dre

As an artist, I find a lot of spaces are very white, and it’s discouraging, especially because I tattoo, and it is such a white subculture. But, originally tattooing was a very spiritual Indigenous practice. I feel like I find myself just trying to crawl into these spaces all the time and make them friendly for me, or find a little safe space. But, it gets super exhausting because there is no one there to replenish how much work I am putting in just to sit in the same spot. I don’t know. 

I don’t appreciate that Black bodies are political. The fact that there are always comments. The Black body can’t just be a body. It can’t be something that can just be seen and then think, “wow, that’s beautiful,” and then turn away. It has to come with a political statement. It has to be saying something. Or your art needs to be saying something or be revolutionary. I would like to have the same leisure as my white counterparts to create just to create art. I went to college, and it was super discouraging because they didn’t even know how to paint Black bodies; which is super fucked up. I think that was one of the most distressing moments that I have had in my later years. In high school, I went through a lot of–it was a very not diverse school, so I dealt with a lot of stuff. I think partly due to my own ignorance on what it meant to be Black, it almost protected me from knowing how much was actually going on. I just didn’t even clue in to, “oh my god, that is so terrible,” until later. So, I am kind of glad because I didn’t have to live all of it. I recently went back to talk to the principal, who now is a coloured man–which is so weird to me–about this stuff, but it was really hard to even walk into that building. I felt like I needed to be small, and shrink down, and be invisible. I hate that. Now I like wearing my hair as big as possible, and just want to take up all the space. Come at me! Other than being called a whole slew of weird ass names, like nigglet, because I was small. My nickname was “token.” That one I didn’t clue into until literally maybe 4 years ago. That was really bad, that is literally tokenism, and I didn’t even see it. My yearbook has that written all over it. The fact that none of these people thought, “this is so wrong what we are doing,” that they were isolating a fellow peer for something that they can’t even control is really messed up. I played sports though, so it was really safe in that sense. If I was on the track or playing basketball, there was a place for Black people to be Black. I got to be at peace in those places. Then when I had a career ending injury when I was 16, so after that I had to figure out what it meant for me to be black and not athletic anymore, which is a really weird thing. I’ve always been into art, and had to figure out if it was ok for me to be myself in this body. Was that something that I am privileged enough to be able to do? Which is weird. I think I still deal with that. I just want people who are kind of your, “alternative” Black people. Why can’t we just be alternative or part of subculture like a white person? I think hip-hop is really cool, and I see the amazing impact it has had on our culture, but it is not something that I listen to. I love my dad-rock, and I like listening to indie-rock and looking at people with tattoos, and it is sad to me that often I don’t get to look at other people of colour. I have to hunt them out, search them out; it’s kind of weird. I remember being in school and people would be like, “Yo, we want to listen to something lit…Dre?” I would be like, “I don’t know. I can’t help you. I don’t know any music. ZZ Top?” They would be like, “No, we want to listen to hip-hop.” I’m like, “I can’t help you. I don’t know.” Music, to be honest, that is the one thing that pisses me off so much to this day. People talk to me like I have this wealth of knowledge of hip-hop from beginning to end, but I was born in ’97, so how the fuck am I supposed to know what was happening in 1981. If you were a teenager in ’97, that’s when I was born, I don’t know much about the golden era of hip-hop. I wasn’t born with an encyclopedia worth of knowledge about that time. My 9-5 is at a café, so I play music all day and people are always so surprised by my music choices. This is such a micro-aggressive way of being like, we didn’t expect you to be outside of the box that we put you in when we walked in here, but you don’t know how to say that. That is one that bugs me the most. 

The whole idea of fetishization and exoticism is my other struggle. I just got out of a relationship (note: interview was in May, 2019) and it started out real great, but it creeps into everyone’s language without people being really aware. I think we are just taught that there is a type of person that you are supposed to want to go after, and I have just never met anybody, who has liked me for more than just being a light skin. There is so much more, that is just surface, and that doesn’t make me cool or nice or want to be your girlfriend. It sounds so arrogant to say this, but I hate being this trophy. It doesn’t matter what I have to say or what I do, it’s just that factor about me why people come after me or hit me up or want to hang out. Have you not seen how frickin’ beautiful Black women are? Just look at all of them. Look at all of these people of colour. Stop just only looking at a certain type of person. We are not representative of our entire race. My sister and I get that so much, like “wow, such a cool mix! What are you mixed with? Oh that’s so cool!” Why? It’s not. What are you mixed with? Irish and German? Cool. It’s weird, right? We don’t talk about it like that. It is like you are ethnic and foreign, but not enough that it is going to scare my family. I find it makes me question the authenticity of friendships even, because I will be friends with people and then they will randomly slip in, “I love hanging out with someone who looks as cool as you do,” and I’m like, “I’ve gotta go.” You don’t say that to people. It is one thing to say, “Oh wow, I like your outfit, I like what is going on with you today,” but, when people just repeatedly use the same vocabulary about being around you because you have a look, it is just like, “I didn’t do this, this is how I was born, and the fact that you are so into that part is weird.” It is unnecessary, and are you cloaking your racism and white guilt by having a Black friend, and they look cool? 

I haven’t really dealt with a lot of blunt racism since I have been here. At the Table Talk, it made me really check my light skin privilege real quick. I was listening to how other people were talking about their experiences in Victoria, and I just had not had that experience. I think in high school, because I was the only Black person, I dealt with it. But, then as soon as I am not the only one, I do have more privilege to move through society and be the funky, quirky light skin and not get questioned or people don’t say nasty, nasty stuff. I just get a lot of weird little comments, and I’m like, “You don’t say that to people. No. I don’t look like your other light skinned friend at all.” Or, they just assume you know everyone. I’m like, “I’m really glad you think that I look like I have a lot of friends, but I don’t know them. I stay at home because I am afraid of you guys.” It is nice to have that freedom, and it is what I kind of like about living here, but I shouldn’t get too comfortable. Stuff still happens, and it is always surprising to me that people have that in them. It is so weird to me to think about saying something to point out somebody’s obvious difference. It is such a weird concept to me. I am really big into complimenting other women, other trans, or non-binary people. I just love complimenting people. In my job, I have a cool opportunity to watch people come in, sometimes they’re not smiling, and I can just be like, “yo, that dress is a really nice colour on you.” The last thing I would do is say, “wow, your skin colour is so pale, I love it how it’s translucent.” I would never think to comment on that. It is just so weird, and I don't get it. I’ve tried to understand where you are coming from, but I still don’t get how you can be like, “I better say something about the fact that they are not the same ethnicity as me.” That concept to me is very weird. Man, I hate that. People think that just cause your appearance doesn’t suggest what other ethnicities make you out to be, that they can say really nasty stuff about First Nations people, and they don’t know that I am one quarter Ojibwe, and I find that very offensive, and even if I wasn’t, I’d still find it incredibly offensive. 

I have some really good friends, that are, I would use the term, very woke. I also have acquaintance friends who say things, and I am like, “I’m going to have to call you out on that.” Why are we friends? Why do you only come to me to talk to me about political things? Why do you message me to ask me if you could use certain words? If you even have to second guess whether or not you can use a word that is part of African American Vernacular, or something like that, then don’t use it. It is so simple. Every time I get asked, “Can I say fleek?” or something like that, I’m like, “when you hear me talk like that, you can start.” I don’t talk like that because that’s not my culture. I wasn’t born in a city where we spoke like that. I’m not from Atlanta; I’m not from Philly. I am not from somewhere where that is how we talk. So, why would I put that on? I understand that it is something that can unite Black people, but I am also like, “guys, we have got to move past these stereotypes.” I remember when I lived on the mainland, and one of my friends was a rapper, and was talking about how he was from the hood, and all of his vocabulary was borrowed. I was like, “dude, I know where you live. You don’t live in the hood; you live in a nice house in Surrey. You don’t hustle; you have a job-job. You are not running from the cops, and you are not selling drugs. Stop keeping this thing going, drop it. You can still rap, just be yourself; be authentic. It is scary, but someone has got to do it.” We are artists, we keep culture alive, but we also get to choose what type of culture we can continue to perpetrate. We are depicted a certain way in the media, and we don’t need to give them more proof or evidence. If that is your truth, and you legitimately do those things, and that is how you live, and that is where you are from, and that is how they speak where you are from, then you are living your truth; go ahead. If you are not, then that’s not something you should be dipping into to put on. I don’t know. I just find that really weird. Especially when I had friends from the continent of Africa, like Ethiopian, Somali, or Sudanese. You got the chance to have actual culture, and you are throwing it away to pick up culture that we created over here because we got it stolen from us. But, you had a chance to bring in your actual culture, and we want to see actual Blackness. Not just what we have created out of what we have been given. I get fired up about that. It is big to me. I want there to be more opportunities, but there can only be more opportunities for people if we give ourselves more doors. A lot of people don’t get the chance or the privilege to open new doors for themselves, and I feel like those of us that do need to be opening doors and being authentic so that we can leave a mark and other people behind us can be like, “if she can do that, I can do that. She was just herself. I don’t have to perform a certain type of Blackness, I can just be me, and that is my truth.” I think it would be cool if we saw more people who were just being. There are so many people who are rising up, and being themselves, and taking over in different industries that used to be really white. Then they get criticized for, “acting white,” but, no, they are just being themselves. You just don’t quite understand it yet, and that is fine. That’s ok; we are all at different places. But, let’s allow people who are being themselves, to be themselves. It is not anti-black or being white. We are just not into the same things that you would expect from them. That’s selling yourself short if you are like, “what are they doing over there, being vegan? What are they doing over there, being into coffee?” They are just doing what they want to do, let them live. I try to focus on the future, because there are so many terrible things that have happened, and I don’t think that we should take them lightly, but I think we should also try to build–and maybe that is a privilege that I get to have as light skinned–but maybe I can help open a door for someone darker than me that wouldn’t have that opportunity. I see that we have been through so much, and we are such a resilient people, for real. Nobody else has survived like people of colour have. The fact that we are still around after every single attempt to wipe us out has been put into effect. Even right now, the abortion bans and stuff like that. It is not an attack on women’s bodies; it is an attack on people of colour. It is a direct, blanketed, hidden agenda, but the fact is that the States are majority coloured people, and you are keeping them in poverty, and you are not giving them anything to step off of, and you are making people who can’t afford to have more children, have more children. They are just going to be funnelled into the same school-to-prison kind of thing, and you are telling all of these coloured women that their bodies are owned by the state, and that is really messed up. Yes, it is going to affect white women too, but a white woman signed that bill, so that does say something. It is not women; it is a class thing. You have to look at who is in poverty, and who is the lower class, and that is where they want to keep us. There is so much shit going on that I think that when we can we have to be our own light to keep ourselves going because no one else is going to do that for us. 

I always look for myself in other people, whether that was people of colour or others. You don’t see yourself anywhere. I love that now, even if companies are just doing it because it’s trendy, I love that little coloured kids can be like, “oh my god, I might grow up and look like that,” or, “wow, look at the adult over there that looks like me!” That’s kind of cool. I didn’t get that opportunity as a kid, but I think that taught me that you can’t look for yourself in what you see on the media, and you can’t look for yourself in what you see on your feed, or on a billboard. You really have to look inside of yourself and be that person because we can beg and we can lust for representation as hard as we want–it kind of sounds negative, but I don’t want it to be–but we also are only so far in terms of representation. It is still a big deal if you release a black film. It shouldn’t be, but it is. So, we don't have it yet and we aren’t there yet, and if you only look at those big, popular movies that people are making, you are not going to feel optimistic, you are not going to feel encouraged. You are always going to feel discouraged. I lived that life, where every day you are like, “I have to fight all of these people, I have to do all this,” and it got really depressing to be honest. I had to take a break. I couldn’t look at the news anymore, because I don’t want to see another person dying. I don’t want to see another hashtag. Then I realized I was looking at that, hoping that one day it was going to change. Hoping in my lifetime to see positive things. No, you have to look for things, dig around and find out stuff for yourself. Go on those deep YouTube dives and find out, “wow, some kid in this state just won a spelling bee.” That is so encouraging and cool. You aren’t going to find hope in the media, at all. You got to find it in yourself, and move from there. I feel like that is the only way to keep yourself balanced, especially being coloured in this world. It is depressing. It is not something that is easy, so you have to find ways to keep yourself happy. One of my forms of protest, which I guess to some, would be lame, but what I do is I realize that I am acceptable Black. Which means that I get to have an opportunity to talk to someone who might have a weird, negative impression of what a Black person is going to be. I get the opportunity to – if I am walking down the street and see the little, white lady grabbing her bag and starting to get scared, I get to just smile at her, and disarm this whole situation, and I don’t have to mean mug her while I walk by. It might be really small, but later she might be like, “oh, that girl smiled at me. She wasn’t trying to take my stuff.” I get followed in the grocery store quite often, but I think it is also because I look like a child when I go grocery shopping. I’m always in a big sweatshirt, scurrying around. I just stop and ask them where I can find stuff, and how is your day? Is it going good? Let’s just have normal conversations, because you didn’t approach me thinking we were going to have this sort of level of conversation. You didn’t think that we were going to have a friendly encounter, and I am going to go out of my way to make sure that we–I know it sounds weird–but now we are both comfortable, because I created my safe space right there, disarmed whatever you had going on, and now I am not going be followed for the rest of the time that I am in the grocery store. It is just really simple little thing, but I think that sometimes our fear of the “whites” can be so overwhelming and all that you see, that you forget that you might also be contributing to that stressful situation, because it is scary. I have been the one to be scurrying, and not smiling, and just moody. You can just have really stressful situations, or you can just go into them and be like, “I am not going to allow this to happen.” I am going to make this safe for myself, and that might make them uncomfortable, but fuck it, I was uncomfortable 2 seconds ago. So, now we are even. I made you check your racism, and I hope that that means that for the next person that comes in here you’ll think, “I am not going to follow them around, they are not taking oranges.” You know? I guess that is a privilege of being a light skin, but it is one that I get to utilize and one smile at a time I can change people’s perception of us. You don’t always have to see us as mug shots. I don’t know. I try to smile as much as I can, keep it friendly. That’s my motto. Just make people second-guess what they came in thinking you were about. That might be enough to get them to not do something terrible next time to someone else. Or maybe next time, instead of scowling at the Black kid that is walking toward them, they will smile. That will make that kid’s day, and that is all we can hope for, is that little by little. I think mostly about the next generation, and the kids, because those are your most formative years, and it is hard being a little Black kid. So, I just want to make this world as positive, and bright, and happy, and joyful for them, so that they can grow up and have a positive outlook on life, just like their white peers. We all deserve that. We all deserve to have safe spaces. That is why I want to have my own tattoo studio, I want to create a space that is like, “everyone is welcome here, but first and foremost people of colour are totally safe. This is your space, and you can just be yourself. You don’t have to be anything else.”