Scenes from a life in Negroland

[shaayecanaan]

Some Negroes would rather work for white people. They don’t resent their status in the same way.

Let’s unpack that. Let’s say you are a Negro cleaning woman, on your knees at this minute, scrubbing the bathtub with its extremely visible ring of body dirt, because whoever bathed last night thought: How nice. I don’t have to clean the tub because Cleo/Melba/Mrs. Jenkins comes tomorrow! Tub done, you check behind the toilet (a washcloth has definitely fallen back there); the towels are scrunched, not hung on the racks, and you’ve just come from the children’s bedroom where sheets will have to be untangled and almost throttled into shape before they can be sorted for the wash. Cleo/Melba/Mrs. Jenkins will do that.

Would you rather look at the people you do all that for and think: If the future of this country is anything like its past I will never be able to have what these white people have, or would you rather look at them and think: Well, if I’d had the chance to get an education like Dr. and Mrs. Jefferson did, if I hadn’t had to start doing housework at fifteen to help my family out when we moved up here from Mississippi, then maybe I could be where they are.

Whose privilege would you find more bearable?

https://www.guernicamag.com/features/scenes-from-a-life-in-negroland/

[Novara]

1. Excellent essay

Thank you.

[shaayecanaan]

2. her memoir is coming out in september

I hope it will find an audience. Margo Jefferson also wrote a book on Michael Jackson that wasn't really embraced because it was a very trenchant and melancholy view of what was a tragic character. Beautiful writing though.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. She is an excellent writer, though I'm not sure that what she's revealing

is very flattering. I think it's important to hear her point of view, I just don't know how this will come across in a good way for her, in the end.

[shaayecanaan]

7. its the sort of honesty you rarely read

She could have left out half of and had her work accepted as yet another church service homily on racism, but I dare say she was too honest for that.

[a kennedy]

3. Yikes, it's dated from a year ago.......so powerful.

Scenes From a Life in Negroland
By Margo Jefferson
June 16, 2014

Love her style of writing.....so compelling.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Shame on you DUer, for not recognizing the trickle down effect in action.

If her employers were doing poorly, she wouldn't even have a job. Don't you get it? It's the cycle of strife, er, life.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. That was a marvelous read...

thank you!

rec