A Quote by Margo Jefferson
Negroland is my name for a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty. Children in Negroland were warned that few Negroes enjoyed privilege or plenty and that most whites would be glad to see them returned to indigence, deference and subservience.
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However the Southern man may have been master of the negro, there were compensatory processes whereby certain negroes were masters of their masters' children.
There were always more Negroes in the field than there was Negroes in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn't get nothing but what was left of the insides of the hog. They call 'em "chitt'lin'" nowadays. In those days they called them what they were: guts. That's what you were -- a gut-eater. And some of you all still gut-eaters.
When I look in the mirror I see the woman I knew I wanted to be as a child. When I was a young girl, I had a vision of the woman I wanted to be. And I often reached out to women of color in America for inspiration. My mother would regularly buy Essence and Ebony. I would look at those magazines filled with images of professional, intelligent women of color who knew who they were, who enjoyed who they were, and who were surrounded by other people who enjoyed who they were. When I look in the mirror, I'm really glad that that's what I see today, but it took awhile to get here.
In a city where most of the wealth is controlled by a small few, certain things are overlooked, particularly when it comes to the assertion of privilege.
I was very careful to cast guys who were very good-looking and very fit and who had a certain sense of privilege about them, because with that sense of privilege comes contempt.
Of course you can more easily recognise the outsiders because they have a different skin color. But let us take for instance the relationship between the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority in America and the negroes. What is important here is that the negroes were the descendants from slaves and were excluded from power, while the white majority kept them at bay, kept them down, kept them where they are. If the negroes in the future became assimilated and acquired equal power access, if there were a black president, then many of these things would change.
I think the most harmful belief passed on to me - not always directly - was the belief that whatever I did as a Negro, however much we Negroes achieved, despite the presence of some enlightened whites, white society as a whole enjoyed being racists in the secret core of their being and would never, ever give that up.
I enjoyed my time in the WRAF. There were plenty of people at the airfields where I worked, and they were all very good company.
There is plenty of television. There are plenty of talk shows. There are plenty of comedians. But there is not plenty of worship of the true and living God.
If your white privilege and class privilege protects you, then you have an obligation to use that privilege to take stands that work to end the injustice that grants that privilege in the first place.
A privilege may not be a right, but, under the constitution of the country, I do not gather that any broad distinction is drawn between the rights and the privileges that were enjoyed and that were taken away.
I was never very interested in boys - and there were plenty of them - vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.
While I was able to pass as white as soon as I came to America, this was not really possible while I was growing up, as it was pretty obvious that I wasn't 'all German.' So my privilege was that in America, I could conveniently withhold one of my bloodlines and avoid racism and discrimination. That is not a privilege most people of color have.
Plenty and indigence depend upon the opinion every one has of them; and riches, like glory of health, have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleaded to lend them.
You were not supposed to show off in Negroland because you are supposed to be perfectly decorous and well behaved. You were also not supposed to tell any stories that reflected badly on the group because that reflected badly on the race. I use past tense, but it still feels like present tense.
It's a privilege to be able to be involved with people as talented as the people I've had the luck to work with, and it's just been a great experience for me, and I'm glad that so many of the films I've had the luck to do were films that could be enjoyed by families together.
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