Hiroko's Story: A Thing or Two for Black Women

I hope that this will not have a negative effect on relationships between API and Black Women for it is not my intention at all:

As an API woman who has a thing or two for black women, living in the "Chocolate City" brings me a pleasure as well as dissappointment. Pleasure, of course, just walking out of my apartment, I see yummy looking brownies all over the place. Checking out babes to butches to everybody in between while I ride my motorcycle, it is amazing that I haven't been in any collision, yet. And it could be one of the reasons that I suffer from a stiff neck. However, at times, disappointment drives me crazy to the point that I want to move out of this city. It mainly comes from their exclusiveness to other ethnicities. It is summed up in words once the president of Black Lesbian Support Group (BLSG) told me. "You ain't black." Yes, I know that. But, can't we just support one another and appreciate the other's support?

I am a woman with interests in many areas, so I go to various functions including ones sponsored by black women's organizations. I do not like the air I receive for the first few seconds when I enter into the room. "What are you doing here?" "You ain't black." Usually it is something like one of these lines. My feeling gets hurt more when I am meeting with somebody there and she happens to be black and comes in later than I. The air changes and all of the sudden I am "one of the family." If I were by myself, I stay as a stray guest. Everybody's polite, but there is a glass wall I cannot penetrate just because of my ethnicity. Though it does not take too long for them to find out who I am and take me in, sometimes the anticipation of the air is annoying enough for me to turn around and not come back.

I am not asking for a membership of the black race. I simply find black women, as well as my API sisters, attractive. And I admire their strength to have gone through so much in this society. Yet, whenever I encounter that "air," I start wondering if the strength I'm attracted to is really there nowadays. The hope to find out tools that we, API women, can adapt to fight the unjust in this society weakened. Not only for my personal benefit, well, that has a lot to do with it, but also in order for us, so called "minority" women to win visibility in this white heterosexual male dominant society, I believe it is important for us to collaborate our effort, support each other, and appreciate the other's support. Seriously.

Hiroko is "a daring Americanized Japanese transplanted to the DC area in 1992. She is a self-appointed activist in minority women's community. This Fall, Hiroko will be attending the University of Maryland Baltimore County. A dyke on a bike."