Fix Your Face.
If your mama ever told you, "Fix your face!" then you most likely have some issue with authority. I know I do.
This fraught phrase translates to many things in black life:
"Quit pouting or I'll beat your ass."
"I am the BOSS, and I don't care how you feel."
"Oh, you don't like it?"
FIX YOUR FACE.
Black girls, most especially have to learn to fix their faces, and fix them early. We grow up and revolt, but it is a process. You may have read my twitter thread about my grandma and the potato grater. She worked for white people, and she did not get to see me that often, because I, like so many of her grandchildren, had been born and raised on Long Island. I cannot recall why we were there out of season; all I know is that I was four and it was a quick trip, (must have been a funeral) so grandma took me to work with her, just to spend time with me. She stowed me out of sight, but still, the lady of the house saw me. She started acting differently. "Luuuuucy!" She knew everybody referred to my grandma as "Miss Lucy," even white people. My grandma raised a generation of their kids, and they respected her. This lady was going all out, and I was getting mad, and then I remembered: "I'm in NORTH CAROLINA. I need to fix my face." I can still recall, more than fifty years later, the effort it took to arrange my face into planes of composure even as I wanted to scream:
"STOP DISRESPECTING MY GRAMMA, LADY!"
Instead, I fixed my face. My grandmother glanced up to see me wrestling with it, and a weather system of emotions crossed her face. At first it lit up, "She learning!" Then she realized that it was about her, and the way the young white lady was treating her, and her face fell, swiftly. I had to fix my face some more. So did my grandma. She had to fix her face and keep cordial with that lady, while her four-year-old granddaughter seethed with rage between the pantry and the linen closet.
The Daily Caller on Tiffany Cross : surprisingly nuanced--took no hard line--just reporting! Wauw.
When Tiffany Cross hosted AM Joy recently, she made the eye roll that produced this blog post.
I can cut an eye, but I ain't never seen an eye roll so uniquely emphatic. Others tried it (I admit, I wanted to see if I could pull it OFF), to no avail. The thing produced much talk on the interwebs, as well it should have.
I'd really like for you to see it, but MSNBC put out NO clips of her guest hosting that I can find. She's great, and up on game when it comes to promoting her personal brand, yo--so ask her to send me a screenshot of the eyeroll heard 'round the world so I can add it to this post!
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Tiffany was expressing disgust at Donald Trump and his administration, and she made no effort to hide it. That got me to thinking about the arc that black women take in life--a path of conciliation and capitulation that sometimes winds up in the eye-roll cul-de-sac of life--after we've "been through some things."
By the time you are describing us as 'angry,' we've got a right to be so. Ms. Cross has pointed out that her career would be different if she were white. I posit that if she were less straightforward and un-back-down-able, a network would have put her on its air by now. There's PLENTY of room for more black women on network news. White men, FIX YOUR FACES, and hire them.
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