giggled. I started to see the boy with new eyes. He was no ordinary human like myself. How could I have missed that before when his name was "Prince". It dawned on me that maybe Prince was one of the royalties that I had read about in story books. He had to be because my caregiver did not care for praising children because, (as was revealed to me later), there is a belief that praises make a child grow haughty. She never hugged me or patted my back. She never looked at me the way she was looking at Prince.
I knew there was something special about "Prince". but I couldn't put my fingers on it. As I watched the two women pour over Prince like Mary must have poured her precious oil over Jesus's feet, I became perplexed. I really couldn't see what Prince had that I didn't. But I didn't have to wait long to find out. Soon, his mother started explaining how grateful she was that she didn’t have any daughters and that God had blessed her with a son. "Daughters are nothing but trouble and that little one (pointing at me) is so dark skinned, she doesn't stand a chance." Those were her words. Then she went on to explain how poor women such as herself and my caregiver needed strong, healthy sons to help them in life. My caregiver agreed with her or at least she seemed to agree. Yes, daughters get pregnant as soon as they turned teenagers. They were more burden than benefit and they never amounted to anything. I slowly realized that Prince was special because he was a boy. He didn't have to do anything or act any particular way. He didn't have to possess any skills or special knowledge. He was born with that one organ that made him superior to everyone else in the room. In his third leg, he carried the gene of greatness.
I started to feel unworthy of his company and to think that I had just played with him as if he were some commoner like myself. The last words I heard as I left the room were “truly…Girls have no sense at all” and I remember as my caregiver giving her verbal assent. How silly of me not to have recognize the inherent difference between Prince and myself.
Confused, conflicted and disappointed in myself, I left the house and went to sit under a tree. Up until this point in my life, I had not realized the extent to which I was shunned, ostracized, and treated differently because I was a girl. That day, I began to understand why I could never amount to anything no matter how hard I tried. I was no Prince and I did not carry the genes of greatness within me.
As I sat under the tree, crying, and talking to God, the wind and myself; being expectedly stupid. I began to question why God had allowed me be born as a poor, little, black girl. Couldn't He have given me that third leg of greatness? Why did I have to be given girl genes and be destined for doom and gloom? It was clear now that all the bad things that had happened to me and all the stupid mistakes that I had made were because of this ominous girl genes. I started to hate that I was female.
The records replayed in my young mind and now I understood them all. I understood why my neighbor had called me “a bad, little, girl” after I was hurt by the neighbor. I understood why my uncle had accused me of lying and claimed that all women are liars. I understood why my brothers and male cousins didn’t want me to play cricket and football with them. I was the carrier of this ominous female gene. My mere entrance into this world and into any room thereafter made me blameworthy and despicable.
That day, I decided that I would not allow this gene to control me and I would not allow my stupidity to taint those around me. I would prove everyone wrong by suppressing this gene and by excelling where they expected me to fail. I deliberately started to live a reclusive life. I took to quietly drawing, reading or listening to music in my room. I no longer longed to watch TV with the Great Men in my family or to play with the boys in the streets. I had no intents of being a burden to them or society. In my room, I planned how I would make and do something positive with my life through the education that I was given.
They saw the change in me. My uncles commented on how independent and strong headed I had become as I refused to take their gifts. My aunts thought I was either feisty or troubled when I declined to join them at their female banters. Generally, my community and school thought I had become an anti-social. Perhaps they were right, all of them. It. didn't matter to me. What was more important to me was to suppress this “poor, little, black, girl” gene and to survive at my own expense. The walls I erected as quarantine gave me control and pride. At least I didn’t have to pollute others with my “girl-ness” but neither did I have to stand their ridicule of me. I became a self-imprisoned, poor, little, black, girl.
And this is where I say “But God” as only a whooping preacher can say it. I say that knowing that if God had not been present in my life I would still be deeply imprisoned and living a lie. But God saw something different in me and long before I was born He had orchestrated a different path for me. When I did my primary school exams, I had no idea which high school I wanted to attend but my teacher thought that I should go to an all-girls high school and she took the liberty of choosing that school for me. As a result I ended up attending an all-girls school. In this environment of a predominantly female staff and student. body, I began to see the female gene differently.
All round me, girls and women excelled unapologetically and they were applauded for it. (Although, I had a male teacher who insisted on calling us his “boys” because according to him girls were not meant to do science, and we did it well so we had to be boys). Most of the other teachers challenged us to embrace our femininity. I remember one teacher walking into the classroom with her hands akimbo. As is the usual, we stood as she entered to show respect. Before we could sit down again, she asked us to stay standing and repeat these words after her “Whatever this world wants, I have it. If they want beauty, I have it. If they want brains, I have it. I am of worth and value and I have the power to choose.” I will never forget those words not only because she made us repeat them several times but because I had started to believe them.
I looked around me and started identifying women who lived those words. I started to take notice of women in leadership roles at school, at church, in the various. other institutions. These were women who despite the catcalls, disparaging remarks, and abuses from men and other women, held their stance and moved onwards. I watched these women walk with a determined sway in their hips and their heads held high and I became aware of the many women whose mere existence defied everything that I was taught about the “poor, little, black, girl”.
It was as if evidence of great women was all around me. Reinforcements came as I observed girls being told everyday by their teachers that they had the potential to be anything that they wanted to be. I listened as girls were told that we could choose our men and not just sit back and wait to be chosen. I became excited as girls were told that within us was the power to change the world. Over the span of my five years at high school, I watched, listened to and even dared to believe that a gene for greatness resides in all women.
I watched and I listened to the evidence but even as I graduated High School, I still had some self doubt. Could I be like the great cloud of female witnesses that had gone on before? Perhaps I was in some way different from them. After all, I was not just female, I also have extremely dark skin and I am from a poor family. I take this "poor, little, black, girl" thing to a whole new level. Is it. possible that I could be carrying the gene of greatness too?
At this stage, the counsel of my oldest brother helped me to embrace my own potential for greatness. I remember getting into a verbal fight with a boy who told me that because I was a girl I could not enter a particular profession. My brother scolded the boy then sat me down and told me that the sky was the limit. He told me that I had so much potential and that he could see my greatness just by looking at me. My brother was and remains the most impactful caregiver in my life. I believed him because he was and still is my hero. More importantly, God knew that I needed to hear these words from him. Because he said it, I accepted, that in that very moment, this poor, little, black, girl was born for greatness.
Over the years, this imagined, ominous, female, gene receded and was replaced by confidence and hope. It is this confidence and hope that brought me through my upper, high school and university years and which still reminds me, when I experience down days, of the greatness that resides within me. When I would give up and throw in the towel, I continue because this gene of greatness won't let me stop.
Now I have a nine years old niece. I don’t get to see or interact with her much but I understand the great responsibility that I have towards her and the other girls growing up in Jamaica. I can’t stand idly by and hear them recite the lies that society has told them about her female-ness and believe me, we have come a ways from when I was young but those lies are still prevalent in our Jamaican society. There still is a societal construct which relegates when to a position of inferiority in our society. Women and girls are still being abused at an unprecedented rate and our chidden are suffering as a result of our sexist views.
On my last visit to the island, my heart broke when my niece told me that she believes women are made to stay behind men and should not hold certain leadership positions. She was being taught this by one of the main societal institutions. My heart broke for her and for the many other girls that are still being taught these lies.
I am writing this article because it is Black History Month
but I am also writing because whichever month it is, Black is still precious and because our poor, little, black, girls must know this:
Little, Black, girls are precious in their Blackness, in their femininity and in their richness or poorness.
They are inherently invaluable.
I fear that my voice is one voice among thousands of other contradicting voices. Yet, I know that just one voice can make a big difference. One voice at a time is all it takes to get change started. It starts as a small rumble but grows into a thunderous roar. I still hear the voices of doubt and negativity every now and again but I thank God for those few, yet powerful voices that told me that I was made for greatness. Those voices trump all the naysayers. Those voices from the past are the ones that pave the foundation for my present and future. Those voices are the ones that set my heart ablaze. Let us be one of those voices. My prayer for my niece, for the girls of Jamaica, for the women of the world, for myself, is that despite our ages, sizes, skin tones or gender, we will activate the voice that calls out to the greatness within all of us.
Please share this post on your social media platforms and be a part of the Voices for positive change. Click on the links below to share.