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Notes of a White Black Woman
Race, Color, Community
206 pages | 6 x 9 | 1995
ISBN 978-0-271-01430-2 | cloth: $40.00 sh
ISBN 978-0-271-02124-9 | paper: $24.95 tr
From the book:
" I remember one time in particular, after the cab I was in crashed into the car in front, then backed into the one behind. A policeman stopped to help. As he was taking down my name and address, I noticed that he had checked the 'white' box. 'Officer,' I said politely, 'you made an error on your form. I am not white. I am black.’ He gave me a long, bored look, decided not to discuss it, and said, 'Sure, lady. If you say so.' If I say so? If I say so! As if it were my idea! I was enraged at his assumption that all of this—the categories, the racial purity laws, the lives that are stomped, mangled, ruined because of those categories and those lawsžïwas based on my say-so. If I said so, we would do away with all of itžïthe sickness and fear, the need to classify asa way to control, the need to make some appear smaller so thatotherscan appear larger. 'If I say so' indeed."
". . . [Judy Scales-Trent] has only two choices. She can accept these crazy definitions and be degraded and marginalized into almost-nothingness, or she can take a look at the narrow margin where she lives and turn it into another set of lines, a river and two shores, or a crossroads where many highways intersect. . . . Scales-Trent hangs out in the margin of things. But she’s taken these margins, these borderlines, and turned them into deep, rich countries of her own." —Carolyn See, The WashingtonPost
"Inthis powerful collection of life-writing, we see our sister cominghome to herself and to us. In doing so, she places the ‘colorcomplex’ squarely on the table. We owe it to her to jointhe dialogue." —Patricia Bell-Scott, editor, LifeNotes: Personal Writing by Contemporary Black Women
While the "one-drop rule" in the United States dictatesthat people with any African ancestry are black, many black Americanshave white skin. Notes of a White Black Woman is one woman's attemptto describe what it is like to be a "white" blackwoman and to live simultaneously inside and outside of bothwhite andblack communities.
Law professor Judy Scales-Trent begins by describing howour racial purity laws have operated over the past four hundredyears. Then,in a series of autobiographical essays, she addresses howraceand color interact in relationships between men and women,within families, and in the larger community. Scales-Trentultimatelyexplores the question of what we really mean by "race" inthis country, once it is clear that race is not a tangiblereality as reflected through color.
Scales-Trent uses autobiography both as a way to describethese issues and to develop a theory of the social constructionofrace. She explores how race and color intertwine throughblack and whitefamilies and across generations; how members of both blackand white communities work to control group membership; andwhathappens to relations between black men and women when thelayer of coloris placed over the already difficult layer of race. She addresseshow one can tell--and whether one can tell--who, indeed,is "black" or "white." Scales-Trentalso celebrates the richness of her bicultural heritage andshows how she has revised her teaching methods to provideher law students with a multicultural education.
Judy Scales-Trent teaches at the SUNY-Buffalo School of Law.