“You should always wear white, Bride. Only white and all white all the time.”
“Not only because of your name, but because of what it does to your licorice skin.”
“If you must have a drop of color, limit it to shoes and purses, but I’d keep both black when white simply won’t do”
Lines from Toni Morrison’s newest novel, God Help the Child. The protagonist, Bride, attempts to make her dark skin more palatable to everyone by wearing white. She was described by her own mother as being “…so black she scared me….midnight black, Sudanese black.” After Bride heeds a colleagues advice to wear white only, she almost instantly becomes “exotic” and “striking”, shedding the negativity that plagued descriptions of her skin previously. Does the color white make black skin more acceptable? Perhaps this is the reason black people love to throw parties where the required attire is all-white? Does white clothing, even subconsciously, make us feel more accepted? Of course, we know the word associations that “white” connotes – purity, heaven, cleanliness, innocence, divinity, etc. Rapper Dej Loaf even raps in her mega-hit, Try Me, “rock that all-white when I’m feeling Godly.” So while I cannot know for sure the minds of everyone Black person in the universe, I know that wearing all-white has always made me feel like I was special. There is definitely not enough space on this post for me to attempt to delve into the psyche of black people wearing white clothing.
Has your perception of me changed? Does the all-white make me different?