The Litmus Test of Black Beauty

Every ethnicity coalesces on the great theatrical stage that is New York City. This day was no different than any other, with throngs of people swarming in and out of stores, offices, and restaurants miraculously managing to avoid bumping into one another. Beneath the spectacular spectacle, the city's gridded structure undergirded rhythmic and undulating patterns of thought. New York City has always been alive with belief. On the occasions when beliefs collide, facades crumble in an instant. The illusions of safely-guarded perceptions snap, and suddenly the believer is thrust into realizing that singular thoughts are gridlocked into textured patterns - no thought exists in isolation. Beliefs spring up from wellboards of sameness, and eventually the believer realizes that thoughts contain legacy and history, hope and belief.
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I was in the back of a yellow taxi cab, stuck in inevitable traffic. My driver was a middle aged Middle Eastern man with a thick accent, and a calm, yet cheerful demeanor. New York is a city filled with people who speak their minds, but their conciseness is often mistaken for rudeness when it should simply be considered as curt and to the point. This man proved the point as he guided our conversation from one mundane topic to the next as he deftly drove us within the ebb and flow of traffic. I turned my gaze from the scene outside the car window and caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. I noted a subtle look of delight on his face when our gazes met, and he smiled. "You're beautiful," he uttered. Normally I would have responded with a short, "Thank you," and changed the subject, but the way he framed the statement made me pause. Like the slight upturn around the crinkles of his eyes when he smiled, there was a light lift to his voice. There was just the slightest bit of...something... that informed me that there was more to his seemingly simple statement. He clarified what my instincts were picking up on with his next statement. "Most Black women aren't that pretty, but you're good."

Before I could choke out a response, he changed the subject. I don't recall what he spoke about next - it could have been about the weather, sports, or some other benign topic. As he rambled on, I was stuck on his seemingly inconspicuous statement that Black women aren't pretty. Embedded within his two-faced compliment was his belief that I had managed to pass his discerning eye for beauty despite my... what? Deep brown skin? Thick, unruly hair? How easy it was for him to speak about my physical being without any preamble or pretense of a relationship. He spoke about my physical appearance as casually as he spoke about the traffic and the weather, as though my body was just another mundane factor for him to comment on.

Perhaps his words struck a chord, because I had unwittingly found myself in similar conversations earlier that summer. The driver's words were echoes of phrases I'd heard from others, each attempting to offer me their approval and acceptance despite the hurdle my Black skin and Black legacy presented to them. New York City has been home to immigrants from all walks of life for centuries, yet I had heard the same sentiment about the litmus test of Black beauty from an Asian woman, a French man, and now this Middle Eastern man. Each had no issue speaking about my Black body in a favorable light while also insulting the very culture that I am from. Did the entire world view Black women as unattractive?

These encounters formed the seeds of "Blk Halos". When I couldn't articulate the myriad of emotions and thoughts that formed at the onset of each of these encounters, I found that poetry and song offered enough breathing room to sort through the sticky feelings of shock, shame, hurt, and confusion.